Old Daddy Flicker Likes Corn Likker 293 



throughout New England who found it paid better to distill 

 their corn and rye than to carry the grain to market. There 

 was a demand for whiskey. During the war years, the importa- 

 tion of rum and molasses had fallen off. Both armies bought 

 spirits for rations. And the soldiers of both armies were not 

 unwilling to trade gunpowder, blankets or a musket for a gallon 

 or two of American whiskey. 



John Adams complained of the dissipation which spread 

 over the New England states, and of the number of stills 

 being operated in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. 



In western Pennsylvania, distilling had become the most 

 profitable branch of farming. A one-hundred gallon still was 

 reckoned to be worth a two-hundred acre farm and this 

 within ten miles of Pittsburgh, which was the capital of the 

 whiskey trade. A traveler along that part of the Back Woods 

 reported that it was hardly possible to be out of sight of the 

 smoke from a still. Monongahela Rye was shipped down the 

 rivers to New Orleans. The usual price was twenty-five cents 

 the gallon including the jug. German potters did a thriving 

 trade in making demijohns. Meanwhile "Old Monongahela" 

 was achieving distinction in Philadelphia and New York where 

 the merchants were not ashamed to fill their decanters with 

 it at forty cents the gallon. The New England rum importers 

 and molasses distillers began to grumble at the competition 

 offered by this "Back Woods liquor." How were their ships to 

 pay if American farmers were going to distill spirits from 

 American-grown corn and rye, and sell their product for less 

 than the price of rum? 



Washington had every reason to know that the Scotch-Irish 

 farmers in western Pennsylvania and down the mountain 

 valleys would defend their right to distill their corn and rye 

 before selling the crops, as passionately as they had defended 

 the forts along the Ohio frontier. These backwoodsmen had 

 formed the first regiment of foot soldiers enrolled by Con- 

 gress. They were the first outside colonists to assist New Eng- 

 land at the siege of Boston. They had made history, and won 



