BREWING IN THE SOUTH.
In the Southern provinces, unfavorable soil and climate conspired with
other unpropitious circumstances to exclude brewing almost entirely.
Sporadic attempts to introduce it were quickly frustrated, no less by
reason of a lack of suitable raw material than on account of a want of
skilled brewers; and also, perhaps, because domestic spirits could be
had more cheaply.
[Sidenote: VIRGINIA]
In Virginia, as early as 1652, one George Fletcher had obtained the
exclusive right to “brew in wooden vessels, which none had experience
in but himself;” but his product evidently found little favor, for we
read no more of him or his wooden vessels.
From the instructions given to the governors of Virginia by the London
Company and from other equally direct evidences, it is to be inferred
that the repression of excesses in drinking, and the creation of
agricultural conditions favoring the home-production of wine and beer
were the two principal objects of the government’s care. The latter
project, for reasons already indicated, failed of realization.
The common beverages then used by the people were imported wines,
strong beer and ardent spirits, and domestic beer, of which latter an
inconsiderable quantity was brewed in the households of the colonists.
The former drinks were retailed not only by keepers of ordinaries
(taverns), but also by victuallers and merchants. Debts for wine
and ardent liquors were excluded from the obligations pleadable in
court. No mention is made of beer in this connection, and from the
exception thus made it is fair to conclude that a discrimination in
favor of malt liquors was intended. Without further corroboration this
inference might be exposed to the reproach of being far-fetched; but,
fortunately, such corroboration is not wanting. It is contained in
an act, passed in 1644, which provides, among other things, “that no
ordinary keeper or victualler _be permitted at all to sell or utter any
wine or strong liquor_ BUT STRONG BEER ONLY. And that, according to
order of the first of August, 1643, no debts made for wines and strong
waters, shall be pleadable or recoverable in any court of justice in
this Colony.”
A double discrimination is here made in favor of malt liquors, viz.,
one in explicit terms, permitting the sale of strong beer only, and an
implied one in the clause which excludes debts for wines and strong
waters (not for beer) from the list of obligations legally pleadable.
The fact is that beer was considered an indispensable part of every
regular meal.
Among the “staple commodities” sought to be encouraged by law, in 1658,
we find hops and wine; the premium on the latter being ten thousands
pounds of tobacco for “two tunne of wine” raised in any colonial
vineyard.
The importation of English malt and malt liquors increased rapidly,
because domestic brewing and malting remained in an unsatisfactory
condition. Roger Beverly gives the following interesting description of
the manufacture and use of drinks at about this time:
“The richer sort generally brew their small beer with malt, which they
have from England, though they have as good barley of their own as
any in the world; but for want of the convenience of malt-houses, the
inhabitants take no care to sow it. The poorer sort brew their beer
with molasses and bran; with Indian corn malted by drying in a stove;
with persimmons dried in cakes, and baked; with potatoes; with the
green stalks of Indian corn cut small and bruised; with pompions; and
with the _batates canadenses_, or _jerusalem artichoke_, which some
people plant purposely for that use, but this is the least esteem’d of
all the sorts before mentioned.
“Their strong drink is _Madeira_ wine, which is a noble strong wine;
and punch, made either of rum from the _Caribbee_ Island, or brandy
distilled from their apples, and peaches; besides _French brandy_, wine
and strong beer, which they have continually from England.”
In 1748, the Sabbath question first entered into legislation on the
liquor traffic. No mention is made of the subject in any of the
preceding acts, not even in those passed during the Cromwellian reign,
when the Puritan idea, that the State should by legislative enactment
enforce complete inactivity and abandonment to spiritual contemplation
on Sunday, had gained popular favor. The act passed in that year
contained the following clauses referring to the Sabbath:
... “If any ordinary-keeper shall in his house permit unlawful gaming,
or suffer any person or persons to tipple in his house, or drink any
more than is necessary, on the Lord’s day, or any other day set apart
by public authority for religious worship, ... the court may disable
such offender from keeping ordinary thereafter, until they shall think
fit to grant him a new license, or may restore him to keep ordinary
upon his former license, as they shall see cause.”
In 1769 the cause of temperance achieved two signal successes; one
consisting in the revocation of the import duty on beer, and the other
in the renewal of legislation encouraging viticulture. The idea of
fostering the manufacture of malt liquors found many advocates at this
time, and there can be no doubt that many of the best Americans strove,
by precept and example, to bring about a change of drinking habits,
in the manner indicated, long before the passage of the two acts just
cited.
As to the encouragement of wine-making in Virginia, we have seen that
it dates back to the earliest periods of Colonial legislation, and
that then it was suggested by the abundance of grapes found everywhere
by the first settlers. Neither these early attempts nor subsequent
efforts led to any lasting results, because viticulture was not
understood by the English colonists, while the French vintners, who, on
uncommonly favorable terms, had been induced to emigrate to Virginia
on the condition that they plant vineyards and instruct the colonists
in viticulture, failed to do what was expected of them, finding the
planting of tobacco to be more profitable.
The sporadic attempts to encourage the manufacture of malt liquors was
equally unsuccessful. The inducements offered to hop growers, even
if they had been sufficiently alluring to tempt farmers to abandon
the profitable cultivation of tobacco, could not have over-balanced
the many difficulties which climate and the absence of industrial
enterprise placed in the way of brewing. There was another drawback,
however,—the cheapness of domestic spirits, which were not burdened by
internal taxes.
[Sidenote: MARYLAND]
Under circumstances and conditions similar to those prevailing in
Virginia, the brewing trade in this Colony lagged far behind the
comparatively rapid progress achieved in other respects. Enterprising
Dutchmen from the settlements on the Delaware had intended years before
to emigrate to Maryland for the purpose of introducing the brewing
industry there; but a want of capital and other obstacles had deterred
them from carrying out their plans. In 1676 there were no malt-houses
in the province, and the planters, chiefly engaged in raising tobacco,
saw no inducement to plant barley or any other cereal, beyond what
they needed to make bread with. The poorer people brewed small beer
from Indian corn dried in common stoves, and from molasses mixed with
bran. As beer constituted an indispensable part of every meal, it is
reasonable to assume that tavern-keepers brewed a similar beer, unless
they could obtain malt either from England, or from one of the other
American colonies.
There appears to have been no lack of orchards at this time, and many
planters made their own cider, and also brandy from apples. The fact
that the law against selling liquors on Sunday contained a separate
clause enjoining owners of orchards not to violate the said act, proves
that these persons made a practice of selling their products.
Like their colleagues of Virginia, the lawmakers of this Colony
honestly strove to encourage the domestic manufacture of fermented
beverages, and, also like the Virginians, they believed that nothing
would serve this laudable aim better than to make the domestic product
cheaper than the imported article.
Of curious interest is a resolution of the Assembly, embodied in
an act passed in 1674, declaring that “noe rates of prices of anie
accommodacons be set or ascertained, but such only as are of absolute
necessity for sustaining and refreshing travelers, that is to say,
man’s _meat, beer and lodging_.”
[Sidenote: THE CAROLINAS]
The great difference between liquor licenses and wine licenses, in
the matter of fees, in Carolina, shows how consistently the lawmakers
adhered to the policy of favoring domestic viticulture. Even before
the time when the immigration of the French refugees began to assume
considerable proportions, wine made in the Colony from native grapes
had been sent to England, where “the best palates well approved of it.”
It was then the general impression that if the planters continued to
“prosecute the propagation of vineyards as industriously as they had
begun it, Carolina would in a short time prove a magazine and staple
for wines to the whole West Indies.” The proprietors of the Colony had
sent to the planters choice European grape-vines for transplantation,
and encouraged wine-making in many ways. The only impediment in the
way of a rapid development of viticulture appeared at that time to
consist in the want of skilled vintners. The French refugees, it was
hoped, would supply this want, and Carolina would in the end rival
France and the Rhenish countries in the quality of her wines. These
expectations were revived when the first colony of Switzers was
planted in the province, and again, many years later, when the poor
Germans, whom Stumpel had allured from their homes on the banks of
the Rhine, were settled at Londonderry. Unfortunately for the cause
of temperance, these expectations were not realized, owing to the
cheapness of ardent spirits, which, before the end of the first half of
the eighteenth century, had completely changed the tastes and habits of
drinkers. That this was the real cause of the failure of every effort
to foster viticulture, appears not to have been understood at the
time. Indeed, as late as 1779 Alexander Hewitt, in his history of the
Colony, expressed the belief, that the repeated failures were mainly
attributable to the want of encouragement. “European grapes,” he wrote,
“have been transplanted, and several attempts made to raise wine; but
so overshaded are the vines planted in the woods, and so foggy is the
season of the year when they ripen, that they seldom come to maturity.
But as excellent grapes have been raised in gardens where they are
exposed to the sun, we are apt to believe that proper methods have not
been taken for encouraging that branch of agriculture, considering its
great importance in a national view.”
No methods whatever could have made viticulture a favored occupation,
so long as cheap rum monopolized the drink market. Indeed, after the
rum habit was once firmly established, it would have been somewhat
difficult, even under the most favorable conditions, to introduce
either brewing or wine-making, because, owing to the change in the
taste of drinkers, there would have been no demand for either beer
or wine. If during the first century, or even half century, rum
had been as difficult to obtain and consequently as expensive as
European spirits, the colonists would in all probability have brought
viticulture or brewing to that stage of development which would
have answered the domestic demand. We have it on the authority of a
contemporaneous writer, that as early as 1680, Mr. Lynch, “an ingenious
planter,” had raised “barley of which he intended to make malt for
brewing English beer and ale.” He had all the necessary utensils for
that purpose, and would probably have succeeded himself and found
successful imitators, if it had not been for the rapid development of
the rum traffic.
[Sidenote: GEORGIA]
General Oglethorpe’s description of the effects of the rum habit in the
older settlements induced the trustees of this province to pass “an act
to prevent the importation and use of rum and brandies in the province
of Georgia, and any kinds of spirits or strong water whatsoever.” Far
from being identical with Prohibition in the modern sense of the term,
this act had for its object neither more nor less than a change of
drinking habits, to be effected by the substitution of wine and beer
for the drinks prohibited. The same trustees who passed the prohibitory
act, sent over large quantities of Madeira wine and strong beer;
and Oglethorpe exerted himself in furthering domestic brewing and
viticulture, which he conceived to be the only practicable means of
making the people temperate. In this, he merely reflected, as we have
seen, the opinions of the early lawmakers of nearly every Colony; but
he went further in carrying out this idea than they did—in fact, he
went too far, and thus overreached his object.
At the present day, the experiment made in Georgia over one hundred
and sixty years ago, is highly interesting because it confirms the
conviction, entertained by all those who have studied the drink
question, that no temperance efforts can ever be successful unless they
are accompanied by all the conditions that favor abundant production
and consequent cheapness of good and palatable fermented drinks. Exert
himself as he would, Oglethorpe could not supply beer or wine in such
quantities and at such prices as to ensure the success of his measure.
In the settlements of the Salzburgers the taste of the people helped
to further his object; but even there, the drink called beer, which
was made of molasses, sassafras and the tops of fir trees, proved but
a poor substitute, scarcely calculated to satisfy a German palate.
Oglethorpe fully understood that a steady and abundant supply of cheap
beer was absolutely required to render the prohibitory act effective.
In a letter to the trustees written at Fredericia,[4] under date of
October 7, 1738, in which he urgently requested that fifty or sixty
tuns of beer from the brewery of Hucks at Southwark be sent him, he
said: “Cheap beer is the only means to keep rum out.” It is extremely
doubtful, whether under then existing circumstances cheap beer would
have sufficed to keep out rum. There were other considerations
which militated against Oglethorpe’s purpose. His own people were
dissatisfied with the law; they conceived it to be detrimental to their
material interests, inasmuch as it debarred them from trading with the
West Indies, “an excellent and convenient market for their lumber,”
as Hewitt has it. Besides, they were of the opinion, held by many
competent judges in our time, that the climate of the province rendered
the use of rum advisable from a sanitary point of view. The Carolinians
could not be prevented from bringing rum into the Colony, although
after the first altercation, which arose on account of this practice,
they promised to desist from it. Hence rum could easily be had; and it
is not difficult to understand that so long as good rum could be had
cheaply, men accustomed to ardent liquors would not at short notice
make poor beer their everyday beverage. Even Oglethorpe’s immediate
_entourage_ could not be induced to discard rum for the questionable
drink which he furnished them from his brewery at Jekyl. “Settlers
and officers,” says McCall, in his History of Georgia, “were known to
retire from the presence of the general into an adjoining apartment in
order to drink.” But, worse than all, the magistrates themselves, who
had the power to license ale-houses, and were instructed to prevent and
punish the sale of ardent spirits, engaged in the unlawful traffic, or
openly connived at it.
[4] The following curious episode of Oglethorpe’s journey to
Fredericia is reproduced in C.C. Jones’ “Dead Towns of Georgia”:
“Mr. Ogelthorpe accompanied them in his scout-boat, keeping the
fleet together, and taking the hindermost craft in tow. As an
incentive to unity of movement, he placed all the strong beer on
board one boat. The rest labored diligently to keep up; for, if
they were not all at the place of rendezvous each night, the
tardy crew lost their rations.”
No more need be said to show that the act was practically a dead
letter, long before its repeal in 1742. A modern historian, the
Rev. William B. Stevens, a sincere friend of true temperance, in
reviewing Oglethorpe’s efforts to substitute wine and beer for ardent
spirits, says that “Georgia was designed to be a temperance colony,
although no temperance movement had roused up the nations to the woe
of drunkenness.” And again: “Thus did temperance strive with charity
to lay pure foundations, and build up a spotless superstructure of
colonial virtue; but it was a movement too much in advance of the age,
and too much opposed to the already settled habits of the colonists,
to meet with the success it merited.” A temperance colony with pure
foundations and a spotless superstructure of virtue by means of the
substitution of fermented drinks for ardent liquors!
The Salzburgers were not the only people of temperate drinking habits
whom Oglethorpe settled in his colony. Before them had come the
Moravians—mostly beer-drinking Germans—men and women of rare virtue
and sincere piety, who embarked for Georgia on the same ship with
the Governor and with John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, at
present the creed of nine million Americans. Wesley, to quote Robert
Southey’s words “was so deeply impressed with the piety, simplicity
and equanimity of these, his shipmates,” that he applied himself to
the study of the German language in order to be able to converse with
them more freely. He had seen them frequently during their tempestuous
voyage, facing the menace of death with the unflinching calm and
resignation of their absolute “Gottvertrauen,” and it was doubtless
on this voyage that he conceived the desires which, upon his return
to England, made him a disciple of Peter Boehler, then on the eve of
his departure for Georgia, and prompted him to visit the Moravians in
Germany.
Neither the Moravians nor the Salzburgers of Georgia seem to have
received at the hands of modern historians their due measure of
appreciation. The somewhat indulgent contempt with which Jones in
his “Dead Towns of Georgia” occasionally refers to the Salzburgers
reveals a total lack of appreciation of these pious, upright and sturdy
people whom one is strongly tempted to style the German Huguenots.
Like their French co-religionists they were driven out of the land of
their birth by the intolerance of tyrannical rulers, and, sacrificing
all they possessed for the sake of their faith, they sought homes in
foreign lands. Both were welcomed and received with open arms by the
father of Frederick the Great, who colonized seventeen thousand of the
Salzburgers in his provinces and would gladly have sheltered them all;
but a part of the exodus was diverted to other lands and of that part
Oglethorpe secured a few communities with their pastors whom he settled
in Georgia.
Goethe immortalized the Salzburgers in his beautiful epic poem
“Hermann and Dorothea,”—“the German’s pride and poesy’s pearl”—and in
his history of Frederick the Great, Carlyle devotes one of his most
interesting chapters to them; but what ought to bring them nearer to
the American heart is the fact that Whitefield and Wesley called them
colonists of the best description, dwelling together in perfect peace
and harmony, without courts of law, referring all little differences
to their ministers whom they loved as their fathers. Wesley said of
the Georgia Moravians (all beer-drinking Germans) that they were “the
only genuine Christians he had ever met.” Whitefield said of the
Salzburgers’ spiritual leaders that he had “not often seen such pious
men.” No greater praise can be conceived than that which Bancroft,
America’s master historian, bestows upon the Salzburgers in the second
volume of his History of the United States. Jones’ veiled slur about
these people’s eagerness to get their beer shows a petty bias which
seems to crop up regularly whenever American historians lose sight of
the close relationship that exists between the Anglo-Saxon and their
Germanic cousins of other lands.
Unbiased minds will appreciate Oglethorpe’s profound regret at his
failure to carry out his plans, all the more so, if the present
condition of things in Georgia be considered.
In the “dead towns” of that State a tombstone may here or there testify
to the mundane existence of the Salzburgers; more rarely, perhaps, a
German patronymic, corrupted or Anglicized, may remind one of these
people; but that is practically all that is left of them. In Prussia,
however, their brethren flourished, forming a most useful, prosperous
and happy part of the population, who, as Carlyle puts it, had all
reason on their annual thanksgiving days “piously to admit that
Heaven’s blessing had been upon that King and upon them.”
From a general point of view, considering the South as a whole, it
may be said that brewing had gained no firm foothold there during the
Colonial period in spite of the fact that, besides the Salzburgers,
there were several considerable German and Swiss settlements on the
Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers in North Carolina, on the Edisto River in
South Carolina, and in many parts of Virginia.
In the middle of the last century, and in a few isolated cases somewhat
earlier, brewing received a strong impetus through the influx of
German immigrants, but the climate and other countervailing influences
retarded its progress, as we shall presently see, until at a much later
period improvements in the art itself and the perfecting of artificial
refrigeration enabled the Southern brewer to carry on a profitable
business adapted to the peculiar conditions of his environment.
In the chapter entitled “The Rise of Lager Beer,” it will be shown what
disasters have befallen Southern brewing under the operation of recent
laws.