pples and peaches,
but I am convinced that a large portion of these stills have been and
are used in the illicit manufacture of spirits. Part of the spirits thus
produced has been consumed in the immediate neighborhood; the balance
has been distributed and sold throughout the adjacent districts.

"This nefarious business has been carried on, as a rule, by a
determined set of men, who in their various neighborhoods league
together for defense against the officers of the law, and at a given
signal are ready to come together with arms in their hands to drive the
officers of internal revenue out of the country.

"As illustrating the extraordinary resistance which the officers have
had on some occasions to encounter, I refer to occurrences in Overton
County, Tennessee, in August last, where a posse of eleven internal
revenue officers, who had stopped at a farmer's house for the night,
were attacked by a band of armed illicit distillers, who kept up a
constant fusillade during the whole night, and whose force was augmented
during the following day till it numbered nearly two hundred men. The
officers took shelter in a log house, which served them as a fort,
returning the fire as best they could, and were there besieged for
forty-two hours, three of their party being shot--one through the body,
one through the arm, and one in the face. I directed a strong force to
go to their relief, but in the meantime, through the intervention of
citizens, the besieged officers were permitted to retire, taking their
wounded with them, and without surrendering their arms.

"So formidable has been the resistance to the enforcement of the laws
that in the districts of 5th Virginia, 6th North Carolina, South
Carolina, 2d and 5th Tennessee, 2d West Virginia, Arkansas, and
Kentucky, I have found it necessary to supply the collectors with
breech-loading carbines. In these districts, and also in the States of
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, in the 4th district of North Carolina,
and in the 2d and 5th districts of Missouri, I have authorized the
organization of posses ranging from five to sixty in number, to aid in
making seizures and arrests, the object being to have a force
sufficiently strong to deter resistance if possible, and, if need be, to
overcome it."

The intention of the Revenue Department was certainly not to inflame the
mountain people, but to treat them as considerately as possible. And
yet, the policy of "be to their faults a littl