Tar Heel Lightnin': How Secret Stills and Fast Cars Made North Carolina the Moonshine Capital of the World

INTRODUCTION: WHITE LIGHTNIN’

Well in North Carolina way back in the hills lived my old pappy and he had him a still

He brewed white lightnin’ till the sun went down

Then he’d fill him a jug and he’d pass it around

Mighty mighty pleasin’ pappy’s corn squeezin’ (whew white lightnin’)

Well the G-men, T-men, revenuers too, searchin’ for the place where he made his brew

They were lookin’ tryin’ to book him but my pappy kept on cookin’

(Whew white lightnin’)

In 1958, rockabilly star J. P. Richardson (better known as the Big Bopper of Chantilly Lace fame) wrote the classic moonshine song White Lightning.¹ We will never know exactly why the Texan located his pappy’s still in North Carolina. Richardson tragically died on 3 February 1959 in the infamous Day the Music Died plane crash along with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Perhaps the words North Carolina just fit into the rhyme and rhythm of the song better than Tennessee or Georgia or the names of any of the other southern states where moonshining was common. He probably chose North Carolina, however, because by 1958 the state had a longtime, and well-deserved, reputation as one of the top producers of illegal alcohol in the United States.

Indeed, the art and craft of distilling grains and fruits into liquor runs deep in the DNA of North Carolina—and not only way back in the hills. Whiskey making was one of the first commercial enterprises in North Carolina, and the first European settlers to the Albemarle Sound region in the 1650s brought with them the skills and equipment necessary for distilling. English settlers in Virginia had already adapted their liquor making to New World conditions, most notably through the discovery that the maize grown by the Indigenous Americans could be effectively, and tastefully, distilled. Migrations in the eighteenth century into the Piedmont of Highland Scots up the Cape Fear River and a horde of Scotch Irish, folks with long whiskey-distilling traditions, reinforced and expanded the economic and social importance of liquor production in the colony.

In the early years of North Carolina statehood, distilling became entrenched as a key component of the subsistence lifestyle practiced by most yeoman farmers. Even when the federal government attempted to tax and regulate liquor production during the Washington and Adams administrations, North Carolina’s liquor production continued relatively undisturbed and unabated. Alexander Hamilton’s unwise excise tax on whiskey, which led to the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, did little but ensure that Thomas Jefferson won North Carolina’s electoral votes in the 1800 election.

In antebellum North Carolina, whiskey continued to permeate virtually every facet of life. Many of the state’s farmers distilled their corn and fruit into whiskey and brandy in the late fall, winter, and early spring when not preoccupied with their crops. They used the liquor as a trade item in stores and as a source of cash to pay mortgages and property taxes. Plantation owners often owned larger distilleries and used slave labor to produce liquor to supplement their income from tobacco and other cash crops. This process created a number of skilled slave distillers who added African and Caribbean distilling traditions to those brought from Europe.

Liquor also fueled the state’s social life; gatherings of all types featured alcohol consumption, often in copious amounts. Politicians regularly treated voters to drinks at political gatherings to ensure their support. Organizers also poured generously at communal work events such as barn raisings, cornhuskings, and hog killings. Although a temperance movement began in North Carolina in the 1830s and 1840s, alcohol consumption by church members and even clergy was the rule, not the exception. Indeed, the teetotal mentality that characterized North Carolina’s evangelical community during the twentieth century would not take deep root until the late nineteenth century.

With the passage of a federal excise tax on liquor during the Civil War, Reconstruction-era North Carolinians faced some hard choices. They could give up liquor production at a time when they desperately needed cash, pay the tax, which would have negated the profits for small producers, or become outlaws and make liquor illegally. For most Tar Heel distillers, the answer was pretty simple. North Carolinians generally saw the decision to make so-called blockade liquor as not just economic but political as well. They believed the hated excise tax imposed on them by federal/Yankee/Republican lawmakers violated their God-given constitutional rights. Despite their best efforts at controlling the illegal activity, federal agents faced a daunting task as huge numbers of North Carolinians chose to defy the government. Indeed, by the late nineteenth century, the blockade liquor business became cemented in the state’s economic, social, and cultural life. Moonshining was one of the few things in the state that united folks across all geographic divisions, connected rural and urban communities, and transcended gender, racial, and ethnic divides. About the only folks in the state not somehow involved in the illegal business as either producers, retailers, or consumers were middle-class, town- and city-dwelling whites. They increasingly became committed to the cause of prohibition.

In one of the more amazing achievements in modern United States history, this minority of middle-class North Carolinians, many of them women, forged a highly effective social and political movement. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the state’s voters severely limited legal alcohol production, distribution, and sale and then outlawed it altogether in 1908.

Prohibition, however, did not have the desired effect on North Carolina’s moonshine business and, if nothing else, made it much more profitable by eliminating legal competition. To be sure, the nearly thirty years of statewide and thirteen years of national Prohibition wove this illegal activity deeper into the fabric of the state’s everyday life. Even after the repeal of national and state prohibition, local-option laws kept many counties dry well into the 1960s and ensured healthy profits for moonshiners. From the late nineteenth century well into the 1960s, North Carolina had some of the most restrictive laws in the nation on alcohol production and sale and generally produced more illegal liquor than any other state. Indeed, if North Carolina has ever held the distinction of being number one nationally in anything, it is in moonshine production.

In the late 1960s, however, the business began to decline precipitously. Economic factors combined with improved law enforcement and the decline of local prohibition led the vast majority of moonshiners to put their stills away. A few held on, but they seemed a dying breed. Surprisingly, the twenty-first century has brought a resurgence in the business (both as an illegal activity and in the so-called legal moonshine business), and moonshine has experienced a kind of postmodern renaissance up to the present day.

Aside from moonshine’s long history in the state, one might still wonder why it’s appropriate to devote a whole book, published by a highly respected university press (at least before this book came out), to the topic. While other factors such as politics, a desire to get rich, and even the adrenaline rush of participating in an illegal activity played a role, the motivation for most of those involved in moonshine was economic. Modern-day North Carolinians often forget that the state has traditionally been one of the poorest in the nation. Making and selling moonshine often served as the poor person’s hedge against desperate economic times and as a supplement to meager farm incomes even in relatively good times. Distilling, transporting, or selling illegal liquor especially helped provide some level of economic security for North Carolina’s most vulnerable populations. These included single women and the African American and Native American victims of the state’s oppressive Jim Crow laws. Unfortunately, we will never be able to calculate accurately moonshine’s impact on the state’s economy, but it was almost surely one of the largest industries in the state from the 1860s to the 1960s.

The moonshine business also demonstrates the resourcefulness, inventiveness, adaptability, and ingenuity (what historians call agency) of North Carolinians, particularly those on the economic fringes. Indeed, over the years North Carolinians found a myriad of creative ways to make more illegal liquor quicker, distribute it more effectively, and evade the long reach of law enforcement.

Given its economic importance, it is not surprising that moonshine had an enormous impact on North Carolina culture. Moonshine and its makers captured the imagination of a variety of writers whose work is replete with vivid, though generally inaccurate, stories and depictions. In the twentieth century, movie producers made probably more moonshine-related films (both in the silent film era and in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s) in North Carolina than in any other state. Andy Griffith and Dukes of Hazzard producer Gy Waldron brought the state’s moonshiners to television in the 1960s and 1970s. Musicians and songwriters, folk artists, souvenir makers, and other vendors also drew inspiration from the illegal business and produced memorable works. North Carolina moonshiners influenced the nation’s sporting scene as well; the state’s creative liquor runners shaped NASCAR in important ways.

A number of the state’s moonshiners became famous, or infamous, nationwide and helped solidify the image of the North Carolina bootlegger in American popular culture. In the late nineteenth century, national publications featured the exploits of career moonshiners and staunch Confederate sympathizers Amos Owens, Aquilla Quill Rose, and Lewis Redmond. In the twentieth century, Percy Flowers and Junior Johnson found themselves featured in nationally circulated magazines. Union County moonshiner Jerry Rushing’s biography formed the basis of the most important moonshine-related television show in the 1970s. Popcorn Sutton and Jim Tom Hedrick took turns creating a postmodern moonshiner image as they starred in documentaries and reality television shows in the early twenty-first century.

In exploring such a topic, it is important not to get carried away with glorifying either the product or the moonshiners themselves. Yes, there were good reasons why so many North Carolinians became involved in the business, and yes, many moonshiners became quite accomplished at making and distributing liquor. But we cannot ignore the harmful effects that resulted from the state’s long and intimate relationship with an illegal product. One of the first things to understand is that while some North Carolinians have enjoyed reputations for producing high-quality whiskey, most of the product made in the moonshine era was pretty vile. Indeed, the prime mission of the moonshiner was to produce a high volume of liquor in as short a time as possible and get it out of their hands and to the market before the authorities caught up with them. In the twentieth century this led to the widespread use of refined sugar, with a little corn thrown into the mix, to make the chief product being distilled. In addition, moonshiners often adulterated the product and used cheap distilling equipment made from metals containing high concentrations of lead salts in order to get more liquor out of a run and reduce costs. The resulting product could have serious deleterious effects on consumers, most often as a result of long-term consumption but also in immediate reactions resulting in serious illness and even death.

The North Carolina Moonshine Hall of Fame (and Shame)

It has always bothered me that the state of North Carolina has chosen to highlight the accomplishments—significant as they were—of a couple of Ohio boys on its license tags. What the heck did North Carolina provide for the Wright brothers’ first flight other than a place with miserable winter weather? And how, given the circumstances, is North Carolina First in Flight? It seems that state officials have some sort of inferiority complex requiring them to go outside the state and import individuals with outstanding achievements.

The strange part of this is that there are important areas that the state could highlight where North Carolinians have proven their genius on a world-class level. Would it not be more appropriate to feature North Carolina’s contributions to the basketball world? How about a license plate honoring Wilmington’s Michael Jordan? Or one for, in my humble opinion, the all-time greatest collegiate basketball player, Shelby’s David Thompson. Or North Carolina’s women’s basketball pioneers Kay and Debbie Yow?

Other North Carolinians who have demonstrated world-class bona fides include bluegrass and Piedmont blues musicians, barbeque pit masters, and stock car racers. How about a license tag honoring Doc Watson or Earl Scruggs or Etta Baker or Libba Cotten or Warner Stamey or Ed Mitchell or Junior Johnson or Richard Petty or Dale Earnhardt? Fortunately, groups honor North Carolinians’ accomplishments in at least basketball, barbeque, blues, and bluegrass in museums and halls of fame scattered around the state and in numerous books.

While a list of outstanding North Carolinians in these fields stacks up well against similar lists from almost any other state, or nation for that matter, there is probably no field where North Carolinians have excelled more, gained more notoriety, or demonstrated more sheer genius than moonshining. As such, I humbly offer my picks for a (strictly hypothetical) North Carolina Moonshine Hall of Fame (and Shame). I have added and Shame to the title because at least some inductees committed acts—including Ku-Kluxing, violent behavior, and possibly even murder—that must be acknowledged alongside their accomplishments and creativity as moonshiners.

Choosing members for this N.C. Moonshine Hall of Fame produces major challenges. First, with so many talented individuals out there, narrowing the field to a reasonable number is difficult. However, many individuals in my Hall of Fame have achieved widespread popular acclaim. They have been profiled in books distributed nationally and internationally, Hollywood movies, popular television programs, and magazines with national circulations such as the Saturday Evening Post and Esquire. Others, however, while excelling in the moonshine business, labored in obscurity. That is partly a tribute to their success in keeping a low profile and avoiding law enforcement officials’ eyes and partly a product of a traditionally patriarchal and racist society that has often failed to recognize women’s, African Americans’, and Native Americans’ accomplishments. I have tried to include some of these individuals in this list, but another challenge in creating a Hall of Fame for individuals engaged in illegal activity is obtaining information on folks in these groups, despite their importance in making North Carolina a moonshine hotbed. In some cases, I have used individuals whom we know a little about as exemplars for these important underrecognized moonshiners.

The profiles in the N.C. Moonshine Hall of Fame sidebars scattered throughout this book are presented not in any sort of hierarchy or ranking but in roughly chronological order based on the peak of each individual’s career in the moonshine business. Some entries are more detailed than others, based on the amount of available information. While the list does not fully represent all groups of moonshiners, it does, I think, well represent the geographical spread of moonshining in the state. Moonshine played a key role in the Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and Tidewater and not just in the mountains, although inductees from the western part of the state do predominate. Most important, I firmly believe this group exemplifies the North Carolina moonshiners’ world-class creativity, entrepreneurship, and native intelligence.

North Carolina’s normalizing of a criminal activity also created its own problems. While most moonshiners in the state were reportedly otherwise upstanding citizens, involvement in one criminal activity led some to other types of criminality including prostitution, gambling, and money laundering. The need to protect operations from law enforcement helped produce a subculture in some communities where violence and gunplay became widespread. The moonshine business also proved to be a corrupting influence on political systems; bribery of public officials became common in some areas, and the local sheriff’s department was often the most reliable source for illegal liquor.

Moonshine had a disruptive impact on families and communities as well. The underground nature of the business, combined with the teetotal absolutism of many of the state’s churches, led to lots of secret drinking, which tended toward bingeing, wild drunkenness, and violent behavior. Families often suffered as a result from spousal and child abuse and neglect. The business and culture of moonshine also kept moonshiners, primarily men, absent from their homes for extended periods as they tended stills in hidden places or served prison time.

All that said, understanding the history of moonshine in North Carolina is key to understanding the state’s history itself. Indeed, one could argue that illegal liquor production has been as important as tobacco, textiles, or furniture, an integral part of the warp and woof of the state’s economic, social, and cultural fabric. Understanding moonshine in the Tar Heel State is also key to understanding business in the south in general and fully understanding the whole region’s history. The huge amount of material on moonshine in the south made a study of it in the whole region an overwhelming task, but in this case North Carolina provides a convenient microcosm for the south as a whole. The presence of moonshining in all of the state’s distinct geographical regions—its mountains, Piedmont foothills, piney woods, and Tidewater swamps—reflects its spread elsewhere. In addition, the involvement of people across lines of gender, race, ethnicity, and social class was common across the south and gives us a fuller picture of these social dynamics.

Indeed, few things in North Carolina’s history connect nearly all its people over the entire state over a longer period of time. As such, moonshine is worthy of serious study and, with certain caveats in place, worthy of celebration. I would not expect the state to change its license plates from First in Flight and First in Freedom to First in Moonshine, but at least it would be historically appropriate. Perhaps the state legislature might consider changing the official state toast to one proposed by a humorist in the Raleigh News and Observer in 1909:

Here’s to the land of the long-nosed swine

That feed upon the roots of the long-leaf pine

Where the moon-shine’s strong and never weak—

Here’s to the land that all should seek.²

1

WHISKEY’S GOLDEN ERA IN NORTH CAROLINA

The ancestors of North Carolina’s early European settlers had been distilling grains and fruits into alcohol for thousands of years. The English, Germans, and Swiss who immigrated to the colony all brought distilling traditions with them to America. The large numbers of individuals who migrated to colonial North Carolina from the Celtic fringe of the British Isles, particularly from Scotland and Northern Ireland, brought an especially strong liquor culture. Indeed, the very word whiskey derives from the Gaelic word usquebaugh—generally translated as water of life—and the earliest records of Anglo-Saxon invaders of Scotland noted the commonality of spirit making among Celtic peoples.¹ For these people whiskey production and drinking were integral to daily life well before they crossed the Atlantic. In the words of moonshiner Lucas Doolin—the main character in Thunder Road, the B-movie classic filmed in Asheville in 1957—making liquor was part of the tradition of his daddy, grandaddy, his daddy before him clear back to Ireland.²

As they migrated to America, Europeans adapted their cultural practices to new surroundings. As early as the 1620s, English settlers in Virginia learned to distill the common grain of Native Americans—maize, or Indian corn—into whiskey. Anglican missionary Capt. George Thorpe wrote to a friend back in England that he had set up a distillery on the banks of the James River and learned to make so good a drink of Indian corn as I protest I have divers times refused to drink good strong English beer and chosen to drink that. By the time the Scotch Irish began arriving in droves in the 1720s, making corn liquor was a common practice in England’s American colonies.³ As historian W. J. Rorabaugh observed, The success of the whiskey industry was due, in part, to the fact that many Scottish, Irish, and Scotch-Irish grain distillers had immigrated to America during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. … When these Irish and Scots settled on the American frontier, they found conditions favorable for the exercise of their talents: plentiful water, abundant grain, and ample wood to fuel their stills.⁴

While distilling corn into whiskey involves few ingredients and demands little in the way of equipment, it is a complicated process that requires experience, patience, and skill. Practically anyone can make liquor, but it takes talent to make good liquor. As Joseph Dabney, who wrote a classic work on moonshining, observed, Making corn whiskey, as anyone in the Appalachians will tell you, is an art, not merely boiling mash and running it through a still. The secret is getting the right ingredients in those mash barrels and giving them proper timing and sequence.⁵

There are many variations on the traditional craft of making corn liquor, but the basic process is pretty standard. The first step is to locate a dependable source of water. Distillers consider soft water that contains few trace minerals to be best for making good whiskey. Most of the creeks and streams of North Carolina contain such water. Early settlers learned to examine the plant life along streams to determine whether the water was soft or hard. The presence of yellowroot or horsemint indicates that the water is soft, while touch-me-nots are a sign of hard water.⁶

The next step is to make the mash. While recipes differ, most traditional mash contains ground corn—white corn is generally preferred—corn malt, and water. Malt produces enzymes that convert the starch in the corn into fermentable sugars. Distillers produce corn malt by taking whole kernels of corn, soaking them in water for a day, draining the water but keeping the corn damp for three to four days until two-inch sprouts emerge, drying the sprouted corn, and finally grinding it in a mill. Some makers use rye or barley malt, but the ready availability of corn made it the most common malt. The liquor maker then mixes the cornmeal with the malt and hot water in a barrel or wooden box and leaves it to sit for five to ten days to ferment. During the fermentation process the mash will bubble and produce a foamy layer on top known as the cap.⁷

When the mash stops bubbling and the cap disappears, the resulting beer (about 10 percent alcohol) is ready for distillation. Early whiskey producers in North Carolina commonly used a ten-to-forty-gallon copper-pot still. Traditionally, distillers have preferred copper for their stills. It is light and tough, conducts heat well and evenly, does not leach metals into the alcohol, and does not corrode. They then pour the beer into the still and start a fire in a stone furnace built around the still to contain and evenly spread the heat. Once the beer reaches the boiling point of alcohol at 173ºF, the still cap is sealed on top, usually with malt paste, and distillation begins. The alcohol vapor produced from boiling the mash rises to the still cap, where it escapes through a coiled copper tube, or worm, run through a stream or a barrel containing cold, running water. The cool water condenses the vapor back into liquid, which drips through a clean cloth, sometimes containing charcoal, to filter impurities and on into a container.⁸

Typical still used in North Carolina in the colonial and antebellum periods. (Courtesy of North Carolina Room, Pack Memorial Library, Asheville, N.C.)

For the traditional North Carolina craft whiskey maker, however, this was not the end but just the first run of low-alcohol singlings, which contain impurities such as fusel oil. The distiller must now pour out the leftover mash residue, known as slops, and thoroughly clean the still. Slops only run a few times can be emptied back into new mash to help speed the fermentation process, and once spent and no longer yielding sufficient alcohol, they can be fed to livestock—hogs love them.⁹

The singlings are run back through the still and filtered, and they once again trickle into a container. The distiller checks the proof of the liquor—in the United States defined as twice the percentage of alcohol by volume—by periodically running some of the product into a small bottle known as a proofing vial. Experienced makers can judge proof with a quick shake of the vial and by observing the bead. The size of the bubbles that form—the bead—and the speed with which they dissipate, or flash off, indicate the proof. As one liquor maker explained it, If it’s high proof—say 115 to 120—a big bead will jump up there on top when you shake it. If the proof is lower, the bead goes away faster and is smaller. … A true bead will stop half in the likker and half out on top.¹⁰

Another way to judge proof is to watch the stream of alcohol coming out of the worm. At 160 proof, the stream becomes twisted and spirals into the catch container. This part of the run produces what North Carolina distillers generally referred to as the high shots. Watching the stream also lets the maker know when the run is done, when the liquor breaks at the worm and produces low-proof backings. Backings are collected separately and either run with the next batch of mash or mixed with the high shots to lower the proof. Distillers pour this doubled and twisted whiskey into a large container called a tempering tub, where they mix the liquor from several runs and lower the proof to the desired level, usually around 100–110, by adding backings and/or water. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whiskey makers in North Carolina would then transfer the product to stoneware jugs or into charred oak barrels for aging.¹¹

While distillers most commonly produced corn liquor during this period, they also produced brandy from local fruit. The process for making brandy is pretty much the same as for producing whiskey: mashed fruit—known as pomace—is placed in barrels with corn or rye malt to ferment and then double run through a still. Brandy commanded a much higher price than corn liquor, so distillers made it at every opportunity. As one producer put it, Just anybody can’t afford brandy. Mostly for judges and lawyers. Indeed, much of the sizeable apple crop in antebellum North Carolina went to making some type of alcoholic beverage, from hard cider to distilled brandy. Producers also used plums, grapes, elderberries, and even maypops. Many of the peach orchards planted in the state before the Civil War were for the primary purpose of making peach brandy.¹²

From the earliest days of European settlement, consumption of alcohol held a prominent place in the life and culture of North Carolina. Throughout much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the United States—despite the development of a national temperance movement in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s—there was little social or religious stigma associated with drinking hard liquor. By 1830, an average American consumed more than five gallons of liquor annually.¹³

While some North Carolina churches embraced the temperance movement of the 1830s and 1840s, most, even the Baptist and Methodist churches, only discouraged drunkenness and promoted moderation. In the antebellum period, deacons and elders in North Carolina churches commonly drank alcohol and even produced it. Indeed, the pastor of a church would not draw stares if he had a flask of whiskey on his hip. In an 1895 article, a reporter for the Greensboro Patriot reminisced about the antebellum period, when the majority [of North Carolina ministers] were not averse to bracing up a little with whiskey or brandy of their own make or that of some member of their congregations. The reporter continued, "These preachers would now and then get pretty lively and seemed to enjoy the potations as much as the regenerate. In fact, it is pretty generally believed that some of them often entered the pulpit more or less tipsy and that a good drink of peach brandy … either inspired a sermon in which hell fire primstone [sic] played a conspicuous part or else heaven was pictured as an elysian land of peace and plenty, according to the effect of drink on the exhorter’s mind."¹⁴

Brandy

While unaged corn liquor is the potent potable most commonly produced by North Carolina distillers over the years, the state also has long brandy-making traditions. Indeed, since European settlers arrived, distillers have been converting their fruit into brandy. Until well into the twentieth century, there was little market for fresh fruit, as the slow pace of transportation made it difficult to get produce to market before it spoiled. Converting fruit to brandy made planting orchards a profitable enterprise, as brandy generally yielded two to three times corn liquor’s price. In fact, distillers were turning almost all fruit grown in North Carolina into brandy or hard cider well into the early twentieth century.

Brandy making does present challenges that distilling corn liquor doesn’t. It is seasonal and dependent on the availability of fresh fruit, although distillers reportedly used imported dried fruit in the early twentieth century. Processing the fruit and turning it into pomace is also much more time-consuming than making corn mash, and the sweet-smelling pomace attracts lots of insects, especially yellow jackets and bees. The high prices brandy brings make it worthwhile for many producers, however, to put in the extra effort. That high price has also traditionally enticed folks to counterfeit the product. Revenue agent Garland Bunting told author Alec Wilkinson that Nash County (Bunting called it Mash County for its moonshine reputation) was noted for its apple brandy. Bunting also revealed a dirty secret about Nash County’s brandy reputation: producers did not actually distill apple pomace, but rather the bootleggers simply flavor their whiskey with apple cores.

Peach brandy is also part of Junior Johnson’s legend. According to sportswriter and Johnson biographer Tom Higgins, Johnson once asked Spartanburg, South Carolina, bootlegger and racing promoter Joe Littlejohn to send him some peaches. A big practical joker, Littlejohn sent Johnson a whole train car full. Johnson allegedly put some of his Wilkes County buddies to work, converted the peaches into brandy, bottled it and boxed it up, and delivered it to Littlejohn’s motel in Spartanburg, stacking the cases in front of the door and blocking the entrance.

Like the moonshine business itself, brandy making has seen a renaissance in North Carolina in recent years. Dean Combs of Wilkes County got caught making apple brandy illegally in 2009. He defended himself by saying he was reviving an important historical tradition in the county: There’s not been any good apple brandy out here for years. It’s better than what you buy at a store. That same year in nearby Lenoir, Keith Norden and Chris Hollifield began a successful legal business with their Carolina Distillery, producing apple brandy using heirloom apples from Perry Lowe Orchards in Moravian Falls.

Of course, the same was true for church members. In his autobiography, Rev. Brantley York recalled his formative days on a farm in Randolph County, where his father supplemented his income by making liquor. York defended his father to his readers, who by the 1870s had embraced teetotalism: "At this time it may be thought strange that any member of the church should follow the distillation of ardent spirits as a livelyhood [sic] but the views entertained by even good people at the time of which I speak, were very different; for no one supposed it was wrong either to make or drink ardent spirits moderately; drunkenness only was regarded as a sin even by ministers."¹⁵ In an 1889 article a reporter for the Tobacco Plant recalled these good old days … when the good Methodist class-leader and Baptist deacon would sit at a still and sing, as the corn juice flowed: ‘Come thou fount of every blessing,’ and as the stream flowed more freely, ‘streams of mercy never ceasing.’¹⁶

Antebellum North Carolinians consumed corn liquor at most social events, and while most folks drank in moderation, excessive guzzling could, and did, occur. Traveler Charles Lanman commented that by the time he arrived at a barn raising in Buncombe County in 1848, an abundance of whiskey had already been imbibed. Militia musters and court days also prompted heavy drinking. Buncombe County attorney Augustus Merrimon observed a court day in Burnsville where the crowd of Yancey Countians tried to see how badly they could behave themselves. … At different times I noticed groups about over the Court Yard and in the center stood a large gawky fellow with a fiddle and he would saw off some silly ditty. Two or three drunken fools would dance to the same.¹⁷

Elections also provoked a good many North Carolina men to drink to excess. Voters generally expected those running for office to treat them with whiskey and provide some entertainment. Traveler Kemp Plummer Battle noted this mountain canvassing by a candidate for the North Carolina General Assembly in Burnsville in 1848: The candidate, a man named Fleming, spoke from a goods-box in front of a grog-shop most animatedly and effectively, for about an hour with a tin quart-pot in his right hand. Then he went into the shop inviting the crowd to follow him to partake of whiskey. He was elected.¹⁸ As the Murfreesboro North Carolina Chronicle put it in 1827, He who treats to the most whiskey, generally has the most friends.¹⁹ Some people condemned the practice. A VOTER wrote to the Raleigh Minerva in 1819 asserting, I would not thank any man to vote for me whose vote could be bought with whiskey. He did concede, however, that such a policy would cost a North Carolina politician votes if he did not follow tradition: I know there are many sots who will exclaim against a candidate who will not treat profusely.²⁰ Such beliefs ensured that treating remained a common practice in North Carolina throughout the antebellum period.

George Caleb Bingham, The County Election. Although the scene depicted took place in Missouri, this would have been a typical, alcohol-fueled, election day scene in antebellum North Carolina. (Courtesy of Reynolda House Museum, Winston-Salem, N.C.)

Aside from the cultural and social dimensions of alcohol consumption in North Carolina, corn liquor and brandy served as the bases for many commonly used folk remedies. Many strongly believed that alcohol was good for what ails you, whatever that may be. Augustus Merrimon observed that farmers in western North Carolina generally assumed that to drink [whiskey] in damp and cold weather will warm them and to drink in hot weather it will cool them.²¹

North Carolinians used whiskey in a wide variety of remedies. Most recipes for common tonics for croup, dysentery, various stomach ailments, toothache, headache, colds, and flu contained liquor. One Swain County resident told writer Horace Kephart that while people in the Smokies generally relied on herbal cures because of the distance to doctors and their scand’lous costs, the herbs customarily ain’t no good ’thout a leetle grain o’ whiskey.²² Even most treatments for animal ailments contained alcohol. Of course, the most legendary medicinal use for liquor was for snakebite. The Salisbury Western Carolinian contained a recipe for the bite of a snake in an 1821 edition: As soon as possible apply the mouth of a bottle, nearly filled with distilled spirits (whiskey or brandy) to the wounds; the spirits will extract the poison and give immediate relief. Of course, this was all the more reason to have a flask of liquor with one wherever one went—just in case.²³

In addition to its social and medicinal uses, perhaps the most significant aspect of corn liquor production in North Carolina before the Civil War was its economic importance, especially to the yeoman farmers that formed the bulk of the white population during the antebellum period. While many observers look back at these folks as living a pioneer, self-sufficient existence, recent research has revealed that market relationships tied North Carolina farmers to local towns, plantations to the east and south, growing American cities, and even international markets as far away as China. Even relatively self-sufficient farmers needed something to trade for items they could not produce themselves such as iron goods, coffee, tea, or salt. Landowning farmers also needed some cash money to pay their property taxes, as the tax man would not accept a hog or bushels of corn as in-kind payment. As Joseph Dabney observed, What the settler needed was a cash crop to enable him to pay his taxes and thus retain his precious property—usually a few hundred acres. Even nonlandowning tenants needed some way to pay their rents and a way to accumulate some cash in order to eventually purchase their own land.²⁴

Small farmers in North Carolina basically had two major products they could produce that had real cash value and would transport relatively easily: livestock and whiskey. Many used both avenues to purchase market goods and pay their taxes. Turning their corn crop into whiskey, even if they relied on a more skilled community distiller, provided the most profitable use of the farmers’ time and resources. As W. J. Rorabaugh observed, A farmer could realize handsome profits from processing his grain into spirits, since a bushel of corn worth 25 cents yielded 2½ gallons of spirits worth $1.25 or more. Even if the farmer did not do his own distilling and had to give a commercial distiller half the output in payment for his services, he could increase the value of his corn by 150 percent.²⁵ In a state crisscrossed by inlets, rivers, and creeks and