128 | ALPATA: a journal of history, VOLUME IX, SPRING 2012

Bruce. E. Stewart. Moonshiners and Prohibitionists:

The Battle over Alcohol in Southern Appalachia.

Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011. Reviewed by Jennifer A. Lyon

When considering the portrayals of Appalachian society in popular culture, it is no stretch to say that moonshining is a central feature. Be it documentaries featuring infamous characters like Marvin Popcorn Sutton, situation comedies like The Beverly Hillbillies, or the Discovery Channels popular reality series Moonshiners, the standard trope of the uneducated, thickly accented, and invariably barefoot distiller is not hard to find. Yet, as historian Bruce E. Stewart demonstrates in Moonshiners and Prohibitionists, these stereotypes were the highly contingent result of a prohibition battle waged over two centuries. In charting the evolution of this conflict, Stewart presents fresh insight into the role of moonshine in Appalachian society and the larger narrative of prohibition in the South. Stewart begins by examining the origins of the antidistiller movement in Western North Carolina. Far from being notorious outlaws, alcohol manufacturers were considered respectable, legitimate entrepreneurs throughout the antebellum period. They provided society with a product that was readily consumed in daily diets, for medicinal purposes, at social gatherings, and even in place of waterwhich was deemed too low class to serve in polite company. While temperance organizations did exist, the majority of Appalachians endorsed distilling and saw government interference as both a violation of their

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constitutional rights and a threat to local autonomy. These dynamics changed briefly during the Civil War as civilians protested the distilling of crops into liquor amid food shortages and astronomic inflation indeed, the price of corn increased 3,000% in one mountain communityyet Confederate defeat saw a resurgence of support for moonshiners. As Stewart explains, the swelling of anti-federal government sentiment during Reconstruction created a golden age of moonshining in Appalachia. Mountain communities linked the issue of liquor taxation with those of larger Reconstruction policies, and in the process the moonshiner became a symbol of resistance in the face of oppressive government interference. Yet, the end of Reconstruction also signaled the decline of socially sanctioned distilling. Middle-class Appalachians were eager to participate in the burgeoning market economy, but they saw alcohol production and consumption by poor, rural mountain whites as an obstacle to attracting the necessary industry, outside capital, and railroad expansion. This class-based conflict was further intensified by the negative depictions of the area in national media and writing. To the horror of townspeople, Stewart explains, illicit distilling became virtually a requirement in descriptive pieces dealing with the mountain region (155). As this outside scrutiny intensified, urban Appalachians worked to protect their own image by advocating prohibition and distancing themselves from their rural and moonshining counterparts. In doing so they actually helped entrench the myth of violent and backward distillers in Appalachia. In the end, this vilification of moonshiners, paired with the changing economy and increased support

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for alcohol reform, helped pave the way for the passage of statewide prohibition in 1908. Criticisms prove few with this text, as Stewart presents a rigorous assessment of the fight over alcohol in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Appalachia. He clearly outlines how the sentiment against distilling changed over time, and how that change related to outside forces including the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and industrialization. The book could benefit, however, from a more thorough treatment of the moonshiners themselves. To be sure, Stewarts cast of characters is quite broad and includes reformers, businessmen, federal agents, and politicians among others. Yet one gets a better sense of the motivations and actions of anti-alcohol forces than local manufacturers. This undoubtedly speaks to a paucity of primary sources left by the average moonshiner, yet it would be interesting to hear more from illicit distillersparticularly after the tide of public opinion turned against them in the late-nineteenth century. This cavil aside, Moonshiners and Prohibitionists is a well-written and interesting read that would make an excellent addition to graduate seminars and upper-level undergraduate courses. Jennifer Lyon is a doctoral student in American history.