In the Pale Moonlight: Jugs and Alcohol in North Carolina

摘要

THE HISTORY OF JUG MAKING in North Carolina is inseparably tied to the manufacture, storage, transportation, and consumption of beverage alcohol.From the 1750s into the twentieth century, the state's potters and distillers produced ample supplies of jugs and alcohol.North Carolina's first colonists quickly set up stills to manufacture alcoholic beverages, especially whiskey made from corn, rye, barley, or wheat.Poorly constructed and badly maintained roads-and, before the 1830s, the absence of railroads^made transporting farmers’grain crops from one region to another a difficult and inefficient task.Distilled spirits made from these grains were much easier to transport, and die revenue gained from dieir sale contributed significantly to farmers’incomes.Although distillers’jobs were unencumbered by regulation, that was not true for long.In 1791, following the Revolutionary War, the newly formed federal government levied a tax on whiskey.This first excise tax was championed by Secretary of die Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who saw it as a way to retire the sizable war debt.Strong opposition to die tax, however, led to the Whiskey Rebellion.The tax was eventually repealed in 1803.Whiskey was taxed once again after the Civil War, and legal distilleries were licensed and regulated by the U.S.Treasury Department, whose agents, known as”revenuers,”were responsible for collecting die tax.Yet for every tax-paying operation diere were many more illegal stills run”in the pale moonlight”by so-called moonshiners.