The Mockingbird's Ballad

A "wool hat" old Unionist farmer from New Market had been arrested for selling untaxed whiskey from a work wagon at Ditto's Landing just before Christmas. Guilty without much doubt, the defense hoped to convince the jury that the hard times of the Panic of '76 was extenuating circumstance and get the old codger off with less than a year. The forty-year-old lawyer was successful. His client got six months and was fined $50. He paid his defense attorney with five gallons of his wares.