ution; but the mountain farmers had
remained poor, owing partly to difficulties of tillage, but chiefly to
difficulties of transportation. As Albert Gallatin said, in defending
the western people, "We have no means of bringing the produce of our
lands to sale either in grain or in meal. We are therefore distillers
through necessity, not choice, that we may comprehend the greatest value
in the smallest size and weight. The inhabitants of the eastern side of
the mountains can dispose of their grain without the additional labor of
distillation at a higher price than we can after we have disposed that
labor upon it."

Again, as in all frontier communities, there was a scarcity of cash in
the mountains. Commerce was carried on by barter; but there had to be
some means of raising enough cash to pay taxes, and to purchase such
necessities as sugar, calico, gun powder, etc., from the peddlers who
brought them by pack train across the Alleghanies. Consequently a still
had been set up on nearly every farm. A horse could carry about sixteen
gallons of liquor, which represented eight bushels of grain, in weight
and bulk, and double that amount in value. This whiskey, even after it
had been transported across the mountains, could undersell even so
cheap a beverage as New England rum--so long as no tax was laid upon it.

But when the newly created Congress passed an excise law, it virtually
placed a heavy tax on the poor mountaineers' grain, and let the grain of
the wealthy eastern farmers pass on to market without a cent of charge.
Naturally enough, the excitable people of the border regarded such a law
as aimed exclusively at themselves. They remonstrated, petitioned,
stormed. "From the passing of the law in January, 1791, there appeared a
marked dissatisfaction in the western parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The legislatures of North
Carolina, Virginia and Maryland passed resolutions against the law, and
that of Pennsylvania manifested a strong spirit of opposition to it. As
early as 1791, Washington was informed that throughout this whole region
the people were ready for revolt." "To tax their stills seemed a blow at
the only thing which obdurate nature had given them--a lot hard indeed,
in comparison with that of the people of the sea-board."

Our western mountains (we call most of them southern mountains now)
resembled somewhat those wild highlands of Connemara to which reference
has been