American Revolution’s drink of choice was rum, not tea
An interesting piece over at Salon. Forget tea, it was all about the rum:
The tea that was thrown into Boston Harbor was actually tax free, and the men throwing it overboard were doing so at the behest of local merchants who had warehouses filled with more expensive smuggled tea that they could sell only if the British East India Co.’s cheaper cargo was unloaded. They knew that no amount of patriotism would stop the Bostonians from buying a cheaper product.
But the real conflict between the colonists and Britain began over taxes on molasses, not tea. And that’s where the French come in. The Founding Fathers not only loved the French, but they also loved the molasses that Paris’ Caribbean colonies produced — and they loved even more the rum that New England distillers made from it.
New England had an insatiable thirst for molasses, since a gallon of it made a gallon of rum, and the inhospitable lands of the Northeast did not produce enough grain to make whiskey. The colonists drank a lot of the New England rum they produced and sold the rest to the Indians, with devastating social results, or bartered the rum for slaves from West Africa, with equally devastating results there. Benjamin Franklin chillingly put it that “indeed if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these Savages in order to make room for cultivators of the earth, it seems not improbable that Rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the Sea-Coast.”
However, they could not get molasses from the British colonies in the Caribbean, who used it to make their own — and much better — rum. Franklin actually wrote poetry about punch made with Jamaica rum!
In 1775 Abigail Adams wrote indignantly to her husband that British Gen. Thomas Gage in Boston had “ordered all the molasses to be distilled into rum for the soldiers: taken away all licenses, and given out others, obliging to a forfeiture of ten pounds if any rum is sold without written orders from the General.” Equally concerned with a rum gap, Washington wrote to Congress in 1777 suggesting “erecting Public Distilleries in different States.” He went on to explain, “The benefits arising from the moderate use of strong Liquor have been experienced in all Armies and are not to be disputed.” Indeed, he anticipated modern patriots when in 1781 he complained to Gen. William Heath because the latter was providing French wine to Continental soldiers, when everybody knew that they preferred rum. Washington laid down firmly, “Wine cannot be distributed the Soldiers instead of Rum, except the quantity is much increased. I very much doubt whether a Gill of rum would not be preferred to a pint of small wine.”
New Hampshire rose to the call and levied each town to provide 10,000 gallons of West India rum for the Revolutionary Army. It is ironic that Gen. Washington thought so highly of the martial virtues of rum, since one of his few outright military victories in the field — over the 1,300 Hessians at Trenton, N.J., on Christmas Day 1776 — was reputedly because the enemy was overfortified with the Christmas spirit.
So tomorrow, do the patriotic thing: Have a rum and Coke or three. (Just leave the fireworks, and the driving, to someone else. Another good argument for backyard celebrations.)
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