Whiskey Rebellion Loses One More

Legendary mountain moonshiner Popcorn Sutton died at his home in Cocke County, Tennessee of natural causes, a family member says. He was 62. Sutton managed to escape spending 18 months in prison after federal agents found some stills and hundreds of gallons of moonshine in a Haywood County storage shed last summer. He’d pled guilty to the charges, was sentenced this past January and was supposed to report to a federal prison in Kentucky.

Chalk one last mark on the board for the Whiskey Rebellion vs. The Revenoo’ers, as rumors abound that his death may not have been so ‘natural’ after all…

As ‘Moonshine’s’ daughter wrote in her book, “Daddy Moonshine”,

“It isn’t surprising that Popcorn has attracted so much attention. His slippery craft and his old-timey antics appeal to something in our collective past. His overalls can be seen as the blue denim flag of old pick-up trucks and cork-plugged clay jugs. His colorless hat is the nod of a gentleman, his beard the badge of a wild man. His high reedy voice carries the echoes of banjos and fiddles. His stealth and focus speak volumes for the cunning and moxie of who he is: a Smokey Mountain moonshine master.”

Public schools don’t spend much time on the Whiskey Rebellion generally, though it was one of our new nation’s first insurrections, beginning when our first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, convinced Congress to impose new taxes on distilled spirits and carriages in 1791. The tax was inherently unfair by taxing small producers a third more than big producers, a particular burden on producers in the western frontier areas where whiskey was a tradable commodity. Civil protests on the frontier soon became armed rebellion, so President Washington decided to make an example of western Pennsylvania and assembled a militia. They marched west out of Harrisburg – with Washington himself in the lead – but found no sign of the rebels. Eventually fines were imposed, people were jailed, victory was declared, and folks started worrying about other things.

The suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania served to encourage distillers in Kentucky and Tennessee, which remained outside federal control for some years. These areas and portions of North and South Carolina began producing and selling on the sly, and moonshining remained a regional art form in some people’s books. For instance, did you know that NASCAR has roots in the Rebellion?

At any rate, our hats are off to perhaps one of the last notorious moonshiners from our mountainous region. Here’s to you, Popcorn! May there be banjos and fiddles in heaven.

Links:

Legendary Moonshiner Dies
Moonshiner Popcorn Sutton Dead
Popcorn Sutton
Wiki: Whiskey Rebellion
Whiskey Rebellion
Friendship Hill National Historical Site

Related Ads:

Filed under Carolina History, Great Smoky Mountains, NASCAR, North Carolina | Comment (0)