and
district-attorneys were enjoined to prosecute all offenders.

"In certain portions of the country many citizens not guilty of
violating the law themselves were in strong sympathy with those who did
violate, and the officers in many instances found themselves unsupported
in the execution of the laws by a healthy state of public opinion. The
distillers--ever ready to forcibly resist the officers--were, I have no
doubt, at times treated with harshness. This occasioned much
indignation on the part of those who sympathized with the
lawbreakers...."

The Commissioner recommended, in his report, the passage of a law
"expressly providing that where a person is caught in the act of
operating an illicit still, he may be arrested without warrant." In
conclusion, he said: "At this time not only is the United States
defrauded of its revenues, and its officers openly resisted, but when
arrests are made it often occurs that prisoners are rescued by mob
violence, and officers and witnesses are often at night dragged from
their homes and cruelly beaten, or waylaid and assassinated."

* * * * *

One day I asked a mountain man, "How about the revenue officers? What
sort of men are they?"

"Torn down scoundrels, every one."

"Oh, come, now!"

"Yes, they are; plumb onery--lock, stock, barrel and gun-stick."

"Consider what they have to go through," I remarked. "Like other
detectives, they cannot secure evidence without practicing deception.
Their occupation is hard and dangerous. Here in the mountains, every
man's hand is against them."

"Why is it agin them? We ain't all blockaders; yet you can search these
mountains through with a fine-tooth comb and you wunt find ary critter
as has a good word to say for the revenue. The reason is 't we know them
men from 'way back; we know whut they uster do afore they jined the
sarvice, and why they did it. Most of them were blockaders their own
selves, till they saw how they could make more money turncoatin'. They
use their authority to abuse people who ain't never done nothin' nohow.
Dangerous business? Shucks! There's Jim Cody, for a sample [I suppress
the real name]; he was principally raised in this county, and I've
knowed him from a boy. He's been eight years in the Government sarvice,
and hain't never been shot at once. But he's killed a blockader--oh,
yes! He arrested Tom Hayward, a chunk of a boy, that was scared most
fitified and never resisted m