Today's history lesson............................Part 1

      For farmers, whiskey was the only way to get full value from their crops.  Not everyone had access to markets and distribution methods, so to feed their family and keep their land, a man sought to do something with the surplus of a harvested crop.  The dominate crop at the time was rye.  They were spending time and money carefully planting and growing rye, and saw no point in watching that money rot before their eyes.

     So they turned rye into whiskey.

     What happened next would send ripples into the American future that we're still dealing with today:  it began with a man who'd become the subject of a huge Broadway musical and ended with Jefferson's Republican Party replacing Washington's Federalist Party.  The American Revolution earned the country its freedom but cost incredible amounts of money, most of it paid for by state-financed debt.  Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton wanted the federal government to assume that debt and impose a sizable whiskey tax to help pay for it.  He saw it as a sin tax, ignoring the economic realities of rural life that led to whiskey's distillation in the first place.  It wasn't the first time a city dweller didn't understand life in a world different from his or her own.

-Wright Thompson, Pappyland:  A Story Of Family, Fine Bourbon and the Things That Last