lace where we were drinking whiskey in the United States. Um, then Cody will tell us a little bit about the tax that was levied on whisky that fomented this whole rebellion, and then at the very end I’ll talk a little bit about the legacies and the situations after the Whiskey Rebellion, and then we have a really great conversation about this conflict and what it has meant for America and what maybe it can tell us about America today.
And we are the History Buffs.
Welcome to the History Buffs podcast, where history matters. After today’s show, go to iTunes, rate us, and leave a review. We hope you enjoy the episode!
Marissa: By the 1790s, whiskey held a special place in the hearts of American drinkers. I thought I’d take a few minutes to explain how this happened. Much like Americans are today, colonial Americans were into beer, as much for food safety reasons as for personal preference. Because basically it was safer to drink beer than it was water, which was full of microbes. Um, but most early American beer had a low alcohol content. Wine, a staple in the Old World, was generally unavailable for all but the wealthiest elites. I think Jefferson had like a huge collection of wine.
Sarah: He did but he went into huge significant debt importing it.
Marissa: Right, so it wasn’t what your average person could. There wasn’t enough demand for it to stimulate American viticulture until much later (like the 1980s). Gin, a staple of every British drunkard, was a grain-based alcohol flavored with the juniper berry. Gin became so popular in Georgian London that satirists like William Hogarth depicted debauched scenes of vagrants and lie-abouts, wasted out of their minds, and littering the London streets. I think one of his cartoons is called “Gin Lane” or something like that. This was called the “gin epidemic.” So, given the high numbers of English flocking to the colonies, one would think that gin would be popular there too. But no, gin never caught on. Some historians think this is because in England, gin was most popular 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 sh