Abstract
A recent body of scholarly literature has extensively studied moonshining and the enforcement of federal liquor laws.1 Focusing mainly on the post-Reconstruction mountain South, historians have portrayed moonshiners as traditionalists who resisted federal liquor laws in order to “preserve a way of life that was being threatened by the centralizing forces then shaping America.“2 In one encompassing study, for example, Wilbur R. Miller raised the question: “What are the conditions under which unpopular laws can be enforced, and what are the limits of their enforcement?” After investigating this matter, Miller found that the universal hostility of Democratic state officials to federal authority posed one of the most serious difficulties that revenuers confronted in the mountain South. Yet such obstructionism, Miller concluded, failed to prevent the development and completion of “an administrative apparatus capable of penetrating all parts of the nation’s territory.“
Recommended Citation
Guthrie, Jr., John J.
(1993)
"Hard Times, Hard Liquor, and Hard Luck: Selective Enforcement of Prohibition in North Florida, 1928-1933,"
Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 72:
No.
4, Article 4.
Available at:
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol72/iss4/4
