Chris Spangle

“One of St. Augustine’s most famous rumrunners was William McCoy, who was also the purported inventor of the ham sack. McCoy operated a boat taxi service for the Jacksonville–St. Augustine area and a boatyard where he built yachts for Andrew Carnegie, the Vanderbilts and others. When Prohibition hit, he recognized the opportunity for a new, more lucrative business enterprise. He sold the taxi service and the boatyard and bought a schooner, which he named Tomoka. McCoy would sail Tomoka (and later six additional vessels added to his fleet) to the Bahamas, fill it with the best rye, Irish, and Canadian whiskey he could purchase and then sail back to St. Augustine and anchor just outside the three-mile limit. The locals would then sail their own vessels out to the Tomoka and purchase what they needed, a perfectly legal transaction on McCoy’s part. Bill McCoy became famous for the quality of his product and the fact that he never “cut,” or diluted his liquor. When you bought from Bill, you were getting the “Real McCoy,” and that is how we remember him today.”
― Ann Colby, Wicked St. Augustine

“It is interesting to note that St. Augustine began to document the identity of its landladies and the location of its brothels only when it enacted its first ordinances outlawing prostitution in the late 1800s. Up until that time, prostitution and brothels were simply “business as usual” in the city and deemed invisible to polite society. Even after passage of laws making the businesses illegal, law enforcement took the stance that brothels were to be raided now and then to assure the public that the city was enforcing the laws, but as was true in the cases against Blanche Altavilla, very few convictions were sustained and no brothels were actually shut down. After all, the judges, the sheriffs and the men who constituted the juries were mostly longtime customers.”
― Ann Colby, Wicked St. Augustine

“Statesmen may plot and plan. Learned men may calculate and conclude. Diplomats may debate and prevaricate. But chance rules the immediate affairs of humankind.”
― Peter Ackroyd, Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors

“But though there were no formal parties, it is true that there were now two broadly opposing worldviews floating in the political ether waiting to be tapped as needed. As the crisis over the Lex Agraria revealed, it was no longer a specific issue that mattered so much as the urgent necessity to triumph over rivals. Reflecting on the recurrent civil wars of the Late Republic, Sallust said, “It is this spirit which has commonly ruined great nations, when one party desires to triumph over another by any and every means and to avenge itself on the vanquished with excessive cruelty.” Accepting defeat was no longer an option.”
― Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic