The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1880-07-08
THE MOUNTAIN DISTILLERS.
Where Two Young Men were Shot Down
Last Week-Some Facts About the Illicit
DiStillers of Georgia.

A dispatch was published last week by
the daily papers mentioning the receipt
of telegram from the revenue collector
at Atlanta by the treasury department in
Washington, representing that, while
raiding illicit stills in Campbell County,
Ga, his posse WAS fired upon by moon
sinners. An Associated Press dispatch
said, however, that party of young men
were passing in the road, and the revenue
posse fired upon them, mortally wound
ing two. They were not moonshiners,
and were unarmed. In this connection
the following letter from Blairsville, Ga,
to the Atlanta Constitution, 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 most active, and here
have been found the most conclusive ev-
licences that the policy pursued by reve-
nue. officials is wrong in principle and
hard in practice. These facts we're amply
attested by the proceedings in the COM
missioner's court last week. A half dozen
citizens bad been brought here for use
less trial, 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 for
lying and gambling, and fled the county
to escape arrest for forgery. 1t seems
that he grati6ed many personal spites
before he left by suing out warrants in
Discriminatory against the citizens of the
county. In each case he would furnish
the names of nearest neighbors as wit
nesses. 1t happened that these warrants
and twenty were sworn out on Chesser's
oath-were nearly every one for persons
in Coestoe district of this county, where
some of the revenue aarmists say no
mans life is safe. Raid after raid had
gone through this district, but most of
the accused were still at large. After
the appointment of a commissioner for
this county, Col. Fitzsimons sent bis
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 ac-
complished in 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 body of officials equipped
like cavalry ready for an engagement.
They readily came in, however, when
assured that they could have q hearing,
and have an opportunity Of giving bond
at home. Several of these cases were
disposed Of to-day. As usual with Ches-
ser's warrants, no evidence was found to
sustain them; the witnesses all testified
that they did not know how their names
came to be given in the cases, and all
swore that they would not believe Chesser
on his oath. If there had been no COM
missioner here these men would have
been dragged away to Atlanta, taken
away from their crops when they most
need attention, and suffered a severe
hardship, absolutely for nothing.
The armed posse plan has been a farce
and fraud, if nothing worse. In one
week nearly all of the forty warrants for
men in the county 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 of the
marshal 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 $500
day.
After one has taken a tour of the
counties north of the Blue Ridge, and
carefully observed all that such trip
brings to his notice, it is hard for him to
believe that he has been through 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. The onl ly arms one seer are
the carbines of revenue posses, and The
search for any show of resistance to- au-
thority results in dead failure.
Illicit distilling has been a curse to
these counties. 1t 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 impossi
BILE. They raise few hogs, a little wheat,
and make the bulk of their crop in corn.
There is no market near them, and when
the years accounts are cast up they find
themselves with enough meat and bread
to live on, but without cent of money.
If they have made surplus of meat or
grain, there is no market for it around
them, and if they haul it sixty or eighty
miles over the mountain roads to the
railroad, it will be losing business.
They can easily make hundred bushels
of the finest Irish potatoes in the world
on the rich mountain soil, but there is
no way of getting them out. 1t was just
this state of things which engendered
the unfortunate practice of illicit distill-
ing. There is among most of these people
that spirit of mountain independence
which believes that man has 4 right to
do pretty much what he pleases. They
have always heartily disliked the law
imposing a revenue of ninety cents
gallon on whiskey, agreeing with MIR.
Stephens that farmer should have the
same right to boil his corn into sweet
mash" as to boil it into hominy. Dis
tillation opened the way for supplying
their own wants, and also for making q
little spare change. 1t became common
in the years first succeeding the war,
vixen there was a decentralization in the
| administration of the law. Then many
of the offenders could honestly plead
ignorance, and the first attempt to sup
press moonshining in Georgia caught
many man who honestly believed that
he had right to make "a little licker."
There is no denial of the fact that the