AMERICANA EBRIETATIS
_Byegone Ways of Byegone Days_
ONE HUNDRED COPIES OF THIS
EDITION HAVE BEEN PRINTED
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DISTRIBUTED
Americana Ebrietatis;
THE
Favorite Tipple of our Forefathers
and the Laws and Customs
Relating Thereto
BY
HEWSON L. PEEKE
[Illustration]
PRIVATELY PRINTED
NEW YORK, 1917
COPYRIGHTED 1917 BY
HEWSON L. PEEKE
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 dedicated 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 culling 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 concerning drunkenness. Thanks to the most timely and
exceptional research of the author, 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 REGULATION 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 WASHINGTON 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--
CLEARING BEES 127
TRAVELING AND TAVERNS 132
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 European 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 experiment 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. 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 reform; 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, besides beer, cider, and porter.
In the Dutch cellar might be found apples, parsnips, 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, canaries, and madeiras. Teetotalism would have
been quite unintelligible to the farmer or burgher of those healthy
days of breezy activity out of doors. In the Dutch cupboard or on the
sideboard always stood the gleaming 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 happening of the community; in public as
well as private life John Barleycorn was a witness 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 raisings. No farm hand
in haying, no sailor on a vessel, no workman in a mill, no cobbler,
tailor, carpenter, mason, or tinker would work without some strong
drink or treat. The bill for liquor where many 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 temperance. Rum was
taken as a common restorative." The Puritans had no objection to wine,
and in latter colonial times hard drinking was very common even among
ministers; but they were much opposed 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 perfection 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 apple 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 secured in proper vessels and
colored by Indian 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 plantations of
the honey locust furnished locust beans for making metheglin. From
persimmons, elderberries, juniper berries, pumpkins, cornstalks,
hickory nuts, sassafras 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 orchards 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 Wilder, of Lancaster, made six hundred and sixteen barrels
himself.
When the Quakers framed their constitution for Pennsylvania they
inserted clauses punishing swearing, intemperance, cardplaying, 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 purpose of boiling greens. Their first beer was made
from molasses, and we have Penn's assurance that, when "well boyled
with Sassafras 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 Philadelphia, John Adams was shocked by
the display of eatables. His appetite overcame his scruples, although
after each feast he 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 Burgundy. 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,
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 indulged in four meals a day.
In the _True and Sincere Declaration_, issued in December, 1609, by
the Governor and Council for Virginia, there was an advertisement for
two brewers, who, as soon as they were secured, were to be dispatched
to the Colony. Brewers were also included among the tradesmen who
were designed by the Company to go over with Sir Thomas Gates.
This indicated the importance in the eyes of that corporation 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 prevalent
among those arriving in the Colony, in the period following the first
settlement of the country, was the substitution of water for beer to
which the immigrants had been accustomed in England. The Assembly, in
the session of 1623, went so far as to recommend that all new comers
should bring in a supply of malt to be used in brewing liquor, thus
making it unnecessary to drink the water of Virginia until the body
had become hardened to the climate. Previous to 1625, two brew-houses
were in operation 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 occasionally settled; the instance of Alexander
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. Richard 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 compressed from the pears
growing in his orchard 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 the nature of the
assemblage. When Charles Hansford and David Condon, as executors of
the widow of the unfortunate Thomas Hansford, leased her residence in
York to the justice of the peace of that county to serve as a court
house, they bound themselves to furnish not only accommodations for
horses, but also a gallon of brandy during each session 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 converted 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 consideration 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. Thus on one occasion William Byrd, who filled
the office in the latter part of the century, 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.