Yes, Thanks Bryan. As War supplies it would have military purposes and therefore subject to military attention from both sides in any conflict. One side would seek to protect these supplies while the other would try to destroy those same supplies. That is a part of war, to protect or destroy ones ability to wage war.

Cindy's Ouestion I took to be on the larger Theater wide scale. Where entire movements of whole armies were conducted with special interest to the purpose of destroying or protecting the distilleries in the area.

At that level I don't know that distilleries were that important an item for concideration. But they certainly were at a lower level of the command structure, for any number of reasons, other than the obviously appearent ones. But,to say that the movements of entire armys weren't influenced by the command conciderations of a lower level is also incorrect. Because the movements of a single brigade for whatever reason, often did influence where a major battle was fought.

This is like a Mobius Loop, like which come first the chicken or the egg. Did the movements of a single brigade cause the entire army to look like it was moving the destroy or protect the distilleries in Kentucky? We know that Bragg had his army split up and moveing in several different directions at once. The Union Army would move to counter this.

In a State like Kentucky in 1862, noted for it Whiskey manufacturing, and whiskeys value as a war supply, I can see how someone could interpret the movements of the armys as revolving around those industries. BUT, to answer Cindy's question and to say for certain that this is what was happening I can't do that. That's a different thing.

So while the locations of Distilleries probably weren't the "direct" reasoning for entire armies to move one way or the other, How do we know that they weren't the "Indirect" reasoning?