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What do NASCAR and The Whiskey Rebellion have in common? Why, revenue agents and untaxed liquor, of course. Here's some early history that Brian France doesn’t want you to know. As a schoolboy, one of the events of post-revolutionary U...

NASCAR, Untaxed Liquor, and the Whiskey Rebellion

by Crabber 1967 . (Scribe)

10

485 reads

Opinion

October 03, 2008


 

What do NASCAR and The Whiskey Rebellion have in common? Why, revenue agents and untaxed liquor, of course. Here's some early history that Brian France doesn’t want you to know.

 

 

As a schoolboy, one of the events of post-revolutionary U.S. history that stuck in my mind, and has to this day, was The Whiskey Rebellion. Now was this because of the unusual name, or was it the fact that it was about Revenue Agents and untaxed liquor, some things that sounded familiar to this southern boy?

 

The Whiskey Rebellion was about the Wild West of its day. The early racers of NASCAR were cowboys of their day; cowboys of the open road and certainly a wild bunch.  The more I learned about like the early days of NASCAR, the more it sounded like The Whiskey Rebellion.

 

The Wild West that Hollywood has burned into our memory is of the mid-continent: wide plains, cattle drives and cowboys. The Wild West of the Post-Revolutionary United States was the Allegheny Mountains and the western lands beyond.

 

This mountain area was settled by people of mostly English, Scots, Irish, or Scots-Irish origin. These mountain men, like their descendants in the 1940s, were without much cash.

 

They found that making whiskey, a heritage they brought over from the old country, from the grain they grew made a product that was easier to transport and was worth a lot more on the open market than the raw materials it was made from.

 

The westerners of 1794 did not want to pay Federal taxes on something that was not only a valuable form of cash in a largely barter society, but something they thought was their God-given right to make.

 

After all, wasn’t the recently won revolution about “no taxation without representation” and hadn’t their ancestors been in the English Civil War of the 1600s because of farm product taxes?

 

Their distrust of the government back east was very much like their ancestors’ distrust of the aristocracy in the old country, and was one of the reasons that they had left the old world and settled on the fringes of this new society.  

 

Although the Wild West of America had moved to the center of the continent, and then onto the movie screens, the 1940's ancestors of the Allegheny Mountains settlers of the 1700’s were no longer on the edges of society geographically.

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10 comments Last one added 4 months ago — Leave a Comment

  1. Crabber 1967 . 9 months ago

    I'm still a rookie, and just like the image I used in my first piece, I'm having a struggle getting the image to display as I'd like, image loads "too big" {the image above was only 200x200 smaller than the minimum shown on site[??]} for size available and the "size slider" is on 'small' and will only make the image larger. URRGH, I hate being a rookie.

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  2. Mary Jo Buchanan 9 months ago

    Crabber, GREAT read - five stars! This was really interesting - great historical look at NASCAR past and how it all began!

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  3. Crabber 1967 . 9 months ago

    Thanks Mary Jo!!!
    I'm glad you liked it.

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  4. Kara Martin 9 months ago

    Awesome, awesome article! I loved it. Great work Crabber, keep it up!!

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  5. Crabber 1967 . 9 months ago

    Thanks Kara!
    I wish I could type as fast as my wife [she's like lighting!], the process might not have took so long. {I am the proverbial hunt-and-peck typer!} An original piece such as this (versus the HoF piece I did earlier, with some follow-ups in preliminary stages) took a bit of work.
    I "wrote" the piece in my mind at least twice, then on paper [version 3] and then on Word [version 4]. All four of the versions were quite different from each other.
    After reading some of the posts on my page and on other articles, I realized that I had to [as my teacher in school once said] 'write as if your reader doesn't know anything about your subject.' So after seeing that B/R is truly international (Way Cool!) I knew would have to 'flesh out' the piece a bit to help anyone who was not familiar with U.S. history to understand the piece, without boring all who read it to tears! Lots of re-reads, lots of spell-check and more polishing to get to the point I felt it was worthwhile. Quite a challenge!

    Thanks again! I'm glad you liked it!

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  6. Robert Ryan 8 months ago

    Good Reserch Crabber. We had something similar happen in Australia, just after World War 2 where drivers tried to sneak past the police with supplies of "sly grog"

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  7. Dan Boone 4 months ago

    The Feds always want to dip their beaks. But then nowadays it seems everyone wants a taste.

    And Big George W began it. Big George was the biggest whiskey maker in America when he died and the old boy didn't like competition and he had his Army to enforce his will and its taxes.

    It was taxes on all his land holdings, tobacco, whiskey, and such that irritated old Big George at the Brits in the first place.

    And if Big G was in Ike's shoes he would have sent Old Light Horse Harry Lee after the moonshiners. Harry, unlike his boy, liked his shine but both Lee's were hell on wheels on the Southern highways and back roads...

    Cheers! Nice Read...

    Steve Earle's Copperhead Row is a fine salute to the old shiners....and a look at the new, darker shine

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc86_Weoye0

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    • Crabber 1967 . 4 months ago

      I'm glad you enjoyed the piece!
      And you are correct, George Washington was the largest whiskey man at the time.
      Perhaps this hasn't been mentioned until lately due to a Prohibition "hangover?"

      I just checked out the song on 'youtube'! Very nice! Thanks for the link!

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