whiskey

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From "When Good Men Do Nothing: The Assassination of Albert Patterson" by Alan Grady at www.nextreads.com/display2.aspx?recid=4046194&FC=1 "Unlike the more industrialized Columbus, Girard-and indeed all of Russell County-relied on farming and liquor as its principal sources of income. At the turn of the century, Girard was home to two major whiskey warehouses, shipping their stock throughout the Southeast and as far away as New York and Boston. But the whiskey interests met increasing political opposition from prohibitionists, who by 1909 were in the forefront of a move to dry up Alabama. In 1914 they gained control of the legislature, and soon afterward they passed a law prohibiting the sale of alcohol. For Girard and Russell County businessmen, this meant ignoring the law or losing everything they had. They chose the former. Aware of the tremendous unpopularity of the law, local officials reached an unspoken agreement with the whiskey interests. Russell County grand juries routinely indicted violators, who would then pay bond. When the accused failed to show for trial, the county would pocket the forfeited surety. It seemed like a reasonable arrangement, but technically it qualified as political corruption. Whatever it was called, it was the beginning of a long history of selective law enforcement in Girard and Russell County. Unfortunately for the Russell County distributors, local option was not an option. By the summer of 1916, prohibitionist groups were demanding state intervention in east Alabama, and the first great Russell County cleanup was under way. At the direction of the Alabama Supreme Court, Circuit Judge A. H. Alston of Clayton and the state attorney general, Logan Martin, went to Seale, the county seat since 1868, and took over the local judiciary. On August 8, Alston impaneled a new grand jury and instructed it to destroy "for once and all time" lawlessness in Russell County and to investigate collusion between bootleggers and local officials. The resulting court proceedings were swift, merciless, and judicially questionable. Those indicted were brought to trial as soon as the grand jury voted a true bill, usually less than three hours. After the first two indictees received a hefty $2,500 fine, many of the others fled, hoping for a better day to appear before the bar. Alston declared them fugitives and confiscated their holdings. State militia entered Girard on August 10 and began hauling out bottles, kegs, and casks from the warehouses and anywhere else they could be found; these they assembled at the intersection of Seale Road and Broad Street. All day long, militiamen, special deputy sheriffs, and hired laborers destroyed some eight hundred casks of beer and an equal number of barrels of whiskey. Some workers fainted from the fumes, which could be smelled in eastern Columbus, two miles away. Eventually, more than a quarter of a million dollars' worth of illegal alcohol was destroyed during the cleanup, and several prominent citizens were ruined in the process. And as a result of the grand jury's investigation into political corruption, almost every city and county official resigned his office." The 1916 cleanup might have been longer lived had it not been for the establishment two years later of Fort Benning, the U.S. Army infantry-training school just outside Columbus. Even as the recruits were moving into the tents and thrown-together buildings, bootleg liquor was again flowing freely in Girard. Arriving doughboys quickly learned that a good time could be found on the Alabama side and crossed the Chattahoochee in droves. By the time the Roaring Twenties arrived, Martin's cleanup had completely unraveled and Girard was once again living down to its reputation.

Girard is now Phenix City, AL.

This photo was used in The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current, September 24, 1916 oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83045782/1916-09-24/ed-1/se... with the caption "The state authorities destroyed $150,000 worth of whisky at Girard, Ala., because it was being sold unlawfully and supplied to inhabitants of the town of Columbus in Georgia, a dry state, across the river. The cases were broken open and the bottles and jugs smashed, and the whisky ran in a river through the streets of the town." S. also The Era-leader., August 17, 1916, Image 1, col. 3 "154 Barrels Liquor Spilled at Girard On Court's Order" chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88064305/1916-08-17/ed-....

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