Old Daddy Flicker Likes Corn Likker 301 



fought and raced each other, when the logs from the Illinois 

 forests jammed the levees in New Orleans, when Tom Lin- 

 coln's big, gawky son floated his pirogue down the river for 

 a look at the French and Spanish folks down on the Gulf, were 

 wet with corn whiskey. Mike Fink, that legend among the 

 keel-boat men, was a "corn-likker" hero. So too, in their way, 

 were the "Tennessee alligators" who followed Andrew Jackson 

 to New Orleans. Long years afterward, their leader said of 

 them: "I had a lot of fellows that could fight more ways, and 

 kill more times than any other fellows on the face of the 

 earth." Each "alligator" had a canteen on his hip. These were 

 filled with a colorless liquid. But it was not water. As for 

 Davy Crockett, who could wink a coon out of a tree, and 

 who, reputedly, rode a wild razorback all the way from Fayette- 

 ville to the Gulf, 



"Why, thar hain't a man alive could 'a done that, 'thouten 

 he was plumb full o' corn likker." 



One of Jefferson's first acts as President was to bring about 

 the repeal of the excise. In 1807 an embargo was placed on 

 the importation of spirits from abroad. The number of stills 

 in the country greatly increased. 



But as roads were cut through the country, and then rail- 

 roads, as mills and refineries were built which ground com or 

 turned it into starch, as the towns grew up and turned to the 

 surrounding farmlands for food, the farmers ceased to distill 

 their grain. They no longer had to do this to buy tools, clothes 

 and groceries. Only when the excise was raised again during 

 the Civil War, and the price of whiskey went up to carry a 

 federal tax of two dollars per gallon, the farmers in the Back 

 Woods got out their stills and went to blockading. It was a 

 high federal tax which made the market for "moonshine." 



Another market was created in states which had dry laws 

 prohibiting sales of spirituous liquors; but not, in those days 

 before Interstate Commerce was regulated, against the ship- 

 ment of liquor into those states by express. The mail-order 



