-Caveat Lector-
http://www.spectator.org/opinion/robinson/robinson.htm
Posted 11/28/00
Drinking Like A Revolutionary
by Matthew Robinson
The History Channel has launched a special on the Founding Fathers. Their
advertisements aren't exactly promising. Ben Franklin is presented as a
"skirt-chaser." James Madison a "nerd" like Bill Gates. John Adams is billed
as a candidate for "Prozac."
True, the Founding Fathers weren't demigods devoid of human foibles. But
most American liberals attack the founders out of a sense of superiority,
searching for ways to vanquish heroes. In this way, they believe they can
hew down the men and ignore the Whig ideas that naturally war with their own
New Deal trust in government and distrust of freedom.
But in one area the founding generation was undeniably tougher, bigger, and
superior: in their ability to drink.
Historian Joyce Appleby estimates that the average American of the Founders
generation drank eight ounces of alcohol a day. Everything from small beers
and ciders with breakfast; rum and wine with dinner; clarets and Madeiras
after dinner; and punches with dances.
And the beverages of this period were not the chic, sissy,
I-don't-like-the-taste-of-alcohol-type drinks that are popular today. No,
the punches of the period were staggering (click here for some examples
http://www.spectator.org/opinion/robinson/drinks.htm ). The kind of
concoction that would hit the spot, rub it out, and then take the paint off
the walls.
It's no wonder their Whig political ideals were so resolute and
far-reaching -- a one-night bender with these 18th century heroes would
likely kill the effete, Volvo driving, wine-spritzer drinking New Englander
of today. In the company of men who loved to read and hear speeches,
drinking and ideas were explored in deep and varied ways.
"Demon rum" was the most enjoyed (and the most lamented) drink of the time.
It was the largest manufactured product north of the Pennsylvania. In fact,
British controls on money made rum a currency used to pay for goods. Rum
became the smuggler's contraband of choice and the instigator of America's
hatred for taxes and love for freedom.
High-seas daring and creative bribes reduced British trade regulation to
nothing. British efforts to get a piece of this action with unlawful
sea-courts, fines, and the elimination of trial by jury helped ignite the
Molotov cocktail of revolution.
Though the early Americans loved to drink, they didn't just lay around the
house boozing it up.
Taverns became the hothouse incubator of Whig ideas and plans for American
resistance. After the Stamp Act, the defiant Virginians, Richard Henry Lee,
George Mason, George Washington, Edmund Pendleton, Peyton Randolph and
Thomas Jefferson would meet repeatedly at the Raleigh Tavern in the capitol
of Williamsburg. There they hatched up such plans as for the Committees of
Correspondence and the non-importation of British goods.
A backroom of the Green Dragon Tavern became the headquarters of the Sons of
Liberty in Boston. There, the revolutionaries, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere,
and John Hancock, James Otis and others orchestrated Massachusetts'
resistance against Parliament's infringements.
Taverns helped foment the revolutionary spirit.
Simply put, alcohol and unjust, plodding, intrusive government didn't mix.
With just enough of life's hard edge removed, the American Whigs, as they
called themselves, counted the blessings of America and soon realized what
their hard work had earned.
Britain's help was mostly incidental in their eyes. So with a little drink,
their conversations were raucous and gritty, but also simple and incisive
about what the superpower of England was up to and what it would cost them.
John Adams wrote of a stop in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts a town 40 miles from
Boston. As he sat in glowing candle light, enjoying a drink after a muddy
and wet ride, he recorded what men talked about when they sat down to drink.
There presently came in, one after another, half a dozen, or half a score of
substantial yeomen, who, sitting down to the fire after lighting their pipes
began a lively conversations on politics. As I believed I was unknown to all
of them, I sat in total silence to hear them. One said, "The people of
Boston are distracted." Another answered, "No wonder the people of Boston
are distracted. Oppression will make wise men mad." The third said, "What
would you say if a fellow should come to your house and tell you he was come
to take a list of your cattle, that Parliament might tax you for them at so
much a head? And how should you feel if he was to go and break open your
barn or take down your oxen, cows, horses, and sheep?" "What should I say?"
replied the first, "I would knock him in the head." "Well," said a fourth,
"If Parliament can take away Mr. Hancock's wharf and Mr. Rowe's wharf, they
can take away your barn and any house." After much more reasoning in this
style, a fifth, who had as yet been silent, broke out, "Well, it's high time
for us to rebel; we must rebel some time or other, and we had better rebel
now than at any time to come. If we put it off for ten or twenty years, and
let them go on as they have begun, they will get a strong party among us,
and plague us a great deal more than they can now."
Honoring such men means remembering the earthy and soaring qualities that
defined that generation. Men who showed how liberty and virtue lift up man
to unparalleled vistas and unequaled accomplishments; and men who knew that
in a free republic Joe Sixpack would come to be as much the image and
stalwart arm of patriotism as any picture of Uncle Sam.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Robinson, a 1999 Phillips Foundation fellow, is working on a book
about the dangers of polling in America.
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