r in urban areas. And there were fewer of those in colonial America.
Besides, early Americans had plenty of options for making their own “hot waters” as distilled liquors were called. Colonists discovered new and exciting fruits that they quickly used to distill fruit brandies. Throughout the rest of the century, these remained popular and regional specialities emerged. New Englanders made pears into perry, Georgia became known for its peach brandy, and the middle Atlantic regions popularized applejack (also called Jersey lightning). And apples weren’t native to the New World, they just got really into them.
Sarah: Right, most apples were used for cider, not for eating.
Marissa: But serious drinkers everywhere sought new and exciting alternatives to fruit liquors. The eastern slopes of the Appalachians were home to America’s first grain alcohols. In the late 1600s, this area was truly a wild frontier with a sparse population. Corn, rye and occasionally potatoes were distilled on a small scale by back country yokels into potent grain alcohols. They didn’t catch on right away though. Rum was too popular. Rum production used the molasses by-product of the Caribbean sugar plantations so it was cheap and readily available in the 18th century. The first rum distillery opened in 1700 in Boston. Spiced rum and rum punch became staples in most regions, and by 1705 or so, rum became one of New England’s most important exports.
As the frontier expanded, settlers realized that rum was becoming harder to acquire. It was too costly to ship heavy vats of molasses, or crates of finished rum, into the dense backwoods of Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, etc. So frontiersmen, drawing on the wisdom of earlier Appalachian settlers, turned to grain whiskeys. Farmers usually harvested more grain than they could eat or sell so whiskey gave them a way to use their surplus. A bushel of corn made 3 gallons of whiskey. Scotch-Irish immigrants flooded the area in the 1730s, bringing their whiskey-distillation skills from the Old Country. (I should mention here that Americans were already familiar with whiskey. Mainland Britons and American colonists imported whiskey from Ireland, the whiskey center of the world, but obviously only wealthy people could afford it). Their skills improved the quality of American whiskey, making it a desirable commodity in other parts of North America. Whiskey was more marketable than grains anyway because it was easier to ship and it kept longer.
The whiskey industry benefited from the Revolution at rum’s expense. During the war, the British Royal Navy blockaded American ports. So imports from the Caribbean, like sugar and molasses, became rare. Rum production suffered as a result. At the same time, civilian and military demand for alcohol sored. Each Continental soldier was given 4 oz. of whiskey per day. In the French and Indian Wars, colonial troops were given rum rations.
What were they given in the Civil War?
Sarah: Nothing, absolutely nothing. No alcohol rations. One of the doctors that I study often talks about how difficult, because of temperance, how difficult it was to get whiskey to transport body parts back to the Army medical museum for study. And so sometimes they would try to transport a barrel of whiskey down to the front line to fill with body parts, and by the time it got there it’d be empty because people would be siphoning it off. And so he writes this memoir that he has this secret hope that people are siphoning it off on the way back and getting this alcohol tainted with human bodies.
Sarah: Yeah, that’s like his revenge.
Marissa: To get back at them?
Sarah: Yeah. It’s disgusting but it illustrates the fight over alcohol during the Civil War. The purposes that it served.
Marissa: Well at this point there was no fight. They were just like give the troops all the alcohol.
Sarah: Yeah, it was seen as necessary for morale.
Marissa: Right, spirits were thought to improve moral and to actually strengthen soldiers’ bodies as they suffered malnutrition, injury and illness. Since alcohol prevented food stuffs