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.