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AMERICANA EBRIETATIS 
 
 Byegone Ways of Byegone Days 
 
ONE HUNDRED COPIES OF THIS 
 EDITION HAVE BEEN PRINTED 
 FOR SALE AND THE TYPE DIS- 
 TRIBUTED 
 
Americana Cforietatttf; 
 
 THE 
 
 Favorite Tipple of our Forefathers 
 
 and the Laws and Customs 
 
 Relating Thereto 
 
 BY 
 HEWSON L. PEEKE 
 
 €S^ 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED 
 NEW YORK, 1917 
 

 Copyrighted 1917 by 
 HEWSON L. PEEKE 
 
 APR 16 017 
 
 CI.A457946 
 
To my father, Rev. Geo. H. Peeke, whose 
 vote followed his prayers, this little book 
 is dedicated, except the chapter on the 
 "Church and the Clergy," which is dedi- 
 cated to that large majority of the ministry 
 who vote one way and pray the opposite, as 
 their clerical forefathers did. These pages 
 are not written to prove any theory or fact 
 except the growth of sentiment in the last 
 two centuries against the liquor traffic. 
 Though prepared somewhat as a lawyer 
 briefs a case, omitting for the most part 
 the citation of authorities, no fact is given 
 that does not rest on the authority of some 
 writer. The authority can be produced if 
 required. The research represents the cull- 
 ing of some four hundred volumes. 
 
 H. L. Peeke 
 
The reprint of Ebrietatis Encomium, 
 London, 1723, led many of my friends to 
 suggest the desirability of a more modern 
 work on the later views and customs con- 
 cerning drunkenness. Thanks to the most 
 timely and exceptional research of the au- 
 thor, I present for their delectation a treatise 
 along this very line, which will pleasantly 
 while away a winter evening. 
 
 L. M. Thompson 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter I Customs based on Race 
 
 Source of Population . . 13 
 Chapter II Early Attempts at Regu- 
 lation by Legislation .... 24 
 
 Tariffs 31 
 
 Internal Revenue Tax . . . .35 
 Chapter III Schools and Colleges . 37 
 Chapter IV Bench and Bar ... 46 
 Chapter V Church and Clergy . . 55 
 Chapter VI Relation of George Wash- 
 ington to the Liquor Traffic . . 64 
 Relation of other Prominent Americans 
 to the Liquor Traffic .... 74 
 Chapter VII The Slave Trade . . 85 
 The Southern Planter .... 89 
 
 The Indian Tribes 93 
 
 Politics and Elections . . . .108 
 Early Defiance of Law . . . .111 
 Chapter VIII Christenings — Marriages 
 
 — Funerals 116 
 
 Chapter IX Vendues — Chopping Bees 
 
 — House Bees — Wood Spells — Clear- 
 ing Bees 127 
 
 Traveling and Taverns . . . .132 
 
io Contents 
 
 Chapter X Extent and Effect of the 
 
 Traffic at Flood Tide . . . .145 
 
 Whiskey as Money 149 
 
 Temperance Societies . . . .150 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 Customs Based on Race Source of 
 Population 
 
 In order to understand the laws, social 
 habits, and customs in regard to the use of 
 liquor it seems proper to consider briefly the 
 sources of the population of the different 
 states and of the country generally. At the 
 time when America was settled, no Euro- 
 pean people drank water as we do today for 
 a constant beverage. The English drank 
 ale, the Dutch beer, the French and Spanish 
 light wines, for every day use. Hence it 
 seemed to the colonists a dangerous experi- 
 ment to drink water in the New World. 
 The Dutch were great beer drinkers and 
 quickly established breweries at Albany and 
 New York. Before the century ended New 
 Englanders had abandoned the constant 
 drinking of ale and beer for cider. Cider 
 was very cheap ; but a few shillings a barrel. 
 
14 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 It was supplied in large amounts to students 
 at college and even very little children 
 drank it. President John Adams was an 
 early and earnest wisher for temperance re- 
 form ; but, to the end of his life, he drank a 
 large tankard of hard cider every morning 
 when he first got up. It was free in every 
 farmhouse to all travelers and tramps. As 
 years passed on and great wealth came to 
 individuals the tables of the opulent Dutch 
 rivalled the luxury of English and French 
 houses of wealth. When Doctor Cutler 
 dined with Colonel Duer in New York in 
 1787 there were fifteen kinds of wine served, 
 ^y besides beer, cider, and porter. In the 
 Dutch cellar might be found apples, pars- 
 nips, turnips, etc., along with barrels of 
 vinegar, cider, and ale, and canty brown 
 jugs of rum. In the houses of the wealthier 
 classes there was also plenty of wine, either 
 of the claret family or some kind of sack, 
 which was a name covering sherries, cana- 
 ries, and madeiras. Teetotalism would have 
 been quite unintelligible to the farmer or 
 burgher of those healthy days of breezy ac- 
 tivity out of doors. In the Dutch cupboard 
 
Customs Based on Race Source 15 
 
 or on the sideboard always stood the gleam- 
 ing decanter of cut-glass or the square high- 
 shouldered magnum of aromatic schnapps. 
 The drinking habits of the Dutch colonists 
 were excessive. Tempered in their tastes 
 somewhat by the universal brewing and 
 drinking of beer, they did not use as much 
 as the Puritans of New England, nor drink 
 as deeply as the Virginia planters, but the 
 use of liquor was universal. A libation was 
 poured on every transaction at every hap- 
 pening of the community; in public as well 
 as private life John Barleycorn was a wit- 
 ness at the drawing of a contract, the signing 
 of a deed, the selling of a farm, the purchase 
 of goods, the arbitration of a suit. If a 
 party backed out from a contract he did not 
 back out from the treat. Liquor was served 
 at vendues and made the bidders expansive. 
 It appeared at weddings, funerals, church 
 openings, deacon ordainings, and house rais- 
 ings. No farm hand in haying, no sailor 
 on a vessel, no workman in a mill, no cob- 
 bler, tailor, carpenter, mason, or tinker 
 would work without some strong drink or 
 treat. The bill for liquor where many 
 
16 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 workmen were employed at a house raising 
 was often a heavy one. 
 
 As to New England, Eugene Lawrence 
 in his papers on colonial progress, says, 
 "wines and liquors were freely consumed 
 by our ancestors and even New England 
 had as yet (1775) no high repute for tem- 
 perance. Rum was taken as a common 
 restorative." The Puritans had no objec- 
 tion to wine, and in latter colonial times 
 hard drinking was very common even 
 among ministers; but they were much op- 
 posed to health drinking which was too 
 jovial and pleasant to suit their gloomy 
 principles. Doctor Peters thus speaks of 
 Connecticut: 
 
 "The various fruits are in greater perfec- 
 tion than in England. The peach and apple 
 are more luscious, beautiful, and large; one 
 thousand peaches are produced from one 
 tree ; five or six barrels of cider from one ap- 
 ple tree. Cider is the common drink at the 
 table. The inhabitants have a method of 
 purifying cider by frost and separating the 
 watery part from the spirit, which, being se- 
 cured in proper vessels and colored by In- 
 
Customs Based on Race Source 17 
 
 dian corn, becomes, in three months so much 
 like Madeira wine, that Europeans drink it 
 without perceiving the difference. They 
 make peachy and perry, grape and currant 
 wines, and good beers of pumpkin, molasses, 
 bran of wheat, spruce, and malt." 
 
 Perry was made from pears, as cider is 
 from apples, and peachy from peaches. 
 Metheglin and mead, drinks of the old 
 Druids in England, were made from honey, 
 yeast, and water. In Virginia whole plan- 
 tations of the honey locust furnished locust 
 beans for making metheglin. From per- 
 simmons, elderberries, juniper berries, 
 pumpkins, cornstalks, hickory nuts, sassa- 
 fras bark, birch bark, and many other leaves 
 and roots various light wines were made. 
 An old song boasted : 
 
 Oh we can make liquor to sweeten our lips 
 Of pumpkins, of parsnips, of walnut-tree ^ 
 chips. 
 
 Beer was brewed in families, and the or- 
 chards soon yielded an abundance of cider. 
 In 1721 the production of cider increased so 
 that one village of forty families made three 
 thousand barrels, and in 1728 Judge Joseph 
 
1 8 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 Wilder, of Lancaster, made six hundred and 
 sixteen barrels himself. 
 
 When the Quakers framed their consti- 
 tution for Pennsylvania they inserted claus- 
 es punishing swearing, intemperance, card- 
 playing, and the drinking of healths. They 
 were mighty drinkers in their sober fashion, 
 consuming vast quantities of ale and spirits, 
 and making no serious inroads on the pure 
 and wholesome water, although we are 
 gravely assured that particular pumps, one 
 on Walnut Street, and one in Norris Alley, 
 were held in especial favor as having the 
 best water in town for the legitimate pur- 
 pose of boiling greens. Their first beer was 
 made from molasses, and we have Penn's 
 assurance that, when "well boyled with Sas- 
 safras or Pine infused into it," this was a 
 very tolerable drink. Rum punch was also 
 in liberal demand, and after a few years the 
 thirsty colonists began to brew ale, and 
 drank it out of deep pewter mugs." 
 
 When Congress met in 1774, in Philadel- 
 phia, John Adams was shocked by the dis- 
 play of eatables. His appetite overcame his 
 scruples, although after each feast he 
 
Customs Based on Race Source 19 
 
 scourged himself for yielding. After dining 
 with Mr. Miers, a young Quaker lawyer, 
 Adams remarks in his diary: 
 
 "A mighty feast again ; nothing less than 
 the very best of Claret, Madeira, and Bur- 
 gundy. I drank Madeira at a great rate 
 and found no inconvenience. This plain 
 Friend and his plain though pretty wife, 
 with her Thees and Thous, had provided us 
 the most costly entertainment, ducks, hams, 
 chickens, beef, pig, tarts, creams, custards, 
 jellies, fools, trifles, floating islands, beer, 
 porter, punch, wine, etc." 
 
 Again after dining at Mr. Powell's: 
 "A most sinful feast again: Everything 
 which could delight the eye, or allure the 
 taste, curds, and creams, jellies, sweetmeats 
 of various kinds, twenty sorts of tarts, fools, 
 trifles, floating islands, whipped syllabubs, 
 etc. Parmesan cheese, punch, wine, porter, 
 beer, etc." 
 
 The Swedes planted peach and fruit trees 
 of all kinds, had flourishing gardens, and 
 grew rich selling the products when the 
 Quakers arrived. They made wine, beer, or 
 brandy out of sassafras, persimmons, corn, 
 
20 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 and apparently anything that could be made 
 to ferment and they imported Madeira. 
 Acrelius, their historian, gives a long list of 
 their drinks, and tells us that they always in- 
 dulged in four meals a day. 
 
 In the True and Sincere Declaration, is- 
 sued in December, 1609, by the Governor 
 and Council for Virginia, there was an ad- 
 vertisement for two brewers, who, as soon 
 as they were secured, were to be dispatched 
 to the Colony. Brewers were also includ- 
 ed among the tradesmen who were de- 
 signed by the Company to go over with 
 Sir Thomas Gates. This indicated the 
 importance in the eyes of that corpora- 
 tion of establishing the means in Virginia 
 of manufacturing malt liquors on the spot 
 instead of relying on the importation from 
 England. The notion arose that one of 
 the principal causes of mortality so preva- 
 lent among those arriving in the Colony, 
 in the period following the first settle- 
 ment of the country, was the substitution of 
 water for beer to which the immigrants had 
 been accustomed in England. The Assem- 
 bly, in the session of 1623, went so far as to 
 
Customs Based on Race Source 21 
 
 recommend that all new comers should 
 bring in a supply of malt to be used in brew- 
 ing liquor, thus making it unnecessary to 
 drink the water of Virginia until the body 
 had become hardened to the climate. Pre- 
 vious to 1625, tw brew-houses were in op- 
 eration in the Colony, and the patronage 
 they received was evidently very liberal. 
 Cider was in as common use as beer; in 
 season it was found in the house of every 
 planter in the Colony. It was the form 
 of consideration in which rent was occa- 
 sionally settled; the instance of Alexan- 
 der Moore, of New York, shows the 
 quantity often bequeathed: he left at his 
 decease twenty gallons of raw cider and 
 one hundred and thirty of boiled. Rich- 
 ard Moore of the same county kept on hand 
 as many as fourteen cider casks. Richard 
 Bennett made about twenty butts of cider 
 annually, while Richard Kinsman com- 
 pressed from the pears growing in his or- 
 chard forty or fifty of perry. A supply of 
 spirits was provided for the members of 
 public bodies when they convened. The 
 character of the liquors used depended on 
 
22 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 the nature of the assemblage. When Charles 
 Hansford and David Condon, as executors of 
 the widow of the unfortunate Thomas Hans- 
 ford, leased her residence in York to the 
 justice of the peace of that county to serve 
 as a court house, they bound themselves tp 
 furnish not only accommodations for horses, 
 but also a gallon of brandy during each ses- 
 sion of the bench. It is not stated whether 
 this brandy was consumed by the honorable 
 justices in the form of the drink which had 
 become so famous in later times in Virginia, 
 the mint julep, but if mint was cultivated in 
 the colony at that age, it is quite probable 
 that a large part of this gallon was convert- 
 ed into that mixture. In 1666 the justices 
 of Lower Norfolk county rented the tract of 
 land on which the court house was situated, 
 on condition that the lessee, in part consider- 
 ation for the use of the houses and orchards 
 each year, would pay ten gallons brewed 
 from English grain. The members of the 
 Council appear to have been fastidious in 
 their tastes. It was one of the duties of the 
 auditor-general to have a large quantity of 
 wine always ready at hand for this body. 
 
Customs Based on Race Source 23 
 
 Thus on one occasion William Byrd, who 
 filled the office in the latter part of the cen- 
 tury, ordered for their use twenty dozen of 
 claret, and six dozen of canary, sherry, and 
 Rhenish, respectively. A quarter of a cask 
 of brandy was also to be added. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Early Attempts at Regulation by Legislation 
 
 This unrestrained indulgence in liquor, 
 which previous to 1624 na d excited the crit- 
 icism of the company, called down on the 
 Colony on several occasions the animadver- 
 sion of the Royal Governor after he had 
 taken charge of affairs in Virginia. In 1625 
 Governor Yeardley was instructed to sup- 
 press drunkenness by severe punishments, 
 and to dispose of the spirits brought into the 
 Colony in such manner that it would go to 
 the relief and comfort of the whole planta- 
 tion instead of falling into the hands of 
 those who would abuse it. He received ad- 
 ditional orders to return to the importers all 
 liquors shown to be decayed or unwhole- 
 some. The injunction to withhold all liquors 
 imported into the Colony from persons who 
 were guilty of excess in the use of them was 
 repeated. 
 
 The attempts to prevent drunkenness were 
 
Early Attempts at Regulation 2$ 
 
 not confined to instructions to the Govern- 
 ors, given by the authorities in England. 
 From the first session of the first assembly, 
 no legislative means were left unemployed 
 to accomplish the same object. In 1619 it 
 was provided that the person guilty in this 
 respect should for the first offense be pri- 
 vately reproved by his minister; for the sec- 
 ond, publicly; for the third be imprisoned 
 for twelve hours; and if still incorrigible be 
 punished as the Governor directed. 
 
 In March, 1623-4, tne church-wardens in 
 every parish were ordered to present all per- 
 sons guilty of drunkenness to the commander 
 of the plantation. In 163 1-2 the offender 
 was required to pay five shillings into the 
 hands of the nearest vestry, and this fine 
 could be made good by levy on his property. 
 In 1657-8 the person guilty of inebriety was 
 punished by a very heavy fine, and also ren- 
 dered incapable of being a witness in court, 
 or bearing office under the government of 
 the Colony. In 1691 the penalty for drunk- 
 enness was ten shillings, and if unable to pay 
 the sum, the offender was to be exposed in 
 the stocks for the space of two hours. 
 

 26 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 In 1668 there were so many taverns and 
 tippling houses in the Colony that it was 
 found necessary to reduce the number in 
 each county to one or two, unless, for the ac- 
 commodation of travelers, more should be 
 needed at ports, ferries, and the crossings of 
 great roads, in addition to that which was 
 erected at the court house. 
 
 Drunkards were severely punished and 
 were set in the stocks and whipped. On 
 September 3, 1633, in Boston one Robert 
 Coles was "fined ten shillings and enjoined 
 to stand with a white sheet of paper on his 
 back, whereon Drunkard shall be written in 
 great lynes, and to stand therewith soe long 
 as the court find meet, for abusing himself 
 shamefully with drinke." Robert Coles for 
 "drunkenness by him committed at Rocks- 
 bury shall be disfranchised, weare about his 
 neck, and so to hang upon his outward gar- 
 ment a D made of redd cloth & sett upon 
 white; to continue this for a yeare, & not to 
 have it off any time hee comes among com- 
 pany, under the penalty of one shilling for 
 the first offense, and five pounds for the sec- 
 ond, and afterwards to be punished by the 
 
Early Attempts at Regulation 27 
 
 Court as they think meet: also he is to weave # 
 the D outwards." 
 
 Lists of names of common drunkards were 
 given to landlords in some towns, and land- 
 lords were warned not to sell liquor to them. 
 Licenses were removed and fines imposed 
 on those who did not heed the warning. The 
 tithing man, that most bumptious public 
 functionary of colonial times, was at first 
 the official appointed to spy specially on the 
 ordinaries. He inspected these houses, made 
 complaints of any disorders he discovered, 
 and gave into the constable the names of 
 idle drinkers and gamers. He warned the 
 keepers of public houses to sell no more 
 liquor to any whom he fancied had been 
 tippling too freely. 
 
 John Josslyn, an English visitor in Boston 
 in 1663, complained bitterly thus: 
 
 "At houses of entertainment into which a 
 stranger went, he was presently followed by 
 one appointed to that office, who would 
 thrust himself into the company uninvited, 
 and if he called for more drink than the 
 officer thought in his judgment he could so- 
 berly bear away, he would presently coun- 
 
28 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 termand it, and appoint the proportion, be- 
 yond which he could not get one drop." 
 
 The prisons found little occupation as 
 compared with the pillory and the whipping 
 post. The latter was the common corrector 
 of drunkenness. We have an amusing de-* 
 scription of what constitutes drunkenness, 
 from Colonel Dodberry : "Now for to know 
 a drunken man the better, the Scriptures de- 
 scribes them to stagger and reel to and fro; 
 and so when the same legs which carry a 
 man into the house can not bring him out 
 again, it is a sufficient sign of drunkenness." 
 
 In 1676, during the supremacy of Na- 
 thaniel Bacon, at which time so many laws 
 were passed for the purpose of suppressing 
 long standing abuses, a legislative attempt 
 was made to enforce what practically 
 amounted to general prohibition. The li- 
 censes of all inns, alehouses, and tippling- 
 houses, except those at James City, and at 
 the two great ferries of York River, were 
 revoked. The keepers of the ordinaries 
 which were permitted to remain open at the 
 latter places were allowed to sell only beer 
 and cider. This regulation was remarkable 
 
Early Attempts at Regulation 29 
 
 in that it was adopted by the action of the 
 people, who must have been the principal 
 customers of the tippling houses, if not of 
 the inns. Not content with putting a stop to 
 sales in public places, the framers of the 
 regulation further prescribed that "no one 
 should presume to sell any sort of drink 
 whatsoever, by retail, under any color, pre- 
 tence, delusion, or subtle evasion whatso- 
 ever, to be drunk or spent in his or their 
 house or houses, upon his or their plantation 
 or plantations." 
 
 The general court of Massachusetts on 
 one occasion required the proper officers 
 to notice the apparel of the people, especial- 
 ly their "ribbands and great boots." Drink- 
 ing of healths in public or private; funeral 
 badges; celebrating the church festivals of 
 Christmas and Easter; and many other 
 things that seemed quite improper to mag- 
 istrates and legislators, and especially to the 
 Puritan clergy, were forbidden. 
 
 In Pennsylvania men were imprisoned in 
 a cage seven feet high, seven feet wide, and 
 seven feet long, for selling liquor to the 
 Indians and for watering the white man's 
 
30 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 rum, both of which offences the law placed 
 on equal footing. 
 
 Virginia and New Jersey declared liquor 
 debts uncollectible by law. 
 
 Several of the colonies forbade workmen 
 to be paid in liquor. In Massachusetts, in 
 1764, the law required that all who bought s 
 \J liquor should render an account of it except 
 state officers, professors and students of 
 Harvard College, and preachers of the gos- 
 pel. 
 
 The law frequently manifested great con- 
 cern about the clergy. Virginia had a stat- 
 ute making it an offence for a minister to 
 appear drunk in his pulpit on Sunday, and 
 in addition the following statute : 
 
 "Ministers shall not give themselves to 
 excess in drinking or riot, spending their 
 time idly by day or by night, playing at dice, 
 cards, or any unlawful game, but at all times 
 convenient they shall hear or read some 
 what of the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 It is one of the curiosities of old time leg- 
 islation that the use of tobacco was in earliest 
 colonial days plainly regarded by the magis- 
 trates and elders as far more sinful, degrad- 
 
Tariffs 3 1 
 
 ing, and harmful than indulgence in intox- 
 icating liquors. No one could take tobacco 
 "publicquely" nor in his own house, or any- 
 where else before strangers. Two men were 
 forbidden to smoke together. No one could 
 smoke within two miles of the meeting 
 house on the Sabbath day. There were 
 wicked backsliders who were caught smok- 
 ing around the corner of the meeting house, 
 and others in the street, and they were fined 
 and set in the stocks and in cages. 
 
 Tariffs 
 
 After the thirteen colonies had formed "a 
 more perfect union" the question of revenue 
 caused a heated discussion. Of the many 
 ways through which a sure revenue might 
 flow into the treasury none seemed as desir- 
 able as an impost. Of molasses, two mil- 
 lions of gallons came into the country each 
 year. A few hundreds of thousands of these 
 were consumed as food. The remainder 
 were hurried to the Massachusetts distiller- 
 ies and there made into the far-famed New 
 England rum, which by the fishermen at the 
 Grand Banks was thought much finer than 
 
32 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 the best that came from Jamaica. All other 
 goods brought into any port in the country 
 were to be taxed at five per cent of their 
 value. 
 
 A long list of articles was given on which 
 special duties were to be paid. At the head 
 of the list stood Jamaica rum, which on mo- 
 tion was changed to distilled spirits of Ja- 
 maica proof. Two duties were suggested, 
 one of fifteen cents on the gallon, which 
 speedily divided the committee. Some 
 thought such rates too high. Some declared 
 they were much too low. And before the 
 discussion had gone far it turned into a de- 
 bate on the good and ill effects of high du- 
 ties and low duties. One low tariff member 
 remarked that the first thing to be consid- 
 ered in laying a tax was the likelihood of 
 gathering it, and that as taxes increased this 
 likelihood decreased. "I trust," said he, 
 "it does not need illustration to convince 
 every member of the committee that a high 
 duty is a very strong temptation to smug- 
 gling. Just in the proportion which a tax 
 bears to the value of an article is the risk 
 men will run in their attempts to bring in 
 
Tariffs 33 
 
 that article in an illegal way. This im- 
 pairs the revenue, and in time so much 
 comes in through the hands of smugglers 
 that no revenue is yielded at all." Boudi- 
 not said "he for one would be glad to see 
 Jamaica rum doing just that very thing." 
 There were three good results that would 
 come of a high rum tariff: The treasury 
 wanted money, and surely there was no arti- 
 cle on the lists of taxable goods so likely to 
 furnish a revenue as rum; the importation 
 would be discouraged, and that was bene- 
 ficial to the morals of the people ; the West 
 Indian distilleries would have no induce- 
 ment to turn their molasses into rum, and 
 as they had no markets for molasses save 
 those of the United States, the home stills 
 would be set actively to work. 
 
 These remarks on the moral effects of the 
 tax were violently attacked by two members 
 from the eastward. Fisher Ames quite for- 
 got himself, and reminded the committee, 
 with great vehemence of gesture and speech, 
 that they were not in church or at school, to 
 sit listening to harangues of speculative 
 piety. We are, exclaimed he, to talk of the 
 
34 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 political interests committed to our care. 
 When we take up the subject of morality 
 then let our system look toward morality, 
 and not confound itself with revenue and 
 the protection of manufactures. If any 
 man supposes that a mere law can turn the 
 taste of a people from ardent spirits to malt 
 liquors, he has a most romantic notion of 
 legislative power. Lawrence, one of the 
 members from New York, took up the at- 
 tack. He was for low tariff. "If," said 
 he, "the committee is to reason and act as 
 moralists, the arguments of the member 
 from New Jersey are sound. For it must 
 be the wish of every man of sense to dis- 
 courage the use of articles so ruinous to 
 health and morals as rum. But we are to 
 act as politicians, not as moralists. Rum, 
 not morality, is to be taxed. Money, not 
 sobriety, is the object of the tax." 
 
 The justness of this reasoning was lost on 
 the committee, and spirits of Jamaica proof 
 were taxed at fifteen cents a gallon. The 
 duty finally levied on all distilled spirits was 
 due to the influence of Hamilton, whose first 
 
Internal Revenue Tax 35 
 
 tariff bill also imposed a duty on glass, 
 "with the significant reservation," as Blaine 
 states, "in deference to popular habits that 
 black quart bottles should be admitted free." 
 
 Internal Revenue Tax 
 
 The system of internal taxation by the 
 federal government began on that memora- 
 ble day in 1791 when Washington signed 
 the bill laying a duty on domestic distilled 
 spirits; a tax which, proving more harsh in 
 its operations than was expected, was amend- 
 ed in 1792, and after being denounced by 
 legislatures and by mass meetings as op- 
 pressive, unequal, and unjust, was openly 
 resisted by the people of western Pennsyl- 
 vania, who rose in armed rebellion in 1794. 
 In that same year taxes were laid on licenses 
 for retailing wine and liquor, and on the 
 manufacture of snuff, tobacco, and refined 
 sugar, on carriages, and on sales at auction. 
 
 In 1 801 the taxes on carriages, on licenses 
 for retailing liquor, on snuff and refined 
 sugar, on sales at auction, when about to ex- 
 pire, were continued without a time limit; 
 
/ 
 
 36 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 but the next year the republicans were in 
 control, and every kind of internal tax was 
 abolished with exultation. 
 
 With this record behind them the two par- 
 ties met in the extra session of the thirteenth 
 congress and changed places. The federal- 
 ists became the enemies of taxation; the re- 
 publicans became its advocates, and before 
 the session ended taxed pleasure carriages, 
 sales at auction, sugar refineries, salt, licenses 
 to sell liquor at retail ; laid a stamp tax on all 
 kinds of legal documents, taxed whiskey 
 stills, imposed a direct tax of three million 
 dollars and brought back all the machinery 
 of assessment and collection, and again 
 turned loose in the land the tax gatherer and 
 what they had once called his minions. As 
 some months must necessarily pass before any 
 money could be raised from these sources, 
 another loan of seven million and a half was 
 authorized. From this time until the pres- 
 ent liquor has been constantly taxed both by 
 state and nation, and has been relied on to 
 furnish a large part of the public revenue. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Schools and Colleges 
 
 What the common schools of a century or 
 two ago must have been is indicated by a de- 
 scription of the colleges which will here- 
 after be given in this chapter. Many of the 
 school-masters were ignorant, and in addi- 
 tion were much addicted to the use of intox- 
 icating liquors. The first of whom we have 
 any trace was Jan Roelandsen, a New York 
 school-master, who is on record as lying 
 drunk for a month at a time, and being in- 
 corrigibly lazy. He was the first of many. 
 Winthrop, in his History of New England, 
 describes the censuring of Nathaniel Eton, 
 a school-master, for furnishing insufficient 
 board to his scholars, in which proceeding 
 his wife testified that the bread and beer was 
 always free for the boarders to go to. In 
 1693 a school bill for a couple of boys of the 
 Lloyd family of Long Island contained the 
 following items: 
 
 A bottle of wine for his mistress 10 d. 
 Wormwood and rubab 6 d. 
 
38 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 While the boys took the drugs the school- 
 mistress drank the wine. 
 
 Henry Clay's education was in a district 
 school taught in a log cabin by an intemper- 
 ate Englishman, and consisted of the merest 
 rudiments. Peter Cartwright speaks of his 
 school teacher as a Seceder minister who 
 would get drunk at times. Washington 
 Irving's Ichabod Crane, and Eggleston's 
 Hoosier School-master are at least average 
 pictures of the country school-masters of an 
 early day. The chorus of the school-masters 
 seems to have been : 
 
 "Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains 
 With grammar and nonsense and learning, 
 Good liquor I stoutly maintain 
 Gives genius a better discerning." 
 
 Mac Masters describes early college life 
 in 1784 as follows: 
 
 "The students lodged in the dormitories 
 and ate at the commons. The food then 
 partaken of with thankfulness would now 
 be looked upon as prison fare. At break- 
 fast, which was served at sunrise in summer 
 and at day-break in winter, there was doled 
 out to each student a small can of unsettled 
 
Schools and Colleges 39 
 
 coffee, a size of biscuit, and a size of butter 
 weighing generally about an ounce. Din- 
 ner was the staple meal, and at this each stu- 
 dent was regaled with a pound of meat. 
 Two days in the week, Monday and Thurs- 
 day, the meat was boiled, and, in college 
 language, these were known as boiling days. 
 On the five remaining days, the meat was 
 roasted, and to them the nickname of roast- 
 ing days were fastened. With the flesh al- 
 ways went potatoes. When boiling days 
 came round, pudding and cabbage, wild 
 peas and dandelions were added. The only 
 delicacy to which no stint was applied was 
 the cider, a beverage then fast supplanting 
 the small beer of the colonial days. This 
 was brought to the mess in pewter cans 
 which were passed from mouth to mouth, 
 and when emptied were again replenished. 
 For supper there was a bowl of milk and a 
 size of bread." 
 
 The oldest college in the United States, 
 that of William and Mary, was founded by 
 the King and Queen of that name, who gave 
 it twenty thousand acres of land and a penny 
 a pound duty on tobacco exported from Vir- 
 
4-0 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 ginia and Maryland. The assembly also 
 gave it a duty on imported liquors for its 
 support. This was in 1726, and the pro- 
 ceeds of the tax were to be devoted to its 
 running expenses and the establishment of 
 scholarships. Twenty-five years later the 
 same benevolent body enriched the college 
 with the proceeds of the tax on peddlers. 
 Those who are inclined to throw stones at 
 the source of these benefactions should re- 
 member that Harvard College has more 
 than once profited by the gains of an author- 
 ized lottery, receiving more than eighteen 
 thousand dollars from such a source as late 
 as 1805. 
 
 In 1752 the rules of William and Mary 
 College required that "spirituous liquors 
 were to be used in that moderation which 
 became the prudent and industrious stu- 
 dent." From the list were excluded all 
 liquids but beer, cider, toddy, and spirits 
 and water. In 1798, when the Bishop of 
 Virginia was president of the college and 
 had apartments in the building, the English 
 traveler Weld noticed that half a dozen or 
 
Schools and Colleges 41 
 
 more of the students dined at his table 
 one day when he was there. "Some were 
 without shoes and stockings, others without 
 coats. During the meal they constantly rose 
 to help themselves from the sideboard." 
 
 William and Mary College, during the 
 days of Jefferson and Monroe, was "a riot 
 of pleasure and power, a jumble of royalist 
 splendor and patriotic fervor, an awe of 
 learning, and indulgence of vice." Thom- 
 as Jefferson, the most eminent graduate of 
 the college, and its cordial friend, in ad- 
 vanced life remembered the "regular an- 
 nual riot and battles between the students 
 and the town boys;" and bore testimony to 
 other greater evils. From one source and 
 another have come down to us complaints 
 that the college was neither a college, nor a 
 grammar school, nor an Indian hospital; 
 that its teachers squabbled among them- 
 selves to the detriment of their academic 
 work; and that some of the professors sent 
 out by the bishops of London were drunken, 
 quarrelsome, and ignorant of the subjects 
 they professed to teach. 
 
42 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 The president, representing the bishop, 
 might have brought charges against the 
 clergy for their flagrant drunkenness but he 
 refrained, being himself a notorious drunk- 
 ard. Farquier, representative of the crown, 
 was the most finished gentleman Virginia 
 had known, and also the most demoralizing. 
 He introduced a passion for high play that 
 ruined many a fine old family, encouraged 
 hard drinking and a mania for racing, de- 
 lighted in having the clergy and favored 
 students join him in his all-night revels. 
 
 Commencement at Harvard in Old New 
 England days was a fete indeed; a fete so 
 important as to be attended by giant expen- 
 ditures and sinful extravagance. Indeed, 
 so early as 1722 in its history, an act was 
 passed "that henceforth no preparation nor 
 provision of either Plumb Cake, or Roasted, 
 Boyled or Baked Meats or Pyes of any kind 
 shall be made by any Commencer," and that 
 "no such have any distilled liquors in his 
 Chamber or any composition therewith," 
 under penalty of twenty shillings or forfeit- 
 ure of the said provisions. Five years later 
 
Schools and Colleges 43 
 
 several acts were passed "for preventing the 
 Excesses, Immoralities and Disorders of the 
 Commencements," by way of enforcing the 
 foregoing act. These, with a simplicity of 
 conclusion which brings a smile, declare 
 that "if any who now doe or hereafter shall 
 stand for their degrees, presume to doe any- 
 thing contrary to the said Act or goe about 
 to evade it by Plain Cake," they shall for- 
 feit the honors of the college. 
 
 In the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury the Yale College butler held his buttery 
 in the ground floor, front corner room, of 
 South Middle College, and sold cider, 
 metheglin, strong beer, together with loaf 
 sugar, etc., to the students. Dr. Lyman 
 Beecher, in his autobiography, says of old 
 Doctor Dwight, then president of the col- 
 lege: "Before he came college was in a 
 most ungodly state. . . Wine and liquor 
 were kept in many rooms, intemperance, 
 profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were 
 common." 
 
 John Bacon, afterwards United States 
 Senator, and Chief Justice of New Hamp- 
 
44 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 shire, sailed from Boston for Princeton Col- 
 lege September 10, 1751. In his diary he 
 states his outfit. 
 
 5 qts West India rum 5 176 
 
 1 qr. lb. Tea, 12 
 
 1 doz. fowls, 2 10 
 
 2 lbs. loaf sugar, 16 
 1 doz-8 lemons, 1 9 
 
 3 lbs. butter, 12 
 
 In a book published in 1764 describing 
 student life at Princeton, it is stated that 
 "the general table drink is beer or cider." 
 
 Washington Irving, in Salmagundi, de- 
 scribed seeing two students at the tavern at 
 Princeton who got drunk and cursed the 
 professors. Madison was a poler at Prince- 
 ton, and although the five o'clock horn was 
 a sovereign preventive of midnight revelry, 
 Madison was occasionally found around the 
 blazing logs of the Nassau Inn, when tank- 
 ards of ale and puffs at the long stemmed 
 pipes punctuated the students' songs. 
 
 James Buchanan at Dickinson was the 
 typical bad boy. Immorality was rampant 
 among the students, sobriety and books were 
 ridiculed. Buchanan became a leader in 
 
Schools and Colleges 45 
 
 debauchery, although his physique enabled 
 him at the same time to maintain a high 
 rank in scholarship. The faculty chose him 
 as a scapegoat, and he was expelled. 
 
 Benny Havens, the hero of the West Point 
 song, for many years sold liquor illicitly to 
 the cadets. The foundation of Vassar Col- 
 lege was the fortune acquired by Matthew 
 Vassar as a brewer. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Bench and Bar 
 
 The field which then lay before the 
 ablest lawyers was far less extensive and far 
 less lucrative than at present. Thousands of 
 cases now arise which could not then have 
 possibly arisen. No wealthy corporations 
 existed, expending each year in lawyers' fees 
 enough money to have paid the taxes of the 
 four colonies of New England. Patent law 
 and railroad law, the business of banks and 
 insurance companies, express companies, 
 telegraph companies, and steamships, have 
 given rise to legal questions of which neither 
 Parsons, nor Tudor, nor Dexter had any 
 conception whatever. A fee of $20,000 was 
 unknown ; a suit involving $50,000,000 was 
 unheard of. Yet the profession was not ill- 
 paid and offered many incentives to bright 
 young men. The law student of that day 
 usually began by offering his services to 
 
Bench and Bar 47 
 
 some lawyer of note, and if they were ac- 
 cepted he paid a fee of a hundred dollars, 
 and began to read law books and copy briefs. 
 In the course of two years he was expected to 
 have become familiar with Coke on Little- 
 ton, with Wood's Institutes of Civil Law, 
 with Piggot on Conveyances, with Burns's 
 Justice of the Peace, with Hawkin's Pleas 
 of the Crown, with Salkeld's Reports, with 
 Lillie's Abridgements, and with some work 
 on chancery practice and some work on what 
 would now be called international law. 
 This accomplished, his patron would take 
 him into court, seat him at the lawyers' table, 
 whisper to the gentlemen present, and with 
 their consent would rise and ask leave of the 
 court to present a young man for the oath of 
 an attorney. The court would ask if the bar 
 consented. The lawyers would then bow. 
 The patron would vouch for the morals and 
 learning of his young friend, and the oath 
 would be administered by the clerk. This 
 done, the new attorney would be introduced 
 to the bar and carried off to the nearest tav- 
 ern where health and prosperity would be 
 drunk to him in bumpers of strong punch. 
 
48 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 Thaddeus Stevens has left an amusing ac- 
 count of his brief connection, about 1820, 
 with the Maryland bar. The examination 
 took place in the evening before the judge 
 and the bar committee. His honor informed 
 Stevens that there was one indispensable 
 requisite to the examination. "There must 
 be two bottles of Madeira on the table and 
 the applicant must order it in." Stevens 
 complied with the condition, and, after the 
 wine had been disposed of, one of the com- 
 mittee asked the applicant what books he 
 had read. He replied, "Blackstone, Coke 
 upon Littleton, a work on Pleading, and 
 Gilbert on Evidence" He was then asked 
 two or three questions, the last of which re- 
 lated to the difference between executory 
 devises and a contingent remainder. A sat- 
 isfactory answer to this question led his 
 honor again to intervene. "Gentlemen," 
 said the judge, "you see the young man is 
 all right. I will give him a certificate." 
 But before the certificate was delivered, the 
 candidate was informed that usage required 
 that the ceremony should terminate in the 
 same way it had opened, and that two more 
 
Bench and Bar 49 
 
 bottles must be produced. Stevens very will- 
 ingly complied with this requirement and 
 was made a member of the bar. 
 
 With such a bar the courts were rude and 
 primitive. The courts sat often times in 
 taverns, where the tedium of business was 
 relieved by glasses of grog, while the judge's 
 decisions were not put on record, but were 
 simply shouted by the crier from the inn 
 door at the nearest market place. In North 
 Carolina the laws were not printed for a 
 long time but only read aloud in the market 
 place, and the courts and legislature met in 
 private houses and taverns. 
 
 Probably the best type of the judges pro- 
 duced by this system was old Chief Justice 
 Marshall, who occupied the highest seat in 
 the Supreme Court of the United States for 
 35 years. His decisions were recorded and 
 will be the noblest monument a man could 
 have or wish. In reference to two of them, 
 Judge Story says: "If all the acts of his 
 judicial life or arguments had perished, his 
 luminous judgments on these occasions 
 would give an enviable immortality to his 
 name." Judge Story said of the mode of life 
 
50 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 of the judges at these general terms of the 
 court: 
 
 "Our intercourse is perfectly familiar and 
 unrestrained, and our social hours, when un- 
 disturbed with the labors of law, are passed 
 in gay and frank conversation, which at 
 once enlivens and instructs. We take no 
 part in Washington society. We dine once 
 a year with the President, and that is all. 
 On other days we dine together, and discuss 
 at table the questions which are argued be- 
 fore us. We are great ascetics and even 
 deny ourselves wine except in wet weather. 
 What I say about the wine gives you our 
 rule; but it does sometimes happen that the 
 Chief Justice will say to me, when the cloth 
 is removed, 'Brother Story, step to the win- 
 dow and see if it does not look like rain.' 
 And if I tell him the sun is shining brightly, 
 Justice Marshall will sometimes reply, 'All 
 the better, for our jurisdiction extends over 
 so large a territory that the doctrine of 
 chances makes it certain that it must be rain- 
 ing somewhere. ' The Chief was brought up 
 on Federalism and Madeira, and he is not 
 the man to outgrow his early prejudices. 
 
Bench and Bar 51 
 
 The best Madeira was that labelled 'The Su- 
 preme Court/ as their Honors, the Justices, 
 used to make a direct importation every 
 year, and sip it as they consulted over the 
 cases before them every day after dinner, 
 when the cloth had been removed." 
 
 Returning to lawyers, Henry Clay was 
 extremely convivial, keenly enjoying the so- 
 ciety of his friends. He was fastidious in 
 his tastes though far from being an epicure. 
 He indulged moderately in wine, took snuff, 
 and used tobacco freely. In earlier days he 
 lost and won large sums of money at play 
 but ceased the practice of gaming in conse- 
 quence of censure, though he remained in- 
 veterately fond of whist. 
 
 Webster was majestic in his consumption 
 of liquor as in everything else. Parton in 
 his Essay speaks of seeing Webster at a pub- 
 lic dinner "with a bottle of Madeira under 
 his yellow waistcoat and looking like Jove." 
 Schuyler Colfax frequently spoke of seeing 
 Webster so drunk that he did not know what 
 he was doing. Josiah Quincy describes 
 Webster's grief at the burning of his house 
 because of the loss of half a pipe of Madeira 
 
£2 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 wine. John Sherman in his Recollections 
 describes hearing Webster deliver a speech 
 at a public dinner when intoxicated. 
 
 "In ante-bellum days, at this season of the 
 year, when there was a long session, a party 
 went down the Potomac every Saturday on 
 the steamboat Salem to eat planked shad. 
 It was chiefly composed of Senators and 
 Representatives, with a few leading officials, 
 some prominent citizens, and three or four 
 newspaper men, who in those days never 
 violated the amenities of social life by print- 
 ing what they heard there. An important 
 house in Georgetown would send on board 
 the steamer large demijohns filled with the 
 best wines and liquors, which almost every- 
 body drank without stint. Going down the 
 river there was a good deal of card playing 
 in the upper saloon of the boat, with some 
 story telling on the hurricane deck. Arriv- 
 ing at the white house fishing grounds, some 
 would go on shore, some would watch the 
 drawing of the seine from the boat, some 
 would take charge of the culinary depart- 
 ment, and a few would remain at the card 
 tables. The oaken planks used were about 
 
Bench and Bar 53 
 
 two inches thick, fourteen inches wide, and 
 two feet long. These were scalded and 
 then wiped dry. A freshly caught shad was 
 then taken, scaled, split open down the back, 
 cleaned, washed and dried. It was then 
 spread out on a plank and nailed to it with 
 iron pump tacks. The plank with the fish 
 on it was then stood at an angle of forty-five 
 degrees before a hot wood fire and baked un- 
 til it was a rich dark brown color, an atten- 
 dant turning the plank every few moments 
 and basting the fish with a thin mixture of 
 melted butter and flour. Meanwhile an ex- 
 perienced cook was frying fresh shad roe in 
 a mixture of eggs and cracker dust at an- 
 other fire. The planked shad, meanwhile, 
 were served on the planks on which they had 
 been cooked, each person having a plank and 
 picking out what portion he liked best, 
 breaking up his roast potato on the warm 
 shad, while the roe was also served to those 
 who wished for it. After the fish came 
 punch and cigars and then they reembarked 
 and the bows of the steamer were turned 
 toward Washington. When opposite Alex- 
 andria an account was taken of the liquor 
 
54 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 and wine which had been drunk, and an 
 assessment was levied, which generally 
 amounted to about $2.00 each. I never saw 
 a person intoxicated at one of these shad 
 bakes, nor heard any quarreling." 
 
 It is said that Webster went fishing the day 
 before he was to deliver his welcome to La- 
 fayette, and got drunk. As he sat on the bank 
 he suddenly drew from the water a large 
 fish and in his majestic voice said, "Wel- 
 come, illustrious stranger, to our shores." 
 The next day his friends, who went fishing 
 with him, were electrified to hear him begin 
 his speech to Lafayette with these same 
 words. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Church and Clergy 
 
 The first tavern at Cambridge, Massachu- 
 setts, was kept by a deacon of the church, 
 afterwards, steward of Harvard college; 
 and the relation of tavern and meeting house 
 did not end with their simultaneous estab- 
 lishment, but they continued the most friend- 
 ly neighbors. Licenses to keep houses of 
 entertainment were granted with the condi- 
 tion that the tavern must be near the meet- 
 ing-house — a keen contrast to our present 
 laws prohibiting the sale of liquor within 
 a certain distance of a church. Those 
 who know the oldtime meeting house can 
 fully comprehend the desire of the colo- 
 nists to have a tavern near at hand, espe- 
 cially during the winter services. Through 
 autumn rains and winter frosts and snows 
 the poorly built meeting house stood un- 
 heated, growing more damp, more icy, 
 
56 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 more deadly, with each succeeding week. 
 Women cowered shivering, half-frozen, over 
 the feeble heat of a metal footstove as the 
 long services dragged on and the few coals 
 became ashes. Men stamped their feet and 
 swung their arms in the vain effort to warm 
 the blood. Gladly and cheerfully did the 
 whole crowd troop from the gloomy meeting 
 house to the cheerful tavern to thaw out be- 
 fore the afternoon service, and to warm up 
 before the ride or walk home in the late 
 afternoon. It was a scandal in many a town 
 that godly church members took too freely 
 of tavern cheer at the nooning; the only 
 wonder is that the entire congregation did 
 not succumb in a body to the potent flip and 
 toddy of the tavern-keeper. In mid-summer 
 the hot sun beat down on the meeting house 
 roof, and the burning rays poured in the un- 
 shaded windows. The tap-room of the tav- 
 ern and the green trees in its dooryard of- 
 fered a pleasant shade to tired church-goers, 
 and its well sweep afforded a grateful drink 
 to those who turned not to the tap-room. 
 There are ever back-sliders in every church 
 community; many walked into the ordinary 
 
Church and Clergy 57 
 
 door instead of up the church alley. The 
 chimney seat of the inn was more comfort- 
 able than the narrow seat of the "pue." The 
 general court of Massachusetts passed a law 
 requiring all inn-keepers within a mile of 
 any meeting house to clear their houses 
 "during the hours of the exercise." "Thus," 
 Mr. Field says wittily, "the townsmen were 
 frozen out of the tavern to be frozen in the 
 meeting house." Our ancestors had no rev- 
 erence for a church save as a literal meeting 
 house, and it was not unusual to transform 
 the house of God into a tavern. The Great 
 House at Charlestown, Massachusetts, the 
 official residence of Governor Winthrop, be- 
 came a meeting house in 1633, and then a 
 tavern, the Three Cranes, kept by Robert 
 Leary and his descendants for many years. 
 It was destroyed in June, 1775, in the burn- 
 ing of the town. 
 
 The first revenue relinquished by the West 
 India Company to the town of New Amster- 
 dam was the excise on wine, beer, and spir- 
 its, and the sole condition made by Stuy- 
 vesant on its surrender was as to its applica- 
 tion, that the salaries of the Dominies should 
 
58 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 be paid from it. For a year beginning No- 
 vember, 1661, the burghers of Esopus paid 
 a tax on liquor, the proceeds of which were 
 used to build a parsonage for the minister. 
 St. Philip's church in Charleston, South 
 Carolina, was originally built by a tax of 
 two pence a gallon on spirits imported in 
 1670. Between 1743 and 1750 the public 
 revenues of South Carolina were all raised 
 by three per cent duties on liquors, wines, 
 sugar, molasses, slaves, and imported dry 
 goods, and produced about forty-five hun- 
 dred pounds, of which one thousand pounds 
 were devoted to paying the salaries of ten 
 ministers. The dedication of St. Michael's 
 church in Charleston, South Carolina, was 
 followed by a great dinner, at which a large 
 amount of liquor was consumed. 
 
 Under such circumstances it could not be 
 expected that the clergy would be much 
 troubled with scruples on the use of liquor, 
 and the evidence is that they were not. We 
 must bear in mind that the use of liquors 
 was universal in those days. "Ordination 
 Day" was almost as great a day for the tav- 
 ern as for the meeting house. The visiting 
 
Church and Clergy 59 
 
 ministers who came to assist at the religious 
 service of ordination of a new minister were 
 usually entertained at the tavern. Often a 
 specially good beer was brewed called "or- 
 dination beer," and in Connecticut an "or- 
 dination ball" was given at the tavern — 
 this with the sanction of the parsons. The 
 bills for entertaining the visitors for the din- 
 ner and lodging at the local taverns are in 
 many cases preserved. One of the most 
 characteristic was at a Hartford ordination. 
 It runs : 
 
 To keeping ministers, £ s. d. 
 
 2 mugs toddy, 2 4 
 5 Segars, 5 10 
 1 pint wine, 3 9 
 
 3 Lodgings, 9 
 
 3 Bitters, 9 
 
 3 Breakfasts, 3 6 
 
 15 Boles punch, 1 10 
 
 24 Dinners, 1 16 
 
 1 1 bottles wine, 3 6 
 
 5 Mugs flip, 5 10 
 
 5 Boles Punch, 6 
 
 3 Boles Toddy, 3 6 
 
 The bill is endorsed with unconscious hu- 
 mor, "This is all paid for except the Min- 
 ister's Rum." 
 
60 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 Here is another ordination bill: 
 
 30 Boles of Punch before the People went 
 
 to meeting. 
 10 bottles of wine before they went to meet- 
 ing. 
 44 Bowles of Punch while at dinner. 
 18 bottles of wine. 
 8 Bowles of Brandy. 
 
 Cherry rum [quantity not mentioned]. 
 
 When the fathers met in synod at Cam- 
 bridge in 1648, there was a liquor bill in 
 connection with the expense of the meeting. 
 At the ordination of Edwin Jackson in Wo- 
 burn, 1729, the town paid for six and one- 
 half barrels of cider, 25 gallons of wine, 2 
 gallons of brandy, 4 gallons of rum. 
 
 In the South the clergy were addicted to 
 horse racing, gambling, and drunken revels. 
 One of them was for many years president of 
 a Jockey Club. They encouraged among 
 the people the celebration of the sacrament 
 of baptism with music and dancing in which 
 the clergymen took part, a custom which 
 shows signs of returning in England. One 
 fought a duel in a churchyard, another 
 thrashed his vestry. One parson preached 
 in his stocking feet, one in his study coat, 
 
Church and Clergy 6l 
 
 and one ran a distillery. Many of them were 
 appointed by the British government and 
 by the Bishop of London and they were af- 
 fected by the irreligious listlessness and low 
 moral tone of the English church in the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 Alexander Graydon tells us that in his 
 early days any jockeying, fiddling, wine-bib- 
 bing clergyman not over-scrupulous about 
 stealing sermons was currently known as "a 
 Maryland Parson." The Maryland clergy 
 are said to have been more vicious than those 
 of Virginia. They raced horses, hunted 
 foxes, drank, gambled, joined in every 
 amusement of the planters and would extort 
 marriage fees from the poor by breaking off 
 in the middle of the service and refusing to 
 go on until paid. 
 
 One Dr. Beatty was acting as chaplain 
 to an army of five hundred men led by 
 Franklin to defend the frontier against the 
 French and Indians after the burning of 
 the Moravian mission at Gnadenhutten, 
 Pennsylvania. "Dr. Beatty complained to 
 me," says Franklin, "that the men did not 
 generally attend his prayers and exhorta- 
 
62 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 tions. When they were enlisted, they were 
 promised, besides hay and provisions, a gill 
 of rum a day, which was punctually served 
 out to them, half in the morning, and the 
 other half in the evening; and I observed 
 they were as punctual in attending to receiv- 
 ing it; upon which I said to Mr. Beatty, 'It 
 is perhaps below the dignity of your profes- 
 sion to act as steward of the rum, but if you 
 were to deal it out, and only just after pray- 
 ers you would have them all about you.' " 
 The shrewd suggestion was adopted by Dr. 
 Beatty, and the philosophic Franklin says 
 "Never were prayers more generally and 
 punctually attended; so that I thought this 
 method preferable to the punishment inflict- 
 ed by some military laws for non-attendance 
 at divine service." 
 
 This chapter may well be concluded with 
 the famous and oft quoted letter of Cotton 
 Mather to John Higginson : 
 
 "September ye 15, 1682. 
 "To ye Aged and Beloved Mr. John Hig- 
 ginson : 
 
 "There is now at sea a ship called the 
 Welcome, which has on board an hundred 
 
Church and Clergy 63 
 
 or more of the heretics and malignants 
 called Quakers, with W. Perm, who is the 
 chief scamp, at the head of them. 
 
 "The general court has accordingly given 
 secret orders to Master Malachi Huscott, of 
 the brig Porpoise, to waylay the said Wel- 
 come, slyly, as near the Cape of Cod as may 
 be, and make captive the said Penn and his 
 ungodly crew, so that the Lord may be glori- 
 fied, and not mocked on the soil of this new 
 country with the heathen worship of these 
 people. Much spoil can be made by selling 
 the whole lot to Barbadoes, where slaves 
 fetch good prices in rum and sugar, and we 
 shall not only do the Lord great service by 
 punishing the wicked, but we shall make 
 great good for his minister and people. 
 
 "Master Huscott feels hopeful, and I will 
 set down the news when the ship comes back. 
 "Yours in ye bowels of Christ, 
 
 "Cotton Mather." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 Relation of George Washington to the 
 Liquor Traffiic 
 
 In approaching the study of the character 
 of Washington a writer should always re- 
 member the veneration in which his mem- 
 ory is justly held among Americans. The 
 reader should remember that public senti- 
 ment was then at a very low ebb with regard 
 to the liquor traffic and neither the drinker 
 nor seller was discredited by his neighbors 
 as he is today. 
 
 The use of liquor played an important 
 part in the life of a Virginia planter a cen- 
 tury and a half ago. At all the cross-roads 
 and court-houses there sprang up taverns or 
 ordinaries, and in these the men of a neigh- 
 borhood would gather and over a bowl of 
 punch or a bottle of wine, the expense of 
 which they clubbed to share, would spend 
 their evenings. Into this life Washington 
 
George Washington 65 
 
 eagerly entered. As a mere lad his ledger 
 records expenditures: 
 
 "By a club in Arrack at Mr. Gordon's 2/6; 
 Club of a bottle of Rhenish at Mitchel's 
 
 i/3; 
 To part of the club at Port Royal 1/; 
 To cash in part for a bowl of fruit punch 
 
 1/7-1/2." 
 
 When Governor Dinwiddie sent Wash- 
 ington in 1753 with a letter to M. de St. 
 Pierre, the French commander, to remon- 
 strate against the erection of French forts, 
 one of the incidents of his journey was a 
 complimentary visit to the Indian queen, 
 Aliquippa, who resided at the confluence of 
 the Monongahela and Youghiogany rivers, 
 in the southeastern part of Alleghany coun- 
 ty, Pennsylvania. She had complained of 
 his neglect in not calling upon her when on 
 his outward journey. Young Washington 
 explained the circumstances that prevented 
 him, and with an apology he gave her a 
 coat and a bottle of rum. The latter, Wash- 
 ington wrote, "was thought the much better 
 present of the two," and harmony of feeling 
 was restored. Aliquippa, who was a woman 
 
66 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 of great energy and had performed some 
 brave deeds, was held in deep respect, 
 amounting almost to reverence, by the In- 
 dians in western Pennsylvania. 
 
 In 1766 Washington shipped an unruly 
 negro to the West Indies and wrote the cap- 
 tain of the vessel as follows : 
 
 "With this letter comes a negro (Tom) 
 which I beg the favor of you to sell in any of 
 the islands you may go to, for whatever he 
 will fetch, and bring me in return for him 
 
 One hhd of best molasses 
 
 One ditto of best rum 
 
 One barrel of lymes, if good and cheap 
 
 One pot of tamarinds, containing about 
 10 lbs. 
 
 Two small ditto of mixed sweetmeats, 
 about 5 lbs each. 
 
 And the residue, much or little in good 
 old spirits." 
 
 Shortly before this time Washington was 
 a candidate for the legislature. There was 
 then a Virginia statute forbidding treating 
 the voters, or bribery at elections, and de- 
 laring illegal all elections thus obtained, yet 
 the following is the bill of the liquors Wash- 
 
George Washington 67 
 
 ington furnished the voters of Frederick: 
 
 40 gallons of Rum punch a 3/6 
 
 per gain. 7.00 
 
 15 gallons of wine a 10 per gain 7. 10 
 Dinner for your friends 3 . 00 
 
 13^ gallons of wine a 10/ 6.15 
 
 13 gallons of beer a 1/3 4"4/ 2 
 
 8 qts Cider Royal a 1/6 . 16-3 
 
 Punch 3-9 
 
 30 galls strong beer a 8d. per gall 1-0 
 26 gall, best Barbadoes rum 5/ 6.10 
 12 lbs. S Fefd. Sugar 1/6 .18-9 
 
 3 galls & 3 qts of beer 1/ per gall. 3-9 
 10 bowls of punch 2/6 each 1 .50 
 9 half pints of rum 7^ d. each 5-7-1 
 1 pint of wine 1-6 
 
 After the election was over, Washington 
 wrote Wood that "I hope no exception was 
 taken to any that voted against me, but that 
 all were alike treated, and all had enough. 
 My only fear is that you spent with too spar- 
 ing a hand." It is hardly necessary to say 
 that such methods reversed the former elec- 
 tion: Washington secured three hundred 
 and ten votes, and Swearington received 
 forty-five. From this time until he took 
 command of the army Washington was a 
 burgess. Once again he was elected from 
 
i 
 
 68 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 Frederick county, and then, in 1765, he 
 stood for Fairfax, in which Mount Vernon 
 was located. Here he received 208 votes, 
 his colleague getting 148, and in the elec- 
 tion of 1768 he received 185, and his col- 
 league only 142. Washington spent between 
 £40 and £75 at each of these elections, and 
 usually gave a ball to the voters on the 
 night he was chosen. Some of the miscel- 
 laneous election expenses noted in his ledger 
 are: 
 
 54 galls of strong beer 
 
 52 dro. of Ale 
 
 £1. o. o. to Mr. John Muir for his fiddler, 
 
 For cakes at the election £7. 1 1. 1. 
 
 Bushrod Washington, made a real estate 
 investment that did not suit his uncle, and 
 Washington wrote him as follows : 
 
 "Now let me ask you what your views 
 were in purchasing a Lott in a place which, 
 I presume, originated with and will end in 
 two or three Gin shops, which probably will 
 exist no longer than they serve to ruin the 
 proprietors, and those who make the most 
 frequent applications to them." 
 
 He expressed an adverse opinion of the 
 liquor business at one time, somewhat in the 
 
George Washington 69 
 
 same line, in a contract he made with a 
 plantation overseer: 
 
 "And whereas, there are a number of 
 whiskey stills very contiguous to the said 
 Plantations, and many idle, drunken and dis- 
 solute people continually resorting to the 
 same, priding themselves in debauching so- 
 ber and well-inclined persons, the said Edd 
 Violet doth promise as well for his own sake 
 as his employers to avoid them as he ought." 
 
 To the contrary, in hiring a gardener it 
 was agreed as part of the compensation that 
 the man should have "four dollars at Christ- 
 mas with which he may be drunk for four 
 days and nights ; two dollars at Easter to ef- 
 fect the same purpose; two dollars at Whit- 
 suntide to be drunk for two days ; a dram in 
 the morning, and a drink of grog at dinner 
 at noon." 
 
 At Valley Forge he complained to Con- 
 gress of the mortifications they (even the 
 general officers) must suffer, when they can- 
 not invite a French officer, a visiting friend, 
 or a traveling acquaintance, to a better re- 
 past than stinking whiskey (and not always 
 that) and a bit of beef without vegetables. 
 
yo Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 In the New York State Library at Albany- 
 is a statement in Washington's handwriting 
 of his household expenses for three months 
 at the beginning of his first term as Presi- 
 dent, from May 24 to August 24, 1789; the 
 total expense for that time was £741 and 9 
 shillings, of which the following items were 
 for liquor: 
 
 Pounds Shillings Pence 
 
 Madeira 
 
 43 
 
 18 
 
 Claret 
 
 21 
 
 11 
 
 Champaign 
 
 18 
 
 
 Van de Graves 
 
 
 
 Cherry 
 
 2 
 
 5 
 
 Arack 
 
 2 
 
 16 
 
 Spirits 
 
 12 
 
 
 Brandy 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 Cordials 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 Porter 
 
 16 
 
 8 
 
 Beer 
 
 34 
 
 14 
 
 Cider 
 
 4 
 
 10 
 
 In the same library is a memorandum of 
 Washington's opinion of his general officers, 
 prepared in the winter of 1791-2. From 
 this it seems that he considered the drinking 
 habit of his subordinates, even at that time, 
 in appointing a successor to General Arthur 
 
George Washington 71 
 
 St. Clair, who had just then been defeated 
 
 by the Indians : 
 
 "Majr General (By Brevet) Wayne. 
 
 "More active and enterprising than ju- 
 dicious no economist it is feared — open to 
 flattery — vain — easily imposed upon and 
 liable to be drawn into scrapes. Too indul- 
 gent [the effect perhaps of some of the 
 causes just mentioned] to his officers and 
 men. Whether sober — or a little addicted 
 to the bottle, I know not. 
 "Majr General (By Brevet) Weedon. 
 
 "Not supposed to be an officer of much re- 
 source, though not deficient of a competent 
 share of understanding — rather addicted to 
 ease and pleasure, and no enemy it is said to 
 the bottle — never has had his name brot 
 forward on this account. 
 "Major General (By Brevet) Hand. 
 
 "A sensible and judicious man, his integ- 
 rity unimpeached, and was esteemed a pret- 
 ty good officer. But if I recollect rightly 
 not a very active one. He has never been 
 charged with intemperance to my knowl- 
 edge. His name has rarely been mentioned 
 
72 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 under the present difficulty of choosing an 
 officer to command, but this may, in a great 
 measure be owing to his being at a distance. 
 "Majr General (By Brevet) Scott. 
 
 "Brave and means well; but is an officer 
 of inadequate abilities for extreme com- 
 mand, and by report is addicted to drinking." 
 
 In 1795, when the United States passed an 
 excise law, distilling became particularly 
 profitable, and a still was set up on his plan- 
 tation. In this whiskey was made from 
 "rye" chiefly, and Indian corn in a certain 
 proportion, and this not merely used much 
 of the estate's product of those two grains, 
 but quantities were purchased from else- 
 where. In 1798 the profit from the distillery 
 was three hundred and forty-four pounds, 
 twelve shillings, and seven and three-quar- 
 ter pence, with a stock carried over of seven 
 hundred and fifty-five and one-quarter gal- 
 lons ; but this was the most successful year. 
 Cider, too, was made in large quantities. 
 
 Washington resigned his command De- 
 cember 23, 1783, and went back to his estate, 
 which had suffered from his eight years' ab- 
 sence. To his friends he offered unpreten- 
 
George Washington 73 
 
 tious hospitality. "My manner of living is 
 plain," he said, "a glass of wine and a bit of 
 mutton are always ready and such as will be 
 content to partake of them are always 'wel- 
 come." 
 
 At Washington's official dinners ordinari- 
 ly a boiled leg of mutton was served, fol- 
 lowed by a glass of wine. The silver service 
 was massive, being valued at $30,000, but 
 the menu was very simple. On a great oc- 
 casion it included soup, fish roasted and 
 boiled, meats, fowls, and so on, and for des- 
 sert, apple pies, puddings^ ice cream, jelly, 
 and fruit. After the cloth had been re- 
 moved the President filled his glass and 
 drank the health by name of each one pres- 
 ent. 
 
 Samuel Stearns, who was a frequent vis- 
 itor to Mount Vernon, thus described the 
 habits of Washington : 
 
 "He is very regular, temperate and indus- 
 trious; rises in winter and summer at the 
 dawn of day; generally reads or writes some 
 time before breakfast; breakfasts about 
 seven o'clock on three small Indian hoe 
 cakes, and as many dishes of tea, and often 
 
74 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 rides immediately to his different farms, and 
 remains with his laborers until a little after 
 two o'clock, then returns and dresses. At 
 three he dines, commonly on a single dish, 
 and drinks from half a pint to a pint of 
 Madeira wine. This with one small glass 
 of punch, a draught of beer, and two dishes 
 of tea (which he takes half an hour before 
 the setting of the sun) constitutes his whole 
 sustenance until the next day. But his table 
 is always furnished with elegance and exu- 
 berance; and whether he has company or 
 not, he remains at the table an hour in famil- 
 iar conversation, then every one is called 
 upon to give some absent friend a toast. 
 After he has dined, he applies himself to 
 business, and about nine retires to rest; but 
 when he has company he attends politely 
 upon them till they wish to withdraw." 
 
 Relation of Other Prominent Americans to 
 the Liquor Traffic 
 
 Among the early prominent American 
 characters the total abstainer was a rare ar- 
 ticle, and the prohibitionist almost unknown. 
 Governor John Winthrop was probably a 
 
Prominent Americans 75 
 
 total abstainer, and the romantic character 
 of John Smith seems quite clear from the 
 drinking habits of the period. "Never was 
 warrior known," says an old writer, "from 
 debts and dice and oaths so free," and his 
 own words as to the object of life show a 
 loftiness of purpose almost unknown among 
 his contemporaries, and should be preserved 
 for the example they furnish to posterity. 
 "Seeing we are not born for ourselves but 
 each to help the other, and our abilities are 
 much alike at the hour of our birth and the 
 minute of our death ; seeing our good deeds 
 and our bad by faith in Christ's merits is all 
 we have to carry our souls to heaven or hell ; 
 seeing honor is our lives' ambition and our 
 ambition after death to have an honorable 
 memory of our life ; and seeing by no means 
 we would be abated of the dignities and 
 glories of our predecessors let us imitate 
 their virtues so as to be worthily their suc- 
 cessors." So wrote the man of whom old 
 Thomas Fuller said, "He had a prince's 
 heart in a beggar's purse," and to whom one 
 of his comrades, a survivor of the starving 
 time, paid this touching tribute : "Thus we 
 
76 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 lost him that in all our proceedings made 
 justice his first guide — ever hating baseness, 
 sloth, pride and indignity more than any 
 dangers; that never allowed himself more 
 than his soldiers with him ; that upon no oc- 
 casion would he send them where he would 
 not go himself ; that would never see us want 
 what he either had or could by any means 
 get us ; that would rather want than borrow 
 or starve than not pay; that loved actions 
 more than words and hated falsehood and 
 covetousness worse than death; whose ad- 
 ventures were our lives and whose loss our 
 deaths." 
 
 But these are two of the few oases in the 
 dreary desert of early American drunken- 
 ness. Most prominent men of the time 
 drank to excess. The early colonial gran- 
 dees furnish a number of quaint pictures. 
 Governor William Cosby, of New York, 
 was admitted to the Humdrum Club on Jan- 
 uary 24, 1733, over many bowls of punch 
 made from peculiar and valuable receipts, 
 known only to the members of the club, 
 which was potent in its effects even over a 
 well seasoned veteran like the late Governor 
 
Prominent Americans 77 
 
 of Minorca. Sir Danvers Osborne, another 
 governor, committed suicide. The colony 
 of New York had been treated to a variety 
 of rulers since the English had taken pos- 
 session of the Dutch colony. They were en- 
 dowed with every vice known. They were 
 fortunately spared the dominion of a mad- 
 man who succeeded a dipsomaniac in the 
 chief office of the province. Governor 
 Clinton immured himself in the fort and 
 spent his time with his bottle and a little 
 trifling circle who lived on his bounty. Gov- 
 ernor Hunter was a man of violent passion. 
 After he had had one of his fits an Indian 
 said to an officer, "The governor is drunk." 
 "No," said the officer, "he never drinks any 
 strong liquor." The brave replied, "I do 
 not mean he is drunk with rum, he was born 
 drunk." 
 
 In 1688, in the midst of the rejoicings, the 
 news came that the Queen, the second wife 
 of James, had been blessed with a son, who 
 became heir to the throne. The event was 
 celebrated the same evening by bonfires in 
 the streets and a feast at the city hall. At 
 the latter, Mayor Van Courtlandt became 
 
jS Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 so hilarious, that he made a burnt sacrifice 
 to his loyalty of his hat and periwig, waving 
 the burning victims over the banquet table 
 on the point of his straight sword. And 
 when, in March, 1691, Governor Slough ter 
 arrived, and Leisler sent him a letter loyally 
 tendering to him the fort and province, that 
 functionary, under the influence of the aris- 
 tocratic leaders, answered it by sending an 
 officer to arrest the "usurper" and Mil- 
 borne and six of the "inferior insurgents" on 
 a charge of high treason. They were taken 
 to prison, and when they were arraigned, 
 the two principal offenders, denying the au- 
 thority of the court, refused to plead, and 
 appealed to the King. They were con- 
 demned and sentenced to death, but Slough- 
 ter, who in his sober moments was just and 
 honest, refused to sign the death warrant 
 until he should hear from the King. The 
 implacable enemies of the "usurper," deter- 
 mined on causing his destruction, invited the 
 governor to a dinner party on Staten Island 
 on a bright day in May. One of them car- 
 ried to the banquet a legally drawn death 
 warrant, and when the governor had been 
 
Prominent Americans 79 
 
 made stupid with liquor, he was induced to 
 sign the fatal paper. It was sent to the city 
 that evening, and on the following morning 
 Leisler and Milborne were summoned to 
 prepare for execution. Leisler sent for his 
 wife, Alice, and their older children, and 
 after a sorrowful parting with them, he and 
 his son-in-law were led to the gallows in a 
 drenching rain. They confessed their er- 
 rors of judgment but denied all intentional 
 wrongdoing. The blamelessness of their 
 lives confirmed their declarations of inno- 
 cence. Before Sloughter was permitted to 
 recover from his debauch, they were hanged. 
 It was foul murder. The governor was tor- 
 tured with remorse for his act, and died of 
 delirium tremens three months afterward. 
 When William Penn, in 1682, drew up 
 his code of laws for Pennsylvania he made 
 the drinking of healths and the selling of 
 liquor to Indians crimes. His opinion as to 
 drinking healths must have changed between 
 1682 and 1 7 10 when Dean Swift met Penn 
 and passed a lively evening. He writes 
 Stella, "We sat two hours drinking as good 
 wine as you do," and it is the strongest proof 
 
80 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 of Perm's lovableness that after drinking 
 good wine with him for two hours that 
 night, Swift the next morning has no word 
 of dispraise for his companion. 
 
 One of the oddest characters in early Vir- 
 ginia history was Dr. John Pott, who was at 
 one time governor of Virginia, and is de- 
 scribed as a Master of Arts, well practiced 
 in chirurgery and physic and expert also in 
 distilling waters, besides many other ingeni- 
 ous devices. It seems he was also very fond 
 of tasting distilled waters, and at times was 
 more of a boon companion than quite com- 
 ported with his dignity, especially after he 
 had come to be governor. A letter of George 
 Sandys says of Dr. Pott: "At first he kept 
 too much company with his inferiors who 
 hung upon him while his good liquor last- 
 ed." After Harvey's arrival Ex-Governor 
 Pott was held to answer two charges. One 
 was for having abused the power entrusted 
 to him by pardoning a culprit who had been 
 convicted of wilful murder, the other was 
 for stealing cattle. The first charge was a 
 common notoriety; on the second Doctor 
 Pott was tried by a jury and found guilty. 
 
Prominent Americans 81 
 
 The ex-governor was not a pardoner of fel- 
 ony but was a felon himself. The affair 
 reads like a scene in comic opera. Some re- 
 luctance was felt about inflicting vulgar pun- 
 ishment upon an educated man of good so- 
 cial position, so he was not sent to jail but 
 confined in his own house, while Sir John 
 Harvey wrote to the King for instructions in 
 the matter. He informed the King that 
 Doctor Pott was by far the best physician in 
 the colony and indeed the only one skilled in 
 epidemics and recommended that he should 
 be pardoned. Accordingly the doctor was 
 set free and forthwith resumed his practice. 
 No one was better disposed toward a mod- 
 erate conviviality than Franklin himself. 
 In that old house on High street where he 
 lived and died there remains now in the pos- 
 session of the Pennsylvania Historical So- 
 ciety that delightful punch-keg which rolled 
 so easily from guest to guest, and which car- 
 ried the generous liquor generously around 
 Franklin's board. A curious little keg this, 
 pretty, portly, and altogether unlike other 
 punch-bowls left us from colonial days. 
 Among the china was a fine large jug for 
 
82 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 beer, to stand in the cooler. Franklin's wife 
 was frugal, and it pleased him to set aside 
 her customary frugality on the blithesome 
 occasions when the punch-keg went rolling 
 round. 
 
 In 1768, when the advent of the new gov- 
 ernor made necessary the election of a new 
 House of Burgesses, Jefferson already 
 craved the opportunity to take an active 
 part in affairs, and at once offered him- 
 self as a candidate for Albemarle coun- 
 ty. He kept open house, distributed lim- 
 itless punch, stood by the polls politely 
 bowing to every voter who named him 
 according to the Virginia fashion of the 
 day, and had the good fortune, by these mer- 
 itorious efforts, to win success. In 1794 Jef- 
 ferson very nearly sympathized with the 
 Whiskey Rebellion. He called the excise 
 law an infernal one. In his gloomy views 
 of the War of 181 2 he asks what Virginia 
 can raise, and answers his question thus: 
 "Tobacco? It is not worth the pipe it is 
 smoked in. Some say whiskey, but all man- 
 kind must become drunkards to consume it." 
 While Chastellux, in his travels, tells of dis- 
 cussing a bowl of punch with Jefferson at 
 
Prominent Americans 83 
 
 Monticello, Jefferson never seems to have 
 drunk ardent spirits or strong wine, and in 
 his last illness his physician could not in- 
 duce him to take brandy strong enough to 
 benefit him. 
 
 While Hamilton favored the whiskey tax 
 and caused the Whiskey Rebellion thereby, 
 he nevertheless was in favor of temperance, 
 as is shown by the circulars he issued to the 
 army. 
 
 In his early youth Andrew Jackson was 
 gay, careless, rollicking, fond of drinking, 
 horse-racing, cock-fighting, and all kinds of 
 mischief; his habits moderated in later years 
 and in his old age Jackson became religious. 
 
 The son of Dolly Madison by her first 
 marriage, Payne Todd, was a continual 
 financial burden to her even after the death 
 of President Madison, and by his dissipation 
 broke his mother's heart, embittered her old 
 age, and ruined her financially as if to show 
 that even the wife of the President was not 
 exempt from the burdens of any mother of a 
 drunkard. When Tyler became President 
 he lived precisely as he had done on his Vir- 
 ginia plantation. He invariably invited vis- 
 itors to visit the family dining-room, and 
 
84 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 "take something," from a sideboard well 
 garnished with decanters of ardent spirits 
 and wine, with a bowl of juleps in the sum- 
 mer, and of eggnog in the winter. 
 
 One of the most picturesque figures of 
 this period was General Sam Houston, who 
 was a prominent figure at Washington dur- 
 ing the Taylor administration. Because of 
 trouble with his wife he resigned the gov- 
 ernorship of Tennessee, went into the Chero- 
 kee country, adopted the Indian costume 
 and became an Indian trader and so dissi- 
 pated that his Indian name was "Big- 
 drunk." He wore a waistcoat made from 
 the skin of a panther dressed with the hair 
 on, and was conspicuous in the Senate for 
 whittling soft pine sticks, which were pro- 
 vided him by the seargeant-at-arms. He 
 was the best customer supplied from his own 
 whiskey barrel, until one day after a pro- 
 longed debauch he heard that the Mexicans 
 had taken up arms against their revolted 
 province. He cast off his Indian attire, 
 dressed like a white man, and never touched 
 a drop of any intoxicating beverage after- 
 wards. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Slave Trade 
 
 In no branch of history is the culpability 
 of the liquor traffic more thoroughly shown 
 than in its relation to the slave trade. The 
 making of rum aided and almost supported 
 the slave trade in this country. The poor 
 negroes were bought on the coast of Africa 
 by New England sea captains and paid for 
 with barrels of New England rum. These 
 slaves were then carried on slave ships to the 
 West Indies and sold at a large profit to 
 planters and slave dealers for a cargo of 
 molasses. This was brought to New Eng- 
 land, distilled into rum, and sent off to Af- 
 rica; thus the circle of molasses, slaves, and 
 rum was completed. 
 
 In 1708 the West Indies afforded the 
 great demand for negroes; they also fur- 
 nished the raw material supplying the man- 
 ufacture of the main merchandise which the 
 
86 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 thirsty Gold Coast drank up in barter for 
 its poor, banished children. Governor Hop- 
 kins stated that for more than thirty years 
 prior to 1764 Rhode Island sent to the Coast 
 annually eighteen vessels carrying 1,800 
 hogsheads of rum. It displaced French 
 brandies in the trade of the Coast after 1723. 
 The commerce in rum and slaves afforded 
 about £40,000 per annum for remittance 
 from Rhode Island to Great Britain. Mo- 
 lasses and poor sugar, distilled in Boston 
 and more especially in Newport into rum, 
 made the staple export to Africa. Some ob- 
 tained gallon for gallon of molasses, but the 
 average was 96 to 100. Newport had twen- 
 ty-two still houses. Boston had the best ex- 
 ample, owned by a Mr. Childs. The cost of 
 distilling was five and a half pence per gal- 
 lon. Cisterns and vats cost fourteen to six- 
 teen shillings per one hundred gallons, in 
 1735, not including lumber. The quantity 
 of rum distilled was enormous, and in 1750 
 it was estimated that Massachusetts alone 
 consumed more than 15,000 hogsheads of 
 molasses for this purpose. The average 
 price of molasses in the West Indies was 
 
The Slave Trade 87 
 
 thirteen or fourteen pence per gallon. The 
 consumption of rum in the fisheries and 
 lumbering and ship-building districts was 
 large. 
 
 There was no article of merchandise com- 
 parable to rum on the African coast. Our 
 forefathers' instincts were neither moral nor 
 immoral ; they were simply economic. They 
 had tried dry-goods, and Africa rejected 
 them in favor of the wet. Captain George 
 Scott writes lamenting the purchasing of 
 dry-goods and says, "had we laid out two 
 thousand pounds in rum, bread and flour, it 
 would purchase more in value than all our 
 dry-goods." 
 
 The cargo of the Caesar, out-bound, was : 
 eighty-two barrels, six hogsheads and six 
 tierces of New England rum; thirty-three 
 barrels of best Jamaica spirits; thirty-three 
 barrels of Barbadoes rum; twenty-five pairs 
 of pistols; two casks of musket-balls; one 
 chest of hand arms; twenty-five cutlasses. 
 The return cargo was: in the hold on board 
 the scow Caesar, one hundred and fifty- 
 three adult slaves, and two children. 
 
 The ships were light of draught and built 
 
88 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 for speed. The captain and the crew were 
 men little troubled with scruples touching 
 the work they had to do. Once off the 
 coast of Mozambique or Guinea, the car- 
 go was rapidly made up. If a band of 
 blacks, moved by curiosity, came round 
 the vessel in a skiff, they were sure to be 
 lured on board, ironed, and hurried into 
 the hold. If a boat's crew went on shore, 
 they came back dragging some wretched 
 man between them. For rum the native 
 princes gladly sold prisoners that their sub- 
 jects made in war. When every available 
 inch of space had been filled, the slaver 
 turned westward and made for some south- 
 ern port. The coast line had scarcely dis- 
 appeared from view when the hatches were 
 taken off and the terrors of the voyage 
 began. Every fine day at sunrise the slaves 
 were driven on deck. Such as were noisy 
 had the thumb-screws put on. Such as 
 were hard to manage were chained in 
 pairs by the arms, or the ankles, or the 
 necks. At the first sign of insurrection the 
 leaders were shot down and cast into the sea. 
 Their food was salt pork and beans. Their 
 
The Southern Planter 89 
 
 sole exercise was dancing and capering 
 about the deck. This they were made to do. 
 If any refused the cat-o'-nine-tails or the 
 rope's end was vigorously applied. When 
 the sun set the whole band went below. The 
 transactions of one of these slavers are pre- 
 served in the history of New Bedford and 
 make interesting reading for those who 
 would hold up the Puritan as innocent of 
 the transgression which stains the character 
 of the Cavalier. 
 
 Dr. 
 The natives of Annamboe. 
 1770 
 
 To one hhds. of rum 1 10 
 
 " " " 130 
 
 " " " 105 
 
 11 " " 108 
 
 Cr. 
 
 Per contra. 
 
 Apr. 22. By one woman slave no 
 
 May 1. " " prime woman slave 130 
 
 2. " " boy slave 4 ft. 1 in. 105 
 
 " 7- " " " " 4 ft. 3 in. 108 
 
 The Southern Planter 
 
 Liquor and slavery combined produced 
 the Southern planter, whose life has often 
 
 Apr. 22. 
 
 To 
 
 on 
 
 May 1. 
 " 2. 
 
 tt 
 
 u 
 
 11 7. 
 
 u 
 
 tt 
 
90 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 been described by various writers. When 
 Yeardley assumed control of affairs in Vir- 
 ginia, the Company required that there 
 should be inserted in all formal grants of 
 land a covenant that the patentees should 
 not apply themselves either wholly or prin- 
 cipally to the culture of tobacco, but should 
 divide their attentions among a number of 
 commodities carefully specified in each deed. 
 These consisted of Indian corn, wheat, flax, 
 silk-grass, and wine. Parton, in his Life of 
 Jefferson, says that the Virginia planter ex- 
 pended the proceeds of his tobacco in vast* 
 ugly mansions, heavy furniture, costly ap- 
 parel, Madeira wines, fine horses, and 
 slaves. 
 
 Another writer says : 
 
 "The gentleman of fortune rises about 
 nine o'clock. He may perhaps make an ex- 
 cursion to his stables to see his horses, which 
 is seldom more than fifty yards from his 
 house; he returns to breakfast between nine 
 and ten, which is generally tea or coffee, 
 bread and butter and very thin slices of ven- 
 ison, ham, or hung beef. He then lies down 
 
The Southern Planter 91 
 
 on a pallet on the floor in the coolest room in 
 the house in his shirt and trousers only, with 
 a negro at his head and another at his feet to 
 fan him and keep off the flies; between 
 twelve and one he takes a bombo or toddy, a 
 liquor compounded of water, sugar, rum, 
 and nutmeg, which is made weak and kept 
 cool ; he dines between two and three, and at 
 every meal, whatever else there may be, a 
 ham and greens or cabbage is always a 
 standing dish. At dinner he drinks cider, 
 toddy, punch, port, claret, and Madeira, 
 which is generally excellent here; having 
 drank some few glasses of wine after dinner 
 he returns to his pallet, with his two blacks 
 to fan him, and continues to drink toddy or 
 sangaree all the afternoon. Between nine 
 and ten in the evening he eats a light supper 
 of milk, fruit, etc., and almost invariably re- 
 tires to bed for the night. This is his gen- 
 eral way of living in his family when he has 
 no company. No doubt many differ from 
 it, some in one respect and some in another, 
 but more follow it than do not. Pewter cups 
 and mugs were everywhere to be seen and 
 
92 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 now and then a drinking horn. There were 
 in the house for the purposes of drinking a 
 variety of receptacles, such as the tumbler, 
 the mug, the cup, the flagon, the tankard, 
 and the beaker. The cups were known by a 
 number of names, such as the lignum vitae, 
 the syllabub, the sack, and the dram. Many 
 planters in moderate circumstances were in 
 possession of a quantity of silver plate." 
 
 MacMasters says of the Southern planter: 
 "Numerous slaves and white servants attend- 
 ed them in every capacity that use or osten- 
 tation could suggest. On their tables were 
 to be found the luxuries of the Old World 
 and the New, and chief among these stood 
 Madeira and rum. That the men of that 
 generation drank more deeply than the men 
 of this is not to be doubted." Another writer 
 says : "The Maryland gentry ordered cham- 
 pagne from Europe by the cask and Ma- 
 deira by the pipe and dressed in the latest 
 fashion." 
 
 Betting and gambling were with drunken- 
 ness and a passion for duelling and running 
 in debt the chief sins of the South Carolina 
 gentleman. 
 
The Indian Tribes 93 
 
 The Indian Tribes 
 
 When Gladwyn wrote to Amherst, "If 
 your Excellency still intends to punish the 
 Indians farther for their barbarities it may 
 easily be done without any expense to the 
 crown by permitting a free sale of rum 
 which will destroy them more effectually 
 than fire and sword," he indicated the policy 
 toward the Indian tribes which has been 
 steadily pursued by all civilized nations on 
 the American continent except the French. 
 Irving, in his Knickerbocker's History of 
 New York, has stated the truth on this, as he 
 often does on other matters : "Our benevo- 
 lent forefathers endeavored as much as pos- 
 sible to ameliorate their situation by giving 
 them gin, wine and glass beads in exchange 
 for their peltries, for it seemed the kind- 
 hearted Dutchmen had conceived a great 
 friendship for their savage neighbors; on 
 account of their being pleasant men to trade 
 with, and little skilled in the art of mak- 
 ing a bargain." There is extant a letter 
 of Ebenezer Hazard to Silas Deane of date 
 February 25, 1775, in which Hazard says: 
 "I am told the Committee appointed by the 
 
94 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 House to state the grievances of this Colony, 
 though mostly Tories, have included all 
 those complained of by Congress and men- 
 tioned some new ones, particularly the de- 
 struction of the Indian Trade by the Quebec 
 Duty Act. You know that trade cannot be 
 carried on without rum. By the Quebec 
 Duty Act no rum may be sold in the Prov- 
 ince but what is entered and the duty paid at 
 Quebec or on Lake Champlain. The Vir- 
 ginians, etc., cannot afford to carry their rum 
 to these places to be entered, and consequent- 
 ly can have no trade. This I am very cred- 
 ibly informed is one of the grievances they 
 have enumerated." 
 
 There were but few storekeepers in Vir- 
 ginia in early days who were not engaged in 
 the Indian trade. Guns, ammunition, rum, 
 blankets, knives, and hatchets were the ar- 
 ticles in greatest demand among the tribes. 
 When in the ordinary course of events a 
 young American in Virginia or elsewhere 
 felt himself impelled to leave the paternal 
 roof he put aside his gun and fishing rod, and 
 asked of his father some money, a slave, and 
 a canoe. His brow grew thoughtful, and he 
 
The Indian Tribes 95 
 
 adopted a pipe. With his money he pur- 
 chased beads, trinkets, blankets, guns, pow- 
 der, not forgetting for various reasons a sup- 
 ply of rum. With these he purposed laying 
 the foundation of his fortunes as an Indian 
 trader. If the trader had several servants 
 with him or was associated with other trad- 
 ers he would fix his quarters in some large 
 Indian town and send his subordinates to the 
 surrounding villages, with a suitable supply 
 of blankets, guns, hatchets, liquor, tobacco, 
 etc. This wild traffic was liable to every 
 species of disorder, a fruitful source of 
 broils, robberies, and murders. The fur 
 traders were a class of men held in contempt 
 among the Iroquois and known among them 
 by the significant title of Rum Carriers. The 
 white trappers seem to have been as dissi- 
 pated as the Indians. One writer declares 
 that most of the Canadians drink so much 
 brandy in the morning that they are unfit for 
 work all day. Another says that when a 
 canoe man is tired he will lift a keg of 
 brandy to his lips and drink the raw liquor 
 from the bung-hole, after which, having 
 spoiled his appetite, he goes to bed supper- 
 
96 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 less, so with drink and hardship he is an old 
 man at forty. The type of French trapper 
 left in the old Northwest may still be seen 
 far north in the great fur land; he is idle, 
 devoted to singing, dancing, gossip, and 
 drinking to intoxication; having vanity as 
 his besetting sin. The Jesuits denounced the 
 traffic. Their case was a strong one, but so 
 was the case of their opponents. There was 
 a real and imminent danger that the thirsty 
 savages, if refused brandy by the French, 
 would seek it from the Dutch and English 
 of New York. It was the most potent lure 
 and the most killing bait. Wherever it was 
 found, there the Indians and their beaver 
 skins were sure to go, and the interests of the 
 fur trade, vital to the colony, were bound to 
 go with it. Cadillac was especially incensed 
 against the Jesuits on account of their op- 
 position to the sale of spirits. So strong was 
 their hostility that Louis XIV, in 1694, re " 
 ferred to the Sorbonne for decision the 
 question of allowing French brandy to be 
 shipped to Michilimackinac. The decision 
 of the Council gave to the Northwest its first 
 prohibitory law; and the commandant was 
 
The Indian Tribes 97 
 
 not more willing to enforce the order than 
 his successors have been to carry out similar 
 laws. "A drink of brandy after the repast," 
 he maintained, "seems necessary to cook the 
 bilious meats and the crudities which they 
 leave in the stomach." Again, at Detroit, 
 Cadillac quotes from a sermon by Father 
 Carhail, whose wing he was engaged in 
 plucking. The Jesuit had maintained that 
 there was "no power, either human or di- 
 vine, which can permit the sale of this 
 drink." Hence, you perceive, argues the 
 crafty commandant, "that this Father passes 
 boldly on all matters of state, and will not 
 even submit to the decision of the pope." 
 The question was indeed a hard one for 
 Cadillac. He understood clearly that unless 
 he had liquor to sell to the savages he might 
 as well abandon his post; for the Indians 
 would go straight to the English at Albany 
 where goods were cheap and rum was un- 
 limited. To give up Detroit never entered 
 Cadillac's plan. He therefore chose the 
 middle course. Intead of prohibition he 
 would have high license. In the restrictions 
 which he threw about the traffic in liquors 
 
98 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 he was both honest and earnest; and, as 
 events proved, he was far in advance of his 
 times. In the report of M. d'Aigrement, 
 who inspected Detroit in 1708, it is men- 
 tioned as one of the grievances of the sav- 
 ages against Cadillac that "in order to pre- 
 vent disturbances which would arise from 
 the excessive use of brandy, he caused it all 
 to be put into the store-house and sold it at 
 the rate of twenty francs a quart. Those 
 who will have brandy, French as well as In- 
 dians, are obliged to go to the store-house to 
 drink, and each can obtain at one time only 
 the twenty-fourth part of a quart. It is cer- 
 tain that the savages cannot become intoxi- 
 cated on that quantity. The price is high, 
 and as they cannot get brandy only each in 
 his turn, it sometimes happens that the sav- 
 ages are obliged to return home without a 
 taste of this beverage, and they seem ready 
 to kill themselves with disappointment. 
 Though the Jesuits refused absolution to all 
 who sold brandy to the Indians, they sold it 
 themselves. LaSalle had detected them 
 in it." Count Frontenac declares that "The 
 Jesuits greatly exaggerate the disorders 
 
The Indian Tribes 99 
 
 caused by brandy and they easily convince 
 persons who do not know the interested mo- 
 tives which have led them to harp con- 
 tinually on this string for more than forty 
 years. . . They have long wished to have 
 the fur trade entirely to themselves." Ap- 
 peal was made to the King, who with his 
 Jesuit confessor, guardian of his conscience, 
 on the one side, and Colbert, guardian of his 
 worldly interests, on the other, stood in some 
 perplexity. The case was referred to the 
 fathers of the Sorbonne and they pro- 
 nounced the selling of brandy to the Indians 
 a mortal sin. It was next referred to the 
 chief merchants and inhabitants of Canada. 
 Each was directed to write his views. The 
 great majority were for unrestricted trade in 
 brandy, a few fof limited and guarded trade, 
 and two or three declared for prohibition. 
 Decrees of prohibition were passed from 
 tiem to time, but they were unavailing. The 
 King was never at heart a prohibitionist. 
 His Canadian revenue was drawn from the 
 fur trade, and the singular argument of the 
 partisans of brandy, that its attractions were 
 needed to keep the Indians from contact 
 
ioo Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 with heresy, served admirably to salve his 
 conscience. The Dutch and English being 
 the heretics, he distrusted the Bishop of 
 Quebec, the great champion of the anti- 
 liquor movement. He wrote to Saint Val- 
 lier, Laval's successor in the bishopric, 
 that the brandy trade was very useful to 
 the kingdom of France, that it should be 
 regulated, not prevented, that consciences 
 must not be disturbed by denunciations of it 
 as a sin, that the zeal of the ecclesiastics 
 might be affected by personal interests and 
 passions. 
 
 From the time, in 1620, when Samoset and 
 Tisquantum brought Massasoit to Plymouth 
 to drink strong waters with the Puritans, 
 liquor played a steady part in all negotia- 
 tions between the white men and the red 
 men. When Hamor went to visit Powhattan 
 he was received with royal courtesy, "bread 
 was brought in in two great wooden bowls, 
 the quantity of a bushel of sod bread, made 
 up round, of the bygnesse of a tenise-ball, 
 whereof we ate some few." After this re- 
 past Hamor and his comrades were regaled 
 with "a great glasse of sacke" and then ush- 
 
The Indian Tribes 101 
 
 ered into the wigwam for the night. From 
 this time on at all Indian negotiations a 
 large percentage of the Indians expected 
 rum or whiskey to be produced. 
 
 No other cause has been as prolific of In- 
 dian wars as the liquor traffic. 
 
 The war of the Indians with the Dutch in 
 1675 in New York was caused by the sale of 
 liquor and firearms to the Indians, as well as 
 all the trouble that the Dutch ever seem to 
 have had with their Indian neighbors. 
 
 Liquor entered largely as a consideration 
 into the purchase of land from the Indians, 
 and the dispute over title and inadequate 
 amounts frequently caused trouble. 
 
 In 1675 Robert Livingston purchased a 
 tract of land on the east side of Hudson 
 river, near Catskill, which was paid for in 
 guilders, blankets, shirts, cloth, tin kettles, 
 powder, guns, twenty little looking-glasses, 
 fish hooks, awls, nails, tobacco, knives, strong 
 beer, four stroud coats, two duffel coats, four 
 tin kettles, rum and pipes, ten pairs large 
 stockings, ten pairs small stockings, adzes, 
 paint, bottles, and scissors. The treaty with 
 the Creek Indians was signed on October 
 
102 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 2I > 1733, when the governor distributed the 
 following presents among the Indians: A 
 laced coat and a laced hat and shirt to each 
 of the chiefs ; to each of the warriors, a gun 
 and a mantle of duffils (a coarse woolen 
 cloth with nap and fringe), and to all their 
 attendants coarse cloth for clothing; a barrel 
 of gunpowder; four kegs of bullets; a piece 
 of broadcloth; a piece of Irish linen; a cask 
 of tobacco pipes; eight belts and cutlasses 
 with gilt handles; tape, and of all colors; 
 eight kegs of rum to be carried home to their 
 towns ; one pound of powder, one pound of 
 bullets, and as much provision for each one 
 as they pleased to take for their journey 
 home. 
 
 In the spring of 1795 the directors of the 
 Connecticut Land Company sent out survey- 
 ors through the Mohawk, over the portage 
 of Wood creek, Oneida lake, and the Os- 
 wego river to Lake Ontario. At Buffalo the 
 agent bought of the Indians their remaining 
 claim to the lands east of the Cuyahoga river 
 for five hundred pounds, New York curren- 
 cy, two beef cattle, and one hundred gallons 
 of whiskey. 
 
The Indian Tribes 103 
 
 The murder in 1774 without provocation 
 of the family of Logan, a friendly chief of 
 the Cayuga nation and of great influence, 
 Jefferson shows was due to the drunken- 
 ness of two traders, Greathouse and Tom- 
 linson, and caused Logan to deliver the 
 speech which is often given in school read- 
 ers. The Seminole War had the combined 
 causes of slavery and liquor. President 
 Jackson gave slave traders permission to buy 
 slaves of the Seminole Indians. The trader, 
 knowing that the Indians were intoxicated, 
 would induce them to give bills of sale for 
 negroes they did not own, and the complica- 
 tions thus caused led to the Seminole War. 
 
 The Black Hawk War was directly caused 
 by the liquor traffic, while the career of Pon- 
 tiac, the ablest Indian statesman his race 
 ever produced, illustrates that drunkenness 
 was the bane of the Indian race. In the 
 same speech in which Pontiac said, "our 
 people love liquor and if we dwelt near your 
 old village of Detroit, our warriors would be 
 always drunk," he concluded his harangue 
 with the desire that the rum barrel might be 
 opened and his warriors allowed to quench 
 
104 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 their thirst. His life was ended by an Eng- 
 lish trader named Williamson, who bribed 
 a strolling Indian of the Kaskia tribe by a 
 barrel of rum to murder him, and for that 
 reward the savage stole softly behind Pon- 
 tiac while he was meditating in the forest 
 and buried his hatchet in his brain, 
 
 Of the influence of the white man on the 
 Indians the less said the better. They erad- 
 icated none of his vices and they lent him 
 many of their own. They found him ab- 
 stinent, and they made him a guzzler of fire 
 water. They found him hospitable, and 
 they made him suspicious and vindictive. 
 They found him in freedom, the owner of a 
 great country: they robbed him of the one, 
 and crowded him out of the other. The 
 Dutch were too much beer drinkers, became 
 with speed rum consumers, and opposed 
 prohibiting the sale of rum to the Indians. 
 William Penn wrote in 1683 : "Ye Dutch, 
 Sweed and English have by brandy and 
 specially rum almost debauched ye Indians 
 all." On arriving at a trading post an Indian 
 hunting party would trade perhaps a third 
 of their peltries for fine clothes, ammunition, 
 
The Indian Tribes 105 
 
 paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then a keg 
 of brandy would be purchased and the coun- 
 cil held to decide who was to get drunk and 
 who was to stay sober. All arms and clubs 
 were taken away and hidden and the orgie 
 would begin, all the Indians in the neighbor- 
 hood being called in. It was the task of those 
 who kept sober to prevent the drunken ones 
 from killing one another, a task always haz- 
 ardous and frequently unsuccessful, some- 
 times as many as five being killed in one 
 night. When the keg was empty brandy was 
 brought by the kettle full and ladled out 
 with large wooden spoons, and this was kept 
 up until the last skin was disposed of. Then, 
 dejected, wounded, lamed, with their fine 
 new shirts torn, their blankets burned, and 
 nothing but the ammunition and tobacco 
 saved, they would start of! down the river to 
 hunt, and begin again the same round of al- 
 ternating toil and drudgery. Nevertheless, 
 with all their rage for brandy they some- 
 times showed a self control quite admirable 
 in its way. When at a fair, a council, or a 
 friendly visit their entertainers regaled them 
 with rations of the coveted liquor, so pru- 
 
106 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 dently measured out that they could not be 
 the worse for it, they would unite their sev- 
 eral portions in a common stock, which they 
 would then divide among a few of their 
 number, thus enabling them to attain that 
 complete intoxication which, in their view, 
 was the true end of all drinking. The ob- 
 jects of this benevolence were expected to 
 requite it on a similar future occasion. In 
 1708, of the sixty- three settlers at Detroit, 
 thirty-four were traders, and the only profit- 
 able articles of trade were ammunition and 
 brandy, the English being able to undersell 
 the French in all other commodities. At 
 the time of the sales of furs every house in 
 Montreal was a drinking shop. In a letter 
 of Governor Halderman to Captain Ler- 
 noult, dated July 23, 1729, Halderman says: 
 "I observe with great concern the astonish- 
 ing consumption of rum at Detroit, amount- 
 ing to seventeen thousand five hundred and 
 twenty gallons a year." 
 
 In his notes on Virginia, Jefferson states 
 that the census of 1669 showed that the In- 
 dians of Virginia in sixty-two years de- 
 creased about one-third, which decrease Jef- 
 
The Indian Tribes 107 
 
 ferson attributes to spirituous liquors and 
 the smallpox. When president, Jefferson 
 recommended that the sale among the In- 
 dian tribes of intoxicating liquors be pro- 
 hibited. 
 
 Of the traffic and its effect on the Indians 
 a large amount of practically unanimous ev- 
 idence can be produced. LeClercq observes 
 with truth and candor that an Indian would 
 be baptized ten times a day for a pint of 
 brandy or a pound of tobacco. Father 
 Etienne Carheil says : "Our missions are re- 
 duced to such an extremity that we can no 
 longer maintain them against the infinity of 
 disorder, brutality, violence, injustice, im- 
 piety, impurity, insolence, scorn, and insult 
 which the deplorable and infamous traffic in 
 brandy has spread universally among the In- 
 dians of these parts. In the despair in which 
 we are plunged, nothing remains for us but to 
 abandon them to the brandy sellers as a do- 
 main of drunkenness and debauchery." 
 
 On one occasion the French Denonville 
 lectured Dongon, the English governor, for 
 allowing West India rum to be sent to the 
 Long House. "Think you that religion will 
 
108 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 make any progress while your traders sup- 
 ply the savages in abundance with the 
 liquor, which as you ought to know converts 
 them into demons, and their wigwams into 
 counterparts of hell." One seems to see the 
 Irishman's tongue curl under his cheek as 
 he replies: "Methinks our rum does as lit- 
 tle hurt as your brandy, and in the opinion 
 of Christians is much more wholesome." 
 
 Politics and Elections 
 
 The presidential campaign of 1840 sur- 
 passed in excitement and intensity of feeling 
 all which had preceded it. Delegations to 
 the whig conventions carried banners and 
 often had a small log cabin mounted on 
 wheels in which was a barrel of hard cider, 
 the beverage of the campaign. Early in Har- 
 rison's campaign comments were made on the 
 elegant style of living in the White House 
 during Van Buren's administration. Van 
 Buren was charged with being an aristocrat 
 and a monarchist while the masses toiled and 
 suffered to pay for his luxurious living. A 
 Richmond newspaper observed derisively of 
 
Politics and Elections 109 
 
 Harrison, "Give him a barrel of hard cider 
 and a pension of two thousand dollars and 
 our word for it he will sit for the remainder 
 of his days contented in a log cabin." Log 
 cabins and hard cider thus became the sym- 
 bols of a popular crusade. The log cabins 
 were decked in frontier style with coonskins, 
 bunches of corn, strings of peppers and 
 dried apples and the like, and were set up in 
 cities and villages. Inside these cabins co- 
 pious supplies of cider were on tap to be 
 drunk with gourds. The appropriateness of 
 the symbol came from the fact that Harrison 
 had formerly resided in a western log cabin, 
 and the cider was meant to typify western 
 hospitality. The result was that young and 
 old drank the cider freely and the whig 
 meetings often degenerated into mere 
 drunken carousals, the example of which 
 was especially injurious to the rising gen- 
 eration. 
 
 There are men still alive who claim that 
 a single glass of wine drunk by Herschel V. 
 Johnson was responsible for the wreck of 
 the democratic party in i860 by unfitting 
 
no Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 him to reply to the speech of Howell Cobb 
 in favor of separate democratic nominations 
 at the Georgia democratic state convention. 
 The Count de Paris says of the vigilance 
 committees that terrorized the South into se- 
 cession: "The bar-room was generally the 
 place of their meetings. Around the coun- 
 ter on which gin and whiskey circulated 
 freely a few frantic individuals pronounced 
 judgment upon their fellow citizens, wheth- 
 er present or absent." 
 
 In one of the Lincoln-Douglas joint de- 
 bates Douglas described his own father as 
 an excellent cooper. Lincoln said he did 
 not doubt the truth of the statement for he 
 knew of one very good whisky cask he had 
 made. As Douglas was short and thick-set 
 and a heavy drinker the joke was enjoyed. 
 
 On another occasion, Douglas said that 
 when he first knew Lincoln, Lincoln was a 
 good bar-tender. Lincoln in admitting that 
 he had sold whisky said Douglas was one of 
 his best customers, adding that he had left 
 his side of the counter but Douglas had 
 stuck to the other side. 
 
Early Defiance of Law III 
 
 Early Defiance of Law 
 
 In the last decade of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury the Whiskey Rebellion arose from the 
 refusal of the Scotch-Irish whiskey distillers 
 of Pennsylvania to pay the excise on whis- 
 key. If a collector came among them he 
 was attacked, his books and papers taken, his 
 commission torn up, and a solemn promise 
 exacted that he would publish his resigna- 
 tion in the Pittsburgh Gazette, If a farmer 
 gave information as to where the stills could 
 be found, his barns were burned. If a dis- 
 tiller entered his stills as the law required, 
 he was sure to be visited by a masked mob. 
 Sometimes his grist-mill was made useless, 
 sometimes his stills destroyed, or a piece of 
 his saw-mill carried away, and a command 
 laid upon him to publish what had been 
 done to him in the Gazette. One unhappy 
 man, who had rented his house to a collec- 
 tor, was visited at the dead of night by a mob 
 of blackened and disguised men. He was 
 seized, carried to the woods, shorn of his 
 hair, tarred, feathered, and bound to a tree. 
 They next formed associations of those who, 
 
1 1 2 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 in the language of the district, were ready to 
 "forbear" entering their stills. They ended 
 by working themselves into a fury and call- 
 ing a meeting of distillers for the 27th of 
 July, at Restone, Old Fort, a town on which 
 the inhabitants have since bestowed the 
 humbler name of Brownsville. From this 
 gathering went out a call for two conven- 
 tions. One was to meet on the 23 d of Au- 
 gust at Washington, in Pennsylvania. The 
 date chosen for the meeting of the second 
 was September 7th, and the place Pitts- 
 burgh. Both were held. That at Washing- 
 ton denounced the law and called on all 
 good people to treat every man taking office 
 under it with contempt, and withhold from 
 him all comfort, aid, and support. That at 
 Pittsburgh complained bitterly of the sal- 
 aries of the federal officers, of the rate of in- 
 terest on the national debt, of the Funding 
 System, of the Bank, and of the tax on whis- 
 key. Meantime the collector for the coun- 
 ties of Washington and Alleghany was set 
 upon. On the day before the Pittsburgh 
 meeting a party of armed men waylaid him 
 at a lonely spot on Pigeon creek, stripped, 
 
Early Defiance of Law 113 
 
 tarred, and feathered him, cut off his hair, 
 and took away his horse. They were dis- 
 guised, but he recognized three of the band, 
 and swore out warrants against them in the 
 district court at Philadelphia. These were 
 sent to the marshal ; but the marshal was a 
 prudent man, and gave them to his deputy, 
 who, early in October, went down into Al- 
 leghany to serve them. He hid his errand, 
 and as he rode along, beheld such signs of 
 the angry mood of the people, and heard 
 such threats, that he came back with the 
 writs in his pocket unserved. And now he 
 determined to send them under cover of pri- 
 vate letters, and selected for the bearer a 
 poor, half-witted cow-driver. The messen- 
 ger knew not what he bore; but when the 
 people found out that he was delivering 
 writs, he was seized, robbed of his horse and 
 money, whipped till he could scarcely stand, 
 tarred, feathered, blindfolded, and tied to a 
 tree in the woods. 
 
 In 1794 a process went out from the dis- 
 trict court at Philadelphia against seventy- 
 five distillers who had disobeyed the law. 
 Fifty were in the five counties of Fayette, 
 
114 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 Bedford, Alleghany, Washington, and West- 
 moreland. Each writ was dated the 13th of 
 May, and each was entered in the docket as 
 issued on the 31st. But the officials were so 
 tardy that it was July when the marshal rode 
 west to serve them. He arrived in the hurry 
 of harvest, when liquor circulated most free- 
 ly and drunkenness was most prevalent. Yet 
 he served his writs without harm till but one 
 was left. It was drawn against a distiller 
 named Miller, whose house was fourteen 
 miles from Pittsburgh, on the road to Wash- 
 ington. On the morning of July 15th the 
 marshal set out from Pittsburgh to serve it. 
 He found Miller in a harvest field surround- 
 ed by a body of reapers. All went well till 
 he was about to return, when one of them 
 gave the alarm. While some threw down 
 their scythes and followed him, others ran 
 back to the house of the brigade inspector 
 near by. There the Mingo creek regiment 
 had gathered to make a select corps of mili- 
 tia as its quota of the eighty thousand minute 
 men required by Congress. All had drunk 
 deeply, and as the messengers came up 
 shouting "The federal sheriff is taking away 
 
Early Defiance of Law 1 15 
 
 men to Philadelphia," they flew to arms. 
 Though it was then night many set off at 
 once, and gathering strength as they went, 
 drew up the next morning, thirty-seven 
 strong, before the house of Revenue Inspec- 
 tor Neville, near Pittsburgh. At the head 
 of them was John Holcroft who whitened 
 half the trees in the four counties with the 
 effusions of Tom the Tinker. The inspector 
 demanded what they wished. They an- 
 swered evasively. He fired upon them. 
 They returned the shot, and were instantly 
 opened on by a band of negroes posted in a 
 neighboring house. At this the mob scat- 
 tered, leaving six wounded and one dead. 
 Tom the Tinker was a nom-de-guerre which 
 originated from the house of an obnoxious 
 official being pulled to pieces by a mob 
 whose members gave out that they were 
 "mending it." Mending and tinkering be- 
 ing interchangeable terms, the members 
 dubbed themselves "tinkers," and "Tom the 
 Tinker was shortly evolved as the popular 
 watchword of the first rebellion against the 
 United States government." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 
 
 In early American history the use of liquor 
 by an infant seems to have been nearly co- 
 incident with its entrance into life. A fam- 
 ily receipt called Caudle has been handed 
 down through the family of Mrs. Johannes 
 de Peyster, and calls for "three gallons of 
 water, seven pounds of sugar, oatmeal by the 
 pound, spice, raisins and lemons by the 
 quart and two gallons of the very best Ma- 
 deira wine." This was especially served at 
 the baptism of a child, and partaken of exten- 
 sively by the women. In early times the Pur- 
 itan women drank cider and Madeira mixed 
 with water, and much scandal was given by 
 the readiness with which the merry wives of 
 Philadelphia joined in their husbands' com- 
 fortable potations. The eighteenth century 
 was the drinking era, and our colony fol- 
 lowed in no halting measure the jovial fash- 
 
Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 117 
 
 ions of the day. In 1733 the Pennsylvania 
 Gazette laments that Philadelphia women, 
 "otherwise discreet," instead of contenting 
 themselves with one good draught of beer in 
 the morning take "two or three drams by 
 which their appetite for wholesome food is 
 destroyed." Women kept ordinaries and 
 taverns from early days. Widows abounded, 
 for the life of the male colonist was hard, 
 exposure was great, and many died in mid- 
 dle age. War also had many victims. Tav- 
 ern-keeping was the resort of widows of 
 small means then. Many licenses were 
 granted to them to keep victualling houses, 
 to draw wine, and make and sell beer. 
 In 1684 the wife of one Nicholas Howard 
 was licensed "to entertain lodgers in the 
 absence of her husband"; while other 
 women were permitted to sell food and 
 drink but could not entertain lodgers be- 
 cause their husbands were absent from home, 
 thus drawing nice distinctions. A Salem 
 dame in 1645 could keep an ordinary if she 
 provided "a godly man" to manage her busi- 
 ness. 
 Wedding festivities seemed to have caused 
 
1 1 8 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 about the same amount of liquor drinking 
 throughout the country. In the new land 
 weddings and births were joyful events. 
 The colonists broke with the home traditions 
 and insisted on being married at home rather 
 than at church. As civilization advanced 
 and habits grew more luxurious the mar- 
 riage festivities grew more elaborate and 
 became affairs of serious expense. Scharf, 
 in his Chronicles of Baltimore, says the 
 house would be filled with company to dine ; 
 the same company would stay to supper. 
 For two days punch was dealt out in pro- 
 fusion. The gentlemen saw the groom on 
 the first floor, and then ascended to the sec- 
 ond floor where they saw the bride; there 
 every gentleman, even to one hundred a day, 
 kissed her. Weddings in old Philadelphia 
 were very expensive and harassing to the 
 wedded. The bride's home was filled with 
 company to dine, the same guests usually 
 stayed to tea, while for two days punch was 
 served in great profusion. Kissing the bride 
 and drinking punch seem to have been the 
 leading features of these entertainments. 
 A custom prevailed in southern Pennsyl- 
 
Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 119 
 
 vania of barring the progress of the coach 
 of the newly married pair by ropes and 
 other obstacles, which were not removed 
 until the groom paid toll in the form of a 
 bottle of wine, or of drinks to his perse- 
 cutors. 
 
 The famous Schuyler wedding cake had, 
 among other ingredients, twelve dozen eggs, 
 forty-eight pounds of raisins, twenty-four 
 pounds of currants, four quarts of brandy, 
 a quart of rum. This was mixed in a wash 
 tub. 
 
 From the earliest period funerals seem to 
 have caused more expense and drunkenness 
 than weddings. In Sewell's Diary of the 
 date of August 2, 1725, he says of the funeral 
 of Mrs. Catherine Winthrop: "Had good 
 birth-cake, good wine, Burgundy and Ca- 
 nary, good Beer, oranges and pears." The 
 Puritan funerals were accompanied with so 
 much drinking that a law had to be passed 
 to check the extravagance. In Massachu- 
 setts one funeral cost six hundred pounds. 
 Parker, in his history of Londonderry, says : 
 
 "Their funeral observances were of a 
 character in some respects peculiar. When 
 
120 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 death entered their community and one of 
 their members was removed, there was at 
 once a cessation of all labor in the neighbor- 
 hood. The people gathered together at the 
 house of mourning, observed a custom which 
 they had brought with them from Ireland, 
 called a 'wake' or watching with the dead, 
 from night to night until the interment. 
 These night scenes often exhibited a mixture 
 of seriousness and of humor which appear 
 incompatible. The Scriptures would be 
 read, prayer offered, and words of counsel 
 and consolation administered ; but ere long, 
 according to established usage, the glass with 
 its exhilarating beverage, must circulate 
 freely. Although funeral sermons were sel- 
 dom if ever delivered on the occasion, yet 
 there would be usually as large a congrega- 
 tion as assembled on the Sabbath. Previous 
 to the prayer, spirit was handed round, not 
 only to the mourners and bearers, but to the 
 whole assembly. Again after prayer, and 
 before the coffin was removed, the same was 
 done. Nearly all would follow the body to 
 the grave, and at their return the comforting 
 draught was again administered, and ample 
 
Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 121 
 
 entertainment provided. Many a family be- 
 came embarrassed in consequence of the 
 heavy expenses incurred, not so much by the 
 sickness which preceded the death of one of 
 its members, as by the funeral services as 
 then observed, and which, as they supposed, 
 respect for the dead required." 
 
 In New York state before a burial took 
 place a number of persons, usually friends 
 of the dead, watched the body throughout 
 the night, liberally supplied with various 
 bodily comforts, such as abundant strong 
 drink, plentiful tobacco and pipes, and new- 
 ly-made cakes. These watchers were not 
 wholly gloomy nor did the midnight hours 
 lag unsolaced. A Dutch funeral was costly, 
 the expenditure for gloves, scarfs, and rings 
 was augmented in New York by the gift of 
 a bottle of wine and a linen scarf. At the 
 funeral of Louis Wingard, in Albany, the 
 attendance was large, and many friends re- 
 turned to the house and made a night of it. 
 These sober Albany citizens drank a pipe of 
 wine, and smoked much tobacco. They 
 broke hundreds of pipes and all the decan- 
 ters in the house, and wound up by burning 
 
122 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 all their funeral scarfs in a heap in the fire- 
 place. At Albany the expense reached the 
 climax. The obsequies of the first wife of 
 Stephen Van Renssalaer cost $20,000; two 
 thousand linen scarfs were given and all the 
 tenants were entertained several days. 
 
 On Long Island a young man of good 
 family began his youth by laying aside 
 money in gold coin for his funeral, and a su- 
 perior stock of wine was also stored for the 
 same occasion. In Albany a cask of choice 
 Madeira was bought for the wedding and 
 used in part; the remainder was saved for 
 the funeral of the bridegroom. Up the 
 Hudson were the vast manors of the Beek- 
 mans, Livingstons, Van Renssalaers, Schuy- 
 lers, and Johnsons, where these patroons 
 lived among and ruled over their tenantry 
 like the feudal lords of old England. When 
 a member of the Van Renssalaer family died, 
 the tenants, sometimes amounting to several 
 thousand, says Bishop Kip, came down to 
 Albany to pay their respects to his memory, 
 and to drink to the peace of his soul in good 
 ale from his generous cellars. At the burial 
 
Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 1 23 
 
 of Philip Livingston, in New York, services 
 were performed at both his house and at the 
 manor house. The funeral is thus described 
 in a journal of the day: "In the City the 
 lower rooms of most of the houses in Broad- 
 street, where he resided, were thrown open 
 to receive visitors. A pipe of wine was 
 spiced for the occasion, and to each of the 
 eight bearers, with a pair of gloves, mourn- 
 ing ring, scarf and handkerchief, a monkey 
 spoon was given. At the manor these cere- 
 monies were all repeated, another pipe of 
 wine was spiced, and besides the same pres- 
 ents to the bearers, a pair of black gloves 
 and a handkerchief were given to each of the 
 tenants. The whole expense was said to be 
 five hundred pounds." At funerals in old 
 New York it was customary to serve hot 
 wine in winter and sangaree in summer. 
 Burnt wine was sometimes served in silver 
 tankards. Death among the Dutch involved 
 much besides mourning. "Bring me a Bar- 
 rel of Cutt Tobacco, some long pipes, I am 
 out also six silver Tankards. Bottles, 
 Glasses, Decanters we have enough. You 
 
124 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 must bring Cinnamon and Burnt wine, for 
 we have none," writes Will Livingston, in 
 1756, on the death of his mother. 
 
 Here is the funeral bill of Peter Jacobs 
 Marinus, one of the most prominent of old 
 time New York merchants, who died in the 
 latter part of the seventeenth century: 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 To 29 galls of Wyne at 6s. 9d. 
 
 per gallon, 9 15 9 
 
 " 19 pairs of gloves at 2s. 3d. 2 4 3 
 
 For bottles and glass broke, 
 
 paid 3 7 
 
 Paid 2 women each 2 days at- 
 tendance 15 
 
 Paid a suit of mourning for ye 
 negro woman freed by ye 
 testator, and making 347 
 
 Paid for 800 cookies & i 1 /*, 
 
 gross of pipes, at 3s. 3d. 677 
 
 Paid for Speys [spice] for ye 
 
 burnte wyne and sugar, 1 1 
 
 Paid to the sexton and bell 
 ringer for making ye grave 
 and ringing ye bell, 220 
 
 Paid for ye coffin, 4 
 
 Paid for gold and making 14 
 mourning rings, 2 16 
 
 Paid for 3 yards beaver stuff 
 
Christenings — Marriages — Funerals 1 25 
 
 at 7s. 6d. buttons, and mak- 
 ing it for a suit of mourning, 114 6 
 Paid for y 2 vat of single Beer, 7 6 
 
 Whole amount of funeral 
 
 charges is 3168 
 
 It should be noted that one of the per- 
 quisites of the doctor's office was the sale of 
 spices, and on the occasion of funerals they 
 did a thriving business. 
 
 In 1764 a reform movement swept through 
 the northern colonies and stopped this ex- 
 travagance at funerals, so that when Judge 
 Clark died in New Jersey, in 1765, there 
 was no drinking at his funeral. Previous to 
 this time it was not unusual for testators to 
 direct that no liquor should be distributed 
 at their funeral, just as today the request is 
 made in regard to funerals that no flowers 
 be sent. 
 
 That the funeral of President Lincoln 
 cost the city of Chicago over eight hundred 
 dollars for the "mourners" was revealed 
 lately in an old whisky and wine bill dis- 
 covered by City Clerk John R. McCabe. 
 The bill is headed: 
 
 Report of Comptroller of amount paid 
 
126 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 for wine and whisky furnished members of 
 the legislature and the "mourners" at the 
 obsequies of the late president, accepted and 
 filed August 7, 1865. 
 
 48 bottles of wine $216.00 
 
 12 bottles whisky 30.00 
 
 Wine for Congressional Committee 199.00 
 Wine & Whisky extras, Supervisors 
 
 room, 24.00 
 
 $469.00 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Vendues — Chopping Bees — House Bees — 
 Wood Spells — Clearing Bees 
 
 In a new settlement more than half the 
 houses were log cabins. When a stranger 
 came to such a place to stay, the men built 
 him a cabin and made the building an oc- 
 casion for sport. The trees felled, four cor- 
 ner men were elected to notch the logs, and 
 while they were busy the others ran races, 
 wrestled, played leap-frog, kicked the hat, 
 fought, gouged, gambled, drank, did every- 
 thing then considered amusement. It was 
 not luck that made these raisings a success. 
 It was skill and strength, and powers of en- 
 durance, which could overcome and sur- 
 mount even the quantity of vile New Eng- 
 land rum with which the workmen were 
 plied during the day. In the older and 
 more settled parts of the country when the 
 first stones of a new wall were laid the ma- 
 sons were given a case of brandy, an anker 
 
128 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 of brandy, and thirty-two gallons of other 
 liquid. When the beams were carried in by 
 eight men they had a half barrel of beer for 
 every beam; when the beams were laid two 
 barrels of strong beer, three cases of brandy, 
 and seventy-two florins' worth of small beer. 
 This was the case in 1656 when the old fort 
 at Albany was removed and a new one built. 
 A tun of beer was furnished to the pullers 
 down, and in addition to the above items the 
 wood carriers, teamsters, carpenters, stone 
 cutters, and masons had, besides these special 
 treats, a daily dram of a gill of brandy 
 apiece, and three pints of beer at dinner. 
 They were dissatisfied and solicited another 
 pint of beer. Even the carters who brought 
 wood and boatmen who floated down spars 
 were served with liquor. When the carpen- 
 ters placed the roof tree a half-barrel of 
 liquor was given them; another half-barrel 
 of beer under the name of tiles beer went to 
 the tile setters. The special completion of 
 the winding staircase demanded five guild- 
 ers' worth of liquor. When the house was 
 finished a Kreag or house warming of both 
 food and drink to all the workmen and their 
 
Vendues and Bees 129 
 
 wives was demanded and refused. Well 
 might it be refused, when the liquor bill 
 without it amounted to seven hundred and 
 sixteen guilders. The whole cost of the fort 
 was twelve thousand, two hundred and thir- 
 teen guilders, or about three thousand, five 
 hundred dollars. The liquor bill was about 
 three hundred dollars. When the building 
 was completed it was christened by breaking 
 over it a bottle of rum. 
 
 Chopping bees were the universal method 
 among pioneers of clearing ground in newly- 
 settled districts. Sometimes this bee was 
 held to clear land for a newly married cou- 
 ple, or a new neighbor, or one who had had 
 bad luck; but it was just as freely given to a 
 prosperous farmer though plentiful thanks 
 and plentiful rum were the only reward of 
 the willing workers. 
 
 Lyman Beecher, in his autobiography, de- 
 scribes the minister's wood spell, which was 
 a bee held for the purpose of drawing and 
 cutting the winter's supply of wood for the 
 clergyman, and a large amount of beer and 
 cider was provided for the consumption of 
 the parishioners. 
 
130 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 Old Ames, of Dedham, Massachusetts, in 
 1767, describes a corn-husking as follows: 
 
 "Possibly this leafe may last a Century 
 and fall in the hands of some inquisitive 
 person for whose entertainment I will in- 
 form him that now there is a custom 
 amongst us of making an entertainment at 
 husking of Indian corn whereto all the 
 neighboring swains are invited, and after 
 the corn is finished they like the Hotten- 
 tots give three cheers or huzzars, but can- 
 not carry in the husks without a Rhum bot- 
 tle; they feign great exertion but do noth- 
 ing till Rhum enlivens them, when all is 
 done in a trice, then after a hearty meal 
 about ten o'clock at night they go to their 
 pastimes." 
 
 In 1687 William Fitzhugh wrote to Nich- 
 olas Hayward, then in England, as follows: 
 "Upon finishing the first line at your corner 
 tree on the Potomac your brother Sam, my- 
 self and some others drank your health." 
 The diary of old Governor Spottswood con- 
 firms the custom of drinking at the comple- 
 tion of a survey, for in 17 16 he with some 
 other Virginia gentlemen and their retain- 
 
Vendues and Bees 131 
 
 ers, a company of rangers and four Indians, 
 fifty-four persons in all, journeyed over the 
 Blue Ridge mountains and descended to the 
 Shenandoah Valley. After drinking the 
 King's health they descended the western 
 slope to the river, which they crossed and 
 named "Euphrates." The governor took 
 formal possession of the region for George 
 I., of England. Much light is thrown on 
 the convivial habits of Virginians at that 
 time by an entry found in the diary of the 
 chroniclers : "We got all the men together 
 and loaded their arms, and we drank the 
 King's health in champagne and fired a vol- 
 ley, the prince's health in Burgundy and 
 fired a volley, and all the rest of the royal 
 family in claret and a volley; we drank the 
 Governor's health and fired another volley. 
 We had several sorts of liquor, viz : Virginia 
 red wine and white wine, Irish usquebaugh, 
 brandy, shrub, two sorts of rum, cham- 
 pagne, canary, cherry punch, cider, etc." 
 
 It was the custom when land was trans- 
 ferred that a libation should be poured to 
 Bacchus, and to such an extent was this car- 
 ried that when Peter Jefferson, the father of 
 
132 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, purchased four hundred 
 acres of Virginia land from his old friend 
 and neighbor, William Randolph, of Tuck- 
 ahoe, the consideration jovially named in the 
 deed is given as "Henry Weatherbourne's 
 Biggest Bowl of Arrack Punch." 
 
 The breaking of roads furnished another 
 occasion for the consumption of liquor, and 
 is well described by Whittier: 
 
 Next morn we wakened with the shout 
 Of merry voices high and clear; 
 And saw the teamsters drawing near 
 To break the drifted highways out. 
 Down the long hillside treading slow 
 We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
 Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
 Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
 Before our door the straggling train 
 Drew up, an added team to gain. 
 The elders threshed their hand a-cold, 
 Passed, with the cider mug, their jokes 
 From lip to lip. 
 
 Traveling and Taverns 
 
 Traveling in ye olden time was by stage 
 going at the rate of ten miles an hour, always 
 stopping at taverns for meals and giving pas- 
 sengers an opportunity to visit the bar to im- 
 
Traveling and Taverns 133 
 
 bibe Holland gin and sugar-house molasses, 
 a popular morning beverage. When the 
 Revolution came most of these vehicles 
 ceased to ply between the distant cities; 
 horseback traveling was resumed, and a 
 journey of any length became a matter of 
 grave consideration. On the day of depar- 
 ture the friends of the traveler gathered at 
 the inn, took a solemn leave of him, drank 
 his health in bumpers of punch, and wished 
 him God-speed on his way. It was no un- 
 common thing for one who went on business 
 or pleasure from Charleston to Boston or 
 New York to consult the almanac before 
 setting out and to make his will. A traveler 
 was a marked man, and his arrival at an or- 
 dinary was the signal for the gathering of all 
 who could crowd in to hear his adventures 
 and also the news. Colonel Byrd was a typ- 
 ical cavalier, and in writing of his visit to 
 Germanna shows an appreciation of the 
 good things of life, with a hearty good will 
 toward his neighbor and especially his 
 neighbor's wife, and a zest for all good 
 things to eat and drink. In his trips he 
 smacks his lips over the fat things that fall 
 
134 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 in his way. Now it is a prime rasher of ba- 
 con, fricasseed in rum; now a capacious 
 bowl of bombo. He tells how he commend- 
 ed his family to the Almighty, fortified him- 
 self with a beefsteak, and kissed his land- 
 lady for good luck, before setting out on his 
 travels. 
 
 The liquor traffic added to the discom- 
 forts of travel by water. At New York un- 
 til the rude steamboats of Fulton made their 
 appearance on the ferry, the only means of 
 transportation for man and beast were clum- 
 sy row-boats, flat bottomed, square ended 
 scows with sprit-sails, and two masted boats 
 called periaguas. In one of these, if the day 
 were fine, if the tide were slack, if the water- 
 man were sober, and if the boat did not put 
 back several times to take in belated passen- 
 gers who were seen running down the hill, 
 the crossing might be made with some de- 
 gree of speed and comfort and a landing 
 effected at the foot of the steps at the pier 
 which, much enlarged, still forms part of 
 the Brooklyn slip of the Fulton Ferry. 
 
 Near Philadelphia at Gloucester Point, if 
 the wind and tide failed, the vessel dropped 
 
Traveling and Taverns 135 
 
 anchor for the night. If passengers were 
 anxious to be landed in haste they were 
 charged half a dollar each to be rowed 
 ashore. At one in the morning the tide 
 again turned. But the master was then 
 drunk and before he could be made to un- 
 derstand what was wanted the tide was again 
 ebbing and the boat aground. 
 
 In the west and south the taverns were 
 generally bad. When Silas Deane and his 
 fellow delegates went down to the Continen- 
 tal Congress in 1774 they found "no fruit, 
 bad rum, and nothing of the meat kind but 
 salt pork." At another tavern they had to 
 go out and "knock over three or four chick- 
 ens to be roasted for their dinner." No por- 
 ter was to be had at another inn, and the one 
 palatable drink was some bottled cider. 
 
 The Marquis de Chastelleux writes of 
 this region in 1790 in his Travels in North 
 America: Landing on a dark night at 
 Courtheath's Tavern the landlord com- 
 plained that he was obliged to live in this 
 out-of-the-way place of Pompton. He ex- 
 pressed surprise at finding on the parlor 
 table copies of Milton, Addison, Richard- 
 
136 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 son, and other authors of note. The cellar 
 was not so well stocked as the library. He 
 could get nothing but vile cider brandy, of 
 which he must make grog. The bill for a 
 night's lodging and food for himself, his 
 servants and horses, was $16.00. 
 
 Much might be written about the taverns, 
 which from the very beginning played an 
 important part in this cheerful, prosperous, 
 unplagued colonial life. Their faded sign- 
 boards swung in every street, and curious 
 old verses still remain to show us what our 
 wise forefathers liked to read. One little 
 pot-house had painted on its board these en- 
 couraging lines : 
 
 This is the tree that never grew, 
 This is the bird that never flew; 
 This is the ship that never sailed, 
 This is the mug that never failed. 
 
 It was not against every tavern that the re- 
 proach could be brought that each person 
 could not have a room to himself, or at least 
 clean sheets without paying extra. Many a 
 New England village inn could, in the opin- 
 ion of the most fastidious Frenchman, well 
 bear comparison with the best to be found in 
 
Traveling and Taverns 137 
 
 France. The neatness of the rooms, the 
 goodness of the beds, the cleanliness of the 
 sheets, the smallness of the reckoning, filled 
 him with amazement. Nothing like them 
 was to be met with in France. There the 
 wayfarer who stopped at an ordinary over 
 night slept in a bug-infested bed, covered 
 himself with ill-washed sheets, drank adul- 
 terated wine, and to the annoyance of greedy 
 servants was added the fear of being robbed. 
 But in New England he might with perfect 
 safety pass night after night at an inn whose 
 windows were destitute of shutters, and 
 whose doors had neither locks nor keys. 
 Save the post office it was the most frequent- 
 ed house in town. The great room with its 
 low ceiling and neatly sanded floor, its 
 bright pewter dishes and stout-backed, slat- 
 bottomed chairs ranged along the walls, its 
 long table, its huge fireplace, with the 
 benches on each side, where the dogs slept at 
 night, and where the guests sat when the dip 
 candles were lighted, to drink mull and flip, 
 possessed some attractions for every one. 
 The place was at once the town hall and the 
 assembly room, the court house and the show 
 
138 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 tent, the tavern and the exchange. There 
 the selectmen met. There the judges some- 
 times held court. On its door were fastened 
 the list of names drawn for the jury, notices 
 of vendues, offers for reward for stray cattle, 
 the names of tavern haunters, the advertise- 
 ments of the farmers who had the best seed- 
 potatoes and the best seed-corn for sale. It 
 was at the "General Green," or the "United 
 States Arms," or the "Bull's Head" that 
 wandering showmen exhibited their autom- 
 atons and musical clocks, that dancing mas- 
 ters gave their lessons, that singing school 
 was held, that the caucus met, that the 
 Colonel stopped during general training. 
 The tavern porch was the rallying point 
 of the town; hither all news came; here 
 all news was discussed ; hence all news was 
 disseminated. DeWitt Clinton in his fa- 
 mous letters on political parties says: "In 
 every county or village inn the barroom is 
 the coffee room exchange, or place of intel- 
 ligence, where all the quid nuncs and news- 
 mongers and politicians of the district re- 
 sort." Many were the good reasons that 
 could be given to explain and justify atten- 
 
Traveling and Taverns 139 
 
 dance at an old-time tavern. One was the 
 fact that often the only newspaper that came 
 to town was kept therein. This dingy tav- 
 ern sheet often saw hard usage, for when it 
 went its rounds some could scarcely read it, 
 some but pretend to read it. One old fellow 
 in Newburyport opened it wide, gazed at it 
 with interest, and cried out to his neighbor 
 in much excitement: "Bad news! Terrible 
 gales, terrible gales, ships all bottom side 
 up," as indeed they were in his way of hold- 
 ing the news sheet. The extent and pur- 
 poses to which the tavern sheet might be ap- 
 plied can be guessed from the notice written 
 over the mantel-shelf in the taproom : "Gen- 
 tlemen learning to spell are requested to use 
 last week's news-letter." A picturesque and 
 grotesque element of tavern life was found 
 in those last leaves on the tree, the few of 
 Indian blood who lingered after the tribes 
 were scattered and nearly all were dead. 
 These tawnies could not be made as useful 
 in the tavern yard as the shiftless and shift- 
 ing negro element that also drifted to the 
 tavern, for the eastern Indian never loved a 
 horse as did the negro, and seldom became 
 
140 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 handy in the care of horses. These waifs of 
 either race, the half-breeds of both races, 
 circled around the tavern chiefly because a 
 few stray pennies might be earned there, and 
 also because within the tavern were plenti- 
 ful supplies of cider and rum. 
 
 In Pennsylvania the Moravians became 
 famous for their inns. The "Nazareth," the 
 "Rose," and the "Crown" at Bethlehem 
 were well known. The story of the Rose 
 Tavern is prettily told by Professor Reichel, 
 under the title "A Red Rose from The Old- 
 en Time," it being built on land leased by 
 William Penn, on the rent of one red rose. 
 The best one of all however was "The Sun" 
 at Bethlehem, which was familiar for nearly 
 a century to all the people from Massachu- 
 setts to the Carolinas. At different times the 
 inn has entertained beneath its roof nearly 
 all the signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, most of the members of the Con- 
 tinental Congress, and all the presidents of 
 the United States down to Lincoln. That 
 the wines were remarkable and that the inn 
 had its brand of Madeira, goes without say- 
 ing. The early Moravians lived largely on 
 
Traveling and Taverns 141 
 
 game, and cultivated a great variety of vege- 
 tables. Deer and grouse were very abun- 
 dant on the barrens in the manor of the Red 
 Rose. It was long a favorite sporting 
 ground for Philadelphians, and the resort 
 of colonial governors. The wayfarers at 
 the inn lived on all delicacies in the greatest 
 abundance, together with the famous fruit, 
 trout, shad, and wild strawberries. For- 
 eigners who stopped there invariably de- 
 clared that the inn was fully equal to the 
 best in Europe. It was owned and man- 
 aged by the Moravian church as part of its 
 communal system. 
 
 A good southern hotel of which there 
 were few was a large brick building with a 
 long veranda in front. For a shilling and 
 sixpence, Virginia currency, the traveler 
 was shown to a neat bed in a well furnished 
 room up one flight of stairs. On the wall 
 was fastened a printed table of rates. From 
 this he learned that breakfast cost two shil- 
 lings, and dinner with grog or toddy was 
 three ; that a quart of toddy was one and six, 
 that a bottle of porter was two and six, and 
 that the best Madeira wine sold for six shil- 
 
142 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 lings a quart. When he rose in the morning 
 he washed his face, not in his room, but on 
 the piazza, and ate his breakfast in the cool- 
 est of dining rooms, at a table adorned with 
 pewter spoons and china plates. Off at one 
 side was a tub full of water wherein melons 
 and cucumbers, pitchers of milk and bottles 
 of wine, were placed to cool. Near by was 
 a water case which held the decanters. If 
 he called for water a wench brought it fresh 
 from the spring, and he drank from a glass 
 which had long been cooling in a barrel 
 which stood in one corner of the room. In 
 winter the fire blazed high on the hearth, 
 and the toddy hissed in the noggin ; in sum- 
 mer the basket of fruit stood in the breeze- 
 swept hall, and lightly clad black boys 
 tripped in bearing cool tankards of punch 
 and sangaree. 
 
 For his lodging and his board, if he ate 
 a cold supper, and was content with one 
 quart of toddy, he paid to the landlord of 
 the Eagle ten shillings, Virginia currency, 
 or one dollar and sixty-six cents federal 
 money, each day. As to New York taverns, 
 
Traveling and Taverns 143 
 
 in a letter written by Dr. Mitchel in Sep- 
 tember, 1794, he states : "The Tontine Cof- 
 fee House, under the care of Mr. Hyde is 
 the best hotel in New York. He sets from 
 twelve to sixteen dishes every day. He 
 charges for a years board without liquor 
 Three Hundred and Fifty to Four Hundred 
 Dollars." 
 
 In Gloucester, Massachusetts, as in other 
 towns the selectmen held their meetings in 
 the tavern. There were five selectmen in 
 1744, whose salary was five dollars apiece. 
 Their tavern bill, however, amounted to thir- 
 ty pounds. The following year the citizens 
 voted the selectmen a salary of five pounds 
 apiece and "to find themselves." 
 
 In 1825 the expense of living at the In- 
 dian Queen in Washington was not great. 
 The price of board was $1.75 per day, 
 $10.00 a week, or $35.00 a month. Brandy 
 and whiskey were placed on the tables in 
 decanters to be drunk by the guests without 
 additional charge therefor. A bottle of real 
 old Madeira imported into Alexandria was 
 supplied for $3.00; sherry, brandy, and gin 
 
144 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 were $1.00 per bottle, and Jamaica rum 
 $1.00. At the bar toddies were made with 
 unadulterated liquor and lump sugar, and 
 the charge was twelve and a half cents a 
 drink. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Extent and Effect of the Traffic at 
 Flood Tide 
 
 In 1648 one-fourth of the buildings of 
 New Amsterdam, or New York, were tap- 
 houses. 
 
 In his notes on Virginia, Jefferson states 
 that in 1682 there were in Virginia fifty- 
 three thousand, two hundred and eighty- 
 nine free males above twenty-one years of 
 age and one hundred and ninety-one taverns. 
 About this time their number was so great 
 that they were limited by law in each county 
 to one at the court house and one at the 
 ferry. 
 
 The diary of Judge Sewall shows that in 
 17 14 Boston had a population of ten thou- 
 sand, with thirty-four ordinaries, of whom 
 twelve were women; four common victual- 
 lers, of whom one was a woman; forty-one 
 retailers of liquor, of whom seventeen were 
 women, and a few cider sellers. 
 
146 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 As soon as the white settlers had planted 
 themselves at Pittsburgh they made requisi- 
 tion on Philadelphia for six thousand kegs 
 of flour and three thousand kegs of whiskey. 
 There were distilleries on nearly every 
 stream emptying into the Monongahela. 
 
 The Chicago directory for 1830 classified 
 its business interests as taverns, two ; Indian 
 traders, three; butchers, one; merchants, 
 one; with a poll list of thirty-two voters. 
 
 So much seed sown from the earliest 
 times produced a bountiful harvest. In 
 1633 Winthrop complains that workmen 
 were idle in spite of high wages because 
 they spent so much in tobacco and strong 
 waters. About this time drunkenness great- 
 ly increased and deprived the custom of 
 bundling of whatever innocence it may have 
 had remaining. 
 
 Josselyn, in 1675, gives a graphic descrip- 
 tion of the extravagance and drunkenness of 
 the cod fishermen, stating that at the end of 
 each voyage they drank up their earnings. 
 In this year Cotton Mather said every house 
 in Boston was an ale house. In 1696 Na- 
 thaniel Saltonstall, of Haverhill, Massachu- 
 
Traffic at Flood Tide 147 
 
 setts, a judge who had refused to sit in the 
 Salem witchcraft cases, wrote a letter to the 
 Salem court remonstrating against licensing 
 public houses. In 1678 Dr. Increase Math- 
 er said : "Many of the rising generation are 
 profane, drunkards, swearers licentious and 
 scoffers at the power of godliness." Dan- 
 kers and Sluyter, in 1680, comment on the 
 puritanical laws and say, "drinking and 
 fighting occur there not less than elsewhere 
 and as to truth and true godliness you must 
 not expect more of them than of others." 
 
 The Reverend John Miller, in his history 
 of New York, says : " 'Tis in this country 
 a common thing even for the meanest per- 
 sons as soon as the bounty of God has fur- 
 nished them with a bountiful crop to turn 
 what they can as soon as may be into money, 
 and that money into drinks, at the same time 
 when their family at home have nothing but 
 rags to resist the winter's cold; nay if the 
 fruits of their plantations be such as are by 
 their own immediate labor convertible into 
 liquor such as cider, perry, etc., they have 
 scarce the patience to wait till it is fit for 
 drinking but inviting their boon companions 
 
148 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 they all of them neglecting whatever work 
 they are about, set to it together and give not 
 over till they have drunk it off. And to these 
 sottish engagements they will make nothing 
 to ride ten or fifteen miles and at the con- 
 clusion of one debauch another is generally 
 appointed except their stock of liquor fail 
 them." In his history of New Haven Henry 
 Atwater states : "A brew-house was regard- 
 ed as an essential part of a homestead, and 
 beer was on the table as regularly as bread." 
 When in Stuyvesant's day it was reported 
 that fully one-fourth of the houses in New 
 Amsterdam were devoted to the sale of 
 brandy, tobacco, and beer, Mr. Roberts ob- 
 served : 
 
 "Their existence tells the story of the hab- 
 its of the people. It was when Governor 
 Sloughter was besotted with drink that he 
 signed the illegal death warrant of Leisler; 
 it was when the informer Kane was pos- 
 sessed by the fumes of liquor of the tavern, 
 that he foisted upon the terrified colonists 
 the lying details of the shameful negro plot; 
 it was when the representative of the most 
 powerful family in the province, Chief Jus- 
 
Whiskey as Money 149 
 
 tice DeLancey, and Governor Clinton, the 
 proxy of the King, were 'in their cups' that 
 a personal quarrel led to antagonisms that 
 threatened the welfare of the colony. In- 
 deed the deep hold that this vice had upon 
 the morals of the entire colony seemed to re- 
 peat and emphasize the wisdom of the name 
 which the earlier Spanish in an intercourse 
 had fastened upon its leading town — Mon- 
 afos — 'the place of the drunken men.'" 
 
 Whiskey as Money 
 
 In a large part of the territory now the 
 United States the early settlers lived in the 
 rudest kind of log cabins and knew no other 
 money than whiskey and the skins of wild 
 beasts. In 1780, after the collapse of the 
 continental currency, it seemed there was no 
 money in the country, and in the absence of 
 a circulating medium there was a reversion 
 to the practice of barter, and the revival of 
 business was thus further impeded. Whis- 
 key in North Carolina and tobacco in Vir- 
 ginia did duty as measures of value. In 
 Pennsylvania what a bank bill was at Phila- 
 delphia or a shilling piece at Lancaster, 
 
150 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 whiskey was in the towns and villages that 
 lay along the banks of the Monongahela 
 river. It was the money, the circulating 
 medium of the country. A gallon of good 
 whiskey at every store in Pittsburgh, and at 
 every farmhouse in the four counties of 
 Washington, Westmoreland, Alleghany, and 
 Fayette, was the equivalent of a shilling. 
 And when, in 1797, the government began 
 to coin new money for the people, the new 
 coins did not, many of them, go far from the 
 seaports and great towns. In the country 
 districts,. in the Ohio valley, on the northern 
 border they were still unknown. The school- 
 master received his pittance in French 
 crowns and Spanish half-joes. The boat- 
 men were paid their hire in shillings and 
 pence, and if perchance some traveler paid 
 his reckoning at a tavern with a few Ameri- 
 can coins, they were beheld with wonder by 
 every lounger who came there to smoke and 
 drink. 
 
 Temperance Societies 
 
 The first prohibitory law was that of 
 Georgia, in 1733, and the first dawn of tem- 
 perance sentiment was undoubtedly the 
 
Temperance Societies 151 
 
 pledge of Governor Winthrop, still earlier 
 than this, when he announced his famous 
 discountenance of health drinking. This 
 first of all temperance pledges in New Eng- 
 land is recorded in his diary in language as 
 temperate as his intent: 
 
 "The Governor, upon consideration of the 
 inconveniences which have grown in New 
 England by drinking one to another, re- 
 strained it at his own table, and wished oth- 
 ers to do the like; so it grew little by little, 
 into disuse." 
 
 Lyman Beecher claims the Massachusetts 
 temperance society formed in 1813 to be the 
 first one, the pledge of its members being to 
 discontinue the use of liquor at entertain- 
 ments, funerals, and auction sales, and to 
 abstain from furnishing laborers with grog 
 during haying time, as was then the custom. 
 John B. Gough, however, mentions the con- 
 stitution of a temperance society formed in 
 New York in 1809, one of whose by-laws 
 was, "Any member of this association who 
 shall be convicted of intoxication shall be 
 fined a quarter of a dollar, except such act 
 of intoxication shall take place on the 
 
152 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 Fourth of July, or any other regularly ap- 
 pointed military muster." 
 
 In 1 8 17 a committee of New York citi- 
 zens appointed to investigate the causes of 
 pauperism reported that seven-eighths of the 
 paupers were reduced to abject poverty by 
 the sale of liquor. As far back as 1809 the 
 Humane Society found eighteen hundred 
 licensed dramshops scattered over the city, 
 retailing liquor in small quantities, and of- 
 fering every inducement to the poor to drink. 
 
 New Hampshire required a selectman of 
 each town to post the names of tipplers in 
 every tavern and fined anyone ten dollars 
 who sold them liquor. About this same 
 time the legislature of Pennsylvania passed 
 a law authorizing the governor to appoint 
 a commission of nine to investigate the 
 causes of pauperism in Philadelphia, and 
 to report to the next legislature. The farm- 
 ers of Upper Providence township, Penn- 
 sylvania, met in the school house just be- 
 fore harvest time and agreed not to give 
 liquor to their harvest hands, nor to use it in 
 the hay field or during harvest, nor to allow 
 any one in their employ to use it. A gen- 
 
Temperance Societies 153 
 
 eral movement for temperance swept over 
 the Atlantic states. The Portland Society, 
 auxiliary to the Massachusetts Society for 
 Suppressing Intemperance, reported that 
 out of eighty-five persons in the workhouse, 
 seventy-one became paupers through drink. 
 A grand jury at Albany drew a picture of 
 their city quite as dismal, and presented the 
 immense number of dramshops and corner 
 groceries where liquor was retailed by the 
 cent's worth as an evil and a nuisance to 
 society. 
 
 One of the most interesting documents in 
 early temperance agitation is the letter of the 
 mayor of Philadelphia in 1821, showing the 
 condition of the liquor traffic at that time. 
 He pointed out the dangers of the tippling 
 houses and corner groceries, where liquor 
 was sold by the cent's worth to children five 
 years old, and paid for often with stolen 
 goods. 
 
 The liquor traffic left an indelible im- 
 press upon the geography of the country. 
 The oldest American reference to the word 
 RUM is in the Massachusetts statute of 1657 
 prohibiting the sale of strong liquors 
 
154 Americana Ebrietatis 
 
 "whether known by the name of rum, strong 
 water, brandywine, etc." The Dutch in 
 New York called rum brandywine, and it 
 conferred its name upon the river which in 
 turn gave its name to one of the most famous 
 battles of the Revolution. Among places 
 may be found such names as Rumford, 
 Wineland, Winesburg, and others. 
 
 When in 1828 Mr. Garrison assumed the 
 editorial control of the Journal of the Times 
 at Bennington, Vermont, he distinctly 
 avowed that he had three objects in view, 
 "The suppression of Intemperance and its 
 associate vices, the gradual emancipation of 
 every slave in the Republic, the perpetuity 
 of the national peace." He contributed to 
 the third object; he accomplished the sec- 
 ond; the first problem he left unsolved as a 
 bequest to this generation. 
 
 
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