After Distillers

The Oglethorpe Echo
Crawford and Lexington, Oglethorpe County, Georgia
Friday, October 20, 1876 (Vol III, No 2), page 3, column 4

"After Distillers"

A hard-looking pair of Radical wretches visited our county last week, and proceeding to Lexington, there hired a vehicle and driver and started in quest of illegal distillers. They first made for Mr. George Turner’s, and finding no one at home but the lady of the house, questioned her as to the whereabouts of her husband. The lady replied that he was at work in a field near by, and proposed to summon him home by blowing three peculiar blasts of the horn, which she obligingly did. Yanks waited one - two - three hours, and still no sign of their expected prisoner, when they reluctantly departed, suddenly remembering that a horn could sound a warning as well as a summons.

The next man they "went for" was Mr. Tom Jennings, but before reaching his home they met one of his children, and acquainting her of their destination and object, inquired the way. The fellows were sent several miles out of their way, and when they reached Mr. Jenning’s, the object of their quest had "left for Athens, to be gone several days."

They then started for Mr. P.L. Wheelers’, and handing him a summons under the name of "F.A. Wheeler," that gentleman refused to respond, as he wasn’t known by that cognomen. In vain did they explain that it was only a mistake–that he was undoubtedly the man. But Mr. W. couldn’t see it through those glasses, and turned a deaf ear to their earnest appeals.

They next threw a summons into a gentleman’s yard, but he not being at home, a darkey, who was uncovering a house, covered up the obnoxious paper with shingles, and so it never reached the eyes of him for whom it was intended.

Thoroughly disgusted with their day’s work, the Yanks contented themselves with capturing a harmless old negro, and with this trophy of their valor (?) came to Crawford.

While nosing around Mr. Pace’s establishment here, and volunteering advice about cigar boxes and empty whisky bottles, that gentleman gave them a "serenade," after which entertainment they concluded it advisable to "lay low and keep dark" until the arrival of the train, which they gladly boarded and were soon carried beyond the inhospitable shores of our county.

Taken altogether, it was the most remarkable raid in the annals of history, and we suggest that, on their arrival in Atlanta, the pair be transported through the streets on a wheelbarrow, their brows crowned with a wreath of pine-tops (emblem, "blasted hopes,") and the post band precede them playing, "See! The conquered sheroes hev arriv!" Of course the wheelbarrow must be pushed by the nigger captive, to complete the picture."

Submitted by William H. Caldwell