What was difference between how federal law enforcement and local law enforcement handled moonshining in Tennessee? What were the consequences?
What will be an ideal response?
Federal law enforcement agents experienced violence in attempting to shut down the illegal liquor industry. In 1877, revenue agents seized 596 stills in North Carolina and arrested 1,174 people. In the course of these seizures and arrests, 12 agents were killed or wounded. Between 1876 and 1902, 35 revenue agents were killed in the moonshine enclaves; another 19 would die by 1905 . Attempts to enforce the liquor tax laws in the South were greeted with perpetual guerrilla warfare (Miller, 1991).
Local law enforcement appears not to have faced such grave danger. For example, in Kentucky
and Tennessee local sheriffs commonly fired over the heads of moonshiners and then waited, giving the miscreants plenty of time to escape before seizing stills that would later be sold
back to the moonshiners (Kellner, 1971). Local courts in the South were also rather cordial in their relations with the illegal liquor industry. In fact, it was common practice in the 1870s for local prosecutors to charge federal and even state revenue agents with trespassing, carrying concealed weapons, assault, and even murder. Between 1876 and 1879, 165 federal agents were arrested in the southern moonshine enclaves, with Georgia alone charging 48 agents (Kellner, 1971).
Moonshiners, on the other hand, got a modicum of mercy from their local prosecutors
and judges. In Georgia, moonshiners were usually assessed a $100 fine, which they could evade
by swearing a pauper's oath. Those who had to be sentenced to jail usually received 30-day sentences. Unlike drug dealers today, moonshiners were well rewarded for their good behavior if
they had to go to jail. Most were let out of their 30-day sentences early. In fact, jailers and judges
routinely allowed prisoners convicted of moonshining or bootlegging to visit their homes, walk
around town, and drink at illegal saloons.
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