Revenue Raiders

Over the decades, moonshiners, bootleggers, and rumrunners have taken on the mantle of anti-heroes. They have been romanized in old movies like Thunder Road and Smoky and the Bandit. NASCAR still claims a kinship with fast driving moonshiners of old. A soft drink bears the name "Mountain Dew." Songs and even institutions of higher education glorify them. For instance, the fight song of the University of Tennessee refers to moonshiners and (by implication) to the murder of revenuers. This book deals with the efforts to curb the illicit liquor trade in one small Tennessee county - that of Macon - between 1877 and 1941. The 69 short articles illustrating those efforts represent but a tiny fraction of the events that took place during the whiskey war. Make no mistake about it - it was a real war. As with all wars, it had real casualties and a real death toll. All sides suffered immensely from it.