Originally published in The Forward Observer.
One participant in the Southern Mountains’ Revenue Wars’ of the late 19th and early 20thcenturies stands out. He has been described as the most famous man of whom you’ve never heard. He epitomizes Appalachia’s resistance to unjust authority. Not only did he essentially lead a war of evasion of which the likes of John Rambo would be proud, he lived to tell about it. Redmond is a shining example of the state-repellant qualities of the southern mountains.
The man who came to be known as “King of the Moonshiners” life is partially shrouded in myth. Accounts of his life vary greatly, largely because he was a leading cause du jour of fictitious dime novels of the 1870’s and 80’s, but the basic facts of his exploits remain true.
Lewis Redmond was most likely born in the northern corner of Georgia where it meets Western North Carolina on the eve of the War of Northern Aggression in the 1850’s, although some sources claim he was born in Swain County, NC. By 1856 the Lewis family had relocated to what is now Transylvania County, North Carolina. Lewis was obviously too young to join the war effort in defense of his southern homeland but his brothers reportedly served in the Confederate Army under Col. William Holland Thomas in his Legion of Highlanders and Cherokee. Lewis Redmond wasn’t actually a Major, but he did get that nickname while hanging around Confederate camps as a teenager.
