Who invited case into a discussion of politics. When case would not back down sears and several of his companions nearly bowled him over with the force of their eloquence and noise. Seeking to restore order to the conversation, case said well, lets discuss all the issues at hand going back to the passage of the stamp act in 1765 and at some point one of the members of the Tavern Company from connecticut got annoyed with him and impatient and they said back home in connecticut youd be put to death for your views for supporting parliament in the imperial controversy. The patriots at the tavern then said, we will not suffer a tory to sit in company with gentlemen and they forced case to sit in a claire by the chimney corner. Sears then called over a young slave of drakes saying he belonged in the of slaves because he was a slave to the British Empire. He agreed formally to put case in coventry meaning none would be allowed to speak with him under forfeiture of a nip of toddy. Although case claim the penalty was a whole bowl of toddy. According to case, someone at that point threatened to brand his backside with a red hot gridiron which would have been very painful but they only stayed his hand because of cases age. Again, he was 60 years old. Ultimately he got the hint and retreated from the tavern and in a later newspaper account case concluded that these actions ought to convince every friend to order and the constitution by which he meant the british constitution how dangerous a situation we should be in if the sons of liberty are suffered to assume the lead in our public transactions. He urged his fellow subjects to unite against such men whose actions proved instead of freedom, their aim is to establish disorder oppression, and anarchy. Case is a loyalist and is trying to demonstrate these are the types of people the revolutionaries are. So my argument today is that during the revolutionary movement taverns contributed in significant ways to politics, particularly in new york city. They welcomed people from all walks of life. They encouraged people, particularly white men, to get involved in civic life. They challenged taverns were places for challenging authority, and taverns were also places that helped new yorks people in new york city communicate with other places in Great Britain, in the west indies, in other parts of north america and beyond. And finally taverns existed, and this is where the title of my talk comes from, taverns existed on the fault line between order and disorder and this encounter between john case, isaac sears, and Alexander Mcdougal tells us a lot about tavens significance in the years preceding the american revolution. Kras tried to engage mcdougal and sears in an orderly discussion about imperial policy. That was how you participated in polite discourse in a refined tavern but the assembled patriots had their own notions about how to maintain order in a tavern. They set up a drinking game in effect. If you talk to the tory, you had to buy the whole you had to buy the whole crowd some toddy. Furthermore, sears classified people according to his own notions of the order announcing loyalists like slaves were beneath fee light beneath polite company. Ive written two books on the ways americans became politically mobilized in the large cities of north america prior to the revolution. In a more recent book and in the talk i gave at Fraunces Tavern a year and a half ago i focused on the Boston Tea Party where it became the focus of political protest in boston and elsewhere. Not just because a bunch of guys dumped tea in the harbor but because it involved boycotts where individuals had to make choices about whether to serve tea in their homes. Before i got add in the tea party, i was interested in alcoholic drinks and the ways pub houses were important sites for political action. For that chapter of rebels rising which is on sale at the back, i focused on new york city. Men found ways to unify and become disunifyied in taverns and their disagreements with one another often spilled into the newspapers. This article about the john case incident or even pellmell into the streets. Some taverngoers attempted to restore order by encouraging civilized discourse, by organizing elite social clubs and associations or by prosecuting disorderly houses and saying the only places that ought to serve alcohol in new york ought to be orderly taverns with proper licenses and everything else. Everything else is just a den of iniquity and it has to be regulated and shut down. These are various ways you could try to impose order on the drinking culture of new york. But despite these attempts to establish an orderly drinking culture and despite the sons of libertys attempts at times to establish an orderly resistance to british policy, drunkenness and violence were bound to accompany both tavern life and the revolutionary movement itself. New yorkers had different views from one another on drinking and tavens and this became part of the tension that shaped their political culture. The resistance to Great Britain arising as it did, i would argue, from tavens also encompassed drusen disorder. As new yorkers found mutual affirmation in their tavern companies, political leaders attempted to harness and mobilize these taverngoers. Rich and poor orderly and disorderly as part of their resistance to the British Empire. Colonial new york city was a drinking town in a culture where the consumption of alcohol was staggering. By one estimate americans over the age of 15 downed 6. 6 gallons of alcohol per capita over the course of the year 1770. To give you a comparison towards the end of the 20th century it was about 2. 8 gallons of alcohol per capita per adult. So we are much less of a drinking culture in general than they were in the 18th century. Drinking was almost certainly more prevalent in colonial new york city than in either boston or philadelphia. New york merchants particularly insisted their liquor be distilled at a high proof. Visitors found new york more lively than philadelphia. Because it was a town run by quakers who were thought to be too stingy to treat well and things like that. One philadelphiian guest in 1754 said that the next generation of new yorkers, the revolutionary generation although he didnt know it at the time might consume the whole vintage of madeira wine, this fortified wine from madeira. Never do i believe, he said, that there existed a city more thoroughly devoted to ba ccaus, the roman god of drink. Dr. Alexander hamilton, who is a scotsman traveling in north america, he observed that among new yorkers a man could not have a more sociable quality or endowment than to be able to pour down seas of liquor and remain unconquered while others sunk under the table. This is how you proved yourself in new york. New york city officials issued 365 tavern licenses between march 1771 and march 1772. A ratio of one tavern for about every 13 adult white men. New york had around double the number of drinking establishments per person than did the other large colonial american cities. So it really is in many ways more of a drinking town than the other big cities in north america and by big cities were not talking very large. New york city has about 25,000 people at this time. New york city was unlike boston or philadelphia in other ways. Unfettered by the cultural predominance of stricter quakers or the descend ents of puritans new york citys ethnically diverse population the only way they could find Common Ground was over their desire to make money and then also just, you know hanging out over bowls of punch and tack ards of ale. They had a close and symbiotic relationship with the citys commercial life. Tav erns sprang up in all parts of the city. It was easy to turn a house back into tavern and back again. Easier than establishing a church which took a lot more doing. New yorks networks of tavens became pipelines of communications. New york city was a principle stop for the packet boats and these ships deposited the mail, gossip, and newspapers that found their way into the public houses. Taverns were places for government business, job recruit am military enlistment, and signing up for privateering expeditions. They could discuss matters of political importance as news flowed from new york to london and new york to other port cities and new york up the hudson river into new jersey and connecticut, et cetera. Such networks would become vitally important as mechanisms for political mobilization. In other words the same roots that news and gossip and information are traveling through the travens these are the same routes that political news and political propaganda are going to travel as the revolutionary movement unfolds. Now, if youre in power whether as part of the imperial government, the provincial government, or local government, how could you impose order . New yorks imperial provincial and municipal governments passed two types of laws regarding alcohol. One, those designed to encourage and profit from the sale of alcohol and those that sought to prohibit the sale to certain groups. The first types of law made sure duties and fees were clekded. Hogs heads and casks were measured fairly and tavern keepers kept an orderly house. Though the mayors had the power to limit the number of drinking establishments, this wasnt really their goal. Instead they raised revenue by encouraging the culture of drinking in new york city. The more taverns you have the more fees get spread around. The second type of law tried to curb disorder. You couldnt sell hard liquor to ser vants or apprentices. Tavern keepers couldnt take clothing or goods as payment. You werent supposed to bet on certain games. You couldnt sell drinks to locals on a sunday. You had to report the name and profession of your out of town guests to the common council. New yorkers particularly feared the disorders that might arise from drinking among blacks, witness sears denigrating of his own fatherinlaws slave. So for instance, more than three slaves werent allowed to meet together without their masters consent and you couldnt hard liquor to slaves without their masters permission. After the socalled negro conspiracy of 1741 i dont know if anyone was read new york burning or any of the number of other books written about this incident, but after this conspiracy among africanamericans to supposedly burn down the city, the assembly the new York Assembly tightened the penalties for serving liquor to slaves because they said the public houses in which the negroes had been entertained had been the principle instrument to their diabolical villainies. Blacks continued to find ways to gather and drink often in mixed company with whites. So, again, theres an attempt to regulate this stuff but, you know, but these laws arent perfect and theres a lot of violations of these things and so there are going to be prosecutions for keeping disorderly houses throughout the colonial period. Now, one of the reasons why whites were so worried about disorder among blacks was because they had witnessed the idleness and immorality that had arisen among whites themselves in taverns. There was a constant tension between people comfortable with the integration of drinking with new yorks political and sog life and those who were not. So alcohol they knew alcohol might lead to the loss of selfcontrol or the weakening of controls over the community. Moralists declared that bawdy songs, obscene toasts, gossip, and effete discussions of fashion would discuss the sensible and disconcert the modest. John adams said of their entertainments, there is no conversation that si agreeable, no modesty no, attention to one another, they talk very loud very fast, and altogether. A new yorker would ask you a question and then interrupt you before you got three words out. These were adams actual observations when he arifersrives in new york city in 1774. With all the opulence and splendor, he said there is very little good breeding. I have not seen one real gentleman, one wellbred man since i came to down. Dr. Alexander hamilton had said 30 years earlier, these dons held their heads higher than the rest of mankind and imagined few were their equals. This i found proceeded from their ignorance of the world and their low extraction. So in other words new yorkers were too provincial and to arrogant to be able to see how provincial they really were. Now, the cure for this jumble of tavern speech and licentiousness and lack of manners might be the establishment of certain kinds of informal order among tavern companies. For instance drinking rituals like the one i mentioned before or drinking clubs like the Hungarian Club or the oyster club drunkenness helped to kind of put everything everyone on an equal footing. You were measured by how much you could drink, not how wealthy you were, what kind of family you came from. So the tavern and its social rit rituals were potentially open to all. Even if you were disinclined to drinking you were generally pressured into it. You couldnt sit out a toast or people would say you didnt support what was being toasted. Drinking was a way that you had the opportunity to ingratiate yourself with strangers and new yorkers respected a man who could hold his liquor. I mean, now newspaper satires get theres an inherent contradiction here so they ridicule the notion of orderly drunkenness. It doesnt make any sense but this free wheeling sense of equality, of forming a collective identity while drinking in company. This was significant, it gave people a sense of belonging because taverns were places where visitors and neighbors mixed together. Another way to organize people in taverns was forming a drinking club. This could bring people together into local networks and then also connect them with Transatlantic Networks as well. These began to emerge in a big way in the 1740s. There were also clubs for public usefulness. Three presbyterian lawyers who had all gone to yale William Livingston, William Smith jr. , and John Warren Scott formed a number of clubs that encouraged civil discourse. In the 1740s they began launching a number of projects. They founded the society for the promotion of useful knowledge followed by the New York Society Library in 1754 which held some of its meetings at one of samuel Fraunces Taverns. They also founded a forum for local skutiondiscussion. They were lawyers. Called the moot in 1770. Perhaps onequarter of new yorks adult white male population belonged to voluntary associations like this not including the various social clubs. After 1763 new york also added such clubs as a hospital society, the chamber of commerce, the Marine Society and the society of house carpenters. There were all kinds of different clubs that you could join as a way of keeping yourself organized in taverns and, yes, there would be drinking involved and eating and, yes, it would be a good time but some of the clubs had other purposes as well. Even more informally, taverns were places where working new yorkers found rest and networks. Abrahams tavern on broadway across from the fields or what is now City Hall Park was the unofficial headquarters for the city cartcartmen. They could hitch their horses or wagons in the street, they could fetch their mail. During the privateering craze they would post notices in taverns and offer goods for examination and sale. If you were a merchant seaman, you could get clothes, small had predicted men would flock into cities in order to receive and communicate knowledge, to show their wit or their breeding, their tis in conversation or living. As club members new yorkers might harness their private interest and their individual pursuits of happiness to promote public benefits, civic spirit, and a kind of solidarity. This spirit of voluntary participation that animated these clubs also became an important component of political mobilization in the decade preceding the revolution. Indeed they were part of the debate over representation and democracy. So j. Hector st. John the author of the letters from an american farmer, had observed two problems with mixing dhol and politics and he had observed this firsthand when he was living in new york a little further upstate. First, taverns encouraged equality and he thought this was a bad thing. The frequent use of spirituous liquors from the repeated inebriation it causes swells people with an idea of equality when they were talking with their betters. So an american, therefore, knows and feels all his influence which perhaps he had never before experienced and this gives him a high opinion of himself, higher than he deserved because, you know, the average american only knew the rudiments of politics but then hes saying most americans didnt really know that much about politics but they would start drinking and then all of a sudden they were swelled with a big opinion of themselves and theyd Start Talking to their betters like they knew better than people. If you think about it thats what what distinguishes a monarchal system or a more Democratic Society where people are participating in politics. The second thing that he observed is that voters often judged candidate political candidate based on gossip. People near know or foresee of what Eminent Service this man will be to their country as opposed to any other. The only way they are judging these candidates for office is based on what they hear said of him at the tavern and at other public places. So again he thinks this is a bad thing. That the way people learned about whether a candidate was fit for office was not because of their the proper ways to judge these candidates, but because they listened to a bit of tavern gossip and that was how they were influenced. Again, this is how we we understand democracy nowadays, but it seems he felt it improper and strange. Furthermore, so these are a couple of the problems with tavern politicking. Furthermore, even these polite tavern clubs i was mentioning before were often prone to disorder although many of them forbade political discussion. Meetings often descended in chaos because of disagreements. Critics like dr. Hamilton became frustrated when new yorkers failed to observe the standards of politeness the clubs had so scrupulously attempted to instill. Alcohol was constantly confounding attempts to place hierarchical social controls on new yorkers. As a result, successful new york politicians recognized that it was better to operate among the beer houses than to try to rise above them. Straight laced presbyterians like William Smith and William Livingston my poohpooh the mixes of liquor with politics the idea of trading your vote with beer and brandy but this was disingenuous. Taverns inspired feelings of individuality and equality. Historian allen tully divides new york politicians from the colonial era into two types. First popular whigs. The delancy and jones family. They were sociable, glad handers who were comfort doing that are politicking in taverns. The original tavern on this spot had been a delancy family tavern. Smith, who was the delancys enemy, bristled at his revrevelism. Tully describes the politics of the Smith Livingston crowd as corresponding to a second type of new york politician the provincial whigs who were more prudish, literary, and aloof. For all of them a good evening was not backgammon and bumpers but conversation with other educated men. Still, both groups sought to use tavern sociability for political ends side stepping both church and formal state structures as a basis for public action. But by the 1760s the divisions between provision and popular whigs had become less relevant and both the delancys and the livingstons had reluctant dealings with the new leaders of the street and tavern. Who were these leaders . The liberty boys. Sears, mcdougal, lamb, people like that. Mcdougal after years as a privateer captain kept a slop shop for sailors. Sears had a fatherinlaw whose tavern on water street i mentioned earlier. John lamb when he was a wine and liquor merchant must have had dealings with retailers all over the city. His wifes husband became a loyalist and also sold wine and liquor. Edward willette was probably these are some of the most famous Young Liberty boys who drove the revolutionary movement. During the imperial crisis they would mobilize new yorkers in the places they knew best, in taverns. Although they also faced the challenge of maintaining order among them. It created disorder in new york. Parliaments harsh imposition of a new imperial order turned the taverns into central sites of cross class political mobile zaths in the city. New yorkers reacted to the stamp act, for instance, with outrage. This was parliaments first attempt to tax the colonies after the sen years war the first attempt to tax them under a kind of new regime by placing stamped paper on newspapers dice playing card, legal documents. So, in other words, theyre going to threaten the groups who were most likely to complain, the lawyers and people who hang out at the printers and people who hang out at tarchs. This was a bad idea. You will see what happens, right . They threaten first new yorkers threaten to twok the appointed stamp officer from mnd because he was at his lodgings at the kings arms taverns in new york city in 1765his land lady said i cant have someone stying here and she packs him off to not george. Delegates from various colonies convened during the Stamp Act Congress in october of 1765. John dickinson was among them and he wrote to his mother the long sittings at dinner at the city arms tavern will consume the greatest part of our afternoons. So, again, he was a bit of a straight laced philadelphiian, so he thinks this is hes poured about this, but this is how they were getting their political business done. On october 3 1st 1765, the day before the stamp act was to take effect, the merchant coffee house wrapped the backgammon boxes in black and the dice in grape as a sign of mourning that this was going to be the death of liberty. Also on that day 200 merchants bet at burns tavern and resolved they would import no goods from Great Britain until the stamp act was repealed. This would put pressure on british merchants to Pressure Parliament to repeal the act. The americans figured if we dont have any representation in Parliament Well try to convince the people who do have relttation. That day crowds of boys paraded in front of the taverns. They whistled through the streets. Broke lamps and winnows and the next day on december 1ers they paraded effigies of the Lieutenant Governor and an effigy of the dev. They destroyed the house of a british officer and eventually upper class new yorkers had to patrol the streets to quiet things down while the Governors Council described these drunken threats as a perfect anarchy. The dual strains of orderly resistance and disorderly disruption were apparent in new york city. Although taverngoers did their best to impose order and mobilize resistance with restraint, using taverns to mobilize people was risky. Once a drinking crowd emerged, could you never be sure you would be able to restore order and put the genie back in the bottle. New yorks culture of socialability could never be solely the province of the polite polite. While the late pauline mayor argued that the stamp act crisis taught new yorks resistant leaders to try to contain disorder it must have been clear they couldnt rely on these wishful, genteel standards as a way of directing the revolution. Taverns tapped into atlantic net networks networks. On november 25th, 1765 the leaders of the stamp act resistance called a general meeting of the free holders at george burns tavern. Persons of all ages, ranks, were welcome. So in other words this was an attempt to restore order to the stamp act protest by saying were going to meet at a tavern but well make sure we keep things orderly. Its not going to be like the demonstrations on november 1st where things got out of hand. You see similar things happening in boston. In a new london, connecticut tavern in 1765 two sons of liberty from new york city showed up and urged a bunch of the local radicals to join them in resisting the starch act. The New York Group which had first met publicly at William Howards tavern in january of 1766 formally established a committee of correspondence and soon resolved we conceive the general safety of the colonies and the british constitution to depend on a firm union of the whole. This was the sons of liberty a group that eventually extended to all of the 13 colonies, essentially a network of tavern resistant. The very name sons of liberty was reminiscent of the fraternal bonds of tavern clubs and these groups which were often thought of as brotherly, fellow sons of the same father they drew on tavern idioms of unity, order masculinity articulating the voluntary ethos that would come to character the revolutionary movement and its institutions. New yorkers made it clear whose political opinions were welcome in the tavern. Taverns were places where authority was largely absent and yet many could fortify and ern courage one another with strong words and strong drink. The company of every well wisher to their country that language was meant to exclude as well as includ. In other words, if you favored parliament imposing the stamp act and other taxes on the colonies you were not a well wisher to the country, therefore, you were not welcome. Schoolmaster john stranger announced his support for the government during the crisis, new yorkers told him plainly i should eat no more of their bread and sow returns to england in 1766. So as north america becomes more polarized over imperial policy, so did the citys tavens. The sons of liberty did their best to emphasize decorum and social unity but new yorkers knew drunken strife could threaten this socialability. At a january 1766 meeting broke up over some disagreement and political disputes in 1769 meant celebrations of the stamp acts repeal were held in two separate tavens that year. So in other words the sons of liberty even managed to fight among one another. When one group tried to extend an orderly courtesy, they debate the whether the sem saer should not be shown the way out of a window. So the emissary opted for the front door instead. Not all resistance meetings ran smoothly nonetheless the sons of liberty seemed to have soeped a certain level of disorder. Now, where conflicts get heated is between new yorkers and the british troops. Taverns and disorderly houses often provided the fuel for such disagreements. When business was booming and new yorkers were happy with their role in the British Empire interactions between soldaries and civilians might be a source of imperial goodwill. They were in town, spending money. Everybody was involved in a shared war effort. People might toast these things together. After the seven years war as the depression hits, new debates over employment and the quartering of troops stirred up long held suspicions of standing armies and gave new ammunition to those who sought to counteract imperial encroachment. Soldiers, individual rank and file soldiers were thought to be estranged from the bonds of family and nation. Theyre just a back of roving bachelors. They were living a debauched life antithetical to liberty. Soldiers were thought to be antithetical to americans notions of liberty. Due to various outrages, the council began to restrict the sale of liquor to his majesties a rank and file 10e8ders. Soldiers sometimes stabbed tavern keepers, menaced civilian civilians and cut down the liberty poles new yorkers had built. Enrougeed new yorkers in response poured out of taverns to throw brick bats, insult sold efforts, and pass around proposals for the inn holders and inhabits not to have any intercourse with the military. Soldiers attacked patrons in january of 1770 and henry bikers hemden hall. Now, the presbyterian triumvirate, new england elites, and other hand wringing moralists, they tried to hold true to whig ideals of political mobilization and sociability that was free of sum mults and disorder. They failed to recognize the reality. When new yorkers wanted to hash out their response to the tea act of 1773 or the boston port act of 1774, they got together at taverns, including Fraunces Tavern rather than expecting their elected representatives to solve their problems for them. By taking advantage of the beer houses radical leaders were much more successful than the moderates at including a wide swath of new workers in the political process. Although loyalists and conservative new yorkers attempted to mobilize against the radicals using taverns, taverns proved to be much more useful to the radicals. Drunken disorder, rum induced courage, and lubricated rage on the one hand and ritual club live and ordered sociability on the other. They could work in tan lem to create an effective revolutionary movement. John cases complaints about drunken anarchy revealed a loyalists implicit recognition that the whigs had become more effective. The very word liberty apparently had the power of intoxication in the colonies. Those who urged moderation called themselves in their newspaper pieces a friend to order. Loyal itss and moderates conceded the most important political territory north had to offer, the taverns. Radical whigs embracedd sociable order. These reports of drunking mobs that are being sent over to england sounded terrible to the overseas audience. It really is a tension in new york politics of some people trying to keep things more on the orderly side and other people who were willing to kind of accept a little bit of drunken disorder. After the outbreak of fighting at lexington and concord on april 19th 1775, taverns served as Recruitment Centers for a militia that kep order in town and intercepted supplies. As companies drilled and Legal Business slowed the tavens filled with publy cans at night. Americans picked up that you are muskets as the emphasis shifted to military mobilization. In may 1775 a crowd drank madeira and planned to rouse dr. Miles cooper out of bed, shave his head, slash out his ears and nose strip him naked and been initial him from the town. In june of 1775 is cloud was led from drakes to intercept troops. In march of 1776 a party of radicals drunk rum at drakes tavern and then attacked the Printing Press of a loyalist printer which was printing responses to Thomas Paines common sense. Although it was a difficult process, joseph tiedtman calls new yorkers reluctant revolutionaries, although the revolutionary movement was a difficult process in this way, ultimately new yorkers succeeded in mobilizing their counterparts in the city and the countryside to revolt. Not all cities were like new york. They didnt all have the same ethnic and religious diversity the same factional climate of family rivalry. They didnt all have the same clash of ideology among popular whigs, provincial whigs, but in every town tories and more cautious moderate patriots worried about disorder. In every town they dealt with these challenges of mobilization in different ways. But most cities and even some smaller towns succeeded in finding leaders who knew how to mobilize men within tavern culture. People like samuel adams and paul revere or philadelphia they hosted committees that corresponded with their counterparts in other towns. New york city was a natural leader in this movement given its superior access to Transatlantic Networks its entrepreneurial climate, its freewheeling drinking culture and its cultural pluralism. New york was a good hub for these kinds of relationships. To the extent americans in other cities reflected these elements they participated in an intercolonial tavern culture. Taverns fostered fraternal bonds among white men in a voluntary Pluralistic Society and encouraged an open debate of political issues. Even as they gave rise to disorderly resistance to british authority. Taverns allowed americans to persuade each other to separate from Great Britain and without taverns i think its really difficult to conceive of how the revolution might have taken place. Before we get to questions, i want to talk about two incidents as kind of an epilogue involved alcohol and the history of revolutionary new york city that are relevant to the revolution. The first, something i have written a bit about as jennifer said before was in the Early Morning hours of september 21st 1776 a few days after british troops had occupied Lower Manhattan which they would occupy for the rest of the war, a fire broke out at the tip of new york city possibly at the fighting cocks tavern or a shed behind it. And this fire then went on to consume a sixth of the city. While many patriots and subsequent american historians have tried to argue that the fire was an accident or maybe that the british had started it themselves even though it was now going to be their headquarters, i have always argued that the americans probably started this fire themselves, that americans saboteurs probably started a fire that started out at a tavern and possibly in other places ends up having a major impact in new york city by burning a sixth of it down. Finally this week i was reading a manuscript about a fiamous legal case in 1784, rutgers v. Waddington in which alexander hamilton, the one we know the treasury secretary, represented a british occupant of a brew house who was being sued by the brew houses american owners for back rent and hamiltons argument ended up setting important residents for the. You dish review of unconstitution laws. Hamilton was a big defender of loyalists in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. So taverns, in other words, in all sorts of ways we know about washingtons farewell to his troops right here on this site. All sorts of ways the taverns are mixed into the revolutionary history of new york city and so and in that way i think theyre really useful windows into the politics and history of this period. So thanks very much and im looking forward to your questions. [ applause ] in the back first. Were women ever allowed to go into these taverns or was it strictly men . Thats a very good question. Most tavern companies were at the elite level were mostly meant for men but women were present in taverns in all sorts of ways. Women hung out in low class taverns and disorderly houses. It wasnt a place for respectable women but working class women could get away with more things. Women were issued tavern licenses in new york city. Very often this would go to impoverished widows as a way to make money. It was a kind of charitable work by the city. But actually new york according to sharon, new york actually had a lower ratio of female Liquor License holders than other cities on the seaboard. So new york doesnt seem to have welcomed women into taverns in the same way. But women might also be the spouse of the tavern proprietor or there would be servant girls serving the patrons and so women were often present in that respect, but they would not have been welcome at these clubs which tended to be men only sorts of affairs. There were other ways for women to participate in leisure activity but the tavern and the coffee house was thought not to be a proper place for a respectable woman. Sorry, up front. A marketing question. Sure. Would this book be an appropriate gift for a tavern owner . Theyd have to be serious about the revolutionary history. Its a work of scholarship. It was based on my dissertation. The Tea Party Book works a little better for a wider audience. I know a lot of college profess professors that successfully assign the book. I think the tavern chapter in particular makes for a really fun read. You know its basically my comments today have reflected that chapter from that book. In the back . So was there anything like a drinking age . Were children just routinely served . I dont know that they would necessarily be served hard liquor, although maybe they would have drunk a little, but keep in mind that the water at this time is really, really bad and so usually if you wanted to have something to drink, you either had to boil something or ferment something in order for it to be potable. Its quite possible children were drinking lower proof sorts of alcohols like beer or cider with their meals. We can only speculate about this, but, no, i dont think the only way in which children that i have seen in Historical Records that children were very strictly kept from drinking was that apprentices were not supposed to be served hard liquor, and so since apprentices were often, you know, younger boys, that would have been one way in which you would have restricted younger people from drinking. But again the specification was for hard liquor not for softer forms of alcohol. Yes, maam. What were the preferred drinks and was it the same in boston and fimphilly . Yeah. I mean, i think so. You know boston and new york city are drawing closer together as part of a kind of general British Culture during this time. So the most popular drink would have been rum, right distilled from molasses from the caribbean. Beer and cider were the local drinks and they were probably cheaper in some ways. Wine tended to be a fancier drink particularly the ford fied wines, brandy from france madeira from the wine islands, things like that. Those were more upper class things. Scotch whiskey was not unheard of. You might see a little bit of that, but the hard liquor of choice in the 18th century in america was definitely rum because it was so close at hand and there were distilleries up and down the east coast. Often not drunk straight but drunk as part of a punch. So mixed with sugar and citrus fruits and all number of other things. I mentioned toddy. That also probably would have been a mixed rum drink but served warm instead of cold which during the winter months probably had a lot more appeal. The case incident i mentioned before took place in january so they would have been drinking toddy and not a kind of cooler type of refreshing drink. Im not sure who to call on next. Over there. I did a quick calculation and the average consumption came to about seven to eight ounces of liquor per day. Yeah i did that calculation myself, yeah. I got to say thats pretty staggering depending how you count a shot. Could be eight shots a day. Fraunces tavern is one of the only survivors with st. Paul church of the buildings in manhattan during that period. What role did Fraunces Tavern play if any for the sons of liberty and where were these other taverns in relation to this one . Yeah. I dont remember the exact addresses of some of the other taverns that i mentioned. Howards tavern drakes tavern, et cetera. Sometimes the locations of these things would move around. So a proprietor of a tavern might close up shop in one location and open up another one across town. Fraunces did that. Actually i think this was the last of his new york davens. Prior to that he was the proprietor of the yens head during the prerevolutionary period and he reopens the building that was destroyed during the starch act riots and runs a pleasure garden establishment there. So fraunces himself moved around. It can be very difficult to keep track of some of these taverns because in the newspapers everyone just said across the street from this and everyone was supposed to know where that was, but they moved around quite a bit. And so this would not have been this was the site of washington saying farewell to his troops but it would not have been the site of samuel Fraunces Tavern prior to the revolution. I think he winds up here a little bit later on. So i dont know as far as one of the things that skews the kind of per day alcohol cop sumption is that the figures for new york is mostly for imported alcohol and a lot of that alcohol probably went to new jersey as well. So its a little bit difficult to just because new york was the main port not just for new york state but also for new jersey. So its a little bit difficult to measure the exact annual per capita consumption but in general people drank in north america as a whole people drank more as part of their daily lives than we do today. Over there . Curious to know in terms of the ratio of ownership of these taverns, patriots versus loyalists versus on a need to know basis. Theres no way to know that kind of thing for certain. If i had, you know kind of statistical profiles of all the tavern keepers in new york but we just dont have good enough information about who all of the tavern owners were to really know that. So we know about some of the prominent places that patriots met because they often talked about it in the papers or in diaries and correspondence and we know that there probably were some more loyalist friendly taverns but trying to find out concrete information about them this might be someone elses project. In the digging i did, i wasnt able to get a lot of concrete information. But, yeah, its quite possible a lot of tavern keepers probably just tried to say like either im not of any particular political persuasion or i wont allow talking about politics in the tavern because i dont want a fight to break out. Im sure there were plenty of people like a lot of other kinds of americans who were just like, look, im just trying to make some money, lets leave politics out of it. What you see happening between 1765 and 1774 is that more and more people are being forced to make a choice one way or another. And you could imagine how the various committees that start running things in new york, the radical committees, how they could probably make life miserable for tavern keepers like dont you dare serve those guys and now the tavern keeper is like im damned if i do damned if i dont. I dont have a lot of concrete information about what the ratios were. But it probably changed, right . People change their minds during the period as well. What about the breakdown of loyalists like drinking traditions versus the patriots. Actually what happened in the tavens taverns . Theyre all the same people right up into the end. Overseas and things being developed here. Is there a difference in terms of what they were drinking technically speaking . I dont think so. A lot of loyal i wasists were american born. Its not as if the loyalists were some sort of foreign nationalities. Theyre the same people. They just say their interests as being better served under the British Empire or the new patriot regime. The only differences were the ones i mentioned in my talk, if you were of a more conservative mindset you might be less comfortable with certain kinds of not necessarily drinking rituals but incorporating pot ticks into those rituals because there was more of a risk of a democratic mindset. That would be the main thing i would argue. Differentiate between a tavern, an inn, a pub, and say an ordinary. Was there any difference at all . As far as im concerned those are more or less sin noms. A country tavern would be a wayside for it might be a local place to gather, but it would also be a kind of wayside for travelers and that was a kind of crucial function. We could imagine though that in new york city even though a lot of taverns probably were welcoming visitors from overseas, a lot of them probably catered to a local clientele maybe even primarily. The difference would not be among those various terms. The difference would be that there difference would be that they were kind of elite fancy taverns. Kind of like slum style houses. You had taverns that followed the same model. So those were skachetchier. Anyone in theory could open their living room and start hosting people on wednesday night. You ran the risk of getting busted. Thats the difference in terms of what we see it. It may have been retailingly core or a liquor store. They didnt want a whole container. They might only want enough some of this stuff was a little bit murky. I tried to capture as much alz i could. The better class establishments certainly did serve food. There were a variety of different menus. They may have tried to attract patrons by advertising what they had. It skriks me that a lot of restaurants have tried to do re search we do have some evidence of what these things might have looked like. Various game. Beef, fowl, turtle soup would have been popular. Yes, sir . He liked it so much that hes still there . Yeah. Some historians claimed that things changed after the lev lugs. That tavern societies have become more strictly stratified according to social class. What you end up seeing are things like hotels where this kind of mixing and stuff was really discouraged and it would be a much more polite kind of thing. The politics change a lot. At the time that i was working on this book, there was already a good hunt with philadelphia taverns. He talks about the philadelphia history of this stuff. For him there were all sorts of regulations and how drinking was allowed and should we restrict the number of taverns . But new yorkers never bothered with that. Its like anything else. If you have a good reputation for hospitality, you could make your way in the world. This is what it noent be a member of the middle class during that time. You could do very well here so obviously this was a skill that he succeeded at. There was interaction going on. Yeah . The was it for Common People . Absolutely. There was a class of people for sure. There was definitely a class that said no. I disapprove of my friends over there who are drinking. There were some who took part in good company in that way. College students they had problems with College Students drinking all the time and they grow up to be the ministers and lawyers and politicians and everything else. I think that drinking was common. Again, in a way it was you drink it at breakfast and lunch and dinner. It was just more of a drinking culture than what were used to. A really big problem of drinking seemed to exist in a greater degree. Did you find that women are drinking the same amount as men . Or is that too speculative. Yes there is tea and coffee and things. You know, again, if we assume that the water was sometimes unsafe to drink, i imagine that proper ladies confined themselves more to beer and cider. I am sure there is evidence of upper classwomen drinking. They are just not taking part in spub lick toasting and club life and that sort of thing. Right . Women are participating in prostitution and disorderly drinking and keeping disorderly houses themselves. So women who did not necessarily have to worry about their rep ewe occasions in the same way partook like men. Maybe behind you . Was there any difference between the percentage of those who consumed alcohol . I dont know enough about the science of it. Aside from food and drink you as a historian walking into a tavern today are there any traditions or procedures that have transcended time . Like i said before there are recipes that have been formed. There are definitely other establishments in new york. Like cocktail making and things like that where they are trying to harken back to the older recipes. That is a way to get a taste. To the extent there are still clubs like the New York Society Library or chamber or commerce or any number of the sons of the revolution, to the extent that those types of clubs survive, very often the rituals that were invented in the 18th century still survive. So i think thats another way that people today can kind of experience something akin to the kinds of drinking culture that existed in the 18th century. With live coverage of the u. S. House on cspan and senate on cspan 2, we compliment that here on cspan 3. History bookshelf. The president , looking at the legacies of our nations commanders in chief. And our new series real america in 1930s through the 70s. Cspan 3 created by cable tv industry and funded by you. Next we will hear the story of sergeant stubby the first k9 given a rank in the u. S. Armed forces. Stubby served for the 102nd infantry in france during world war i. Over the course of 17 battles alerted soldiers to incoming german attacks. He was later received by three american president s this event was hosted by the Kansas City Public Library and the National World war i museum