One line stood out from thje rest of the play. While the audence was surrounded by the liberalism and regulationism that is West Virginia politics and government, the actor who played Devil Anse Hatfield in the drama stood in his quiet living room on and reflected thoughtfully with some company...
"Ya know," the plays Devil Anse said, "I just don't see that the government has a right to regulate what a man does with his own corn...." Devil Anse posed for us for a moment with his pipe in his hand. The words stuck in my head.
The Whisky Rebellion Toastmasters Club in Pittsburgh is named in honor of that spirit.
"Many of our charter members could identify with the libertarian spirit of that momentous revolt," the club's web site says, "which was not really about whiskey; it was about a hideous tax levied upon Western Pennsylvanians by the fledgling Federal Government. The rebels were vindicated in 1800, when the opponents of the Federalists' policies sent Thomas Jefferson to the White House and the Whiskey Excise Tax was repealed."
Well maybe, but Jefferson's Federalism is dead. The club chose the name in 1993 to commemorate the approaching bicentennial of the 1794 Western Pennsylvania uprising anyway...
Moonshine began to be a prominent part of American life with the onset of the Civil War: the Federal Government imposed excise taxes on whiskey and tobacco in an effort to finance the Union army. After the war ended, the taxes were simply kept in place. After all, someone had to bay to rebuild all the stuff Sherman burnt down...
After the Civil War the Revenue Bureau of the Treasury Department was formed. Among its enemies was North Carolina Senator Zebulon Vance. Vance campaigned against revenue laws in 1876, and called bureau's agents "red-legged grasshoppers." Because of them, Vance grumbled, "The time has come when an honest man can't take an honest drink without having a gang of revenue officers after him."
Under Commisioner Green B. Raum (1876-1883) the bureau became a police force, hunting down moonshiners in their home enviornments and exercising national authority with no regard of state lines.
The whiskey tax was raised to $1.10 per gallon in 1894 - a tax considered stiffer than most shine. The impact was a lively market in untaxed liquor as more and more distillers decided the only way they could make a profit was to sell their drink illegally. The government estimated at the time that between 5 and 10 million gallons of illegal liquor were produced and sold annually in the years just before the current century started.
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