Of virginia. Ok, we have been talking in this class about the american republic, which is a radical experiment for its time. There were very few republics in the world. So, this is a risky venture, because it expects a lot of people. In a monarchy, the duty of the people is essentially to obey. But in a republic, the citizens must participate. They need to vote. They should follow issues. They should be involved in campaigns. And so, a republic asks much more of people. And this is the foundational generation for this american republic. And yet, this is also the peak period for alcoholic consumption in america. So, there is a paradox in which this is a period where the political thinking, the political ideology said we need a republic with a virtue. In other words an electorate , where the people are committed to the wellbeing, the common good of the country and should be willing to set aside their self interest to advance the common good. That is the concept of virtue. And yes, this is the period when people are drinking as never before, and you can see the statistics here that historians have come up with. That in 1790, the per capita Alcohol Consumption in the United States, in the equivalent of gallons of 90 proof alcohol what does 90 proof mean . Everybody knows the answer to that. [laughter] ok. I ask you about Alexander Hamiltons fiscal policy, and there are crickets in here. But i ask you what 90 proof means and half the class knows the answer to that. 45 alcohol. So per capita, that is also a , term. What does per capita mean . Yeah . Per person. Ok, in the u. S. Population, we say per capita, that includes women and children including newborn infants. We are taking the quantity of alcohol consumed in 1790 and dividing by the total population and we are getting 3. 5 gallons per person. I think we can conclude that men were drinking most of this, were drinking more than the infants, and probably were drinking much more than the women were. So, we can assume that mens consumption was probably on the order of 16 gallons per year, of the equivalent of 90 proof alcohol. Now that is higher than it was previously during the colonial era, and yet it will go up. You see by 1830, it gets up to four gallons per capita in the u. S. So this is a period of peak consumption of alcohol in American History. You are wondering, how do you measure up . The last statistic i have for the year 2007, it shows Alcohol Consumption in this country is half of what it used to be, and yet there is plenty of evidence that alcohol can be, for much of the american population, still a problem. Ok. So, we talked about the extent of drinking. We need to talk about what it was that early americans were drinking. So, here are the options. You have to think about what were gentlemen drinking, and what were Common People drinking . Of these options up here, what the gentlemen of the early what did gentlemen of the early republic prefer . Gentlemen like John Marshall . Madeira, that strong wine, imported wine. Pretty expensive. Has a punch, but not nearly as powerful as what Common People preferred. Of the options there what the , Common People prefer . You are thinking beer because youre thinking in your own time, all right . What do you think of those choices would be the most popular for common men in america of 1830 . Whiskey, far and away. Remember, we talked about the whiskey rebellion . How people were upset about the federal government putting a tax on whiskey . Because that really hit home. That was a preferred item of consumption. Now, it is a good question. Why did they drink so much whiskey and very little beer . A lot of it has to do with technology. Go ahead. Did a cute them warm did it keep them warm . It has a warming effect, more so than beer, and that is important because a lot of people working outdoors. Yes . [indiscernible] it does not spoil as easily. There is no refrigeration in the early republic, so you cant go to your refrigerator and get a nice cold beer. If you are going to drink a beer, it has to be freshly made and you got to drink it pretty quickly before it goes bad. People are moving around a lot, so they like something that is portable, something they can put in a flask and stick in their pocket. Whiskey is perfect for that. And will keep for a very long time. So, people drank a lot of whiskey and very little beer. And wine, they mostly drank these very strong wines like madeira, but wine drinking was a phenomena of gentlemen rather than Common People. So, foreigners commented on the very great extensive drinking in the early republic. One english visitor said that americans were certainly not as sober as the french or germans, but perhaps about on the level with the irish. And americans recognized their own heavy drinking. John adams found it mortifying that we americans should exceed all other people in the world in this degrading, beastly imbibe beastly vice of intemperance. Intemperance meant drunkenness in the language of the time. It was not just working men. It was also gentlemen. For example in 1790, the governor of new york gave a public dinner attended by fellow gentlemen. There were 120 gentlemen attending, and they consumed 135 bottles of madeira, 36 bottles of port, 60 bottles of beer, and these would be bottles the same size as a wine bottle. So, the running total for those of you keeping score 135 bottles of madeira, 36 of port, 60 of beer, 15 bottles of rum, and this was at one public dinner. Partly the drinking is so heavy at these political banquets because they are offering toasts to almost everything. There would be a toast to the United States, a toast to the constitution, a toast to the heroes of the revolution, a toast to the president , a toast to the Vice President , a toast to the american fair, by which they meant the women not attending the banquet. There would also be a toast offered for every single state in the union. [laughter] that is quite a challenge when youre just at 13 states, but they keep adding states to the union. Indeed, i think this is one of incentives for adding states to the union. Lets let in kentucky. That would be another toast of the next banquet. And people are drinking everywhere and on all occasions. They drink at home. They drank at work. They drink at taverns. They drank for pleasure. They drank to numb pain. They drank from the crack of dawn to the crack of dawn. It was standard for many men to begin the day with what was called an eyeopener, which was a shot of whiskey, and then to continue through the rest of the day. A traveler declared americans can do nothing without a drink. If you make acquaintance, you drink. You close a bargain, you drink. They quarrel in their drink and they make it up with a drink. They drink because it is hot. They drink because it is cold. If successful in elections, they drink and rejoice. If not, they drink and swear. So, now we have got a pattern. We have something we need to explain. We have to address the why question. Why is it that americans are drinking so much in this period of American History . What explanations would you want to put on the table for this . Yes . Maybe the Water Quality was not so good . Water quality, poor Water Quality. That is certainly true. There was almost nothing in the way of public purified water, which we take for granted today. How did you get your water in the early republic . You went to the well and got it. Even in the cities. In the cities, you can imagine how filthy the well water would get. If you are drawing water out of a river or a stream, because they also double as sewers. Drinking the water was not a popular option. What else would you put for an explanation . [indiscernible] to say the least, it is very cheap. The cheapest in all the world. Why would alcohol be so cheap in the United States . Yes . Production methods. They are importing . Do you think that they are mostly importing their alcohol or consuming domestically produced alcohol . Mostly. Madeira is imported, but what about whiskey . Domestic. Ok, what is whiskey made from . Grain. What do americans grow a ton of . Grain. The number one grain producing country in the world. It is an agricultural country. They have a lot of surplus grain. And often the Grain Growers are at a distance from market. Say, they are in western pennsylvania. They have to get their produce over the mountains to market in philadelphia. You want something that is more portable and higher value per volume. So, distilling your corn crop into whiskey makes it much more marketable in the east. So, there is more whiskey being produced in the United States than in any other country in the world, and when you have got a big supply, it means the price is going to be low. Another factor is the governments did not tax whiskey. You remember what happened when the government tried to tax whiskey. It did not go well. If any of you want to rush out and buy a bottle of whiskey right after this lecture, youre going to find it is pretty expensive. And youre going to find that most of the cost of that whiskey comes in the form of federal and state taxes. So, in the 20th century, governments got in the habit of levying taxes on whiskey and got away with it. But that was not the case in the early 19th century. So, you had a very common product with virtually no taxation on it. That meant it was cheap. It was cheaper to get drunk in america than any other country in the world. And Many Americans thought that was their primary liberty. So, we have bad water. What about drinking other things . What about drinking soda or drinking juices . Were those options . Those did not exist. No carbonation. And fruit juice again, you have the refrigeration problem. People might drink juice right away during harvest season, but there is no way to store it except to turn it into alcohol. So, you would turn apple juice into a hard cider or pear juice into a pear brandy. But there is very little to drink in america that is not alcoholic, other than water, and the water was bad. I asked one new yorker what he thought about the local water. He said, it is very good for navigation. In other words you can sail on , it, but you dont want to drink it. So we have the bad water. We have the fact that whiskey is quite cheap. Any other explanations you can think of why people drink so much at this time . Yes . Being drunk makes you feel better about what is happening in your life. Certainly it does, in the short term. So, there are stresses in this society. It is a very Competitive Society in terms of people seeking to make money, and not everyone is going to succeed. There will be a fair share of failures. Just the stress of this more Competitive Society is going to leave a lot of people to drink is going to lead a lot of people to drink to console themselves or to drink to celebrate that they are successful. Any other things you can think of . Yes . The cost ofk to production and the cost of transportation between out west farms and cities improved. Ok, transportation costs are going down as transportation is being improved, particularly at this time with the steamboat but also canals, such as the theory canal which is completed in 1825. That is helping to lower the cost of whiskey in the east when that whiskey is being brought from the west. Let me also suggest to you that the high geographic mobility of americans contributes to this. That americans are moving around in pursuit of economic opportunity, not always finding it. And when they do move around, they are trying to form new social bonds with people, and they often found it easier to share a drink with some new acquaintance, to try to get to know them. And so almost every social occasion featured drinking. Every cornhusking, barnraising, funeral, marriage, birth called for alcohol. One farmer remembered a country funeral in maine. The minister could not stand to preach without holding on by the side of the door. The bearers could not walk straight, nor the mourners keep the line of procession. Yet it was not noticed in those times. The same man recalled a local wedding. We all took so freely of the good cheer that the minister forgot his verses, so after trying several kinds of poetry and ditties, he gave up and said to the couple, you may consider yourselves married and i will come out some other day and finish the ceremony. [laughter] these were stories told during the 1830s looking back on this earlier time of very heavy drinking. Another factor is what americans ate. What do you suppose the diet was very heavy of at this time . A lot of health food . No . What do you suppose people ate massive quantities off . Meat. We come to the refrigeration issue. Could you go to the refrigerator and pull out a steak . No. Were there any Grocery Stores to go to . No. How did you preserve meat at that time . It orlts it you salt you smoke it. In either case, if you eat a lot of that, you are going to be very thirsty. Then you will face the choice. Water or whiskey. Most americans will choose the whiskey. There was the belief that after you have had a heavy meal, heavy and salted or smoked meats, you need alcohol to settle your stomach. Americans were notorious for eating massive quantities of food, and eating it as quickly as possible. European visitors were just astonished. They would bring stopwatches to time american meals. And they would marvel to see these huge quantities of hams and beef steak and bacon being bolted down in five minutes, and of course they have to settle their stomachs, and it is with whiskey. One visitor noted as soon as food is set on the table, they fall upon it like wolves on an unguarded herd. Yes . Dont they get a little alcohol poisoning . We are going to come down to those. Because none of this is going to be without problems. Were going to talk about social consequences. In terms of causes, i also want to talk about the nature of work. There was the belief that alcohol helped people work outdoors. It helped them deal with extremes of temperature, either very hot or very cold. Helped them cope with it raining or snowing. Did most americans work outdoors or indoors at that time . Outdoors, because what sorts of jobs did they have . They are farmers, overwhelmingly. That is the number one occupation in america. 80 . And then other common occupations are also outdoors. Being a sailor, being a logger, being a fisherman, being a dockworker. Relatively few americans work indoors at desk jobs. If you believe this helps you cope with the weather outside, you will be drinking on the job. And even people who worked in shops lets say a blacksmith or a shoemaker they also drank during the job. The belief was it helps people the believe was that it helped people do their daily work. So, it was a common practice. It was almost universal that employers would provide alcohol. If you were a farmer and you hired farm laborers, those laborers expected that in addition to the pay you were giving them you were going to feed them a meal and provide them with alcohol, so they could keep working. You went into a shoemaker from if you went into a shoemaker shop, same story. The master would provide alcohol. It would be a bonds the between the master or the journeyman and the apprentice. Question . Did they also give it to slaves . No, slaves are the exception. With the exception during harvest season. A special bonus to get slaves to work harder during the cotton harvest or tobacco harvest, providing them alcohol at that season. Otherwise, masters or trying to deny alcohol to their slaves. But slaves could see the free people around them drinking heavily. It becomes a goal to steal alcohol and share it with your friends in the slave quarters as an act of defiance, as a way to say, we are just as good as free people and we should be able to drink, too. In the military, the army and the navy had to provide alcohol. George Washingtons Army often ran out of food for long stretches of time. His army never ran out of alcohol. And washington understood, as did all other commanders, if you wanted to keep men in the ranks the number one thing you could do, even better than paying them, was to provide alcohol every day. Same thing in the navy. We will see that this will start to change in the 1830s and it will produce a great deal of strain in the relationships between employers and employees when employers try to cut off providing alcohol. Elections promoted alcoholic consumption. We might like to think people would be sober when they were making their very important political decisions, but in the early republic, most voters were not sober. And indeed, the friends of different candidates would be at the polling places and theywould have flasks of whiskey with them, and they would be up slapping people on the back, offering them free whiskey, and encouraging them to cast their vote for the candidate providing them with the alcohol. It was for example, a traveler reported an election in kentucky lasts three days, and during that period, and apple toddy flowed through our cities and villages like the euphrates through ancient babylon. A number of runners, each with a whiskey bottle poking its long neck from his pocket, were busily employed bribing voters. Today there are laws that say if you are promoting a candidate, you have to be a certain distance from the polling place, and you not allowed to be pressing alcohol a potential on potential voters, but there were no such laws in the early republic. George washington was one of the most successful politicians of his time in virginia, because he understood a practice known as treating, which is that a candidate should host a barbecue in the runup to the election. Invite all of the voters of the county to come to his barbecue and provide them with free food, heaping slabs of smoked and salted meat, and all the alcohol they could drink. The belief of the time was, a candidate who is so generous is proving that he is accessible to Common People. He is not some sort of stuck up, distant aristocrat. Washington, who was a very dignified man, would not show up at his own barbecue. He would have friends that would host this and washington would pay the bill. And he was not the only one. Almost everyone running for office, particularly in the south, did this. In one of his more successful campaigns, washington served 144 gallons of alcohol to 307 voters. Thats about two votes per gallon, which was not considered not a bad return. But what about the politician who develop