Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1880 — MOUNTAIN DISTILLERS. [ARTICLE]

MOUNTAIN DISTILLERS.

A dispatch was published in theStm of Saturday, Bsentiooing tire receipt of a telegram from the revenue collector al Atlanta by the Treasury Department in Washington, representing that, while raiding illicit stills in Campbell county, his posse wm fired upon by moonshiners, and his pome retuned the fire, wounding two ot the moonshiners. An Associated Press dispatch said, however, that a party of young uien'were passing in the road, and the revenue posse fired upon them, mortally wounding two. They were not moonshiner*, and were unarmed. In this connection the following letter from Blairsville, the Atlanta Coarishtifon will be of interest: Union county has been the principal source of complaint in the recent revenue troubles. Here the operations of armed posses have been moat active, and here have been found the most conclusive evidences that the policy pursued by revenue officials is wrong in principle and hard in practice. These facts were amply

attested by the proceedings in the commissioner’s court last week. A half dozen citizens had been brought here for a useless trial, and on warrants sworn out by one J. J. Chesser. Chesser served his term in the penitentiary for larceny, and then moved to Union county, where he joined the church. He was soon expelled tor tying and gambling, and fled the county to escape arrest for forgery. It seem* that he gratified many of his personal spites before he left by suing out warrants indiscriminately against the citizens of the county. In each case he would furnish the names of nearest neighbars as witnesses. It happened that these warrants —and twenty were sworn out on Chesser’s oath—were nearly every one for persons in Choestoe District in this .county, where some of the. revenue alarmists say no man’s (ife is safe. Raid after raid has gone through this district, but most of tbe accused were still at large. After the appointment of a commissioner for this county, Col. Fitzsimons sent his deputies to arrest these men. Not the slightest difficulty was experienced in doing so, and what armed raids could never have done was thus peacefully accomplished in a few days. The district had been so aggravated by these raids, and had suffered so many hardships, that these men would have lain in mountain caves all the year before they would have given up to a body of officials equipped like cavalry ready for an engagement They readily came in, however, when assured that they could have a hearing, and have an opportunity of giving bond at home. Several of these cases were disposed of to day. As usual with Chesser's warrants, no evidence was found to sustain them; the witnesses all testified that taey did not know how their names come to be given In the cases, and all swore that they would not believe Chesser on his oath. If there had been no commissioner here these men would have been dragged away to Atlanta, taken a wav from their crops when they most needed attention, and suffered a severe hardship, absolutely for nothing.

The armed posse plan has been a farce and a fraud, it nothing worse. In one week nearly all of the forty warrants Jor men in the country have been disposed of in the most peaceable manner. Men have voluntarily given themselves up by the dozen, and though some of the most noted moonshiners in the state have. been arrested, there has not been a show of resistance to the single deputies ot the Marshals who have performed their duty without the posse. In the mean time the scores of mounted, armed men employed in the service of this and adjoining counties have been moving around, but have really done nothing. The expense to the government has been about >2OO a day. After one has taken a tour of the coun ties north of the Blue Ridge, and carefully observed all that such a trip brings to his notice, it is hard for him to believe that he has been through a region which has been declared in official reports to be in a state of armed resistance to the authority of the united states. Every where farmers are planting their rocky fields: everywhere people are hospitable and kind. '£he only arms one sees are the carbines of revenue posses, and the search for any show of resistance to authority results in a dead failure. Illicit distilling has been a curse to these counties. It has caused the arrest of hundreds of citizens. The guilty have been punished, but they have involved the innocent in the consequences of their offending. The farmers there live on small plantations, which are literally locked in on all sides. Communication with the outside world, is almost impossible. They raise a few hogs, a little wheat, and make the bulk of their crop in corn. There is no market near them, and when the year’s accounts are cast up they find themselves with enough bread and meat to live en, but without a cent of money. If they have made a surplus ot meat or Sain, there is no market tor it around em, and if they haul it sixty or eighty miles over the mountain roads to the railroad, it will bo a losing business. • They can easily make 100 bushel* of the finest Irish potatoes in the world on the rich mountain soil, but there is no way of getting them out. It was just this state of things which engendered the unfortunate practice of illicit distilling. There is among most of these people that spirit of mountain independence which believes that a man has a right to do pretty much what he pleases. They have always heartily disliked the law impesing a revenue of 90 cents a gallon on whisky, agreeing with Mr. Stephens that a farmer should have the same right to boil his corn into “sweet mash” as to boil it into hominy. Distillation opened the way for supplying their own wants and also for making a little spare change. It became common in the years first succeeding the war, when there was a demoralization in the administration of the law. Then many of the offenders could honestly plead ignorance, and the first attempts to suppress moonshining in Georgia caught many a man who honestly believed that he had a right to make “a little licker.” There is no denial of the fact that the revenue laws are unpopular. For this reason they should have been carefully enforced from the start. It has seemed, however, to be the policy of most ot the officers directing the enforcement ot these laws to terrify the people into obedience. This is the secret of all the trouble. Buch a policy has led to gross outrages upon person and property, to a disregard of the authority of the State to protect its citizens, to the frequent employment of desperate and unworthy men as deputies,and to the consequent feeling among the people that what was called law was in reality oppression. Besides this, it seems that Georgia has had an undue share of accusation. The amount of illicit whisky made in this .state is very much less than is generally supposed. The whisky frauds of BL Louis and other cities make the sins ot Georgia moonshiners sink into insignificance. These wholesale violators have frequently escaped punishment altoty* <■!«*>?«»»?* “'T. 1 nave enaureu 11 unaer Kia-giove mwmeet, while the back-woodsman has been hauled out of his little mountain hollow, > when he may have made ten or fifty gal-

lons of wh isky, and he i 9 held up as an example of the terrible power of the law. It to useless, however, to complain at past injustice. la there any hope that these troubles In Georgia will be terminated soon t Those best acquainted with the subject declare that there is. Public opinion in the mountains is setting more firmly than ever against all forms of lawlessness. The people are condemning illicit distilling, and it will not bo long before a man sos pected of it will be regarded as the enemy of a community which has suffered so much by such sms as he is commitcounty has been blessed in many respects. Its magnificent scenery; its terti le valleys, in which veget at ion grows with almost tropical luxuriance; fie climate, blessed w th the ever fresh breath of mountain breezes and beyond the reach of all epidemics, all combine to make its future bright with promise. Its mineral wealth can only be guessed by the results oi slight developments. These justify the opinion that there to not on this continent a richer region in deposits ot gold, - ’ copper and a dozen other precious secrets of the soil. The people, as a rule, are illiterate, t>ui they are hospitable, kind, and intelligent as the masses of any population 1 have ever noticed. There seems to.be in their dealings a sort of primitive virtue which has long since fled irom more populous regions of the state. They leave their doors open at night, and sleep without the slightest fear of theft. They are liberal in their donations to all good causes among them, and in the care of the unfortunate and the ministry of every form of charity they are singularly warm-hearted and tender.-—W. r. Bun.