Dutch Courage: A History
of Booze in America
(continued)
By Joan Schonbeck
By 1667, Plymouth was a "civilized" place,
with five taverns. Its new minister, John Cotton, a relative of Boston
witch-hunter Cotton Mather, ranted from his pulpit about "Intemperance...
a growing scandal!" It's ironic that Cotton, as a young man studying
at newly-opened Harvard College, had been such a hell-raiser and drunkard
that his own father had excommunicated him from the church! However,
judging from the bill for a funeral of the time, reformed preacher Cotton's
accusation was probably valid. The largest single expenditure on that
bill was the bar tab!
One of the loudest voices in New England's witch hysteria
was before-mentioned Cotton Mather. Through the 1690's, he and other
Puritans were responsible for the deaths of scores of innocent people
whose only crime lay in being different. In later years, most of these
witch-hunters saw the absurdity of their earlier fervor, and to their
credit, several prominent Bostonians publicly admitted their terrible
mistake. But not Cotton Mather! As late as 1697, he was still trying
to rekindle witch-hunting fervor. That was the year he accused a Boston
tavern wench of practicing the black arts. His eloquent prosecution,
citing her peculiar behavior as indicative of witchcraft, fell apart
when those who knew her well calmly assured the court that she was just
in the DT's, a state she apparently often achieved. Shamefaced, Mather
had to drop his charges.
Its been said that the Puritans had laws against everything
except drinking, but that's not entirely true. They did have laws against
drunkenness, and even scarlet "D's", a la The Scarlet Letter,
for sots to wear publicly. But it was a "sin" they more often
closed their eyes to, for good reason. Those same stern Puritans created
"The Devil's Triangle," with Boston, Africa and the West Indies
as its points. Yankee sea captains traded rum in Africa for slaves,
who were then sold in the West Indies for molasses, which was toted
to Boston, where it was distilled into rum, beginning the process again.
Ironically, these Puritans, forebears of fierce abolitionists, created
the slave trade in America. Rum was New England's first stable currency.
It was the basis of most "Old Yankee" wealth. Farmers paid
hired hands with it, and sold their crops for it. Like "Mental
Health Days" today, work contracts of the time routinely specified
days that employees could get drunk.
"John Barleycorn" fought on both sides in the
American Revolution. It's not by accident that "the shot heard
round the world" at Lexington was fired outside of a tavern. On
America's then frontiers of Western Pennsylvania and Kentucky, Scotch-Irish
settlers had begun making something to lessen their homesickness, corn-mash
whiskey. It was a matter of local pride. Officials boasted that every
family in the area owned and operated their own still. These stills
produced the "corn likker" served as a daily ration to Washington's
army. A turning point in the War for Independence occurred when Washington's
half-starved, ragged troops surprised and defeated a large force of
Hessian mercenaries at Trenton, New Jersey. One reason for the rout
was that the Hessians were mostly drunk or hung-over from an overly
vigorous celebration of Christmas the night before.
Those frontier stills provided our nation's first domestic
crisis. First Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton quickly recognized
alcohol's tremendous revenue potential. This knowledge is a legacy the
federal government has retained ever since. Hamilton shepherded the
first federal excise tax on whiskey through Congress in 1791. Instant
mayhem, rather than income, was an immediate effect. Frontier tax collectors
were tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. Violence escalated,
and a federal official was killed. In 1794, long-suffering George Washington
had had enough. He dispatched militia into Pennsylvania, and the "Whiskey
Rebellion" was put down.
Though taverns remained the primary meeting places and
socialization centers for men, and women continued to get plastered
on respectable-sounding "medicines" like Hexham's Tincture
and Stoughton's Remedy, the nation's 200-year romance with booze was
showing signs that the honeymoon was over. The temperance societies
that sprang up in the new republic were the first symptoms of that disenchantment.
By 1826, state temperance societies had banded together into the American
Society for the Promotion of Temperance, boasting a million members!
New York had been the first state to form a society back in 1808, and
well it might. In the one year that comprehensive records were kept,
1829, state capitol Albany's 20,000 citizens consumed 200,000 gallons
of rum — ten gallons for every man, woman and child!
In the 1840s, Baltimore added a new dimension to the temperance
movement. Six die-hard drunks, "having a few" at Chase's Tavern,
mused on how much fun it would be to send two of their number to a temperance
meeting. Well into their cups, two were chosen. This pair returned a
few hours later, a new light shining in their eyes. Over Chase's objections
(he hardly wanted to lose his best customers), the other four were quickly
converted. Theirs would not be the only attempt to curb excessive alcohol
consumption in those years. Irish refugees of the Potato Famine, encouraged
by Catholic priests, would take annual "Pledges" against drinking.
But that night, in that Baltimore bar, the first self-help group for
the treatment of alcoholism was born. They were called Washingtonians.
Overnight the Washingtonians became a national phenomenon.
But all too soon, the two emerging issues of their time, slavery and
women's rights, destroyed them from within. Differing views regarding
states' rights, slavery and a determined anti-feminist stance distracted
the group from the business of staying sober. In parody of Paul Revere's
famous message, thousands lined Boston Common shouting "The Teetotalers
are coming!" as the Washingtonians marched by, 12,000 strong, with
23 brass bands in the summer of 1860. That march was their last hurrah.
They slipped quietly into obscurity after that, early casualties of
the Civil War and the changing times that went with it.
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