In popular culture, the American South is purported to have been an early bastion of the bourbon and US whisky industries. Paradoxically, the South played only an incidental role in whisky distillation, yet it played an instrumental role in the prohibition movement.
The year before the Civil War started in April 1861, the 11 southern Confederate States of America (CSA) drank more than 10 times the volume of spirits they produced, distilling only 2.8 per cent of the national spirits — the bulk being peach and apple brandy. The northern, eastern, and western states generated 99 per cent of America’s whisky. After the Civil War commenced, legal whisky production disappeared as the CSA banned distillation and prohibited liquor consumption and sales in some cities, driving black market whisky prices to US$40 a gallon by 1864 from an affordable 25 cents before the war.
Within a year of Virginia seceding from the United States, CSA president Jefferson Davis prohibited distillation and liquor sales in the South’s capital, Richmond, Virginia. Arkansas was the first state to ban distilling in March 1862, Georgia in November 1862, and Alabama and Virginia followed a month later. In January 1863, Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana enacted distilling prohibitions, and by year’s end, South Carolina had also banned distillation. In December 1863, Texas passed a local option law allowing county courts to issue a distiller’s tax at $1,000 per still; there is no record of a registered distillery. Tennessee proved intractable by spring 1862, with the Union controlling western Tennessee and its Confederate General Assembly abandoning Tennessee until its 1865 surrender. Under federal jurisdiction, the Union licensed six distilleries in western Tennessee to resume production at the end of 1863.
The motivation to ban distillation and limit sales varied according to each Confederate state. The primary rationale was to preserve grain for military rations and civilian foodstuffs. Some states feared inebriation among soldiers and the populace and the terror of intoxicated uprisings by slaves, who in many counties outnumbered white residents. The North Carolina Congress described liquor in its prohibition legislation as a “blight on humanity”, with Mississippi and Alabama “suppressing evil”.
Distilled spirits became a medicinal necessity, especially for battlefield injuries. During the first year of the war, the CSA attempted contract distillation and sourcing spirits through agents; fraud and supplies of spurious spirits immediately abused this inept procedure, further encouraging bans. Due to Union blockades, the CSA finally authorised government whisky distilleries (euphemistically called medical laboratories) in 1864 to manufacture whisky, overseen by druggists and chemists. Of the seven approbations, only six entered into production, with limited output as the CSA was in retreat — two in North Carolina and Georgia, one in South Carolina and Alabama.
Kentucky was one of the three western slave-owning states aligned with the Union, complying with federal laws including paying whisky excise taxes from July 1862 under the four new federal collector tax districts. As the Union encouraged distilling, Kentucky prospered during the war, growing from 11 registered distilleries to 43 by 1865. Other Union states followed suit, such as Ohio, expanding from 56 large-scale distilleries to 65 and building some of the world’s largest distilleries before Prohibition. In 1860, Kentucky contributed 3.6 per cent to national whisky spirit production; by the war’s end, it was 4.5 per cent and poised to expand.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the reconstructed southern states operated mainly as smaller-scale agricultural distilleries, primarily due to a lack of capital, entrenched temperance tendencies, and distilling prohibitions, with Mississippi only officially repealing prohibition in 2021. By 1950, only two whisky distilleries operated in the South, manufacturing 0.6 per cent of US whisky: Jack Daniel’s in a dry Tennessee county and A Smith Bowman in Virginia.
