N.C. history awash in liquor

When it comes to booze, North Carolina's history conjures images of spirited temperance rallies, revenue agents smashing mountain stills, and politicians and preachers condemning the "drink demon."

Turns out, that history of an ever-dry state is all wet. As documented by the new exhibit at UNC-Chapel's Wilson Library, "Satan in a Bottle," for much of its history, North Carolina was one of the nation's top producers -- and consumers -- of wine and spirits.

Before the 20th century, Tar Heels were known as a rough-and-tumble people who kept their friends close and their bottles closer.

"I have frequently seen [Carolinians] come to the Towns, and there remain Drinking Rum, Punch, and other Liquors for Eight or Ten Days successively," the Englishman John Brickell observed in his 1737 book, "The Natural History of North-Carolina." "These Excesses are the occasions of many Diseases amongst them."

Fast forward almost two centuries, and little had changed. In a fiery 1907 address, the ax-wielding temperance leader Carrie Nation decried Salisbury as the "whiskeyest-soaked town in the United States."

It was only with the passage of statewide prohibition in 1908 that North Carolina remade its public face as a booze-free land where blue was the color of the law.

And yet, such strict statutes became the best friend of moonshiners. They built secret stills and fast cars -- helping lay the foundation for NASCAR racing -- to elude the authorities and satisfy a thirsty public.

"Satan in a Bottle" describes North Carolina's colorful and paradoxical relationship with alcohol through dozens of books, photographs, record albums, campaign buttons and other materials drawn from the Wilson Library's vast North Carolina Collection. These include vintage shots of mountain men tending huge stills in secluded hollers and of state alcohol agents destroying those Rube Goldberg contraptions with gusto.

"There's always been this tension in North Carolina between the desire of a hard-drinking, hardscrabble people to do as they please and the various authorities trying to control them," said the exhibit's curator, R. Neil Fulghum.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, taxation rather than morality guided official efforts to control alcohol. Before the income tax, state and federal governments relied on tariffs and excise taxes for revenue. Alcohol became a chief target.

It was also an important source of income for North Carolina farmers, especially in the western part of the state where transportation was poor.

"A farmer's crop of corn or apples might rot before he ever got it to market," Fulghum said. "If he distilled it down into corn liquor or apple brandy, it wouldn't spoil, and he'd get a higher price."

One of the first showdowns in American history occurred during the Whiskey Rebellion of the early 1790s, when Congress approved taxes on distilled spirits. The outcry was so great that Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton threatened to send troops to North Carolina to quell the insurrection.

Still, there were no strong efforts to ban alcohol. Fulghum noted that the temperance movement of the early 19th century tried to convince people to drink in moderation.

This effort had little affect on UNC student James Dusenberry, who described the campus's wild celebration of George Washington's birthday in 1842: "The amount of liquor drank by the students was tremendous. More than 2/3ds of college were intoxicated. Pink & I went over to the [Old] East & were gloriously tight before breakfast."

And alcohol wasn't just for pleasure. The exhibit notes that it was a key ingredient of folk remedies and patent medicines. To induce labor, women were directed to ingest a concoction of "whiskey mixed with gunpowder." A standard treatment for snake bite required victims "to get dead drunk at once." Whiskey and honey was a cure for a sore throat.