Hewson L. Peeke

“ Through autumn rains and winter frosts and snows the poorly built meeting house stood unheated, growing more damp, more icy,56 more deadly, with each succeeding week. Women cowered shivering, half-frozen, over the feeble heat of a metal footstove as the long services dragged on and the few coals became ashes. ”

“ At three he dines, commonly on a single dish, and drinks from half a pint to a pint of Madeira wine. This with one small glass of punch, a draught of beer, and two dishes of tea (which he takes half an hour before the setting of the sun) constitutes his whole sustenance until the next day. But his table is always furnished with elegance and exuberance; and whether he has company or not, he remains at the table an hour in familiar conversation, then every one is called upon to give some absent friend a toast. After he has dined, he applies himself to business, and about nine retires to rest ”

“ Those who will have brandy, French as well as Indians, are obliged to go to the store-house to drink, and each can obtain at one time only the twenty-fourth part of a quart. It is certain that the savages cannot become intoxicated on that quantity. The price is high, and as they cannot get brandy only each in his turn, it sometimes happens that the savages are obliged to return home without a taste of this beverage, and they seem ready to kill themselves with disappointment. Though the Jesuits refused absolution to all who sold brandy to the Indians, they sold it themselves. ”

“ In 1733 the Pennsylvania Gazette laments that Philadelphia women, "otherwise discreet," instead of contenting themselves with one good draught of beer in the morning take "two or three drams by which their appetite for wholesome food is destroyed." Women kept ordinaries and taverns from early days. Widows abounded, for the life of the male colonist was hard, exposure was great, and many died in middle age. War also had many victims. Tavern-keeping was the resort of widows of small means then. Many licenses were granted to them to keep victualling houses, to draw wine, and make and sell beer. ”

“ There were but few storekeepers in Virginia in early days who were not engaged in the Indian trade. Guns, ammunition, rum, blankets, knives, and hatchets were the articles in greatest demand among the tribes. When in the ordinary course of events a young American in Virginia or elsewhere felt himself impelled to leave the paternal roof he put aside his gun and fishing rod, and asked of his father some money, a slave, and a canoe. ”

“ The fur traders were a class of men held in contempt among the Iroquois and known among them by the significant title of Rum Carriers. The white trappers seem to have been as dissipated as the Indians. One writer declares that most of the Canadians drink so much brandy in the morning that they are unfit for work all day. Another says that when a canoe man is tired he will lift a keg of brandy to his lips and drink the raw liquor from the bung-hole, after which, having spoiled his appetite, he goes to bed supperless,96 so with drink and hardship he is an old man at forty. ”

“ Our intercourse is perfectly familiar and unrestrained, and our social hours, when undisturbed with the labors of law, are passed in gay and frank conversation, which at once enlivens and instructs. We take no part in Washington society. We dine once a year with the President, and that is all. On other days we dine together, and discuss at table the questions which are argued before us. We are great ascetics and even deny ourselves wine except in wet weather. What I say about the wine gives you our rule ”

“ In New York state before a burial took place a number of persons, usually friends of the dead, watched the body throughout the night, liberally supplied with various bodily comforts, such as abundant strong drink, plentiful tobacco and pipes, and newly-made cakes. These watchers were not wholly gloomy nor did the midnight hours lag unsolaced. A Dutch funeral was costly, the expenditure for gloves, scarfs, and rings was augmented in New York by the gift of a bottle of wine and a linen scarf. ”

“ The tap-room of the tavern and the green trees in its dooryard offered a pleasant shade to tired church-goers, and its well sweep afforded a grateful drink to those who turned not to the tap-room. There are ever back-sliders in every church community; many walked into the ordinary57 door instead of up the church alley. The chimney seat of the inn was more comfortable than the narrow seat of the "pue." The general court of Massachusetts passed a law requiring all inn-keepers within a mile of any meeting house to clear their houses "during the hours of the exercise." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Seminole War had the combined causes of slavery and liquor. President Jackson gave slave traders permission to buy slaves of the Seminole Indians. The trader, knowing that the Indians were intoxicated, would induce them to give bills of sale for negroes they did not own, and the complications thus caused led to the Seminole War.
The Black Hawk War was directly caused by the liquor traffic, while the career of Pontiac, the ablest Indian statesman his race ever produced, illustrates that drunkenness was the bane of the Indian race. ”

“ 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 Indian17 corn, becomes, in three months so much like Madeira wine, that Europeans drink it without perceiving the difference. ”

“ In his gloomy views of the War of 1812 he asks what Virginia can raise, and answers his question thus: "Tobacco? It is not worth the pipe it is smoked in. Some say whiskey, but all mankind must become drunkards to consume it." While Chastellux, in his travels, tells of discussing a bowl of punch with Jefferson at83 Monticello, Jefferson never seems to have drunk ardent spirits or strong wine, and in his last illness his physician could not induce him to take brandy strong enough to benefit him. ”

“ The Dutch were too much beer drinkers, became with speed rum consumers, and opposed prohibiting the sale of rum to the Indians. William Penn wrote in 1683: "Ye Dutch, Sweed and English have by brandy and specially rum almost debauched ye Indians all." On arriving at a trading post an Indian hunting party would trade perhaps a third of their peltries for fine clothes, ammunition,105 paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then a keg of brandy would be purchased and the council held to decide who was to get drunk and who was to stay sober. ”

“ Of the many ways through which a sure revenue might flow into the treasury none seemed as desirable as an impost. Of molasses, two millions of gallons came into the country each year. A few hundreds of thousands of these were consumed as food. The remainder were hurried to the Massachusetts distilleries and there made into the far-famed New England rum, which by the fishermen at the Grand Banks was thought much finer than32 the best that came from Jamaica. All other goods brought into any port in the country were to be taxed at five per cent of their value. ”

“ From this time on at all Indian negotiations a large percentage of the Indians expected rum or whiskey to be produced.
No other cause has been as prolific of Indian wars as the liquor traffic.
The war of the Indians with the Dutch in 1675 in New York was caused by the sale of liquor and firearms to the Indians, as well as all the trouble that the Dutch ever seem to have had with their Indian neighbors. ”

“ The King was never at heart a prohibitionist. His Canadian revenue was drawn from the fur trade, and the singular argument of the partisans of brandy, that its attractions were needed to keep the Indians from contact100 with heresy, served admirably to salve his conscience. The Dutch and English being the heretics, he distrusted the Bishop of Quebec, the great champion of the anti-liquor movement. ”

“ One was to meet on the 23d of August at Washington, in Pennsylvania. The date chosen for the meeting of the second was September 7th, and the place Pittsburgh. Both were held. That at Washington denounced the law and called on all good people to treat every man taking office under it with contempt, and withhold from him all comfort, aid, and support. That at Pittsburgh complained bitterly of the salaries of the federal officers, of the rate of interest on the national debt, of the Funding System, of the Bank, and of the tax on whiskey. ”

“ The Reverend John Miller, in his history of New York, says: "'Tis in this country a common thing even for the meanest persons as soon as the bounty of God has furnished them with a bountiful crop to turn what they can as soon as may be into money, and that money into drinks, at the same time when their family at home have nothing but rags to resist the winter's cold ”

“ The federalists became the enemies of taxation; the republicans became its advocates, and before the session ended taxed pleasure carriages, sales at auction, sugar refineries, salt, licenses to sell liquor at retail; laid a stamp tax on all kinds of legal documents, taxed whiskey stills, imposed a direct tax of three million dollars and brought back all the machinery of assessment and collection, and again turned loose in the land the tax gatherer and what they had once called his minions. ”

“ Two days in the week, Monday and Thursday, the meat was boiled, and, in college language, these were known as boiling days. On the five remaining days, the meat was roasted, and to them the nickname of roasting days were fastened. With the flesh always went potatoes. When boiling days came round, pudding and cabbage, wild peas and dandelions were added. The only delicacy to which no stint was applied was the cider, a beverage then fast supplanting the small beer of the colonial days. ”

“ The bill for liquor where many16 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. ”

“ In Pennsylvania men were imprisoned in a cage seven feet high, seven feet wide, and seven feet long, for selling liquor to the Indians and for watering the white man's30 rum, both of which offences the law placed on equal footing.
Virginia and New Jersey declared liquor debts uncollectible by law.
Several of the colonies forbade workmen to be paid in liquor. In Massachusetts, in 1764, the law required that all who bought liquor should render an account of it except state officers, professors and students of Harvard College, and preachers of the gospel. ”

“ In early American history the use of liquor by an infant seems to have been nearly coincident with its entrance into life. A family receipt called Caudle has been handed down through the family of Mrs. Johannes de Peyster, and calls for "three gallons of water, seven pounds of sugar, oatmeal by the pound, spice, raisins and lemons by the quart and two gallons of the very best Madeira wine." ”

“ A good southern hotel of which there were few was a large brick building with a long veranda in front. For a shilling and sixpence, Virginia currency, the traveler was shown to a neat bed in a well furnished room up one flight of stairs. On the wall was fastened a printed table of rates. From this he learned that breakfast cost two shillings, and dinner with grog or toddy was three; that a quart of toddy was one and six, that a bottle of porter was two and six, and that the best Madeira wine sold for six shillings142 a quart. ”

“ Just in the proportion which a tax bears to the value of an article is the risk men will run in their attempts to bring in33 that article in an illegal way. This impairs the revenue, and in time so much comes in through the hands of smugglers that no revenue is yielded at all." Boudinot said "he for one would be glad to see Jamaica rum doing just that very thing." There were three good results that would come of a high rum tariff: The treasury wanted money, and surely there was no article on the lists of taxable goods so likely to furnish a revenue as rum ”

“ Wedding festivities seemed to have caused118 about the same amount of liquor drinking throughout the country. In the new land weddings and births were joyful events. The colonists broke with the home traditions and insisted on being married at home rather than at church. As civilization advanced and habits grew more luxurious the marriage festivities grew more elaborate and became affairs of serious expense. Scharf, in his Chronicles of Baltimore, says the house would be filled with company to dine; the same company would stay to supper. For two days punch was dealt out in profusion. ”

“ In 1817 a committee of New York citizens appointed to investigate the causes of pauperism reported that seven-eighths of the paupers were reduced to abject poverty by the sale of liquor. As far back as 1809 the Humane Society found eighteen hundred licensed dramshops scattered over the city, retailing liquor in small quantities, and offering every inducement to the poor to drink.
New Hampshire required a selectman of each town to post the names of tipplers in every tavern and fined anyone ten dollars who sold them liquor. ”