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Updated: June 8, 2025
It has already been indicated why it was impossible so to sustain the Cienfuegos blockaders. The reason, in the last analysis, was our insufficient sea-coast fortification. The Flying Squadron was kept in Hampton Roads to calm the fears of the seaboard, and to check any enterprise there of Cervera, if intended or attempted.
This requires not only constant attention, but some skill as well, for there is no thermometer nor saccharometer in our mountain still-house. When done, the sugar of what is now "sour mash" has been converted into carbonic acid and alcohol. The resulting liquid is technically called the "wash," but blockaders call it "beer." It is intoxicating, of course, but "sour enough to make a pig squeal."
The signalising and firing had, however, brought several other blockaders down to dispute our passage, and we found ourselves at one moment with a cruiser on each side within a pistol shot of us; our position being that of the meat in a sandwich.
I think of you all, separately and collectively, in the busy hours of the day and the silent hours of the night, and the recollection of each and every one whiles away the long night, in which my anxious thoughts drive away sleep. But I always feel that you and Agnes at those times are sound asleep, and that is immaterial to either where the blockaders are or what their progress is in the river.
It was hard lines, no doubt, but quite fair play. It was the blockaders' turn to laugh now. I have now come to the end of my blockade-running yarns. I have endeavoured to avoid giving offence to anyone: to the American officers and men who manned the cruisers I can, as a nautical man, truly and honestly give the credit of having most zealously performed their hard and wearisome duty.
It is, to-day, a notorious fact that our blockaders dread their own State courts far more than they do the Federal courts, because the punishment for selling liquor in the mountain counties is surer to follow conviction than is the penalty for violating Federal law.
For the first day, little danger was to be expected, and the voyage was generally so timed that the outer line of blockaders would be reached just after nightfall. A soldier going to enlist in one of the Confederate cavalry regiments thus tells the story of his evasion of the blockade. "After a favorable voyage we reached the desired point off Wilmington at the proper time.
But the Tallahatchie was in a position where it was plain sailing now, and her future troubles would all come from the blockaders. "There you are!" exclaimed the engineer, as the peal of a gun boomed over the water from the westward. "The steamer has been seen by a blockader, and she will catch it now." "I don't believe that was one of the Bellevite's guns," added Christy.
After the blockaders have established their still, the next thing is to make arrangements with some miller who will jeopardize himself by grinding the sprouted corn; for be it known that corn which has been forced to sprout is a prime essential in the making of moonshine whiskey, and that the unlicensed grinding of such corn is an offense against the law of the United States no less than its distillation.
I only know that public opinion in the mountains did not consider an arrest, or even a conviction, by the Federal authorities, as a very serious matter during the period from 1880 up to the past two or three years, and little resistance was offered by blockaders when captured. Recently, however, a new factor has entered the moonshining problem and profoundly altered it: the South has gone "dry."
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