ALCOHOL, AND ALCOHOLISM
“...a large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep.” — Professor William James HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
2,300 BCE
Assyrians recorded that before their gods created the earth, they had been drinking a wine made from sesame seeds. PLANTS
A map depicting the Mesopotamian city of Lagash was carved into a stone tablet held in the lap of a Sumerian god.
Donkey-mounted couriers begin carrying written messages about Iraq and Iran. Originally, these imperial messengers, called angaros in Persian and angelos, or angels, in Greek, had no scheduled routes or relay stations. Instead they would count on getting replacement mounts from the areas through which they traveled. This procedure would sometimes led to conflict with locals. (The government paid local leaders to provide the post riders with grooms, shelter, watering facilities, and substantial numbers of mounts. Since nothing happens perfectly, sometimes the post riders were reduced to taking what they needed.) A modified system in which the kings kept their own postal herds worked better, and by the 13th Century the Mongols would have relay stations linking every major town between the Yellow and Black Seas.
Eastern Mediterranean smiths began beating meteoric iron into sacred knives and medallions. Meteoric iron has continued to be made into aristocratic weapons into historic times, Indonesian krisses being the most famous examples. As about 2,000 meteorites fall on earth during the typical year, meteoric iron is found throughout the world. While the Ka’bah in Mecca is probably the world’s most famous iron meteorite, the largest would be found near Grootfontein, Namibia, in 1920 — a 60-65 ton block of iron shale measuring about 9 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 3-1/4 feet thick.
Friezes on the walls of a tomb in Saqqara, Egypt show youths wrestling. Other friezes on the same tombs also show boys in light tunics boxing with bare fists and fencing with papyrus stalks (perhaps in the context of playing soldier).
ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.
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PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1,468 BCE
The Sumerians invented a single-tube seed drill.
Archaeological evidence such as the distinctive axes and swords of China, found at various Middle Eastern sites, indicate there to have been considerable contact and trade between the Far East and the Middle East. Liquor was distilled in parts of Asia. The soybean was cultivated in Manchuria. Bone inscriptions in Chinese ideograms refer to the making of beer. PLANTS
ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT WHEN HE INSISTED THAT ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC AND PARTICULAR (AND WRONG WHEN HE CHARACTERIZED TRUTH AS A GENERALIZATION).
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PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
500 BCE
Etruscan soldiers started carrying curved short swords known as kopis. Later popularized by the armies of Cyrus and Alexander, these slashing weapons are sometimes claimed as ancestors for the Gurkha kukri. That seems unlikely, because until their transition to firearms and bows during the 1760s the Nepalese used kukris mostly to slaughter livestock, chop wood, and clear brush.
Mayans made statues showing psilocybin mushrooms.
Peruvians made pots showing men chewing coca leaves and friezes showing men carrying staffs made from the stalks of psychotropic cacti.
“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.
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PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
241 BCE
Yet another altercation involving our favorite pushy people, the Romans: at Aegates Islands the Romans led by C. Lutatius Catulus defeated the Carthaginians under Hanno (this was not the Hanno who sailed down the west coast of Africa, as that had happened in about 500 BCE), creating the Pax Romana.1
Annual tribute demanded after the conquest of Sicily would allow Rome to obtain wheat cheaply for its citizens. War in general had brought benefits for the Romans through the capture of productive acreage for Romans, the opening of markets for Roman plantation-produced wine, and the taking of slaves by the Romans — and after all, this is about the triumph of civilization, isn’t it? If we need to have more without end, doesn’t it stand to reason that we are also going to need war without end? PLANTS
YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.
1. You will note that in these records of battles leaving fields littered with corpses, the terms “creating the Pax Romana” and “disrupting the Pax Romana” are terms of art — and are employed arbitrarily. Please don’t try to figure out why sometimes the term “creating” is selected, and sometimes the word “disrupting,” as this won’t get you anywhere at all. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
280 CE
The emperor Marcus Aurelius Probus rescinded an edict of Domitian which had prohibited the planting of grape vineyards in the Roman provinces. PLANTS
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
600 CE
During the 7th century of its existence, the Christian Church would give rise to the doctrine known as “monotheletism” — to wit, that Christ had one person and one nature. However, this would be being replaced in some areas by Islam, which would eventually take over the Arabian Peninsula, Mesopotamia, and North Africa. The more Eastern portion of the Christian domain would upholds marriage for priests. Britain would be completely evangelized, and Christianity would spread into the Frisians.
Isidore appointed an archbishop of Seville.
Mohammed was part owner of a shop in Mecca, trading in plant products such as myrrh, frankincense, and spices. PLANTS
“According to legend, Mohammed was cured of narcolepsy with coffee.”
— Wolfgang Schivelbusch, TASTES OF PARADISE: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF SPICES, STIMULANTS, AND INTOXICANTS. NY: Pantheon Books, 1992, page 17.2
Moslem teachings would allow the use of cannabis while proscribing the use of alcohol.
Plant Name Place OTHERS Spinach Spinacia oeracea Iran
2. Schivelbusch points out that this legend is a dubious one, since Mohammed died in AD 694; although coffee was in use as medicine “as early as the 10th century” its popularity as a beverage in Islam dates to “certainly no earlier than the 15th century” (nevertheless, might we not recommend this as a form of argumentative outreach, to the Pope?). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM There was at that time a square old temple in Mecca, the Ka’bah, full of idols.
In one of its corners a black-metal meteorite had been set. Eventually people would be telling each other that this heavenly stone had been given by Gabriel to Abraham. They would be kissing it and touching it. It would be worn hollow by centuries of constant frottage.
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
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PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
746 CE
At this point the Dutch and the Germans began adding the dried blossoms of the hops vine to their brewing beer (the Brits would not be adding hops until after 1524). PLANTS
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
775 CE
Charlemagne gave the upper slopes of the hill of Corton to the Abbey of Saulieu (wine from the grapes of this zone is still called Corton-Charlemagne). PLANTS
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
867 CE
King Charles the Bald granted land on the Loire River at Chablis to the Chapter of St. Martin at Tours for a vineyard. Since the Loire connects to the Seine, this “Chablis” wine would become well-known in Paris. PLANTS
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1250
At about this point, the technique of the distillation of alcohol became known in Europe, making it possible to produce more potent and convenient alcoholic beverages. Until the 16th century, however, distilled or spiritous liquors primarily would be being distilled out of wine (the result of this is termed brandy), would be consequently somewhat pricey, and would find use only by the wealthy and only as medicine. Credited with extraordinary healing powers, their common name would be aqua vitae, “water of life.”
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1475
From this point until 1500, various dervishes would be spreading the use of coffee to Medina and Mecca. The 1st of the khavehkaneh coffee houses would be opening. Secular use would become more prominent in part because wine and drunkenness were forbidden by the Koran. Some holy men would begin to attack the use of this stimulant also, as implicitly contrary to the religion.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1494
Henry VII sent Sir Edward Poynings to regain control of Ireland. Poynings held Parliament at Drogheda; accused Garret More of treason. The “Poynings’ Law” arrangement began, according to which the Irish Parliament might only convene with the consent of England, and all its enactments would of necessity be subject to advance approval by England.
The government of Scotland introduces taxes on a triple-distilled single malt beverage called “whiskey,” a Gaelic word meaning “the water of life.” Yet, even without taxes, distilled spirits were expensive. Therefore they were drunk mostly at weddings, funerals, and similar family or clan occasions. During these gatherings, clansmen competed in rough games such as archery, single-stick, sword-and-buckler fencing, and wrestling. At night, they did sword dances and told stories in rhyme. Military training consisted of a combination of rehearsing moves with sword and buckler, poaching deer, and stealing cattle.
A new university, King’s College, was founded at Aberdeen, Scotland, to join St Andrews (founded 1411) and Glasgow (founded 1451). It was not until this year that any Scottish writer applied the name “Scots” to his own tongue, as distinct from referring to it as “Inglis.” The language would continue to be called Scots or Inglis interchangeably.
At St Andrews, Gawin Douglas graduated from St Salvator’s College and thereafter we suppose would continue his education at Paris. LIFE OF GAWIN DOUGLAS
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1500
During this century, psychoactive drug use in Europe would be becoming more widespread and diverse as European explorers and travelers would discover and bring back a wide variety of new drugs: tobacco, coca leaves or cocaine, cocoa, and cassina from the New World; coffee from Arabia and Turkey; the kola nut from Africa; and tea from China. At the same time, major sociocultural changes make the Western world more receptive to the adoption of innovative drug use. Previous social and religious controls were loosening and society generally was becoming more urban, complex, secular, and freeform. As the recreational consumption of new distilled spirits spread, as religious, social, and political changes weakened traditional controls, the problem of uncontrolled alcohol consumption was increasing. The Reverend Martin Luther, the Reverend John Calvin, and other Reformation leaders would emphasize the need for temperance; for the first time entire books would be devoted to such subjects. During this century the Dutch would achieve their Golden Age in part through cannabis (“hempe”) commerce. However, in North America the hemp plant was growing wild.
In China, the medicinal use of pure opium was fully established, but recreational use was still limited. In India, we find the earliest western records of the production and widespread use of opium. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1525
A coffee controversy preoccupied the Ottoman Empire as use of this “Wine of Islam” became widespread.
Hops were introduced in England from Artois.
THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.
In England, from this point to 1550, excessive use of distilled spirits of alcohol would first be becoming apparent.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1550
From this year until 1575, according to Thomas Nash, there would be widespread inebriety in Elizabethan England; drunkenness was mentioned for the first time as a crime, and preventive statutes would multiply.
BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1564
King Philip of Spain ordered cannabis (hemp) to be grown throughout his empire, which stretched from modern-day Argentina to Oregon.
Priests brought the European grape vine to California via Mexico. PLANTS
FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1589
The West was beginning to learn about an Eastern temperance drink, tea. A Venetian recorded that “The Chinese have an herb from which they press a delicate juice which serves them instead of wine. It also preserves the health and frees them from all the evils that an immoderate use of wine doth breed in us.” PLANTS
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1600
Although there was only one brewery in Saffron Walden, owned by the Gibsons, the climate and soil in this locale produced barley of such high quality that there were 5 additional malting businesses. Much of the malt was transported to London. (By the end of the 19th century when London and other towns were expanding rapidly, 22 maltings would be operating locally, and a peak number of 33 would be reached before the number diminished to one.)
The smoking of tobacco was introduced Turkey and to Russia by travelers from Central Europe and by Western European and Turkish sailors. A controversy broke out over whether use of such substances was implicitly forbidden by the Koran. Although Sultan Ahmed I prohibited tobacco, the poet Pecevi would describe it, coffee, opium, and wine as the four “cushions on the sofa of pleasure.”
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
Queen Elizabeth of England granted a charter to the “Company and Merchants of London trading with the East Indies.” Better known as the Honourable East India Company, this company would be the sole British agent in India until 1858.
In Italy, the 1st import monopolies over tobacco were established. In France, despite high prices, smoking was spreading among the lower classes; snuffing would be more prevalent among the nobility, who consider this a more dignified and aristocratic mode of use. In the Italian and French courts and clergy, the use of tobacco was spreading, and from there throughout the populace (the habit was being spread also by sailors returning from the New World). Tobacco was selling in London for its weight in silver shillings. Cultivation for Europe began in Brazil, while in England, Sir Walter Raleigh persuaded Queen Elizabeth to try some. The 17th Century would be the great age of the pipe. Popes would need to ban smoking or even the taking of snuff in holy places, under threat of excommunication. Tobacco would come into use as “Country Money” or “Country Pay,” and would continue to be used as a monetary standard —literally a “cash crop”— throughout the 18th Century,
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM lasting as a standard of exchange twice as long as would the metal gold.
Increasingly, medicinal use in England would decline and smoking would become primarily a pleasurable pastime. The government eventually would come to rely on tobacco duties as a main source of revenue. By the 1630s, smoking would have overcome most opposition in England, and use would continue to spread as tobacco prices declined markedly.
In England, coffee was introduced as a luxury, medicament, and panacea; its use was encouraged as a cure for widespread drunkenness. In Arabia and Turkey, another brief attempt to shut down coffee houses as centers of sedition failed.
From the founding of the English colonies in America, drunkenness was so prevalent that it simply was not a stigmatized behavior. As in England the consumption of beers and wines, particularly home-brews, was integrated into every aspect of colonial family life. Abuse was condemned and temperance advocated, but alcohol itself is highly esteemed as in England as the Good Creature of God, a beneficial gift to man. England. During the reign of James I, numerous writers describe widespread drunkenness from beer and wine among all classes. Alcohol use was tied to every endeavor and phase of life, a condition that would continue well into the 18th Century. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1606
King Philip III of Spain decreed that tobacco might be grown only in specified locales — such as Cuba, Santo Domingo, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. Sale of tobacco to foreigners was to be punished by death.
The English Parliament enacted “An Act to Repress the Odious and Loathsome Sin of Drunkenness.”
YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1625
Massachusetts laws would attempt to control widespread drunkenness, particularly from home-brews, and to supervise taverns.
Five “beastly Sodomiticall boys” were sent back from the Massachusetts Bay colony to England, for execution. SODOMY
“Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.”
— Dwight David Eisenhower
In a later timeframe, the Reverend William Hubbard would have his own imitable comments on this “lustre of years” in the history of New England.
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
READ HUBBARD TEXT Chapter XXI. Of the affairs of religion in the Massachusetts Colony, in New England, during the first lustre of years after the first attempt for the planting thereof; from the year 1625 to the year 1630. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1629
The Virginia Colonial Assembly decreed that “Ministers shall not give themselves to excess in drinkinge, or riott, or spending their tyme idellye day or night.” (Well, you gotta start somewhere.) DRUNKENNESS
ONE COULD BE ELSEWHERE, AS ELSEWHERE DOES EXIST. ONE CANNOT BE ELSEWHEN SINCE ELSEWHEN DOES NOT. (TO THE WILLING MANY THINGS CAN BE EXPLAINED, THAT FOR THE UNWILLING WILL REMAIN FOREVER MYSTERIOUS.)
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1633
September 3, Tuesday (Old Style): An Ipswich man was ordered to pay £10 and stand so long as the court think meet with a white sheet of paper on his back, whereon Drunkard is written in great letters, “for abusing himself shamefully with drink and for enticing his neighbor’s wife to incontinency and other misdemeanors.” The neighbor also was ordered to pay 15s. for drunkenness.
There, as in numerous other lamentable cases since, intoxication led to the commission of crime.
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE SEPTEMBER 3D, 1633 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST).
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1637
The General Court of Hartford, Connecticut ordered all families to plant at least a single teaspoonful of cannabis (hemp) seed.
Each New England town was required to establish a man to sell wines and “strong water” so that the public would not suffer from lack of proper accommodations.
In France, King Louis XIII, who enjoyed snuff, repealed restrictions on its use.
CONTINGENCY ALTHOUGH VERY MANY OUTCOMES ARE OVERDETERMINED, WE TRUST HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM THAT SOMETIMES WE ACTUALLY MAKE REAL CHOICES.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1638
June 9, Saturday (Old Style): Nathaniel Eaton (a brother of Governor Theophilus Eaton who had been born about 1609) was made a freeman of Cambridge and became the first head of Harvard College. This man would never be dignified with the title of President of that college because his administration of the college, contained in his home, would have to be censured by the government. After this censure he would flee to Virginia and then back to England, where he would die, it has been alleged, in gaol. A very curious confession of his wife, showing the unfavorable management of domestic economy at the College in its earliest day, is given in notes to WINTHROP I. 310. One of the charges against him was that Harvard students in his home had been “wanting beer betwixt brewings a week and a week and a half together.” His wife with her children (except Benoni Eaton), following him to Virginia in a ship, were never heard of after. WINTHROP II. 22.
THE AGE OF REASON WAS A PIPE DREAM, OR AT BEST A PROJECT. ACTUALLY, HUMANS HAVE ALMOST NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING, WHILE CREDITING THEIR OWN LIES ABOUT WHY THEY ARE DOING IT.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1647
Sultan Ahmed I of Turkey lifted his prohibition of tobacco. The poet Pecevi described tobacco, coffee, opium, and wine as the four “cushions on the sofa of pleasure.”
Connecticut banned public smoking: citizens might smoke only once a day “and then not in company with any other.”
Rice was introduced into cultivation in the Carolinas (nowadays California, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas are our main rice-producing states).
Correspondence from the Caribbean to Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts confirmed that workers at sugar cane plantations would require food provisions from the outside, because the production of sugar was more profitable than the production of these other provisions. The most important export for Massachusetts was salt cod sold to feed slaves in West Indian plantations. Returning ships brought quantities of sugar and molasses sufficient to spur the New England spirits industry. PLANTS
IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS, WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.)
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1649
New England’s inns were required by law to provide their customers with beer. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1650
At this point both coffee and tea were virtually unheard-of as hot beverages in Europe and America, although coffee had been playing a minor role as a medication. Tea, Camellia sinensis, was still merely a Chinese crop, and it was alcoholic beverages that remained the universal unchallenged daily drink of “Europeans” everywhere. The New England colonies would be attempting to establish a precise definition of drunkenness that would include the time spent drinking, the amount that was drunk, and the related behavior. However, the 1st shipment of tea was received in New Amsterdam during this year, plus, as of this year the beverage made from the scorched Arabica bean was being introduced into England at a head shop “at the [sign of the] Angel in the parish of St. Peter in the East” in the university town of Oxford. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM By 1675 there would be over 3,000 such coffee houses in England.
Rumor has it that the proprietor of this 1st coffee shop was a Jew from the Lebanon. Soon there would also be a similar outlet in Exeter in Devonshire, which would be being patronized by the spiritual descendants of Walter Raleigh not only for the consumption of the beverage from Arabia but also for the “drinking” of the smoke from the burning of the leaves of a plant from America, the tobacco. Although many coffee houses would also serve beer and wine, the spread of coffee use in Europe’s rapidly growing cities would be facilitated by growing resentment against the effects of alcohol and the need for a center for sober social intercourse and intellectual discussions. In general, tobacco use would begin among the upper classes and aristocrats and then, as prices declined, be copied by the lower and middle classes.
HOWEVER, HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS AS OF THE YEAR 1630, FOR INSTANCE, AS ABOVE, THAT USE WOULD BE EXPANDING AMONG THE CLASSES AS PRICES DECLINED, S/ HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. AT THIS POINT PRICES HAVE NOT YET DECLINED, AND THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1654
In Connecticut, a General Court Order was made to confiscate... “whatsoever Barbados liquors, commonly called rum, Kill Devill or the like” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1655
In Italy, what isn’t exactly sinful is at the very least a revenue possibility. Pope Alexander VII (he had just left off being Fabio Chigi of Siena) franchised alcohol and tobacco monopolies (he would pull this neat trick again in 1660). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1659
May 11, Wednesday (Old Style): Christmas was not a family holiday, but yet another excuse for downtown hooliganism, often by wandering bands of firemen. The Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony directed that “For preventing disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others: it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county.”The towns would be employing “mince smellers” to walk the streets, sniffing BOSTON
out any who dared to bake the traditional mincemeat pies of the season.3
THE SCARLET LETTER: “What have we here?” said Governor Bellingham, looking with surprise at the scarlet little figure before him. “I profess I have never seen the like since my days of vanity, in old King James’s time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favour to be admitted to a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions in holiday time, and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a guest into my hall?”
3. This may not seem so strange if one bears in mind that it would be such bands of drunken Christmas carousers that would induce New-York to form its 1st police department. Christmas then was not like Christmas now: until the 1830s, gifts were typically given at the new year rather than on Christmas Day. After that decade gifts would begin to be given during the entire holiday period, and then gift-giving would refocus itself upon our newly reconfigured family-oriented and food-oriented, no longer downtown riot- oriented and drink-oriented, Christmas holiday to the exclusion of the drunken New Year’s bash. This celebration of Christmas that was being banned therefore had nothing whatever to do with “family values.” Rather than being organized by a benign “Santa Claus” figure, it was under the sway of a very dicey street-smart “Lord of Misrule” who indulged himself — often with a vengeance. Refer to Stephen Nissenbaum’s THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1660
The beverage made from the scorched Arabian bean coffee was at this point being introduced into France as a substitute for the consumption of wine. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1673
William Hall was for one last time Deputy from Portsmouth to the General Assembly of Rhode Island. He was appointed on a committee for the purpose of “treating with the Indians about drunkenness, and to seriously council them, and agree of Some way to prevent extreme excess of Indian drunkenness.” Five headmen were named with whom the committee should treat, among whom was Metacom of Mount Hope, called King Phillip. “KING PHILLIP’S WAR” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1674
In France, what a Pope can get away with a King can also get away with, maybe sometimes. King Louis XIV established monopolies on alcohol and tobacco in imitation of the ones sponsored by the Pope in Italy.
In an account of an American estate molasses appeared, indicating that it was still being used for sweetening rather than cane sugar. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1675
The office of tithingman was established in Massachusetts to report on liquor violations in homes.
A Court of Sessions was established in New-York, to enact legislation forbidding the sale of liquor to the Indians, regulate weights and measures, and limit the number of breeding mares allowed to landowners on Paumanok Long Island. A system for condemning property was set up and a slaughterhouse outside the city was ordered.
William Dervall was appointed as the city’s mayor for the year. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1677
There were a total of 14 “Ordinaries & publick drinking Howses” in Salem. Captain Richard More and his wife had a “neager” slave named Judeth, possibly procured in Barbados, to help them around their tavern. The tavern evidently had deep drinkers among the “travailers & strangers” that made up its transient clientele, as during this year the old Captain arranged for a shipment of “two tonnes of strong beer” to be shipped there by way of Virginia. SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1680
Since the monarch owed his dad some £15,000 and couldn’t pay up, Friend William Penn was asking to be granted instead an area north of Maryland and west of the Delaware River.
This would be the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. He obtained the construction of the 1st brewery in Pennsylvania BEER
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1681
As an example of Quaker disownment, here is one that was announced in this year at the Castledermot monthly meeting: “These are to certify to all People where this Writing may come, that whereas A.B. hath for divers years gone under the denomination of a Quaker, and yet in several things hath walked disorderly, and more especially hath been subject to the vile and notorious Sin of Drunkenness; and tho’ he hath from time to time, for the space of ten years and upwards, been very tenderly admonished, both privately and publickly, yet still he persists and is subject to be overcome by that notorious Sin, to the great Dishonour of God, his Truth and People, and to the saddening of the Hearts of the Upright,... we can do no less than declare against him and his evil course of Life; and hereby signify unto all the World, that we do disown him and all such unsavoury Members and actions as he is found in. And the Lord our God, in whose Presence we are knows that this is not done in any Rashness or Prejudice towards him as a man, but in very much Tenderness and Humility. — And if it shall please God so to work upon his Heart and Spirit that he be made sensible of his Sin and Transgression, and come, thro’ Judgment, unto true and unfeigned Repentance and Amendment of Life, and, in true Penitency and Brokenness of Spirit, seek Reconciliation again with the Lord and his People, we shall in the same tenderness and unfeigned Love be glad and willing to receive him, as the Father did his prodigal Son, into Favour and Fellowship again, until which time we do Deny and Disown him and his Actions, and cannot account or esteem him to be one of us.”4 RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS DRUNKENNESS
4. Quoted in John Rutty, TREATISE CONCERNING CHURCH DISCIPLINE (1752), pages 129-131. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1685
According to Philippe Dufour’s THE MANNER OF MAKING COFFEE, TEA, AND CHOCOLATE, published in this year, “The Ladies, also and Gentlemen of Mexico, make little delicate Cakes of Chocolate for daintiness, which are sold likewise in the Shops, to be eaten just as Sweet Meats.”
French physicians were favoring the beverage made from the scorched Arabian bean coffee in the belief that it “countered drunkenness and nausea, relieved small pox, dropsy, and gout, [and] cured scurvy.” They also pointed out that “the voice benefited by well-gargled coffee.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1691
October: In an attempt to lift the spirits of its island possession, the East India Company was vending arrack, locally distilled from potatoes, at St. Helena Plantation. DRUNKENNESS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1693
August 4: Champagne was invented, by Dom Perignon.5 ALCOHOL
5. And a good time was had by all. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1694
The Reverend Cotton Mather’s EARLY RELIGION, URGED IN A SERMON, UPON THE DUTIES WHEREIN, AND THE REASONS WHEREFORE, YOUNG PEOPLE, SHOULD BECOME RELIGIOUS, WHERETO ARE ADDED, THE EXTRACTS OF SEVERAL PAPERS, WRITTEN BY SEVERAL PERSONS, WHO HERE DYING IN THEIR YOUTH, LEFT BEHIND THEM THOSE ADMONITIONS FOR THE YOUNG SURVIVORS, WITH BRIEF MEMOIRS RELATING TO THE EXEMPLARY LIVES OF SOME SUCH, THAT HAVE GONE FROM HENCE TO THEIR EVERLASTING REST. He discovered irreligiosity in New England and attributed it to excess “tippling” (indulgence in alcoholic beverages). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1700
When alcohol was to be consumed, the alcoholic beverage of choice of “Europeans” everywhere was still beer, but, during this century, distilled spirits, an order of magnitude more potent and immediate in their effect than beer, would be becoming increasingly common.
Coffee had become firmly established as a hot beverage to be consumed in public in Europe and America – although it had not yet become established as a beverage for use in the home, let alone as the normative hot drink to enjoy with one’s breakfast– and therefore alcoholic beverages were no longer unchallenged as a daily drink. With a population of roughly 600,000, London boasted some 3,000 coffeehouses, and the coffeehouse, unlike the tavern, was a place of business.6
6. This may seem high, but in fact it is the same proportion, once for every 200 citizens, that we now observe in Hong Kong for licensed and operating restaurants. One of this multitude of coffeehouses, that of Edward Lloyd, which opened its doors in 1687 or 1688, is still in existence, as the global insurance firm known as Lloyds of London. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1701
January: Many St. Helena trees had been destroyed to distil potatoes for arrack, which wasn’t all that good for you although it did help somewhat to mitigate the loneliness and interminable boredom of existence on a remote little company island. Turning a bad thing into a good thing, the East India Company instituted a local tax on firewood. DRUNKENNESS
August 1, Monday (Old Style): A great flood on St. Helena washed away several houses, temporarily easing the island’s boredom. Later in the month, to curb drunkeness, Governor Captain Stephen Poirier imposed a 10PM curfew. DRUNKENNESS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1702
October 6, Friday (Old Style): A former slave named Jack, and two slaves, were apprehended for breaking into the Luffkin house to steal arrack. The jury of St. Helena citizens would hang the slaves but allow Jack to remain alive while remanding him to slavery. DRUNKENNESS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1721
The drinking of “hard” alcoholic spirits, although widespread among the British ruling classes, was on the decline due to the spread of coffee. In France, the court of King Louis XV in particular had developed a taste for this beverage, and in this year the 1st coffeehouse appeared in Berlin. More of it was being consumed at this point in London than in any other city on earth. Daniel DeFoe, however, was able to speak of the “honest drunken fellow” as an archetypal Englishman because high import duties and other legislation in control of alcoholic beverages were having such an effect, in encouraging home distillation of cheap potent spirits, that among the lower classes drunkenness was coming to be considered essentially harmless. In America, rum and whiskey were supplanting traditional beers and hard ciders, and more and more taverns were being founded since drinking was considered to be primarily a male pastime and to be indulged in away from the wife and children. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1723
November: On St. Helena, Parson Giles had a reputation for drunken and disorderly conduct. Rumor had it that he was imbibing 4 to 6 pints of arrack a day. Islanders were inclined to tolerate this due to “the cloth he wears.” DRUNKENNESS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1725
At age 15, Samuel Johnson was living with the Reverend Cornelius Ford, an older 1st cousin, in London. According to Pat Rogers, “the worldly Ford first opened the young man’s eyes to a world of sophistication which he had never seen as a boy in Lichfield. It is probable that he acquired his first knowledge of the London literary scene from his cousin during a prolonged stay in 1725-1726.” This was an era of “anything goes” in London, however, an era in which gin drinking, drunkenness, and crime were virtually out of control. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1726
The Reverend Cotton Mather’s RATIO DISCIPLINAE FRATRUM NOV ANGLORUM and his THE VIAL POURED OUT UPON THE SEA.
This was an era in which gin drinking, and crime, were on the rise. The Reverend Mather along with 16 other ministers issued A SERIOUS ADDRESS TO THOSE WHO UNNECESSARILY FREQUENT THE TAVE R N, AND OFTEN SPEND THE EVENING IN PUBLICK HOUSES. BY SEVERAL MINISTERS. TO WHICH IS ADDED A PRIVATE LETTER ON THE SUBJECT, BY THE LATE REV. DR. INCREASE MATHER, with the running title SEASONABLE ADVICE CONCERNING TAVER NS . TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1729
The Chinese governmental monopoly on opium restricted its recreational use to the very well-to-do. This drug was not going to become a public problem in the Central Kingdom for so long as the Chinese had any control over their own internal situation. (This ban on importation would be seriously compromised by the British East India Company until 1839. Eventually, growing, supplying, or even smoking this drug would be made, in China, capital offenses.)
Yongzheng set up his Grand Council, an informal and flexible body of military advisers.
The British Parliament passed the first Gin Act, the high duties of which would result in the production of bad, bootlegged gin, prompting widespread protests. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1733
The British Parliament liberalized the laws dealing with alcohol and drunkenness increased even further.
Georgia was founded by General James Oglethorpe, becoming the 13th North American colony of the English.
As part of this Oglethorpe experiment, Georgia would prohibit alcoholic spirits (the attempt would fail by 1742).
September 23, Sunday (Old Style): “Benjamin Hopkinss Wife, having been proved guilty of the Scandalus Sin of drunkenness was admonished before ye Congregation on Sep: 23 . 1733.”7
7. An excerpt from the records of the 1st Parish in Brewster MA on Cape Cod, which was formerly the 1st Parish in Harwich. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1735
The Trustees of Georgia prohibited both human slavery and “ardent spirits” such as rum (by way of contrast, beer, since it was considered a temperance drink, was encouraged). An “act for rendering the colony of Georgia more defensible by prohibiting the importation and use of black slaves or negroes into the same.” W.B. Stevens, HISTORY OF GEORGIA, I. 311; [B. Martyn], ACCOUNT OF THE PROGRESS OF GEORGIA (1741), pp. 9-10; Prince Hoare, MEMOIRS OF GRANVILLE SHARP (London, 1820), p. 157. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1736
With the degeneration of the London poor being directly attributable to the cheapness and availability of gin, there was heated debate over prohibition. The 2d Gin Act, which established a prohibitory tax, would, however, provoke even greater protests, and would eventually be superseded by a licensing system. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1743
In England, the 2d gin Act, which had been enacted in 1736, was at this point superseded by a licensing system.
In the general rules of the Methodist church, the Reverend John Wesley included a prohibition against drunkenness and the buying, selling, or drinking of spirits. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1744
With their conversion to Christianity, the Narragansett were apparently able to cope better with the heretofore devastating reality of European domination:
Their Faith and Hope in GOD encourageth and quickeneth them in Duty to obtain the Promises of the good Things of this Life, and of that which is to come. So that there is among them a Change for good respecting the outward as well as the inward Man. They grow more decent and cleanly in their outward Dress, provide better for their Households, and get clearer of debt. Especially they have been kept perfectly free, for ought that has appeared to me, from the Sin of Drunkenness, the Sin which so easily besets them. Many of them say that they have no Desire after strong Drink.... They manifest great Sorrow of Heart, for their Brethren and Kins-Men ..., when they hear of their drinking and quarrelling.... Ever since the Lord has been graciously among the Indians manifesting his Power and Glory; they have been desirous of a School among them, that their Children and all such as can, might learn to read.
DRUNKENNESS
October: Thomas and James Greentree were fined £10 each because they had refused to impound their goats at Peak Gutt on St. Helena for inspection. They were advised that they were being treated mercifully, because disobeying the law was the beginning of rebellion and the consequence of rebellion was of course execution.
“Voted by ye Chh yt as things appear at present our Sister Sarah Robbins about ye last of May was guilty of ye Sin of Drunkenness & in Consideration thereof ye She be debarred from Communtion in ye Special ordinances of ye Gospel for a Season, — yt we will privately use Means for her Conviction, & are ready to hear with Candour any thing which She may offer in her own Vindication within Six weeks from this Time.”8
8. An excerpt from the records of the 1st Parish in Brewster MA on Cape Cod, which was formerly the 1st Parish in Harwich. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1746
July: The Mohawks gathered in war council near Mount Johnson in backwoods New York. William Johnson gained their allegiance to the British cause.
On St. Helena, Thomas Greentree was charged with selling liquor without a licence. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1747
In England, there was further liberalization of sale of alcohol and an even greater degree of drunkenness.
Frederick the Great forbade all manner of hawking — especially the hawking of chocolate. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1749
The rum produced by the Appleton distillery of Jamaica, which dates to this year, is said to be the world’s 2nd oldest spirits.9
9. The Jamaican Excise Duty Law, Number 73 of 1941, defines rum as “spirits distilled solely from sugar cane juice, sugar cane molasses, or the refuse of the sugar cane, at a strength not exceeding 150% proof spirit.” Rum is produced from sugar cane by fermentation by yeast. The resultant “wash” has approximately 6% alcohol which after distillation produces rum as a clear, colorless liquid with about 80% alcohol and a sharp taste. White rum is essentially this product diluted to 40% alcohol. Gold rum requires aging in 40-gallon oak barrels. The process of aging is very complex, involving evaporation of some of the pungent volatile components, reaction of the rum with the oak wood and perhaps even the absorption of oxygen through the barrel to convert some of the alcohol to aromatic esters. The origin of the term “rum” is obscure, but rum has been known since the English settled in Barbados in 1627 and it has been suggested that the Spanish and Portuguese were possibly involved in distilling spirits on their sugar plantations even earlier than this. One possible derivation is from the Latin for sugar saccharum another has been given as... the name Kill-Devill alias rumbullion was given to the first beverages in Barbados which were notably rough and unpalatable and could “overpower the senses with a single whiff” and were “a hot hellish and terrible liquor.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1750
Massachusetts had 63 distilleries producing rum made from molasses supplied in some cases by slave traders who were selling it to the Puritan distillers for the capital needed to buy African natives that could be sold to West Indian sugar planters. TRIANGULAR TRADE
Toward the middle of the 18th Century the consumption of industrially distilled spirits, generically termed “gins” by the English, was soaring among “Europeans” everywhere, and the consumption of home-brew beers correspondingly declined. English consumption figures, cited by Wolfgang Schivelbusch in TASTES OF PARADISE: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF SPICES, STIMULANTS, AND INTOXICANTS, were: ALCOHOL
Gallons of gin
1684 500,000
1734 5,000,000
1750 11,000,000
That would amount to eight liters of distilled spirits per year per capita in England, and Schivelbusch points out for purposes of comparison that this was three times as much distilled spirits per capita as was being consumed in West Germany in 1974. From this historic high, the consumption of distilled spirits would decline substantially, at least per capita. Schivelbusch compared the impact of gin on the English public with the impact of whiskey on native American cultures. The development of counters in drinking establishments, especially that form of counter known as the “stand-up bar,” seems to have accompanied this transition from beer to hard liquor. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1751
Fielding’s AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF THE LATE INCREASE OF ROBBERS denounced the evils of gin, “the grand destroyer.” A new Gin Act attempted to return to the 1743 legislation, strengthening retail controls and aiming to license sales rather than restrict them. Drunkenness would begin to decline, with coffee and tea often taking the place of alcoholic beverages. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1752
The health argument in behalf of temperance was first made by Nathaniel Ames in his ALMANACK: Strong Waters were formerly used only by the Direction of Physicians; but now Mechanicks and low-li’d Labourers drink Rum like Fountain-Water, and they can infinitely better endure it than the idle. unactive and sedentary Part of Mankind, but DEATH is in the bottom of the cup of every one. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1760
February 29, Friday: Concern for the effect of liquor upon the public weal was expressed by John Adams in his diary: the taverns were “becoming the eternal haunt of loose, disorderly people...”: ... These houses are become the nurseries of our legislators. An artful man, who has neither sense nor sentiments, may, by gaining a little sway among the rabble of the town, multiply taverns and dram shops and thereby secure the votes of taverner and retailer and of all; and the multiplication of taverns will make many, who may be induced to flip and rum, to vote for any man whatever. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1764
The Sugar Act of 1760, putting a tax of six cents per gallon upon the molasses obtained in the Caribbean in exchange for the cod, vegetables, wheat, and Indian maize of the North American colonies, had been defeated through contraband trade. Britain’s attempt to obtain a revenue stream from its colonies was a failure. The British Parliament in this year tinkered with the duties, lowering this oppressive tax upon molasses but placing instead duties on sugar and on Madeira wine. The idea they had was that since the substitute for Madeira wine was Port wine, and since Port wine was available only from British merchants, the colonists would switch from SWEETS Madeira to Port. However, the practice was to trade a middle-grade cure of cod, known as the Madeira cure, WITHOUT for Madeira wine. This tax tinkering would also be a failure, as the colonists would switch to the drinking of SLAVERY rum.
During this year the slaves of Jamaica were plotting servile insurrection — although nothing would come of it.
The free men of color in Haiti (Hispaniola) were prohibited from the practices of medicine and pharmacology. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1765
Rum production began at the St. James distillery of Martinique. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1766
A slave by the name of “Negro Tom” had attempted, unsuccessfully, to run away from his owner, a plantation master and miller named George Washington. –Well, maybe this wasn’t our founding father, but some other Virginian of coincidentally the same name?– This slavemaster engaged in the international slave trade by sending this recalcitrant slave off to the West Indies, to be traded fair and square on some escape-proof island. What did this Virginia slavemaster want in exchange for his troublesome human being? — He suggested a hogshead of “molasses, rum, limes, tamarinds, sweet meats, and good old spirits.”
(Was this unusual behavior for Washington? — Was it unusual, for our Founding Father to be equating in such a manner the life of a human being with a hogshead of sweetmeats and spirits? Unfortunately, it was not. For instance, according to Henry Wiencek’s AN IMPERFECT GOD: GEORGE WASHINGTON, HIS SLAVES, AND THE CREATION OF AMERICA, at one point in his life, in need of dental work, he would not be above having sound teeth yanked from the jaw of one of his slaves, without anesthesia, to be fashioned into a denture for SWEETS him to wear! –But probably it was not Negro Tom but someone else among his numerous slaves, who would WITHOUT supply these sound white teeth for the mouth of the white master.) SLAVERY During this year, in Rhode Island harbors, it has been estimated by Alexander Boyd Hawes, some 15 vessels were being fitted out for the international slave trade. If an average cargo of slaves was 109 –as we have estimated on the basis of a number of known cargos– then a total of more than 1,630 souls were transported during this year in Rhode Island bottoms alone. Examples from this year include the Rhode Island sloop Hope, carrying a cargo of 100 slaves, the brig Nelly, carrying a cargo of 130, and a sloop of unknown name carrying 60.
During this year, according to the 1822 revision of the PUBLIC LAWS OF RHODE ISLAND (page 441), we have an indication that the colony’s legislature enacted some sort of “restrictive measure” that had to do with the “Slave Trade.” However, neither the title or the text of this ever having been found — we have no clue as to its substance. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM March 18, Tuesday: In response to colonial boycotts, the Stamp Act was repealed by England. READ THE FULL TEXT
Hey, guys, we’re not trying to be unreasonable.
The Declaratory Act was enacted, pointing out that nevertheless, Parliament and the King had the right to make laws for the American colonies. READ THE FULL TEXT
News of the repeal would be greeted in Providence, Rhode Island with “32 of the most loyal, patriotic and constitutional toasts.” DRUNKENNESS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1773
As the evils of intemperance began to attract the attention of the religious, the Reverend John Wesley denounced the sin of distilling and declared for its prohibition, and a pamphlet entitled THE MIGHTY DESTROYER DISPLAYED AND SOME ACCOUNT OF THE DREADFUL HAVO C MADE BY THE MISTAKEN USE, AS WELL AS THE A BUSE, OF DISTILLED SPIRITOUS LIQUORS was created by Friend Anthony Benezet, advising against the use of any drink “which is liable to steal away a man’s senses and render him foolish, irrascible, uncontrollable, and dangerous.” THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
December 27, Monday: The town of Lincoln joined the great tea boycott.10 March 15, 1770, the town [of Lincoln] voted, “that they will not purchase any one article of any person that imports goods contrary to the agreement of the merchants of Boston”; and in a long answer to a circular sent to the town, they say, February, 1773, “We will not be wanting in our assistance according to our ability, in the prosecuting of all such lawful and constitutional measures, as shall be thought proper for the continuance of all our rights, privileges, and liberties, both civil and religious; being of opinion that a steady, united, persevering conduct in a constitutional way, is the best means, under God, for obtaining the redress of all our grievances.” The first committee of correspondence was chosen November 2, 1773, — Deacon Samuel Farrar, Capt. Eleazer Brooks, and Capt. Abijah Pierce; a similar one was elected annually till 1784. The sentiments of the town [of Lincoln], on several questions then agitating the province, being requested by the citizens of Boston, were communicated in the subjoined very interesting
10. As an outgrowth of heavy tea taxes and the Boston Tea Party, abstinence from tea was being equated with the quest for liberty. The colonial tradition of tea drinking would permanently decline, and coffee consumption increase. Dr. Benjamin Rush would author numerous papers on the ravages caused by tea drinking (although after the revolutionary war he would do an about-face and promote tea as an alternative to alcohol). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM letter, on the 20th of December. “Gentlemen, — We have read your letter, enclosing the proceedings of the town of Boston at their late meeting; as also another letter enclosing the proceedings of a collective body of people, not only of Boston, but the adjacent towns; in which, after some very pertinent observations on the alarming situation of our public affairs, you desire our advice and to be acquainted with the sense of this town respecting the present gloomy situation of our public affairs. We rejoice at every appearance of public virtue, and resolution in the cause of liberty; inasmuch as, upon our own virtue and resolution, under Divine Providence, depends the preservation of all our rights and privileges. “We apprehend that we, in America, have rights, privileges, and property, of our own, as well as the rest of mankind; and that we have the right of self- preservation, as well as all other beings. And we are constrained to say, that after the most careful and mature deliberation, according to our capacities, weighing the arguments on both sides, we apprehend our rights and privileges have been infringed in many glaring instances, which we mean not to enumerate, among which the late ministerial plan, mentioned in your letter, is not the least. “The Act imposing a duty on tea is alarming, because, in procuring the same, our enemies are dealing by us, like the great enemy of mankind, viz. endeavouring to enslave us by those things to which we are not necessitated, but by our own contracted ill habits; although, if tea were properly used, it might be of some advantage. When we speak of our enemies, as above, we mean those persons on either side of the water, who by many ways, either secret or open, are sowing the seeds of strife and discord between Britain and her colonies; or are in any way the active instruments of our distress. “Now since it must be granted, that our rights and privileges are infringed, and that we have the right of self-defence; the important question is, by what means to make such defence. Doubtless the means of defence in all cases ought to quadrate with the nature of the attack; and since the present plan seems to be to enslave us, we need only (had we virtue enough for that) to shun the bait, as we would shun the most deadly poison. Notwithstanding, considering so many are so habituated to the use of tea, as perhaps inadvertently to ruin themselves and their country thereby; and others so abandoned to vice, expecting to share in the profits arising from the ruin of our country, as to use all means in their power to encourage the use of tea; we cannot, therefore, but commend the spirited behaviour of the town of Boston, in endeavouring to prevent the sale of the East India Company’s teas, by endeavouring to persuade the consignees to resign their office, or any other lawful means; and we judge the consignees, by refusing to comply with the just desire of their fellow- citizens, have betrayed a greater regard to their HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM private interest than the public good and safety of their country, and ought to be treated accordingly. “The situation of our public affairs growing more alarming, and having heretofore tried the force of petitions and remonstrances and finding no redress; we, the inhabitants of this town, have now come into a full determination and settled resolution, not to purchase, nor use any tea, nor suffer it to be purchased or used in our families, so long as there is any duty laid on such tea by an act of British Parliament. And we will hold and esteem such, as do use such tea, enemies to their country; and we will treat them with the greatest neglect. And as we beg leave to recommend it to the several towns within this province, who have not done it, to go and do likewise. “How easy the means! How sure the event! But be the event what it may, suppose this method should not obtain a repeal of the act, which we judge to be unrighteous, but the event should be a total disuse of that destructive article, we might then (if we may so express ourselves) bless God, that ever he permitted that act to pass to pass the British Parliament. “We trust we have courage and resolution sufficient to encounter all the horrors of war in the defence of those rights and privileges, civil and religious, which we esteem more valuable than our lives. And we do hereby assure, not only the town of Boston, but the world, that whenever we shall have a clear call from Heaven, we are ready to join with our brethren to face the formidable forces, rather than tamely to surrender up our rights and privileges into the hands of any of our own species, not distinguished from ourselves, except it be in disposition to enslave us. At the same time, we have the highest esteem for all lawful authority; and rejoice in our connexion with Great Britain, so long as we can enjoy our charter rights and privileges.” This able paper is attributed to the pen of the Hon. Eleazer Brooks. The original agreements of the town [of Lincoln] about the disuse of tea and non-consumption of imported articles of merchandise have been found among his papers, and are now [1835] deemed worthy of preservation. “Whereas, the town of Lincoln did, on the 27th day of December current, by a full vote, come into full determination and settled resolution, not to purchase nor use any tea, nor suffer it to be purchased or used in their families, so long as there is any duty laid on such tea by the act of the British Parliament; and that they would hold and esteem all such as do use such tea, as enemies to their country; and that they will treat with them with the greatest neglect; — We, the subscribers, inhabitants of said town, pursuant to the same design, do hereby promise and agree to and with each other, that we will strictly conform to the tenor of the abovesaid vote. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names. “Lincoln, Dec. 27th, 1773.” This was signed by 52 of the principal inhabitants. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM The following by 82. “We, the subscribers, inhabitants of the town of Lincoln, do sincerely and truly covenant and agree to and with each other, that we will not for ourselves, or any for or under us, purchase or consume any goods, wares, or manufactures, which shall be imported from Great Britain, after the thirty-first day of August, seventeen hundred and seventy-four, until the Congress of Deputies from the several colonies shall determine what articles, if any, to except; and that we will thereafter, respecting the use and consumption of such British articles, as may not be excepted, religiously abide by the determination of said Congress.” This was a time when it was impossible to stand on neutral ground and escape censure. Those who were not decided in opposition to the measures of Great Britain, were supposed to favor them. Of the suspected was the minister of the town [of Lincoln]; and, though the suspicion was groundless, and of short duration, the people in September assembled around the meeting-house on a Sabbath, and prevented him from entering to preach. Two or three individuals were subsequently obliged to leave the town [of Lincoln] for not conforming to the prevailing sentiments of the people. One of the largest estates in the town [of Lincoln] was for some time in the hands of the government.11
11. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1775
British traders from India established depots at Canton and Macao on the coast of China, and the commercial importance of opium in the British trade balance began to increase. Opium smoking would reach Peking in 1790. As opium smoking spread across China, there would be imperial edicts in 1780,1796, and 1800 prohibiting its importation, sale, and consumption.
Frederick the Great ordered Prussians to drink beer rather than coffee, because he was deriving better revenue from the taxes on beer than from the taxes on coffee. He attempted to restrict coffee drinking to his court, and established a prohibitive tax.
King Louis XVI of France granted to Jews the privilege of inheritance. JUDAISM HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1776
September 3, Tuesday: Captain John Paul Jones’s USS Providence captured the Bermudan brigantine Sea Nymph, put aboard a crew, and sent this prize vessel with its cargo of sugar, rum, ginger, and oil headed toward the port of Philadelphia.
Dr. Josiah Bartlett wrote to Colonel William Whipple to characterize the promises of Independence made by Lord Howe to the Continental Congress as “false” and “hollow.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1777
September 13, Saturday: Frederick the Great of Prussia noticed that war and coffee wouldn’t mix — though war and beer would do just fine together thank you:
It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of this country in consequence. Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer. His majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors and his officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer; and the king does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended upon to endure hardship or to beat his enemies in case of the occurrence of another was.
Hey, Fat Freddy, brew coffee not war! HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1778
Even at this early point in the temperance movement there was an organization calling itself the Free African Society which excluded men of drinking habits, and this would be followed soon thereafter by the Organization of Brethren, and the Litchfield, Connecticut Association of “the most respectable farmers” in Connecticut determined to discourage the use of spirits. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1780
At about this point Malwah opium grown in Central India was beginning to be shipped by the East India Company from the port of Bombay to China in the form of cases of 300-gram balls. Opium was hardly known in China. This inferior Malwah product could be purchased for between 20% to 50% as much per case as European-grade opium.
(In related drug-traffic news, at this point the doors of Warren Tavern in Charlestown MA were opening to local imbibers for the first time. And these doors’ve been open ever since, for the establishment now lays claim to being the oldest continuously operating tavern in the US of A. The open door to China has, however, been closed for some time to the products of this East India Company.) ALCOHOL HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1781
Thomas Jefferson brought tomatoes to his table (along with french fries).
Jefferson suggested tobacco cultivation in the “western country on the Mississippi.”
As the smuggling and use of the bean had continued in Prussia subsequent to his requiring that citizens were required to drink beer rather than coffee, Frederick the Great created a monopoly, forbidding coffee roasting except in royal establishments. This monopoly also would prove unsuccessful. Also, coffee substitutes such as chicory made their appearance. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1783
29th day 12th month: Friend John Congdon of South Kingstown, Rhode Island manumitted a Negro Lad Named Dick about 14 years of age and pledged that for the meanwhile he would provide for instruct and direct him. “During his Infancy,” until the age of 21, Dick the former slave was to play the role of apprentice.
Changes to St. Helena licensing laws meaning soldiers could not obtain arrack from the island’s Punch Houses. 200 soldiers, bayonets fixed, marched on the Governor. DRUNKENNESS
Although nearly 100 would be condemned to death, only 10 would actually hang. The governor would withdraw the new liquor regulations. ST. HELENA RECORDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1784
The Methodist Church took a staunch position against the sale or imbibing of ardent spirits “unless in cases of extreme necessity.” THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1785
Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia’s INQUIRY INTO THE EFFECTS OF ARDENT SPIRITS UPON THE HUMAN BODY AND MIND. Enumerating the diseases of the body and mind which plague the drinker of distilled liquors, Dr. Rush outlined the symptoms, including “unusual garrulity, unusual silence, captiousness ... an insipid simpering ... profane swearing ... certain immodest actions” and “certain extravagant acts which indicate a temporary fit of madness.” THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1786
The Strathisla Distillery (which produces, among other brands, Chivas Regal, and claims to be the oldest in the Scottish Highlands) was founded in this year. Clearly, “aged Scotch whiskey” is nowhere near as old as the demon rum that was being produced from sugar cane by the application of slave labor. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1789
According to tradition, the Baptist Reverend Elijah Craig of Scott County, Kentucky, discovered that waiting, while aging corn whiskey in oak barrels for a couple years, would greatly improve the product’s flavor. Nevertheless, many, perhaps most, Americans, unable to wait for this “bourbon,” would continue for the next century and a half to imbibe their corn likker straight from the still.
The Reverend Jesse Lee, with two other Methodist ministers, entered George Whitefield’s tomb to view the evangelist’s quiet repose. THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS
In 1784 the Methodist Church had taken a staunch position against the sale or imbibing of ardent spirits with a qualification, “unless in cases of extreme necessity.” In this year this qualification was deleted. A similar platform was adopted by the Presbyterian Synod of Pennsylvania and by the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1791
Alexander Hamilton had adopted the idea earlier effected by the individual colonies, to tax distilled liquors for revenue purposes. In this year the tax was enacted as part of a federal Revenue Act.
William Cowper published his improvement on Alexander Pope’s version of Homer. When the widow Mary Unwin with whom he had been living long-term fell ill, the poet relapsed into another depression, one from which he would never fully recover.
A pamphlet was published in an attempt to get the people of Great Britain to abstain from West Indian cane sugar and rum, so as to abolish the international slave trade.12 It quoted the following, attributed as “Cowper’s Negro’s Complaint”: Why did all-creating Nature Make the plant for which we toil? Sighs must fan it, Tears must water, Sweat of ours must dress the soil. Think ye Masters, iron-hearted, Lolling at your jovial Boards, Think how may Backs have smarted For the Sweets your Cane affords!
12. “Address to the People of Great Britain on the propriety of abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum,” M. Gurney et. al., 8th edition, No. 128 Holborn-Hill, 1791. Except for the decline in cane sugar production which was caused by the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803, the island of Haiti being the world’s largest colonial producer, world production of sugar has not suffered more than an occasional hiccup in the course of five centuries. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1792
Congress designated our unit of currency to be the Dollar (in imitation of the Spanish, who had the strongest currency at that time) as proposed by Thomas Jefferson. The first US mint went into operation in Philadelphia, to supplement and eventually to replace the various foreign coinages in circulation. The only previous coinage in Massachusetts had been the one which the General Court there had authorized in 1652, in direct challenge to English law, a minting which had continued only until about 1682. Political parties were forming; Republicans (to be Democrats) versus Federalists. The Post Office was established by Congress to be a separately functioning entity, not part of this political process. The 2d Congress of the United States added license fees for distilleries and excise taxes on liquors distilled from imported materials (to help retire debts from the Revolutionary War — this tax would after eight years be discontinued). Incensed by this action, farmers in Western Pennsylvania mobbed revenue collectors and armed to resist this intrusion by the new Federal Government. It would require 15,000 militia to bring the so-called Whiskey Rebellion to an end. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1794
August 7, Friday: The Whiskey Rebellion. READ THE FULL TEXT
When President George Washington would send Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton at the head of a military formation to western Pennsylvania to put down this insurrection and enforce the federal excise tax on whiskey, one of the hidden no-longer-Mr.-Nice-Guy objectives of that military formation would be to seek out and “terminate,” their term, Hamilton’s political foe, the local fiscal hero Albert Gallatin. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1800
From this year until 1825, in Finland, the ending of restrictions against home manufacturing of alcohol would have the result of increasing drunkenness.
In Sweden, the ending of the crown alcohol monopoly and its restrictions on production and sales results in increased consumption. United States. Between 1790 and 1830, Americans seem to go on an alcoholic binge; the per capita consumption of distilled spirits rises dramatically as migration and social dislocation further dislodge traditional controls. The New England Federalist elite begins to worry about the spread of religious irreverence, democracy, and drunkenness; religious revivalism encourages general temperance activities.
The turn of the century brought a revitalization of the temperance spirit. Religious leaders, including Cotton Mather, Dr. Lyman Beecher, John Wesley and Reverend Andrew Elliott inveighed against the consumption of liquors. Temperance activity figured prominently in the concerns of the Presbyterian, Methodist, Universalist, Baptist, and Friends churches. Had the temperance reform in America awaited for a non-church or a non-Christian leadership, ... the temperance revolution of the past century would yet remain to be accomplished.... Every successful temperance movement of the last century has been merely the instrument-the machinery and equipment through which the fundamental principles of the Christian religion have expressed themselves in terms of life and action. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1802
The federal taxes on distilling and importing spirits were repealed.
January 14, Tuesday: Karl Theodor Anton Maria Freiherr von Dalberg replaced Miaximilian Christoph von Rodt as Prince-Bishop of Constance.
January 15, Wednesday: Job, a slave of Mr. Defountaine, was hanged as a “highway robber” for having snatched a liquor bottle away from a drunken sailor. DRUNKENNESS
January 16, Thursday: Les deux journees, ou Le porteur d’eau, a comedie lyrique by Luigi Cherubini to words of Bouilly, was performed for the initial time, at the Theatre Feydeau, Paris (it was an enormous success with press and public).
January 17, Friday: The Peace of Montlucon pacified La Vendee. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1805
The USA began to fill its opium need primarily from the region east of Smyrna in Turkey.
In this or the following year, Perry Davis of Westport, Massachusetts, at the age of 14, seriously injured one of his hips by falling through a raft upon which he was at work. The record asserts that by this accident he was not only made a cripple for life but rendered peculiarly liable to colds, followed by fevers and kindred diseases, to many of which he would become a prey in succeeding years. From sickness he would suffer greatly and would be brought down with fevers, which had their regular run on 24 different occasions. “With physicians, however, he was abundantly blessed of the regular scientific stamp, and by them has submitted 64 times to the use of the lancet, not to mention other accompanying remedies administered for his diseases.” (Eventually Mr. Davis would find surcease for his bodily pain in a “vegetable” concoction he would develop, of opiates in ethanol.)
HOWEVER, HISTORY ISN’T MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS THIS SORT OF FUTURE ROLE FOR OPIUM IN THIS PERSON’S LIFE, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET. THIS IS AN OPIATE THAT HASN’T YET HAD A CHANCE TO HAPPEN.
According to Jay Coughtry’s THE NOTORIOUS TRIANGLE: RHODE ISLAND AND THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE, 1700-1807, Rhode Island merchants participated in the African slave trade over more than three human generations, from 1725 to 1807.
(What follows in this paragraph is a synopsis from Coughtry’s study, with minor editing for compression and clarity.) Allowing for yearly fluctuations during our wilderness warfare with France and the eight years of our struggle for independence from England and our period of commercial stagnation that followed 1783, the trend had been, Coughtry establishes, toward intensification of this peculiar trade. The number of slaving voyages from Rhode Island ports had increased throughout the 18th Century and reached its high point, at 50 voyages, during this Year of Our Lord 1805. During that span of 75 years we now know of 934 vessels had left Rhode Island ports for the Guinea coast of Africa and had carried away an estimated 106,544 slaves (this is only what we are able now to count).13
From an international perspective, Coughtry acknowledges, these figures would make Rhode Island only a “minor” carrier comparable to such nations as Holland and Denmark, rather than hitting the big time with such slave-trading enterprises as Portugal and Great Britain, for by way of radical contrast, from 1701 to 1810 Great alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
13. For this and other such maps: http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/search.html HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Britain purchased approximately 2,500,000 human beings. A typical slave ship of Nantes or Liverpool in harbor must have dwarfed one of these little Rhode Island brigs. Rhode Island’s profit was more in the export of distilled spirits for use in the purchase of slaves than in the transport of the slaves themselves. Rhode Island merchants monopolized the trade in spirits along the West African littoral and their vessels were known as “rum-men” to distinguish them from European vessels that commonly offered mixed cargoes of cloth, guns, iron bars, and assorted trinkets. Along with a few other items such as gold and cowrie shells, the product of our rum distilleries became an indispensable local currency wherever slaves were bought and sold. Both the quantity and significance of rum on the Upper Guinea and Gold Coasts increased until it became, like gold and cloth, one of the few indispensable commodities bartered there. Our economical double- and triple-distilled “Guinea Proof” rum in oversized “Guinea” hogsheads drove most West Indian rum, and European gin, French brandy, and liquor out of the trade. Rhode Islanders exploited a volume market for drunkenness that West Indian interlopers had failed to satisfy. Originally seen as an economical substitute for higher priced spirits such as French brandy, this potent rum maintained and strengthened its hold on the African palate even after its cost surpassed its competition. African drinkers demanded it. Local demand for slave labor in our little colony was never great because of the scarcity of local land for use in slave plantations, and Rhode Island slavers were soon rerouting the majority of their cargoes to markets more to the south, where higher prices could be obtained. The business had assumed its classic three-point “triangular trade” configuration almost from the outset, with a second leg known as the “middle passage” probably added to the itinerary by or during the 1730s. Most of these so-called “middle passage” voyages were to the Caribbean, where human cargo could be exchanged for specie, bills, and return cargoes of sugar or molasses for use in the distilling of more rum. The trade began as Rhode Island’s focus turned toward the sea and ended when it turned toward the factory. Governor Ward, writing to the Board of Trade in 1740, calculated that investment in the shipping sector been negligible until the turn of the century. Prior to 1700, he explained, “necessity [had] engag[ed] the Inhabitants to employ the whole of their time and care to agriculture.” The principal concerns of the small farmers and religious dissidents who populated the colony during this period have been tersely but aptly described by Carl Bridenbaugh as “fat mutton and liberty of conscience.” There was a limit, however, to the population that could be supported on the thirty square miles of farmable surface in this colony which John Brown would describe as “scarcely anything but a line of seacoast.” Governor Samuel Cranston would write about a process had barely begun by 1708: “The land on said Island being all taken up and improved in small farms, so that the farmers, as their families increase are compelled to put or place their children to trades or callings, but their [children’s] inclinations being mostly to navigation, the greater part betake themselves to that employment. So that such as are industrious and thrifty ... get a small stock beforehand, improve it in getting a part of a vessel as many of the tradesmen in the town of Newport also doth for the benefit of their children that are bred to navigation.” In Cranston’s day the local merchant fleet consisted of 27 sloops and a couple of brigs, only four or five of which had been in existence twenty years earlier. Throughout the 18th Century, the market share of the American trade in African slaves by Rhode Island merchants would be 60%-90%. Despite a late start in the 1720s, they had soon surpassed Massachusetts as the chief colonial carrier, and by 1770 they controlled some 70 percent of the trade. From 1725 to 1807, what has been called the “American slave trade” might better be termed the “Rhode Island slave trade.” After the Revolution there were no serious American competitors. Even at the height of Massachusetts’ involvement, the slave trade was only an insignificant figure in its commercial statistics. Only in Rhode Island does the triangular trade appear in anything like the role described in our textbooks of American history. In no other colony or state did the international slave trade play as significant a role in the total economy. In both relative and absolute terms, then, Rhode Island was the leading American carrier of African slaves. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1807
October 22, Thursday: Magnus Huss, a Swedish medical clinician, was born. Huss would be the 1st to recognize chronic alcoholism to constitute a medical syndrome (his “Alcoholismus chronicus eller kronisk alkoholssjukdom” would appear in 1849).14 PSYCHOLOGY
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 22nd of 10 M 1807 / At meeting my mind was exercised on acct of the many deficiencies that prevail among us as a society, but over all & above all on acct of my own Short coming & consequently Small Authority to put hand too to help remove those weaknesses which are Among us - O Williams Stood up & said his mind had been so impressed with the message which the prophet had to deliver formerly that he thought best to express it - “Oh Alter Alter hear the word of the Lord,” he wished us to remember that there was to be but one Alter in Israel & that was to be at Jerusalem — M Morton stood up & preached very sweetly, encoraging us to “seek first the kingdom of heaven & the righteousness thereof & all things necessary shall be added unto us” - She said she had no doubt but there are in this particular meeting a livingly baptized remnant, & by faith & Patience she trusted they would see the desire of their Souls & be satisfied, notwithstanding the many clogs which retard the wheels of Society. She stood rather longer than I ever saw her before, & was very lively in her communication In the preparative meeting the Queries were answered & the defective manner in which some of them were necessarily expressed, occasioned some close remarks & doubtless exercise to some feeling minds, & sorrowful to mention, the Overseers reported a Young man as a delinquent for attending a Militia training - RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
14. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1808
March: In New York, Saratoga County physician Dr. Billy J. Clark read Dr. Benjamin Rush’s AN INQUIRY INTO THE EFFECT OF SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS ON THE HUMAN BODY AND MIND. ALCOHOLISM
April 30, Saturday: In New York, Saratoga County physician Dr. Billy J. Clark formed the Union Temperance Society of Moreau and Northumberland. ALCOHOLISM
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 30th of 4 M / Nothing material; time has passed & no Note taken but from its loss — On reflecting on the time that I am spending & little proffit arising, I often feel Sorrowful. Oh that I had resolution to have things littlr [?] RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Our national birthday, Monday the 4th of July: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, or Hathorne’s 4th birthday. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
In Richmond, Virginia it was resolved that only liquor that had been produced in this nation might be consumed on during this nation’s birthday celebration.
Walton Felch’s son Hiram E. Felch of Boston would inform us of a family tradition, that at the age of 18 his father had delivered a Fourth of July Oration.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 2nd day 4 of 7 M / For what it is called Independence day we have had a very still time the least drunkeness & noise I ever recollect at a similar time
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
Major-General Alexander Beatson took over as governor of St. Helena from Colonel Robert Patton. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1811
December 24, Tuesday: Governor Major-General Alexander Beatson also had tried to control drunkenness on St. Helena, through rationing, with results similar to those of his predecessors. On Christmas Eve about 250 soldiers had the very bad idea to stage a mutiny.15 DRUNKENNESS
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 24 of 12 M // This has been a violent stormy day I did not go home to dinner, & took a little with Aunt Anna Carpenter’s Brother D R came to the Shop in the Afternoon finding nothing to do in his own - I set the eveng at home & read indubly [?] to my H in Silliman’s journal & finished it ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
December 25, Wednesday: Governor Major-General Alexander Beatson restored order on St. Helena, after about 250 soldiers had staged an ill-advised Christmas Eve mutiny in protest of liquor rationing. DRUNKENNESS
French troops defeated the Spanish defenders of Valencia and laid siege to the city.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 25 of 12 M // By accounts today the Storm of Yesterday was more violent than we who were mostly confined within doors were aware - The Wind was so high as to blow down several trees in Broad Street & Washington Square, the large & Ancient honey locust that stood in John Earls yard, a Chimney on the Point, frose to death an horse belonging to Sandford in Middletown, drove on Shore a brigg from Ireland with 70 Passengers, Men Women & children were obliged to wade from the wreck & came from the Neck thro’ the Streets this Afternoon to a house provided by the town for their accomodation on the long wharf, they were pitiable Objects indeed — ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
December 26, Thursday: Governor Major-General Alexander Beatson had restored order on St. Helena, after about 250 soldiers had staged a Christmas Eve holiday-spirits mutiny in protest of liquor rationing. On or by this day 6 of their members, identified as ringleaders, had been hanged. DRUNKENNESS
In a theater of Richmond, Virginia, a fire killed 5 black Americans, and 68 white Americas of whom many were from prominent local families.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 15. The Governor, however, placed a high value on his own beer — when a soldier stole six bottles from one of the Plantation House cellars, he sentenced him to be hanged (said soldier would be pardoned by the Council). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM 5th day 26th of 12 M 1811// I walked towards Portsmouth to attend our Moy [Monthly] Meeting. Rich’d Mitchell kindly gave me a ride of about 3 Miles on my way to Meeting his Sleigh, in going over one bank we over Set but neither of us was hurt. Our Meeting was small. The Womens side of the house counted but seven & them very young Women, I suppose neither of them over 30 years of life: -Ours was large in Number, perhaps 40 of 50 - Peter Lawton was Clerk & for the first time I was assistant & succeeded beyond my expectations -After meeting I rode with R Mitchell to his house & dined & after dinner a part of the way home with D Buffum in his sleigh which eased me of my journey exceedingly for if I had not have been assisted in this way it is not probable I should been able to have got home the same day. & tho’ as it was my limbs were much fatigued, yet I was glad I went, for had I had not the Books & papers of neither meeting would have been there -Jonathon Dennis the two D Buffums, little Wm Chase & myself were all that were there from Newport. The Snow Banks were formidable indeed some I walked over that I doubt not were 15 feet high. A sorrowful affair was related to me in Portsmouth It appears that about 7 an hour before sun set in the Storm the day before yesterday Joseph Cundel went out of his Mill & has not yet been seen or heard from Yet. they have been searching the Mill dam today & cannot find him whether he was suffocated in the snow drown’d in the Mill dam & got into the Sea is Yet undetermined, but there is no prospect of ever finding him alive. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1813
The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance damned not only rum, but all of the “kindred vices, profaneness and gambling” and beseeched members to “discourage... by ... example and influence, every kind of..... immorality.” THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
During this period retailers’ and distillers’ licenses would bear a federal tax, although beginning in 1818 the industry would begin to enjoy a tax-free era which would endure until 1862.
In England, by this point Thomas De Quincey had become a “faithful and confirmed opium-eater” with a decanter of laudanum always by his elbow.
His relations with William Wordsworth became strained. He courted Margaret Simpson, daughter of a Lake District farmer. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1814
January 1, Saturday: On the New York side of the Niagara River, Youngstown, Lewiston, Manchester, Schlosser, Black Rock, and Buffalo had been put to the torch. By holding Fort Niagara the British were in control not only of the mouth of the river but also of a safe haven for their warships and supply vessels.
The Emperor Napoléon replied favorably to the allied offer of December 15th.
Hung Hsiu Ch’üan was born. After being disappointed in the Confucian civil service examinations, he would have visions and come to the conclusion that he must be Jesus Christ’s younger brother on a mission to redeem China (don’t laugh, 25,000,000 Chinese are going to die rancid deaths on account of this fantasizing).16 CHINESE CIVIL WAR
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 1st of 1st M 1814 / Recd this eveng a leter from my beloved friend Micajah Collins Dated 12 M 23rd - which was a very agreeable NewYears gift.——17 RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
January 6, Thursday: In Concord, formation of a society for the suppression of alcohol abuse.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 6 of 1st M / Our friend Gideon Molineux & his companion Silvester Birdsill from NYork state were at our Meeting today & at Portsmouth yesterday - Gideon is a preacher of the true stamp, & manifested himself a deep searcher of States - he appeared in testimony & supplication much to the comfort of the living, & the awakening of such as were at ease - They have gone to Connanicut this Afternoon accompanyed by David Buffum & John Weaver intending to have a meeting there tomorrow. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
December: Nathan Brooks delivered the 1st address before Concord’s new society for the suppression of alcohol abuse. A society for the suppression of intemperance was organized January 6, 1814. Nathan Brooks, Esq., delivered the first address before it the following December. Auxiliary Missionary, Tract, and Temperance Societies exist in 16. For all that he was JC’s little brother, this guy wouldn’t actually have much use for anything peculiar to the New Testament — such as for instance kindness, or forgiveness, or redemption. Instead his Christianity was going to be long on obedience, and proper worshipfulness, and his dad was to be construed as a God of vengeance. But the Tai-p’ings did have a useful list of prohibitions: there was to be no prostitution in their Kingdom of Heaven, or even divorce, there was to be no enslavement or even foot-binding, there was to be no recreational use of opium or wine or tobacco — and of course there was to be no gambling! Both the Chinese Communists of the PRC (People’s Republic of China, on the mainland) and the Chinese Nationalists of the ROC (Republic of China, on Taiwan) now claim that they originated as this nativist resistance movement against the Manchu overlords in Beijing. 17. Stephen Wanton Gould Diary, 1812-1815: The Gould family papers are stored under control number 2033 at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library, Box 7 Folder 11 for July 1, 1812-August 20, 1815; also on microfilm, see Series 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM the town, besides many other less public associations.18
18. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry David Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1816
Fall: Distraught by constant turmoil in the home caused by the drunkenness and sexual escapades of his acting-out elder brother James Holley Garrison, at the age of 11 William Lloyd Garrison left his family in Baltimore to work and attend school in Newburyport, Massachusetts. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1818
John Adams wrote Thomas Jefferson and mentioned that Jesuits were traveling the country “in as many shapes and disguises as ever a king of the gypsies, Bampfylde-Moore Carew himself, assumed.” MUMPERY ANTI-CATHOLICISM
Retailers’ and distillers’ licenses no longer bore a federal tax. The distilling industry began to enjoy a tax-free era which would endure until 1862. Jefferson would rejoice –“as a moralist”– explaining that: It is an error to view a tax on that liquor as merely a tax on the rich. It is a prohibition of its use in the middling class of our citizens, and a condemnation of them to the poison of whiskey, which is desolating their houses. No nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the only antidote is the bane of whisky. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
According to Dr. Edward Jarvis’s TRADITIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 1779-1878, pages 155-169: HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
There were nine stores in Concord in which spirit of various kinds —West Indian and New England rum, brandy, gin and wine— were kept for sale. These stores were Jonathan Hildreth’s (who died in 1818; afterward George Hildreth’s) on the road to Westford one mile from the village; Deacon White’s (afterward Col. Shattuck’s) [at the] north-west end of the square in the block where now L. Surette lives; Daniel Smith’s for a few years on the spot where the Town Hall now is; the green store where is now the Catholic church kept successively by Abel Barrett, Francis Jarvis (my father) and Hammond, Isaac Hurd, Burr and Prichard, L. Bascom and J.P. Hayward; [a] store [at the] corner of the Lexington road and the Common, kept by John Adams and afterward by Moses Davis; [a] store southeast of the Common kept, 75 to 80 years ago by Richardson and Wheeler, [by] Jonathan Davis who died in 1815, Ebenezer Woodward [who] died in 1820 and Cyrus Davis, successively; [the] store on the northwest side of the mill dam north-east of the brook, kept by Stephen Wood till his death in 1820; [the] store of Tilly Merrick afterward of Phineas How where now is the front yard of Judge Brooks. Josiah Davis’s store stood where is now the barn of Mrs. Calvin Damon. This was opened about 1812 to 1814 and continued until about 1836. These were all miscellaneous stores keeping everything wanted in the country, [and] spirits and wines were included. New rum [colored with caramel and aged] or New England rum constituted the far greater part of the spirits that were sold. This was used by work people, by those who loved it, and by the self-indulgent. West India rum, brandy, gin and wine were kept in families for company, but not used by the work people in fields or mechanics’ shops nor by the topers. New Rum was what was called by the traders a leading article, and on this they based their competition. It was called for much more frequently than any other article and generally the first in order of the customers’ wants. People generally knew its cost and first inquired the price, and if it was satisfactory, the purchasers would take it and then ask for other matters that they wanted, with the value of which they were not so familiar, and took these with less care as to the price to be charged. It was the object of the trader to make this leading article as attractive as possible, and therefore it was generally retailed by the gallon and the quart, at the cost by the hogshead in Boston and transportation to Concord. Besides the quantity of spirits sold to be carried away and used at houses elsewhere, all these stores sold liquor by the glass to be drunk on the premises. They all had on the counter near the spirit barrel or hogshead a tin shallow pan one or two inches deep, 12 to 18 inches long and 10 to 12 inches wide with a wine grating over it. On this grating stood the tumbler to drain into the pan below. Close by stood a pitcher of water and a bowl of sugar and spoons. Thus it was easy to mix a glass of grog for any caller. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
It was not the general intention to sell grog in this manner to all or any merely thirsty person, but mainly to purchasers of other goods, some of whom wanted and claimed a treat gratuitously from the merchant in consideration of this gain from his other and profitable sales. More frequently it was probably offered voluntarily by the traders in gratitude for the opportunity of satisfactorily dispensing other goods, and in some stores, especially the ones on the dam, grog was freely sold to any who wanted it, and thirsty men and topers resorted hither to gratify their desire for rum at probably a cheaper rate than at the tavern. Yet I believe that generally the drinkers independent of other purchases were unacceptable to the traders. From my earliest recollections and from tradition that went much farther back, there were three taverns in the village. They were all in their several ways respectably kept according to the ideas of the time and held in good esteem by the people and the classes of travellers that went to them. All the taverns in those days had a bar, and the public room was called the bar room, which very hospitably opened its doors and in cool weather offered its great fire and comfortable seats to all.... The oldest is now the Middlesex Hotel near the courthouse (by some in former years called the jail tavern).... The tavern on the main street on Groton road next above the burial ground and where now (1877) the house of Mr. Reuben N. Rice stands has ever been, and was until the death of its late proprietor Hartwell Bigelow, the home of teamsters, people who were contented with a coarser fare and at a lesser cost, but it had a larger bar custom than either of the others. It was more the resort of those who were in the habit of drinking spirit and especially of those who were given to frequent indulgence and even intoxication. This was the tradition and my early observation from the beginning to my final removal from town in 1837. There were constant gatherings of these dissipated fellows in the evenings until late, sometimes very late, at night. Passing by to my house in my last years of residence there, after dark, I could commonly hear the toddy stick in its frequent work, stirring up the rum and sugar and water for the thirsty customers.... The upper tavern, called sometimes the coffee house or Shepherd’s coffee house, was the resort of more wealthy or genteel travellers. It was the stage tavern, where the passengers from Boston going to the country had breakfast. This was in my early day the place for the more cultivated assemblages for the dancing schools, balls etc. The whole style of the house and management was more refined than that of the others and of course more costly to the customer. It was more quiet, although there was a bar, and liquor was offered to such as wanted it. Yet these were mainly travellers, and very few townspeople went there to drink. There was no gathering of the low and rowdy element, none of the intoxication that the others presented. Such as these certainly in Mr. Shepherd’s day were very unwelcome, and they were not drawn to this house.... HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
Before my day or observation, it was the custom to set out decanters of brandy, rum etc. at the funerals, for all who would partake. It is impossible to say now how many or what proportion of the people drank, but tradition said that many did so, and the weak-headed and lovers of spirit often became intoxicated on these occasions, and some were supposed [presumed] to attend for this purpose only. The custom of offering spirit to the bearers, who had a separate room for themselves, was continued unbroken certainly until April 1826. At my mother’s funeral in that month, I proposed to my father than no spirit should be put in the bearers’ chamber. My father was full of grief and felt grateful to these friends for coming to do this last office for my mother, and felt disinclined to withhold this mark of hospitality. He said they were old men and accustomed to the occasional use of spirit especially at funerals, yet he saw the propriety of my proposal and wished me to consult Dr. Ripley. I went then to Dr. R. and laid the matter before him. He, like my father, was pleased with the plan, yet he said it was new; spirit had always been given, and it might be considered a mark of unkind inhospitality to withhold it. He asked the names of the bearers who were invited. Then he said, “Perhaps they may think it strange, yet they are all sober men and not in the habit of drinking, I think they will approve the measure. It requires some courage to make this innovation but you can take the responsibility; it is known that in this matter, your father leaves the whole management to you. You are in college, you are of age and can bear any odium that may come from it.” No spirit was then offered, and I never heard any complaint of our want of hospitality. I do not know that this example was followed immediately and generally, but I think that soon thereafter the practice was discontinued. ...The military companies all had toddy carried out in pails to them. All drank freely out of tin cups. This was offered once or more in a half- day’s parade. I do not recollect that any one became intoxicated, although each had as much as he desired. It is probable that in the militia company, which included all that were not in the infantry and artillery and some that were prone to excessive drinking, some were overcome with the spirit and unfitted to do military duty in the rest of that day.... There were a few drunkards in town, lost to all sense of self-respect, who might be seen, at any time, intoxicated, staggering with difficulty in the road, or even lying powerless on the ground. Chief among them was Breed, the barber, with whom rum was the all-absorbing want and motive of action. He would do anything, try every art, to get it. Regardless of health, of home, duty, rum only affected [attracted] him. If he could get a chance to shave or cut hair and thus earn six cents, he would expend one cent for a cracker and five for rum. It was a frequent sight to see him lying dead drunk in the highway, and if in the carriage path and in danger of injury, people would haul him to the grassy side, as they would a log or any other obstacle to travel, and then leave him to recover consciousness and power of motion sufficient to carry him home. He was found dead on the road, Sept. 1824, died of drunkenness.... HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
The records of death in the town state that intemperance was wholly or in part the cause of death of eleven in the period 1779 to 1800, of nine in the period 1801 to 1820, eighteen 1821 to 1830 and ten in the years 1831 to 1850, and four from 1850 to 1878.
Intemperance
Period Deaths 1779-1800 11 1801-1820 9 1821-1830 18 1831-1850 10 1850-1878 4 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1819
Dr. Josiah Bartlett moved to Concord. He was such a strong believer in the health risks of that psychoactive drug of choice in America, ethanol, that a number of Concordians would not accept his medical services, and his property would frequently be vandalized by the partisans of the barroom crowd. Not only did the drinkers girdle his apple trees in his orchard, they once heaved a container of their own excrement through the front window of his house.19
CAPE COD: The same author (the Rev. John Simpkins) said of the inhabitants [of Brewster], a good while ago: “No persons appear to have a greater relish for the social circle and domestic pleasures. They are not in the habit of frequenting taverns, unless on public occasions. I know not of a proper idler or tavern-haunter in the place.” This is more than can be said of my townsmen.
This was in the days before ambulances took injured people to emergency rooms, the day when doctors still made house calls and did not consider that there was any alternative, so Dr. Bartlett always bought the fastest horses and drove his chaise at a breakneck pace. Once, when the imbibers shaved the tail of his horse so that it looked like a giant rat, and vandalized the cover of his chaise by slashing it to ribbons, to shame these drunken foes he deliberately let the tatters fly in the wind. We notice, however, that none of this controversy involving the good physician made its way into WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS:
WALDEN: The old and infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, PEOPLE OF thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them WALDEN life seemed full of danger, –what danger is there if you don’t think of any?– and they thought that a prudent man would carefully select the safest position, where Dr. B. might be on hand at a moment’s warning. To them the village was literally a com-munity, a league for mutual defence, and you would suppose that they would not go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
DR. JOSIAH BARTLETT
19. A word to the wise. Due to recent improvements in DNA testing it is no longer wise to involve oneself in such pranks. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1820
The town of Ipswich dealt with the need of its paupers for an alms-house: “The whole number in the alms- house, when visited, was forty-seven. Of these, twenty-three were brought to poverty, directly or indirectly, by intemperance.”
There are a number of standard texts on the history of American drinking/temperance and there is the organ of a scholarly group called the Alcohol & Temperance History Group, Social History of Alcohol Review. None of these treat the question of the history of actual consumption in any great detail, the historiography in this field having long been tethered to the temperance movement — in effect, to focuses on “thought” and “political action” rather than upon “social history” and “historical ethnography.” However, the period of Henry Thoreau’s lifetime, 1817 to 1862, falls across what is believed to be the great historical divide in American drinking—going from an era in which there was little restraint on consumption (alcohol was generally regarded as “The Good Creature of God”) to a much more temperate sensibility characterized by: • a long-term shift from whiskey to beer • ethanol consumption down to about 1/3rd the “pre-shift” level • drinking of alcohol confined, by and large, to men
During this decade our medical profession would be beginning to take a more relaxed attitude toward the imputed perils of tea because, due to an increasing expense of the leaves at three shillings, four shillings, and even five shillings the pound, our teasips were beginning to brew their caffeine fix not nearly so strong. The doctors, of course, should have been doing everything within their power to increase the drinking of Chinese tea, especially in the USA, because the more of this tea infusion people consumed during this period the less ethanol they would be consuming — and alcoholism was of course one of our most major killers. DOPE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1822
The chronic alcoholic stupor and antics of the Vice President of the United States of America, the Honorable Daniel D. Tomkin, had been embarrassing the Senate –in which of course he was the presiding officer– and finally his colleagues prevailed upon him to just go the hell home, for the remainder of his term of office. DOPERS
Thomas De Quincey’s CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER, which had appeared in the previous year in London Magazine, at this point was printed as a book.
He projected a work to be entitled CONFESSIONS OF A MURDERER (this would not materialize). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1823
At the age of 6 Charles Henry Appleton Dall was packed off to live in Boston with his father’s brother and sister William and Sarah Dall, and study at the Franklin School. He would not be visiting his parents in Baltimore for 9 years.
An indigenous bush producing leaves that contained caffeine was found growing in Upper Assam. This, eventually, would break the Chinese monopoly on tea. The 1st agricultural laborers in tea in northern India would be Chinese accustomed to work on Chinese tea plantations, who would be enticed by Charles Bruce out of China to transplant young native bushes into nursery beds.
Warren Delano sailed from Boston for Canton on behalf of Russel & Co. He would return after traffic in opium had made him a wealthy man. He well knew that opium was “black dirt,” but defended his conduct by pointing out that alcoholic beverages were also being imported into America — and nobody was barfing at that. In 1851 he would settle in Newburgh, New York, where he would give the hand of his daughter in marriage to James Roosevelt (father of Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
The fuchsia had been first noticed by Fuchs in 1501. The scarlet fuchsia had been introduced from Chile in 1788 and the slender fuchsia in 1822, and in this year the tree fuchsia was obtained from Mexico. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1824
Glenlivet Distillery was founded by John Smith. Clearly, “Scotch whiskey” is nowhere near as old as the demon rum that was being produced from sugar cane by the application of slave labor.
When Albert Brown (an older brother of Theophilus Brown) had completed his tailoring apprenticeship in Providence, Rhode Island, he relocated to Worcester and established a tailoring shop, the “Emporium of Fashion.” This was the 1st merchant tailoring business in the town, and initially was located in an annex to the home of Dr. John Green which had formerly been in use as his apothecary, on Main Street opposite Central.
Upon the death of his father Isaac Bailey at the age of 36, Jacob Whitman Bailey attempted to begin to support his mother and younger brothers in their need by forsaking his position in the bookstore and lending library in Providence, Rhode Island to accept a position as a manufacturer’s clerk in Massachusetts. He would soon discover, however, that this new job involved the sale of rum, and that this was something which he simply could not bring himself to do — and so he would soon need to root around and obtain other gainful employment, as a high school assistant.
Isaac Babbitt of Taunton, Massachusetts began to manufacture Britannia ware, the 1st produced in the New World (approximately 93% tin, 5% antimony, and 2% copper, the Britannia alloy melts at 491° Fahrenheit and had been in use in Britain since 1769 as an alternative to pewter, which is approximately 91% tin, 7.5% antimony, and 1.5% copper; Academy Award “Oscar” statuettes, unlike Olympic medals that are an alloy of gold plated in 24-carat gold, are manufactured of Britannia alloy plated in gold).
Friend John Cadbury returned to Birmingham, England and started a business next to his father’s drapers shop in Bull Street, selling tea, coffee, hops, mustard, and drinking chocolate. The emphasis, in this Quaker establishment, was going to be on the highest quality. The establishment began to produce, as a breakfast beverage, “Cocoa Nibs.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM October 19, Tuesday: From the diary of George F. Jencks, a white man of Pawtucket: “Last night the Whites assembled on the bridge in Providence and went out in a body to that part of town occupied by the blacks and pulled down Ten of their houses and laid waste all there contents and this day the Governor and Council has ordered out the Light Infantry to guard the town.”20 A crown of perhaps as many as a thousand white people had stood around idly and watched in Providence, Rhode Island as a white mob, reacting to perceived economic competition from free black Americans, had demolished some 20 black homes in “Addison’s Hollow” or “Hardscrabble,” a challenged neighborhood along Olney Lane by what is now Gaspee street and the State House. (It would all happen again, in the Olney Lane and Snowtown district of Providence, Charles/ Orms Street area, on September 21, 1831.) RACISM
Although 10 of these white rioters would be prosecuted for serious offenses, their defense, provided by the prominent local attorney Joseph Tillinghast, consisting of an argument that actually they had been improving “the morals of the community” by removing a “pig-stye” of lewdness, disorder, drunkenness, and unseemly dancing, would prove to be entirely successful. The only convictions would be on minor charges, and the only punishment would be of the “slap on the wrist” variety, with leading white citizens openly congratulating them for their civic-minded destructiveness. (When the rioting would break out again in 1831, however, it would end with the militia needing to kill four white men, and afterward, in the interest of maintaining public order, voters would approve a charter for a city government with stronger police powers.)
Providence in the 1820s was a fast-growing port town, drawing on its hinterland’s farms and manufactures to overshadow Newport, once Rhode Island’s primary metropolis. Providence had about 11,750 people in 1820 (by 1825 there would be about 15,000, and by 1830 about 17,000). Of these, about 1,000 were freemen who met the property qualification to vote in Town Meetings. At the other extreme of Providence’s social spectrum were about 1,000 blacks, rising from 980 in 1820 to 1,200-1,400 in 1830. Only four people were still enslaved. Many black families had lived in Providence for generations, but others were recent arrivals from South County. About half the blacks in town lived with their employers, and the other half were generally drawn of course to neighborhoods where land and rent were cheap, at the north end of town. A proud few owned homes. Two days before the “Hardscrabble” riots, the Providence Beacon had editorialized about “Our Black Population.” (The Beacon, published almost single-handedly by William Spear, would be characterized as “a fearless paper” by a lawyer representing the white rioters, Chief Justice William Staples, in his Annals of Providence, but Attorney General Duttee Pearce would characterize William Spear himself as “a person of evil, wicked, and malicious mind and disposition.” Spear was the sort of person who would lament in print that local blacks were “naturally vicious and wicked,” “profligate,” and “worthless,” and spread stories that groups of blacks were forcing whites to step off the sidewalks to make way for them rather than themselves stepping off the sidewalks to make way for whites as was natural and proper.) The previous weekend the Providence Beacon had reported that local blacks had defeated a white crowd for possession of the bridge on Smith Street (were people using this bridge to cope with the heat of the season?) –since nature had given them disproportionate “physical strength”– and that a thrown stone had wounded “a respectable lady” on the breast. Spear was warning that Providence after dark was now “absolutely dangerous for females.” Other Providence newspapers, such as the Jeffersonian Providence Patriot, the proto-Whig Manufacturer’s and Farmer’s Journal, and the old Federalist Providence Gazette, generally ignored the white riot. The Patriot ran a half-inch notice of the “affray,” and after a few days reprinted the Gazette’s editorial obliquely deploring “the increase of our colored population.” It noted that the Town Council had ordered a census of blacks for the purpose of expelling the “idle, dissolute” ones. After reviling the capacities of the race, it allowed that most long-settled blacks were “sober, industrious and respectable citizens.” Spear’s Beacon, however, was offering that while “extermination” was not indicated, at least as yet, some decent white people would need to volunteer to “rid the town of its superabundant share” of transient poor blacks. It was two days later, on the evening of October 18th, that a white mob marched north to Hardscrabble and destroyed eleven structures. Most of the structures destroyed were speakeasies, but all accounts agree that a few were the homes of “respectable” black craftsmen and their families. By some accounts, including the Beacon’s, this mob comprised 400 to 500 rioters and up to 1,000 eager spectators, although others estimated
20. See HISTORY OF THE PROVIDENCE RIOTS, published in Providence by M.M. Brown during 1831. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM the mob at only 50 or 60 effectives, with a cheering section amounting to only about a hundred. The next Beacon published a short account of the violence, followed by a romantic lamentation for the poor, innocent, hard-working black victims, after which Spear chastised their impudence, “idleness and vice” and proposed that Draconian controls be imposed over them. This article, entitled “RIOT AND REBELLION,” announced that Providence, known “for the purity of its morals and its domestic felicity and repose,” had been “disharmonized” by the indiscriminate “atrocities” of an “abandoned and profligate mob.” Hardscrabble, wrote Spear, was a “hamlet” of “smiling aspect” where blacks had moved “to avoid all intercourse” with “hostile” whites. When attacked, the “unoffending and unsuspecting inhabitants” “were engaged in convivial sports and rural games.” Their “innocent festivity” may have involved rum, for the newspaper mentioned that some provident housekeepers had enough of it on hand to buy off the mob and thus preserve their homes. In the wake of the white mob, Spear found devoted mothers, an “honest sailor” and “an aged son of Africa,” mourning “with downcast countenance” their “humble cottages,” the fruits of “honest toil,” and gasping, “’Hope forsaken!’” Spear predicted that these wronged blacks would be righteously seeking vengeance. They were innocent as lambs, except that they were “impudent, and often offer insults to whites.” Blacks “cannot bear the luxuries of freedom,” and are temperamentally incompatible with whites. Therefore, “let their liberties be abridged.” we should put “every Negro under the immediate control of the Orphan’s Court,” and apprentice them all to “respectable Mechanics.” Some would be “susceptible of improvement,” and for others “it would be the means of driving them from our region.” This “benevolence” would benefit both whites and blacks — the only alternative would be a cycle of riot culminating in a white “war of extermination” destroying this black element in the town. The next week, Spear’s sympathies would be even more firmly with the wronged black residents of Providence. He would be pointing out that many of the local blacks, although they had become “miserable wretches,” were actually the offspring of “noble” Revolutionary veterans.
December 8, Wednesday: On 8th day 12th month of 1824 Friend Elias Hicks delivered a sermon at the Byberry Friends Meeting that was taken down in Short Hand by M.T.C. Gould, and would in the following year be published in Philadelphia by Joseph & Edward Parker: My mind, since we have been sitting silently together, has been led to a feeling view of the excellency of love; pure undefiled love; its dignity, its majesty, and its power. It stands over and above all: it is above all price; — it cannot be bought. If a man would give all the substance of his house for love; it would be utterly contemned. It was, no doubt, that which led the apostle, formerly, to address his brethren on this wise: “Let brotherly love continue.” Now, what is this brotherly love, my friends? — this true brotherly love? I apprehend we may see something of it, in a family of children, all of the same parent; why, it leads and instructs all, and keeps all in their proper allotment, under the direction of a pious and wise parent, who begins with his children when young, very young; and if he is, as he ought to be, possessed of love, — his love to his tender offspring is equal to his love for his own soul. He begins with them, when they have a being, one after another; and he instructs them according to their age and preparation to receive instruction. And in a large family of brothers and sisters, there are many states, all somewhat different from each other, in point of age and acquirements; the parent begins with the first, and leads them on, so that they are prepared to receive a different kind of instruction, and greater knowledge and information from him, than the younger brothers and sisters. But here, if brotherly love prevails, no envy gets in rather younger do not envy the elder, because the father informs them HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM of higher pursuits, which are beyond the reach of the younger, and which they cannot understand. And as they keep in love and fellowship and in obedience to the father, they are all content with his disposing toward them. They attend individually to their own lessons of instruction. Their meals are all meted out, in proportion, and in agreement with, their several states and conditions; and yet there is a diversity in the whole, not all being capacitated alike for receiving instruction, or any thing else. The elder ones have their proper places in the family, all in regular gradation one above another. The younger ones, seeing the elder advance beyond what they know and experience, are stimulated with a desire for this advanced state. As they keep in love to one another, it does not raise any envy or dislike, but all go on in harmony. Now, these are the effects, of pure undefiled love. This is that love, of which we read so much; the excellency of which is so highly desirable; and which is said to be stronger than death. Oh! its excellency, its dignity, and its power! What wonders it does in the creation! He that is the author of it, assigns of it, like a pious father dealing out to his children, to every one who is obedient to his manifested will, and agreeable to his state and condition to receive. The elder will always be ahead in advancement, if he is equally obedient and faithful; and yet there is no envy, no strife: “for where envy and strife is, there is contention and every evil work.” But in a well ordered family of children. these things cannot rise; for if they all stand in their proper places, envy hath no place; and strife is not known. Now, my friends, there is nothing, I apprehend, that can keep families together; and preserve, harmony and concord, but love — all powerful love. However, as I observed, we read much of it, and of its power and sufficiency; yet we cannot gain it through that medium. All that we can read and hear about it, gives us no possession at all. There is but one way in which we can come to know it; and be blessed with it. We cannot purchase it with money: no, it is above all price. How are we then: obtain it, my beloved friends? There is but one only way — there never was but one only way — and that is faithfulness and submission the father's direction; faithfulness and submission to the father's discipline. For every prudent, godly, and wise parent has a discipline his family. If he has wisdom to direct, and his children are obedient to his will, all will be subject to this discipline; subject to this law of the family; each standing in his own proper allotment, without grudging, and without envy. So it will be, and so it must be, with our Heavenly Father's family; for all his children must be taught of him. “The Lord's children are all taught of the Lord, in righteousness are they established, and great is the peace of these children.” Here we have a view of the subject outwardly; but it gives us no possession at all. It is but the letter; it is not to be depended upon. We must come home within ourselves. We must come to know our hearts cleansed, purified, and emptied of every thing which is in opposition to this pure and holy principle. Now this is great work. It is a work of God upon the soul; for man cannot do it himself. We have all fallen away from this pure, undefiled love. There is another who has got possession of our hearts; “the strong man armed.” While he keeps the city, the goods are at peace: but HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM when a stronger than he comes in and turns him out, then he call spoil his goods. What is stronger than the strong man? Pure, undefiled love is stronger; for God is love, and they that dwell in love, dwell in God, and God in them. Now here we may see and behold what to do. We feel and know, in ourselves, that while we are in a natural state; while we are unredeemed and not saved, our hearts are filled with many guests, — many beloveds. Here divine love cannot enter and get a place of residence. If it for a moment breaks in upon us, and makes us feel its excellency; it is soon crowded out by these many beloveds. We turn away our attention, and lose the feelings which are sometimes witnessed, while it is shed abroad in our hearts. Now, here the divine visitor manifests himself, and shows the design of his coming; that it is in order to bind the strong mall in us, who has taken the seat of God and of love in our hearts; — the man of sin and son of perdition; or man's strong will, iris strong and ungoverned passions, which have grown up in him, by indulging his propensities beyond truth and righteousness. This is the strong man in the soul, which stands in direct opposition to God, and to pure undefiled love. It is selfish, and all it does is to gratify self: all it does while under the power of this man of sin and son of perdition, is to exalt itself, no matter how. The great work which we have to do is, turn to the Lord, when he is pleased to call upon us, to plead with us, as no doubt he has times with all of us. We must endeavour to fee the mollifying influence of his love; we must listen and attend to this holy visitor. We must give way to him in our hearts, and permit him to dispossess the man of sin; for he has come to bind the strong man armed, and to turn him out to clear our hearts of all our strong passions, our cultivated desires, and selfish will. We should, therefore unite, with the operation of this divine principle of God in the soul. It is a living principle, it is the light and life, by which all the children of men are enlightened, and shown their condition. By it they discover the enmity that exists between this divine love, and the man of sin; for there is great enmity between the two seeds. One to bruise the head, and the other to bruise the heel. The man of sin and son of perdition cannot bruise the head; for the true head is the seed of God in the soul. He can do nothing but to undermine and deceive, by his working and deceptive power. Here every individual has a great work to do, under the leading and influence of this divine visitor, the light and love of God in our own souls. He comes in at times and seasons, when, in the cool of the day, the mind is a little retired from the continual exertions and buzzing about its own business. Whenever it can find the soul in a state of quiet, it comes in, and makes it sensible of its condition. Blessed be his great and glorious name; he is visiting all the children of men with this divine love; for God is love: — and by this principle he works upon the children of men. By it, he endeavours to bring them off from that which is against his nature Man, in his fallen state, is a heap of hatred and opposition to divine love; and hatred and love cannot abide in the same place at the same time. And as we yield to temptations, evil of every description arises in the soul, and stands in direct opposition to God, and his law and light. The great work, therefore, is to HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM turn inward, and wait in holy silence to feel the arising of the love light and love of God there; and in the same proportion as we yield, our love will begin to rise. It will break forth as the morning. Yea, if we are faithful to its divine influence, it will cause our darkness to be as the noon day, anti thus our hearts will become emptied. They will become as a vacuum, when the divine love and light shall have banished all these evils; and when all combustible matter shall be turned out of the soul. This cannot all be done at once. It is a gradual work. In the figure, the Israelites did not drive all out at once, lest the beasts of the field should prey upon them. So with the souls of the children of men. The Almighty enters and engages the soul, and turns its attention to itself. He shows it what is its first work. It is to do away this thing, that thing, or the other thing, which the light reveals to be inconsistent with the divine will. Here then, as we give up this enemy, to be slain and cast out, it leaves a vacuum in the soul, and this is filled with divine love; and so, as there is faithfulness to the divine light and manifestation in the soul, one enemy after another is overcome, and there is always something to fill up the place. The Lord in his loving kindness fills the vacuum, and enables us to go on from one degree of strength to another. Here we learn to know and understand what the apostle expresses of growing in grace; and in the saving knowledge of God our Saviour, step by step, like Jacob's ladder, by which we climb from earth to heaven. We are brought out of a state of wrath; a state in which envy and strife is, and contention, and every evil work. We gradually rise out of these things; and as way is made, as I observed, evil is cast out, and good comes in and fills the vacuum, till the whole heart becomes renovated and renewed. Here we come to witness the new birth. We read of a state in which man becomes a new creature; “he that is in Christ is a new creature.” What is it to be in Christ? It is to come up into that righteousness which he came up into. He had to war with temptations as we have. One temptation after another assailed him; and as he overcame one, the divine light took place of it: just so it must be with us, if we are ever made fit for the kingdom of heaven. We must come to know all these things removed, before we can enjoy that pure undefiled love, where no envy or strife is, no contention or evil work. We are willing that every one should stand in his own allotment. Therefore, “let brotherly love continue.” Let us be of the same mind to one another. How are we to be of the same mind? Does this mean that we are all to come to the same point? No. Because we are gradually advanced one above another. The elder brother has a mind to love the younger, when he is under the direction of the father; and therefore the younger has the same mind to love the elder, in proportion as he is in his proper allotment, under the direction of his great parent. So it should be in societies. There should be no discord, because the individuals are in different situations; they are all children growing up together; some have, of course, experienced a great deal, some very little; but this should not excite the envy of those who are so young as not to comprehend, what their elder brothers have attained to. That love, which is stronger than death, keeps down envy and strife, and every one in his proper allotment, is willing to let others do as he would have the do to him. Now to the want of this spirit of love, in the minds of the HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM children of men, may be attribute all the persecutions in the world, on a religious account. Because if men were willing to subject their wills to the divine will; if we are desirous of being the Lord's children, we must be obedient to his law. And therefore, as he has but one law, which is a law of righteousness in every soul, it is a law that is clear and perfect; so that every individual that attends to this inward law, has the will of God manifested to him. For no outward thing can manifest the will of God. If we believe what we read, and what we know in ourselves, nothing can teach us the things of God, but the spirit of God. Nothing can write God's law upon our hearts but the finger of God. There it is, then, that we must gather as the only place of safety; there the work is to be done. It is there, we find our enemy, if we have any, and there we must find our friend. But people too generally, looking outwardly to find God and in this outward looking they are told about a devil; some monstrous creature, some self-existing creature, that is terrible in power. Now, all this seeking to know God, and this devil, the serpent without, is the work of darkness, superstition, and tradition. It hath no foundation; it is all breath and wind, without the power. We need not look without for enemies or friends; for we shall not find them without. Our enemies are those of our own household: our own propensities and unruly desires are our greatest, and I may almost say, our alone enemies. And yet, in themselves, they are all good; because man could not give himself propensities or desires; and therefore, as there is but one being who creates, and as he is perfect in wisdom and holiness: and as he is nothing but pure and undefiled love, he could create nothing but that which is good. If nothing can create but this undefiled love, all that we feel and all that we have, when we turn inward, is the work of this Almighty creator, who has stamped it upon man, and made him a twofold creature, consisting of a body and a spirit — matter and spirit. He has impressed upon the immortal soul of man, propensities and desires, suited to its nature, and suited to the design of its creation and existence. He has impressed upon our animal bodies propensities and passions suitable to their nature, to lead us to provide for what we stand in need of. Nothing could impress these upon the creature, but God Almighty who creates; because man cannot create any thing, or make any addition to that which God has given him. Neither is there any power under Heaven, which can alter the state of man, beside man himself and his Creator. And as God is over all, and is perfectly good, he could not possibly create evil: and therefore, we must seek for the way in which, and the place from whence this evil arises, in some other quarter. We must not look outwardly for it, but inwardly. Here we find that we are possessed of desires and propensities of various kinds, and a great many of them; and yet they are all absolutely necessary, as our being is necessary. Here we shall find out that which will banish all superstition and tradition from our souls: we shall find out that God is the only great good; that all evil arises from our disobedience to him, and from our abuse of his blessings. He has made man a twofold creature; one part mortal, the other immortal. The mortal tabernacle and the immortal spirit within, can never unite one with the other; they must stand eternally distinct from each other; and therefore, the immortal spirit has its independent nature, distinct from matter, because it comes from God. In old HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM days it was seen to be so. These poor bodies of clay must return to the earth from whence they were taken, and the spirit to God who gave it. The soul, when disencumbered from the body, returns to the world of spirits, to give an account of its deeds, while an agent under God, in the animal body, with authority to direct it as wisdom should dictate. We see that it is not in the animal body to reason. No: it is not in bones to think, or flesh to reason. It is the immortal soul only that is accountable to God. For its own propensities are limited by the light of God in itself, and its duty is to keep insubordination the animal body, so as not to suffer it to get angry, or do any thing contrary to this light. It is to keep it down within its proper limits. And how natural these things are, my friends, if we reflect upon them. They are as plain as A, B, C. You would find you never were tempted by a devil without you, but by a devil within you. What is the devil? It is that cunning, twining wisdom, — that serpentine wisdom of man. Man is a being who is made a free agent, and with propensities, out of which, he is to grow up into a more glorious state. But by indulging them beyond the bounds of wisdom and of truth, — here is where the evil begins, here comes in that that does us mischief. What makes a drunkard, but the soul's indulging the animal passion after drink, which taken to excess produces drunkenness? It is nothing but the excess that makes the drunkard. Here now we see where sin begins; here we see where devils are created, by man himself; he is the author of them all; as he is the only fallen angel upon earth. What produces the glutton, the adulterer, the fornicator, the covetous, the liar, the thief, but an excess in the indulgence of propensities, which lead us to seek for that which is necessary for us? We should always keep within the limits of truth and wisdom, and never suffer our propensities or desires to carry us beyond what God in his wisdom intended to our limits; and thus all our passions would kept in their proper allotments. Man was created and placed in a garden of trees — full of trees — which he was to dress, keep them in order. And what were the trees the garden of Eden? They were the propensities of man, in his animal body. These are the trees that will grow, if they are not kept down by pruning. You know how necessary it is for the wise husbandman, by care and the use of the knife, to keep his trees pruned; and if any bud shoots out improperly, he rubs it off, and keeps all smooth. If he suffers it to grow, it may be injurious to the tree, and may require the knife. Just so it is in a spiritual sense, if we attend the trees of the garden; if we watch over them with diligence, and watch every growing propensity, as it grows stronger, and the soul creases in knowledge. As the desire of know ledge grows stronger, we are to keep it down and never let the mind rise, to exercise its own ability to decide for itself, but wait in humility on the heavenly Father to know his will. Let the business be great or small: still it must be under the dominion and control of the heavenly Father. Here we see how the blessed Jesus went on, and how he began. He said he did not come to do his own will, but the will of the Father, that sent him. Just so with us, my friends; this is the end of our coming into the world, not to do our own will, but the will of him that has blessed us with this state of being, and endowed us with these passions, which bring about our probationary state. We feel that we are placed in a state of HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM probation; and we feel and know that it is done by our Creator; and, therefore, we must conclude that it is the best situation in which infinite wisdom and perfect justice could have placed us. There could have been nothing more excellent; for if there could have been, our gracious Creator would have placed his creature man in the best situation — in the best possible state to effect the great end of his creation. Therefore, this probationary state, is the best state that infinite wisdom Could have selected, to effect the great design. Well now, there must be something to bring about this probation; and has there been any thing that any of us ever knew of but these propensities and desires, that are a part of our common nature? I challenge the whole host of mankind, to find any thing but our own propensities and desires. And as man could not give to himself these propensities and desires, we have the evidence along with them, that they were given to us by our Creator, as the best possible medium, through which to effect his great end. He made us innocent creatures, and placed us here on earth, and had we been content in that state, we should have remained mere machines. That being, which is the creature of another; if he is made complete at once, without the liberty of exercising free agency, is a mere machine. But contrary to all the rest of creation, the Creator made and endowed us with the power of electing for ourselves. He gave us passions — if we may call them passions — in order that we might seek after those things which we need, and which we had a right to experience and know. Yet, not without laying a restriction upon the immortal soul, saying, “thus far shalt thou go, and no farther;” as was the charge to our first parents, when placed in the garden. They were endowed with a soul, which was to be kept in subjection; which was to be kept under the divine direction in all its propensities, and not to allow them to exceed due bounds. Here is the probation of the soul; and the only possible one, by which it could rise out of an innocent state, into a virtuous and a glorious one: to be an inhabitant of Heaven; to be a communicant with its Creator, and the God of its existence and life. Oh! my friends, how glorious the view — I say, how glorious the view, when we are brought to witness and to see how divine wisdom intended we should rise from a state of mere innocency, into a state of glorification, by a conquest over all its enemies, over every thing which could obtrude itself upon the soul, or divert it from its proper duty. We need not look outward to find a devil; we shall find enough in us. We read that there were seven devils cast out of Mary Magdalene. She had been a vile woman, who was given to multitude of evil propensities, by the indulgence of which, she was brought completely under the power of them. Her rational spirit became enlisted in the service of the passions; and seven propensities had been indulged in, till they became as devils to her. Here she went counter to the divine will. So now, Jesus quelled all these, and brought her into a sense of her desperate state. As she believed on him, and looked to him for help, — as she gave up to him, he banished the evil spirits from her soul — he bound the strong man armed, and cast him out; and as she was faithful, and sat down in humiliation at his feet, he spoiled all his goods. This produced a vacuum; and this vacuum was filled with the holy presence. The Lord Almighty came in, in lieu of it, to reign over all. And these were all the devils that were HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM cast out; they were the passions which were inimical to man's happiness. The leprosy was a disease, and such was the superstition of that day; such the darkness and ignorance,-that they were led to suppose, that there was some devil from without that had brought this disease upon them. This disease, and ready others, were cleansed from the people by Jesus. He took upon him to cleanse the people-he cured the lunatic. And what is lunacy? It is a failing in man, it is a disease, which was then, may be now, and even is, sometimes supposed to be, by the foolish and credulous a spirit — an evil spirit. These things should show us our infirmity; and teach us to trust in the Lord our God, for salvation and strength; believing that if we in early life begin to attend to these things; to the divine law, and the visitations of the holy spirit, all these things would be banished. But for the want of this, our imperfections lead us to turn away from him, who alone can save us; and thus are we led astray and deluded. This we must conclude if we believe the scriptures, and our own experience: “They that trust in the Lord, shall never he confounded.” So that the great business of life, to the children of men is, to turn inward, to the witness of God, in their own souls. We have many demonstrations of this in the letter: but what does fine letter do? What has it ever done? It can do nothing. It is not a cause, but an effect. It might have a tendency, if we were willing-hearted, to attend to the divine grace, to push us to it; to direct its to it; but it can do nothing more. The grace of God is the only thing that can produce the salvation of the soul of man: “For by grace are ye saved, through faith.” We must not expect that the grace of God will save us, without faith in its sufficiency. There is but one way that I ever found, and that is, to be obedient to its teachings, and attentive to its operation upon the mind. As we attend to it, it will open our understandings; we shall learn to know its excellency; and in proportion as we are attentive to it, we shall love it for its excellency and goodness. “For by grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. How then shall we undertake to give a brother or a father a belief? If we do it, what wicked and presumptuous creatures we are, because we take the place of God. We assume the place of God when we tell our brother, this is the right way; my opinion is just right, and if thou do not come into it, thou art a heretic. A brother who does this, must be void of christian love; otherwise he would never assume such a stand. He has not that love which leads every one to do what lie thinks is right in the sight of his Heavenly Father. If they do not see as he does, it may be because they are not fit to see as he does. They are not prepared in their own hearts. They are not enough subjected, so as to bring them to experience what their brother has experienced; and yet in this darkness they would presume to rule their brother. Here is no brotherly love existing. Look at it now, if we should suppose that some one should say, “My brother, thou must be constrained to come into my views.” The brother says: “Not so, but thou must come into my views,” Here now, contention and discord would enter, and every evil work prevail: but on the contrary, were they under the influence of brotherly love, they would be willing to say, each to the other, “mind thy HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM own business; thy Father hath given thee thy portion, and let it he what it may, be thou faithful. Do not mind me; I am not to be thy teacher; I am not to be an example to thee, any further than my example corresponds with what God commands thee to do.” Let us encourage each other, in pursuing the path of duty, as laid out by our Heavenly Father; and none else does know it. As long as we believe in the light, and continue to walk in the light, our intentions become settled and firm; that we will do nothing but that which is right. We shall endeavour to pursue the right way in all things; to do all the good we can, and as little harm as possible, in the world. These are resolutions which the divine light brings the soul into, when it comes under its regulating influence. It brings the soul into its own nature, to do nothing but the right thing. This will be its steady aim. But as finite creatures, though we might have no other motive than that of doing good; yet it is possible we may mistake, and do all injury in our dealings with others. But when our motives are correct, and we suppose that we are doing the best thing; but through a want of previous knowledge we do that which injures another, yet if he knows the sincerity of our heart, and believes that we are always striving to do the best thing; it would make no uneasiness, no breach of brotherly love among us. Each one would continue to pursue his own straight course, with nothing in view, but to do all the good he could, and as little hurt as possible. This is an excellent religion, when men are willing to come to it. These things have arisen from a view of the preciousness, the dignity, and majesty of divine love, as it has opened to me, since I stood up; although, I saw but little when I first to see, but to endeavour to lead our minds home, that we might be enabled to act with propriety towards one another; for I am clear, that it would be impossible for any thing to disturb our peace, however different our views, if we were acting under the influence of pure undefiled love. We should all harmonise and rejoice together, my beloved friends; we should become as one family of love; and should experience the testimony that “the Lord's children are taught of the Lord, and great is the peace of these children.” But when we look around and see how little righteousness there is among us, we are afraid to look; we see so many inconsistencies, we hardly dare look?-we are afraid to examine. That even when an individual under the best concern or exercise, is led to point out to us the enormities we are guilty of in this land, they seem ready to turn it behind their backs. Then what must be done? Let us “try all things; prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.” Did we enter into a close investigation of the one great principle of actions — justice, we should see how far we are in the performance of our duty to our fellow creatures. For we must be just before we are generous. There can be no charity, no virtue, which has not justice for its foundation. Let us then inquire, are we doing any thing that oppresses them; are we doing any thing that strengthens the hand of the oppressor? Look to it my friends. You know that the receiver and the thief are considered equal. He that receives stolen goods is just as guilty as the one who steals them. Now, how oppression reigns in our land; and how many goods there are which are even worse than stolen goods. I appeal to your common sense, my friends, whether to make a man HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM labour and bring forth to us his goods, is not worse than stealing. Therefore he that partakes of these stolen goods, is worse than the common thief. Our common understanding would dictate this to us, was it not for the prejudice of education and tradition. But when we become accustomed to any thing, however evil it may be, if it has been sanctioned by usage, we find it extremely difficult to abandon it; and particularly, where we are individually interested in it. We are not willing to believe it. We do not want to see these things, and turn our backs to a serious search. In this case it is not difficult to know our duty, because the matter is so clear and plain: and there cannot be an individual who is willing to stand as an upright man or woman, but would be willing, if possible, to know where they were falling short. For they that can strengthen the hand of the oppressor in the least degree, how can this divine love come in, and all their hearts, while they manifest a hatred to their fellow creatures? They who strengthen the hand of the oppressor, evidently manifest a hatred to the oppressed. There are many ways in which we oppress. This land is guilty of the oppression of human beings, and the crime lies as a dark cloud Upon the nation. I consider it the duty of every individual to search into this subject. Oh! my friends, let us strike at the very bottom; and may we be led to go on hand in hand in the work. Let us join hand in hand in the resolution to do good; and we shall be stimulated, to do all that we can to put an end to this cruel oppression in our land. Where injustice now reigns, justice would come up in its dignity and power; and the oppressed would he relieved. The chains would be released from the necks of our fellow creatures; justice would be exalted, and come up to reign over all. We have hardly got our hands clear of our oppressed fellow creatures, and we sit down in ease, and keep encouraging those who are engaged in this cruel traffic. What is the difference whether I hold a slave, or purchase the produce of his labour from those who do? If I deal moderately with him, would it not be better to hold him myself? — I say, would it not be better to keep one in a moderate way? Look to this, my friends. I see the scales that are upon the eyes of the people; — their prejudices are such, that it requires something powerful to break the scales from off their eyes. But let us make the case our own, and then we shall begin to see through a more impartial medium. Now here are dear parents, the fathers and mothers of children. Suppose the tyrant should tear from you your dear sons and daughters, take them into the next county, put them under the iron yoke, and lash them every day, and deprive them of every liberty and enjoyment; and above all, the liberty of free agency, without which all other blessings are not worth enjoying; for nothing can be a blessing to a slave in this world. Look at it, my friends, and say, whether you could go over the line of a county, and traffic, and buy the produce of your tender offspring, who, through toil and bloodshed, had been compelled to labour at a tyrant's will. And is not the principle still the same, if we go a little further, and buy the produce of our fellow creatures, who are not so nearly connected? Are we not all brethren? Have we any better right to oppress one who is not our immediate brother or sister, than we have to oppress one that is? Oh! that we might learn wisdom, before our iniquity becomes our HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM ruin! I say there is a black cloud hanging over us, and I can see no advancement that we can make till this greatest of evils is removed. There are many other evils and acts of injustice in the line of commerce and trade with one another, where we impose on one. another, and do manifest injustice; but these are so trivial and small compared with this great one, that I have little hope of improving in this respect, till the greater evil is banished from our land. And how quick it might be effected, were justice to reign — if we were all willing to be just men and women. Are we to reason about consequences, when the divine light shows us our sins? If we leave off this sin, this or that will be the consequence; the tyrant may suffer by it; we shall be taking away his living. Is this good reasoning? What matter is it about the tyrant? We are called upon to do that which is right and just; and are not to consider what the consequence will be. What if a thief should say to himself, “Now God calls on me to leave off this sin; but I have been stealing a great while, and if I leave off this sin, I shall have no way to live.” What should we think of an individual who would undertake to reason with the Most High in this way? We know he could not find favour in his sight. When we have sufficient evidence, we need not look any higher. When our own understanding testifies to us that we are wrong, that we are unjust and unrighteous, shall we then wait for revelation? Why it would be casting an indignity upon him, who gives us these lesser means, to convince us with the clearest demonstration. Our own common sense is a sufficient evidence, and we need not look any higher. If we know an act to be unjust, no matter how we come by the knowledge; even if a child in the neighbourhood, should tell us of it, if we have evidence in ourselves that the child has spoken the truth, we have no need to look for higher evidence, because this may be the means under Heaven, by which our eyes should be opened. Whenever we come to the knowledge of a truth, no matter by what means, it is time then for us to attend to it, and to leave off our injustice, if we are guilty of ally. It is enough that we are convinced, even if it were by an inanimate thing; or if we are brought to see as Balaam was, by means of an ass. We have to right to look any higher, when we are convinced that any thing is the truth, and nothing but the truth. — Well is it not so? Can we want to go any where to be informed of our duty in this matter? Can any people have a better view of a subject than we have of this? Could we know it better if we should ascend into Heaven? No. Not any thing in Heaven can make it plainer than it is. All revelation, and all that is rational, can prove no more; for our common sense proves indubitably that slavery is the most cruel and most wicked of all things. We have the most self- evident proof; and in the great day of account, We dare not make the plea, and say, the BIBLE did not reveal it to me. The question will be, didst thou not see it by the light of reason, that was communicated to thee? Did not thy common understanding convince thee? And still thou wouldst not believe! But we are not willing to believe unless the Almighty will convince us by some great miracle. We are like the Jews, when they would not believe the miracles of Jesus Christ. His disciples wanted him to bring down fire from Heaven. But he would not indulge them. We know, to the utmost certainty what slavery is, and not any thing in Heaven can make it plainer, than it is. If we know it HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM to he unjust, will we still wait for the Lord to tell us it is so? He will never do it; for he has already done it, by the means which he appointed for that purpose. But being unjust to man in our common way of life — being, too many of us, in the way of darkness, we can have fellowship with the works of darkness; although we are called out of it all. I know not how to leave this subject, for my soul is in it. Oh! may it be our desire and our resolution, my friends, willingly to take up the cross and despise the shame; — although individuals may point the finger of scorn at us, and say it is a little thing — don't let us regard these things. We are not accountable to man, but to our Creator, who is doing every thing to make the way plain and intelligibly clear to us. Can we have christian love, and strengthen the hand of an oppressor? Be sure we cannot, my friends. We are Void of it, because we delight in gratifying ourselves. Oh! may we, individually, sink deep into the-consideration. Try these things, my friends, and search for yourselves. I do not desire, as a brother, to impress my opinions upon you; but only to give you my views, and leave them as a mirror for you to look into. I would not have any turn to my views, merely because they are mine; but because they are convinced of the irresistible truth of them. If they do not see as I do, it does not break my love with my fellow creatures. I am thankful — and this is the very pearl of my life — that I feel and continue to feel, nothing but love to flow to every creature under Heaven. Oh! how precious it is. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath prepared for them that love him;” — that love him with that pure love, that hath all power, both in Heaven and in earth. Love is stronger than death, but jealousy is more cruel than the grave. I have never known or witnessed any evidence of fallen angels, but those who are fallen men and women. I believe there never were any other on this earth. Those whom the Lord has called, and who have been made partakers of the good things and power of the world to come, these when they fall away and become apostates, are fallen angels. For what are angels, but messengers? As it is said: “He maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” Now we ought to take warning, my friends, till we become established. Not but that I believe there is an arriving at a state of establishment beyond falling. But few arrive at it for want of faithfulness. Many make a good beginning, but too few hold out to the end. It is not enough to begin well, and to run well for a while; but we must persevere. For it is only those who endure to the end, that shall be saved. Now, those whom the Lord has blessed, and who have advanced in some degree to be his people; and whom he has enabled by his grace to become useful in their day; do sometimes fall off. Are not these fallen angels? Oh! let us deeply consider these things. Ever remember that it is not enough to begin well. How many there were brought out of Egypt, through the wilderness, who, nevertheless: never entered into the promised land. They were afraid, they lost their confidence, When they came on the borders of Canaan. So it is with many who set out in the christian travel. They go on well for a while; but when their life and all is to be given up, they fail. When we enter the conflict, and our lives are ready to be taken from us, how many ten thousands there are, in the present HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM day, who, like the Israelites, have rebelled against God, and turned away from their former confidence. Let me repeat it again. It is not enough to begin well: it is not enough to run well for a while, and to get through the wilderness, and in a good degree towards a state of establishment; because the greatest trim that we find, is at the end of the conflict; when we come to the point where all must be given up; where our lives must be considered as nothing to us. See our great example; he had his conflicts, his trials, and temptations; when his life and all was to be given up. How trying the scene! I how painful! He was brought to cry out, in anxious concern to his Father. Yea, in his prayer, he was brought to sweat, as it were, great drops of blood, and nature felt the desire to escape this suffering. “If it be possible, Father, let this cup pass from me.” But see the example — “not my will, but thine be done.” Oh! believe me, here in this trial many shrink back, and become as dead lights. Oh! may we be encouraged to faithfulness: Oh! may we be led in due time, to see our own insufficiency, and to cry out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” These things we must go through, if we continue to the end. If we persevere in faithfulness, we must be brought to the time in which all must be given up: yea, the death of the cross must be our experience. Therefore, let us take courage and persevere on, whether life or death, let us keep our eye single to the divine light, to our holy leader, and he will carry us through, over all, to name the name of that great and adorable name. Let us, therefore, in confidence of this, be willing to thank God and take courage. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1825
A drugstore in Philadelphia began to offer soda water.
Drunkenness was increasing uncontrollably in Sweden.
From this year until the middle of the century, a temperance movement would be developing in Finland.
In the United States, the temperance movement was in a period of major flux and transition. Demands were increasing for voluntary total abstinence from all intoxicants, rather than merely temperance in the use of alcohol. In this year the Reverend Lymon Beecher prepared SIX SERMONS ON INTEMPERANCE and in the following year (1826) the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance would be founded. The first national temperance convention would be held in 1833 and the Washington Temperance Society would be founded in 1840. The temperance movement would be beginning to attract the middle classes and a decline in aristocratic leadership would be occurring. The movement would continue to aim primarily for a voluntary reform in manner and morals through persuasion and education, but more attention would begin to be placed also upon coercive legislation.
J. Wray and Nephew Co. Ltd., the largest producer and bottler of rums and spirits in Jamaica, began when John Wray opened the Shakespeare Tavern on the north side of the city square in downtown Kingston. (The partnership with Charles Ward, his nephew, would not begin until 1862. Wray and Nephew and the Appleton Estate and Distillery, which began operation in Jamaica in 1749, would be linked in 1917 when Wray and Nephew was purchased by the Lindo Brothers Company who the previous year had bought the Appleton Estates.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1826
In this year which would see the formation of the American Temperance Society, Sylvester Graham graduated from Amherst College and entered the Presbyterian ministry, on his way toward temperance, vegetarianism, and a Graham cracker. DOPE
Charles Follen had been offering demonstrations of a new discipline, gymnastics, that had been being made popular in Europe by the gymnast Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), known universally as “Father Jahn.” Follen and Francis Lieber, true believers in the maxim “a sound mind in a sound body,” had been the 1st to introduce gymnastic training in Boston. In this year, with the assistance of Charles Beck, Follen established at Harvard College the 1st college gymnasium in the United States (one may well suppose that after a good workout, the fellow would pause somewhere in the Harvard vicinity for a few rounds of beer).
In a contemporary drawing by G. Tytler we see members of the London Gymnastic Society exercising at their open-air gymnasium in Pentonville — they are using parallel bars, climbing ropes, engaging in tugs-of-war, wrestling, and doing individual and partner-assisted stretches.
February 13, Monday: Augustus Taber was born to William Congdon Taber and Hannah Tucker Shearman or Sherman Taber (1801-1858).
The American Temperance Society, later to become the American Temperance Union, was organized. It would so quickly beget auxiliaries that, by 1835, some 8,000 locals would be in existence. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1827
During the late 1820s American males seem to have been consuming prodigious amounts of ethanol. Their annual per capita intake has been calculated at four gallons per man — and that’s four gallons at 200- proof absolute. I don’t know whether the source for this statistic means to indicate four gallons of alcohol per adult male, or four gallons per male regardless of age,21 but either way it’d be a great deal more than we’d feel comfortable with ingesting nowadays anywhere outside the former borders of the former USSR.
October 18, Thursday: Frederick Douglass had been sent back from Baltimore to the farm where the slaves and livestock were to be distributed in settlement of the deceased Aaron Anthony’s estate. While on the farm this time, “Freddy” would be made foreman over a group of other slave laborers and would be present, and frozen into immobility in his powerlessness, while his brother Perry was being thrown down by the drunken Andrew Anthony and kicked until blood ran from his nose and from an ear.22
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 18th of 10th M / Our Meeting was a precious season of favour, our friend Abigail Robinson was engaged in a living testimony which I have no doubt was strengthening & comforting to more minds than my own. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
21. Larkin, RESHAPING OF EVERYDAY LIFE, pages 285-6, 295-7. 22. In adulthood, the Frederick Douglass of the lecture circuit would make much of the “enslavement” of an intemperate person to his or her out-of-control bodily appetite: he would be advocating not only the outlawing of any sale of human beings but also the outlawing of any sale of alcoholic beverages. But notice that there is this leetle problem in Douglass’s 1845 narrative, that when he is describing his service at Freeland’s, he characterizes himself as a model of temperate self-control, yet while on the lecture circuit in 1846 he would speak of how Mr. Freeland used to give apple brandy to his slaves, and of how he had been in the habit of consuming not only his own share of that brandy but some of the portions of the other slaves as well: “I was able to drink my own and theirs too. I took it because it made me feel like a great man.” THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1829
October 6, Tuesday: A locomotive competition was held at Rainhill in England before 10,000 people. Each competing locomotive had to haul a load of three times its own weight at a speed of at least 10 mph. The locomotives had to run twenty times up and down the track at Rainhill which made the distance roughly equivalent to a return trip between Liverpool and Manchester. Afraid that heavy locomotives would break the rails, only machines that weighed less than six tons could be allowed to take part in the competition. Of the 10 locomotives originally entered for the Rainhill Trials only 5 actually turned up and 2 of these had to withdraw with mechanical problems. The Sans Pareil and the Novelty did well but it was the Rocket, produced by George Stevenson and his son Robert for the London/Manchester Railway, that was judged to be the best, averaging 22 kilometers per hour over 100 kilometers.23
In the Athenaeum of Baltimore, a temperance society was formed.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 3rd day 6 of 10 M 1829 / Have reflected much today on our visit from our dear & very much beloved son. — I have felt my heart to glow with gratitude, that he seems to be so far preserved in the Truth - on conversing with him I have the satisfaction to find him very much established in Christian faith & attached to the principles & testimonies of Friends. - is plain in his dress & address & very much in all respects just what I could wish him to be. — the gratitude I feel at this is quite out of my power to express. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
November 13, Friday: William Lloyd Garrison wrote the first of two articles in The Genius of Universal Emancipation excoriating Francis Todd for slave trafficking (this would get him thrown in jail in Baltimore for “slander”). In the follow-up article, he would write that “[slave traffickers] are the enemies of their own species — highway robbers and murders; and their final doom will be ... to occupy the lowest depths of perdition.”
The New Bedford Mercury reported that “the Black Prince Abdul Rahman for whom subscriptions were raised a short time since, is dead.”
A correspondent chortled to Fanny Wright that during her bold visit to the “burned over” district of upstate New York, instead of contamination, instead of the monster they had led them to expect, her audiences had experienced “only a plain republican woman.” (During that winter, pinned down in Buffalo by a snowstorm, Fanny would on four succeeding nights be addressing packed houses.)
In Rochester, a crowd estimated at about 8,000-10,000 was waiting at the 92-foot Upper Genesee Cataract at 1PM. The newspaper was quoting Sam Patch as saying, “There’s no mistake about Sam Patch. He goes the whole hog and, unlike too many politicians, he turns no somersets in his progress. He goes straight as an
23. You can inspect the Rocket in the South Kensington Science Museum. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM arrow.”
After a certain amount of celebrating in local taverns,24 Sam again attempted his jump, this time not from
24. His appearance of being half-drunk, or at least being badly hung over, would be used to great effect by the temperance movement in Rochester. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM ground level but from a 25-foot tower he had built at the brink of the precipice. He was wearing white
pantaloons with a red sash around his waist, and a jacket. He addressed the crowd for a few minutes,25 and then tossed in his pet bear cub. A prominent citizen had his thumb in his mouth when Sam jumped, and in the tension of the moment he bit it off. Sam flailed his arms on the way down, and his legs were not together.
25. Reportedly, what he said was: “Napoleon was a great man and a great general. He conquered armies and he conquered nations, but he couldn’t jump the Genesee Falls. Wellington was a great man and a great soldier. He conquered armies and he conquered nations, but he couldn’t jump the Genesee Falls. That was left for me to do, and I can do it, and will.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM There was a noisy impact. He was not seen after his jump.
Speculation that he had hidden in a cave at the base of the falls was dispelled months later when the river began to thaw in March, and Silas Hudson recovered his frozen corpse at Charlotte, near the mouth of the river. Most of the hair was gone, the face was battered, and there was a deep gash over one eye. None of the bones were broken. His grave in the Charlotte Cemetery in Rochester would initially be marked with a wooden board inscribed SAM PATCH — SUCH IS FAME.26 (This would be carried in a local parade and then stolen. Now there is a bronze plaque on a cemetery stone.)
26. Paul E. Johnson’s SAM PATCH, THE FAMOUS JUMPER (NY: Hill & Wang, 2003). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1830
The 19th Century would be the age of the cigar. England was in this year beginning to import all of 250,000 pounds of cigars per year. Since tobacco use was known to dry out the mouth, “creating a morbid or diseased thirst,” the first organized anti-tobacco movement in the US would begin during this decade as an adjunct to the temperance movement.
Evidently as the result of some horrible accident, the Prussian Government ordered that in the future cigars, to be smoked in public, would need to be enclosed in a sort of wire-mesh contraption. The wire mesh was designed to prevent sparks from setting fire to the “crinolines” and hoop skirts of ladies.
During the decade of the 1830s, more than 30 malt-shops and breweries were thriving in and around the town of Saffron Walden.
By this point there were fully one thousand temperance societies in the United States of America.
Facing competition from other Papaver somniferum growers, the British again, as they had in 1821, stepped up their efforts to increase their exports to China.
Opium importation to England had reached an annual total of 22,000 pounds, 80 to 90% of it from Turkey, where the USA also filled the preponderance of its demand. In the region east of Smyrna this was a family cash crop. There were three sowings, in November, in December, and in February/March, so that the labor- intensive harvesting of the sticky white sap from the maturing poppy pods by all members of the family could proceed over a longer period of time. Farmers had to be careful to protect their children from the vapors produced by the 6-to-8-foot-tall plants, and these vapors were especially pervasive during the night. The product was transported inside Turkey in two-pound brownish-black slabs wrapped in leaves and packed in gray calico bags in fitted wicker baskets. The purest export opium from Smyrna was stamped “24 Carat,” and loaded into wooden crates that had been lined with zinc to make them airtight. At this point product from Persia, in the form of sticks, was mixed in with the Turkish product. In contrast, product from Egypt came to brokers in Mark Lane and Mincing Lane in London as flat round cakes, and, from India, as chests of 1 mangowood with two rows of ten compartments, having a 3 /2-pound ball the size of a smallish grapefruit in each one of the 20 compartments. Garraway’s Coffee House, near the Royal Exchange, held regular auctions of these provisions and the stocks were carefully supervised by the British government to ensure proper purity and weight — nobody likes to get burned on a drug deal!
DOPERS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
The failed minister Sylvester Graham attempted to become a professional reformer on the lecture circuit. At first he lectured primarily against the evils of alcohol. (He would, however, allow his wife to drink wine and gin, for strength, when she was ill or when she was nursing.)
During the 1830s many people would be attending such lectures and taking a pledge to live healthy lives and eat right. Baker’s bread made from finely milled white flour was being recognized as injurious to health. One should have no need for stimulants such as coffee and tea, whiskey and tobacco, spices, which only cause a bothersome and excessive sexual appetite that distracted otherwise decent people from “civilized endeavors.” To avoid masturbation, one should rise as soon as one awakes, and take a cold-water bath. One should exercise regularly. Married couples could have sex once a month, and should not violate this rule even on a honeymoon, because any energy given to sex would be energy taken away from the more serious things in life. Tight corsets were unnatural. Meat was to be eaten only sparingly, and thus there would arise vegetarian “Graham boardinghouses” at which no pepper, mustard, oil, vinegar or “other garbage” would be provided. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
Our sailor-boy Richard Henry Dana, Jr. would comment extensively on the vegetarian aspect of this regimen, and of course fail entirely to comment upon its sexual aspect, in TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST: … The work was as hard as it could well be. There was not a moment’s cessation from Monday morning till Saturday night, when we were generally beaten out, and glad to have a full night’s rest, a wash and shift of clothes, and a quiet Sunday. During all this times,– which would have startled Dr. Graham– we lived upon almost nothing but fresh beef; fried beefsteaks, three times a day,– morning, noon, and night. At morning and night we had a quart of tea to each man; and an allowance of about a pound of hard bread a day; but our chief article of food was the beef. A mess, consisting of six men, had a large wooden kid piled up with beefsteaks, cut thick, and fried in fat, with the grease poured over them. Round this we sat, attacking it with our jack-knives and teeth, and with the appetite of young lions, and sent back an empty kid to the galley. This was done three times a day. How many pounds each man ate in a day, I will not attempt to compute. A whole bullock (we ate liver and all) lasted us but four days. Such devouring of flesh, I will venture to say, was seldom known before. What one man ate in a day, over a hearty man’s allowance, would make a Russian’s heart leap into his mouth. Indeed, during all the time we were upon the coast, our principal food was fresh beef, and every man had perfect health; but this was a time of especial devouring; and what we should have done without meat, I cannot tell. Once or twice, when our bullocks failed and we were obliged to make a meal upon dry bread and water, it seemed like feeding upon shavings. Light and dry, feeling unsatisfied, and, at the same time, full, we were glad to see four quarters of a bullock, just killed, swinging from the fore-top. Whatever theories may be started by sedentary men, certainly no men could have gone through more hard work and exposure for sixteen months in more perfect health, and without ailings and failings, than our ship’s crew, let them have lived upon Hygela’s own baking and dressing.
During this decade French soldiers returning from service in Africa were beginning to popularize a new drink. It was a herbal infusion in alcohol of wormwood, anise, badiane, and fennel they had been using, at least initially, to kill germs in their drinking water. They were terming this “absinthe.” A problem would eventually arise, as said concoction didn’t just kill germs. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM During the decade of the 1830s, due to inefficiencies of production, the cost of most newspapers was $0.06, which was about the cost of a cheap pint of whiskey. Choose your poison! (By the 1850s news drunkenness would be achievable at a penny per paper.) Here is a table indicating the annual gallons of ethanol consumed by your average American adult, in the year 1830, as compared with other years from 1790 to 1980:
1790 5.8
1830 7.1
1840 3.1
1860 2.1
1890 2.1
1900 2.1
1920 0.9
1940 1.56
1980 2.76
Small wonder, then, that there would be an abstinence movement!
THE ABSTINENCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM We know from Stanley Lebergott’s MANPOWER IN ECONOMIC GROWTH (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1964) what monthly farm wages typically amounted to in Massachusetts during this period, over and above of course one’s room and board:
1818 $13.50 1826 $13.50 1830 $12.00 1850 $13.55 1860 $15.34
Incidentally, such wages were ordinarily significantly higher in Massachusetts than elsewhere, except for a brief period for which the wage was higher in Minnesota, and a brief period for which it was higher in Rhode Island. This year’s currency inflation would be:27
1830 $111 £87.2
1831 $104 £95.9
1832 $103 £88.8
1833 $101 £83.4
1834 $103 £76.9
1835 $106 £78.1
1836 $112 £86.8
1837 $115 £89.0
1838 $112 £89.6
1839 $112 £96.1
1840 $104 £97.9
It was costing about $450 to maintain a family of 4 for a year, but an able-bodied day laborer, male, would be lucky to earn $200 even in a year on which he had full employment for all 260 workdays. Politically, at least since 1827, and until 1833, protective tariffs and nullification were important issues. Of course, slavery was creating problems especially from 1830 on; and temperance (with a recognized point of origin in Dr. Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia’s INQUIRY INTO THE EFFECTS OF ARDENT SPIRITS UPON THE HUMAN BODY AND MIND in 1785, and a secondary impetus from Beecher’s 1813 founding of the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance) –for instance, the revocation of the innkeepers’ licenses in Worcester in April of 1835– were sources of political activity. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
Immigration of Germans, Poles, English, and especially Roman Catholic Irish in after 1827 was raising the hackles of immigrants from Europe who were already acculturated here. For instance, the Irish were welcomed
27. To get a sense of what that amounted to in today’s money, consult
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM and supported by the Jacksonian Democrats but were not by the Workingmen Party, made up largely of Democrats who had become disgruntled by that party’s acceptance of competing sources of labor. The Workingmen’s Party had risen out of Western agrarian, early industrial worker, and coastal tradesman interests and were opposed to rich Bostonian control and power. Thus various of its members had ties with the Democrats throughout the decade. Henry Thoreau would characterize them as “sources of democracy,” “opponents to ‘accumulators’ who manipulated ‘associated wealth,’ and, with it, affairs of public concern,” and as “Those of hard hands and sound hearts.” They repeatedly supported the campaigns of George Bancroft. The Bank of the United States would be a major topic of debate throughout the decade, with special attention paid to this issue in the first half of the decade. The Panic of 1837-39 would raise the issue of the Bank anew. The four major recognized political groups in Massachusetts in the 1830s were: • the National Republicans (AKA Whigs), strongly tied to the Antimasons • the Antimasonic Party, the influence of which would peak in about 1833 • the Democrats, inheritors of Jefferson and more recently of Andy Jackson –whose name had become a curseword in Massachusetts in the 1820s– also had ties to the AntiMasons, in that the more extremist elements of both major parties profited from fear of the “Masonic/Illuminati Conspiracy” • the Workingmen’s Party, being formed in Plymouth in April HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1831
September 21, Wednesday: Alexis de Tocqueville had an interview with Mr. Gray, a Senator of the State of Massachusetts, and confided to his diary as to the reasons for the relative moral purity of the American people: American morals are, I believe, the purest existing in any nation, which may be attributed, it seems to me, to five principal causes:
1. Their physical constitution. They belong to a northern race, even though almost all living in a climate warmer than that of England. 2. Religion still possesses there a great power over the souls. They have even in part retained the traditions of the most severe religious sects. 3. They are entirely absorbed in the business of making money. There are no idle among them. They have the steady habits of those who are always working. 4. There is no trace of the prejudices of birth which reign in Europe, and it is so easy to make money that poverty is never an obstacle to marriage. Thence it results that the individuals of two sexes unite ..., only do so from mutual attraction, and find themselves tied at a time in life when the man is almost always more alive to the pleasures of the heart than those of the senses. It is rare that a man is not married at 2-+ years. 5. In general the women receive an education that is rational (even a bit raisonneuse.) The factors above enumerated make it possible without great inconvenience to allow them an extreme liberty; the passage from the state of young girl to that of a married woman has no dangers for her. ... Mr Clay, who appears to have occupied himself with statistical researches on this point, told Gustave de Beaumont that at Boston the prostitutes numbered about 2000 (I have great difficulty believing this.) They are recruited among country girls who, after having been seduced, are obliged to flee their district and family, and find themselves without resource. It seems that the young blood of the city frequents them, but the fact is concealed with extreme care, and the evil stops there, without ever crossing the domestic threshold or troubling the families. A man who should not be convicted but suspected of having an intrigue would immediately be excluded from society. All doors would be shut to him. Mr. Dewight was saying to me that a venereal disease was a mark of infamy which was very hard to wash away. On the other hand, the police do not concern themselves in any way with the prostitutes. The Americans say that it would be to legitimate the evil to oppose to it such a remedy. Mr. Dewight said to us (what we had already had occasion to remark in the prison reports) that of all the prisoners those who most rarely reformed were the women of bad morals.
Norborne E. Sutton wrote to Governor John Floyd of Virginia: Bowling Green Sept 21st 1831 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Honorable John Floyd Sir It is now certain that the slaves in this county was apprised of the insurrection which developed itself in South Hampton. Some Gentleman have enquired of these slaves as to this fact, (Mr. Campbels) in this immediate neighbourhood all admitted that they had receved information of the intended insurrection but that it commenced two soon by eight days Yesterday a faithfull servant of Mr. Wm P Taylors gave him information that large meetings of slave were held in his neighbourhood for the purpose of concerting and effecting the best cours they should pursue to get clere of the whits Much excitment and much alarm has prevailed in the couty especally with the slaves of the county and it is now so obvious that the slaves design an attempt between this and the 1st of October I have concluded to suggest to you the proprity of furnishg the malitia with arms at least to some extent For one until the information in relation to Mr Taylors slaves was receved I had not even had my gun in my room Because I did not apprehend any danger and I was certain it was calculatd to create a greater degree of alarm with my wife and I thought two it was giving an importance which might induce the negros in this neighborhood to immagine that I was alarmd I hope sir you will arm the Troop and a part of the companies in this county if not all I am as perfectly satisfied that those travling preachers and Pedlers have been instrumental to a great degree in producing the present state of things as that I am now addressng this letter to you And I do hope that the Legislature will at the next session at least pass a law which shall have for its object This That no man particularly a strangr shall preach in any County or Town untill he shall have produced sufficnt evidence that he has been regularly ordained and of his moral worth and standing when he was receved on his last place of residence I hope I shall be excused for suggestg other civils slaves should not be permitted to have preachng at any time nor should they be permitted to go about contracting for themselves I would make the Law in relation in relation to These matters more penal and I would make it the duty of every officer to arrest such slaves as are permitted to goe at large and sell him forthwith the result to be applied to the use of the County Again Sir it is now the practice at every Court House to see large numbrs of Carts some white and some black vending and trad in various things there Sir although I have used my exertions to arrest the civil practice of court nights frequently the exhibition of whites and blacks mingling together Beggars description They have no law imposed upon them They are composed of the very dregs of the different Counties and what I ask is to be expected but disorder and consequences of the most dangerous and alarming results Last October or November Mr Blak had a valuable slave killd at these Carts white and black all engaged in the [encounter?] late at night I hope you will incur[?] these suggestions repectivly yours &c Norborne E Sutton
P.S. I would suggest the propriety of arming the four companys immedially about this place wher information must be receve first on sight to be fully armed say Capt John Bellah Capt John Washington Captain Washington Carter and Capt W. Wrights these I think should be armed fully N. E Sutton HDT WHAT? INDEX
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In Rhode Island, as incendiary reports of a supposed massive slave revolt in North Carolina were appearing in the Providence Journal (slaves were maybe burning down the city of Wilmington; a white army was maybe gathering in Raleigh, etc.), there was another local race riot. In the white riot of 1824, the rioters had torn down several houses in the black district of Providence by Gaspee Street and the State House that was known as Hardscrabble. Again this was happening, fueled by liquor and property values, this time in Olneys Lane (now Olney Street) and in Snowtown, a hollow up against Smith Hill southwest of the Hardscrabble district, in the Charles/Orms Street area. The rioting was initiated by a mob of white sailors, continued with the throwing of stones between a group of blacks and a group of whites, and culminated with a black man stepping out of a house with a gun and warning the sailors away –“Is this the way the blacks are to live, to be obliged to defend themselves from stones?”– and then being forced to shoot dead one of the advancing white men. The mob, except for five sailors, retreated to the foot of the hill. After someone shot and wounded three of these sailors, the mob again advanced, and began systematically to knock down two houses and damage several others.
So, as a point of interest, here is the manner in which these events would be truncated in an almanac of 1844: 1831. A riot of four days continuance commenced Sept. 21, in Olney’s lane, North end. It originated with some sailors and the colored people living in the lane, one of the former being shot by a black man, and instantly killed. An immediate attack was made on the houses, and two were promptly destroyed. Each evening the mob increased in number, and violence. The efforts of the Town Council and the Sheriff to suppress it were ineffectual, and the services of the military were called into requisition by the Governor. On the fourth evening, the corps, near Shingle Bridge, were assailed by the crowd, with stones and other missiles, and were commanded to fire, which they did, and four men fell mortally wounded. The crowd dispersed, and quiet was restored. Nearly twenty small houses had been destroyed or badly injured. — At a town meeting, Nov. 22, more than three- fifths of the votes polled were in favor of a City Charter.
We can afford to let local citizen William J. Brown tell the story, for his account is remarkably detailed despite the fact that we have no reason to suspect that he himself had been present and remarkably tolerant despite the fact that he himself had no reason whatever to be objective about this tense racial confrontation: PAGES 50-54: The feeling against the colored people was very bitter. The colored people themselves were ignorant of the cause, unless it could be attributed to our condition, not having the means to raise themselves in the scale of wealth and affluence, consequently those who were evil disposed would offer abuse whenever they saw fit, and there was no chance for resentment or redress. Mobs were also the order of the day, and the poor colored people were the sufferers.... Not long after this [an earlier gentrification mob action] there was another mob, commenced at the west end of Olney Street. Here were a number of houses built and owned by white men, and rented to any one, white or colored, who wanted to hire one or more rooms, rent payable weekly. Some of these places had bar-rooms, where liquors were dealt out, and places where they sold cakes, pies, doughnuts, etc. These they called cooky stands. In some houses dancing and fiddling was the order of the day. It soon became dangerous for one to pass through there in the day time that did not belong to their gang, or patronize them. Most all sailors who came into port would be introduced into Olney Street by some one who had an interest that way. I remember when a boy, passing up one day to my father’s garden, which was on that HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM street, in company with two other boys, looking at the people as we passed along. Some were sitting at the windows, some in their doorway, some singing, some laughing, some gossiping, some had their clay furnaces in front of their houses, cooking, and seeing us looking at them, said “What are you gawking at, you brats?” hurling a large stone at the same time, and we were obliged to run for our lives. This street had a correspondence with all the sailor boarding houses in town, and was sustained by their patronage. Vessels of every description were constantly entering our port, and sailing crafts were seen from the south side of the Great Bridge to India Point. It was the great shipping port of New England in those days, and although the smallest of all the States, Rhode Island was regarded as among the wealthiest, the Quakers occupying a large portion of the State.... There was a sailor boarding house in Power Street, kept by a man from Virginia by the name of Jimmie Axum. He was a sailor, every inch of him, and his wife, Hannah, was an Indian woman of the Narragansett tribe. Uncle Jimmie was a shipping master and a fiddler, and when he failed to entertain sailors, they all knew where to go — Olney Street was their next port of entry. When a ship’s crew of sailors came ashore they would all go to Uncle Jimmie’s to board, and Uncle Jimmie, with his household, would entertain them with fiddle and tamborine. There would be drinking and dancing through the day and evening, and every half hour some one would take a pitcher and go after liquor, which they purchased by the quart or pint. The best of Jamaica rum then sold for nine pence a quart; gin at the same price. Brandy was twenty-five cents a quart. In those days it was common to drink liquor; everybody used it. Ministers drank and Christians drank. If you were passing on Main or Water Street in the morning the common salutation was: “Good morning, Mr. A. or B., won’t you walk in and take a glass of brandy or gin?” If men were at work on the wharf, at eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon grog was passed around, consisting of a jug of rum and a pail of water. Each one would help himself to as much as he wanted. Even the people that went out washing must be treated at eleven and four o’clock, and people were considered mean who would not furnish these supplies to those whom they employed. If a person went out to make a call or spend the evening and was not treated to something to drink, they would feel insulted. You might as well tell a man in plain words not to come again, for he surely would go off and spread it, how mean they were treated — not even so much as to ask them to have something to drink; and you would not again be troubled with their company. The sailors often drank to excess. You could frequently see them on South Water Street lying at full length or seated against a building intoxicated. After sailors had stayed at Uncle Jimmie’s boarding-house long enough to be stripped of nearly all their money by Uncle Jimmie and his wife, and the females which hung around there, they would be suffered to stroll up to Olney Street to spend the rest of their money. One night a number of sailors boarding at Uncle Jimmie’s went up to Olney Street to attend a dance. It was about nine o’clock when they left the house, expecting to dance all night and have what they called a sailor’s reel and breakdown. About ten HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM o’clock there came to Uncle Jim’s a large, tall and powerful looking black man to the door. He said, “Uncle Jimmie, where is the boys?” He answered, “You will find them up in Olney Street; they went up to a dance tonight.” He replied, “I am going up there, and if anybody comes here and inquires for me tell them I am gone up to the dance in Olney Street.” Uncle Jimmy said, “Who are you and what is your name?” The man replied, “I am the Rattler.” No one took notice of him. Those that were on the floor continued their dancing. This man seeing no one noticed him went in amongst them and commenced dancing, running against one man and pushing against another, just as his fancy led him. There being at that time five or six large men calling themselves fighting men or bullies, came to the conclusion that they would not have their dance broke up in that shape by a stranger that nobody knew. One of the men by the name of James Treadwell, and known to be a great fighter, said to another large double- jointed man, so considered, by the name of Augustus Williams, “This fellow calls himself the Rattler, let’s rattle his box.” So they gathered three or four other men who would come to their assistance if needed. They approached the stranger and addressed him saying, “Who are you, stranger, and what do you want here?” He replied “I am the Rattler.” They said to him, “If you don’t clear out we will rattle your box.” He replied, “That you can do as soon as you have a mind to.” Without further ceremony they all pitched into him. The Rattler threw one man into the bar, another he threw across the room, some he slammed against the sides of the house, and in a few minutes he cleared the house, and as they had no power to resist him, they very wisely concluded that he was the devil in fine clothing. This story was told me by Augustus Williams, who was present and witnessed the whole affair and declared it to be the truth. The next visitation in Olney Street was made by two crews of sailors, one white and the other colored, consequently a fight was the order of the day, in which the blacks were the conquerors, and drove the whites out of the street. The white sailors not relishing this kind of treatment, doubled their forces the next night and paid Olney Street another visit, and had a general time of knocking down and dragging out. This mob conduct lasted for nearly a week. They greatly discomfited the saloonkeepers, drinking their liquors, smashing up the decanters and other furniture. One of their number was shot dead by a bar tender, which so enraged them that they began to tear down houses, threatening to destroy every house occupied by colored people. Their destructive work extended through Olney Street, Gaspee Street and a place called the Hollow, neither of which bore a very good reputation. They warned the better class of colored people to move out, and then went on with their work of destruction, calling on men of like principles, from other towns, to help, promising to share with them in the plunder, or take their pay from the banks. Governor Arnold hearing of this ordered out the military, thinking that their presence would quell the mob. They were not so easily frightened, and continued their work of ruin until the governor was compelled to order his men to fire. This had the desired effect; broke up the riot and dispersed the mob; but Olney Street had fallen to rise no more as a place of resort for rum shops, sailors and lewd women. READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Here now is the same event, but as it would be described in William Read Staples’s 1843 ANNALS OF THE TOWN OF P ROVIDENCE FROM ITS F IRST S ETTLEMENT, TO THE O RGANIZATION OF THE C ITY G OVERNMENT, IN JUNE, 1832: The first outbreak of popular feeling was on the night of September 21. A number of sailors visited Olney’s lane for the purpose of having a row with the blacks inhabiting there. After making a great noise there and throwing stones, a gun was fired from one of the houses. The greater part of the persons in the lane then retreated to the west end of it, and five sailors who had not been engaged in any of the previous transactions, went up the lane. A black man on the steps of his house, presented a gun, and told them to keep their distance. They in turn proposed taking his gun. This they did not attempt, but pursuing their walk a little further, then stopped. Here they were ordered by the black man “to clear out,” or he would fire at them. This they dared him to do. He did fire, and one of their number was instantly killed. The first company, who were still at the foot of the lane, then returned, tore down two houses and broke the windows of the rest. During the next day there was a great excitement. The sheriff of the county with other peace officers were in Olney’s lane early in the evening. As the mob increased in numbers and in violence of language, they were ordered to disperse, and seven taken in custody. Subsequently others were arrested, who were rescued from the officers. The sheriff then required military aid of the Governor of the state, and at midnight the First Light Infantry marched to his assistance. The mob, not intimidated by their presence, assaulted them with stones. Finding that they could effect nothing without firing upon them, the soldiers left the lane, followed by the mob, who then returned to their work, and demolished six more houses in the lane and one near Smith street, not separating until between three and four o’clock in the morning. On the morning of the 23d, an attack on the jail being expected, the sheriff required military aid, and the Governor issued his orders to the Light Dragoons, the Artillery, the Cadets, the Volunteers, and the First Infantry, to be in arms at six o’clock in the evening. The mob appeared only in small force, and did little mischief. The military were dismissed until the next evening. On the evening of the 24th there was a great collection of persons in Smith street and its vicinity. Soon they commenced pulling down houses. Upon this, finding it impossible to disperse or stay them, the sheriff called again on the Governor, and the military were again assembled. During their march to Smith street they were assailed with stones. They marched up Smith street and took post on the hill. Here both the Governor and the sheriff remonstrated with the mob, and endeavored to induce them to separate, informing them that the muskets of the military were loaded with ball cartridges. This being ineffectual, the riot act was read, and they were required by a peace officer to disperse. The mob continued to throw stones both at the houses and soldiers. The sheriff then attempted to disperse them by marching the dragoons and infantry among them, but without success. He then ordered the military to fire, and four persons fell mortally wounded, in Smith street, just east of Smith’s bridge. The mob immediately dispersed, and peace was restored. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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This week, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould and his wife had been visiting Newport from their current home at the Quaker educational institution that eventually would become the “Moses Brown School” in Providence, Rhode Island.
6th day [Friday] 16th of 9 M 1831 / Having for sometime anticipated a visit to Newport We went on board the Steam Boat at 12 OC & arrived at our home about 3 OC PM. — I had not been there half an hour before I met with an accident which so lamed me that I was wholly unable to get about & 7th [Saturday] & 1st day [Sunday]s I was in Bed most of the time - on 2nd day [Monday] I was about a little & on 3rd day [Tuesday] we came home again to the Institution not a little disappointed in not being able to visit my friends & attend to many little things that was desirable to me. — But disappointment & trial is the lot of us all on this side of the grave, & I have much to be thankful for, in being favourd as I have. — Few have been more exempt from the disagreeables of life, while I may recount many bitter cups which I have had to take from time to time, yet I have been exempt from many which falls to the lot of Some in passing down the Stream of time. — We found our friends & relations at Newport in good health & comfortable in situation - Father & Mother Rodman tho’ aged are Smart & now free from some trials which recently awaited them in Davids state of mind & the situation of his family - he having removed to Lynn & is more comfortable in mind & a pretty good prospect of maintaining himself & family. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1832
Chloroform was discovered by Soubeirau.
In part to improve its soldiers’ unimprovable morality, in part to appease the unappeasable temperance lobby, and in part to save the federal government $22,000 a year, the US Army begins issuing sugar and coffee rations to its enlisted men rather than the customary rye whiskey, apple jack, or rum. (Officers, on the other hand, would until well into the 1870s remain at liberty to show up for duty as drunk as they pleased — when I was in the Marines in the 1960s, and on even into the 1970s, ethanol was most emphatically the drug of choice and it was considered almost unmanly for an officer not to be in the habit of “stopping by” the Officers Club where, almost every evening, in the company of other officers of his rank, everyone would drink heavily.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1833
April 3, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson left Rome for Firenzi (Florence).
Pro-democracy students attacked the main police station in Frankfurt-am-Main in an attempt to free political prisoners and begin a general republican uprising. Failing to attract public support, the uprising collapsed.
At the request of Charles Babbage, a pair of arbitrators, Messrs. Field and Donkin, had visited the contractor for the Calculational Engine project. They found the main point at issue to be who it was who was responsible to the contractor for the project, whether it be the Parliament or Babbage himself.
In Salisbury, New Hampshire, the Reverend Horatio Wood delivered an address on temperance (this would be printed as an 18-page tract in Concord, New Hampshire by the firm of Hill and Barton). It is to be noted, in this address, that the “temperance” being urged was not abstinence from ethanol products, but instead consisted in two things, a total abstinence from distilled spirits such as rum, whiskey, vodka, brandy, etc. and in sale of such distilled spirits to others, coupled with sufficient moderation in the consumption of wine, beer, and cider, that public or private drunkenness is never the result. REVEREND HORATIO WOOD
Every friend of temperance should show himself. Let him take a decided stand. We want no half way men. I will tell you what I think a decided stand is, the only stand, from which one can consistently and properly lift up his voice with effect, and prove himself a friend of temperance. This stand is total abstinence from the use of ardent spirits. ... It is enjoined in holy writ, that no man put a stumbling block, or an occasion to fall in his brothers way. Let those who drink temperately abstain altogether, is it to be doubted that they would check the tendency of many to ruin, and stop others in the first steps of a dangerous habit? ... Let me ask to, how it happens, that ardent spirit is needed in so many cases as alleged, when it is well known, that ardent spirit had its invention within three hundred years, and has been in common use in New-England less than one hundred. ... Break away from a slavish regard to self alone, and let the generous spirit breathed through these words of the holy page possess you, “Let no man seek his own but every man another’s good.” ... Those who drink temperately and who are here, I would respectfully ask, whether it would not be really safer for them not to drink ardent spirit at all, and whether duty to others does not prompt them to a generous declaration of entire disuse for the future. ... You ought also, I conceive, not to drink to excess of other things which do not come under the denomination of the forbidden article; for thereby you do yourself injury and discredit, injure the cause, and are keeping up the appetite which sometimes may find its old channel of gratification.
YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK HDT WHAT? INDEX
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PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.
alcohol and alcoholism “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1834
At Harvard College, Professor Cornelius Conway Felton became Eliot Professor of Greek Literature and had David Henry Thoreau as one of his pupils. Professor Felton was positioning an essay in the North American Review in defense the teaching and study of classical mythology, especially Greek mythology, which evidently was considered in need of a defense as it seemed to be encouraging lewdness. For Professor Felton, expurgation of the classic texts to delete titillating stuff did not represent a problem of suppression and censorship, but rather represented the correction of a problem of debasement and inauthenticity, because it was inconceivable that there could have been any actual “food for the passions” in originary authentic works of classicism, or, at least, in works of Greek classicism.
To the scholar we would say, then, expurgate your Horaces and your Ovids, till not an obscene thought shall stain their pages; and you may be sure that nothing will be lost in your enquiries respecting the classic religion.
No, for if you credit Professor Felton’s reconstruction of European history, these dead white men could never have been guilty of worshiping at “altars of indecency and wantonness.”
WALDEN: There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not PEOPLE OF philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once WALDEN admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier- like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?
CORNELIUS CONWAY FELTON HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Hanging being a piece of public theater, however, it was sometimes required of a condemned man in this modern decent society that he attire himself in his shroud (a long white linen or cotton garment with open back and long sleeves) prior to the placement of the hood and the noose. Local taverns would sometimes hire “watchers” to keep around-the-clock guard upon a condemned man, not to prevent his escape of course but to ensure that he would not cheat them of their profits from the alcohol-imbibing throng of men come to witness a hanging. No way would such an important participant in an expected ceremony be allowed to off himself in private in advance. When a condemned man was reprieved at the last moment, as indeed sometimes happened, this might incite the disappointed throng to riot, for although we have few records for such items as the shroud and the death watch, we know that this sort of riot is actually what did result from a reprieve in Pembroke MA in this year.28
The lenience of Harvard President Reverend John T. Kirkland had been succeeded by the strictness of President Josiah Quincy, Sr., the former mayor who was attempting to deal with student rebellion as he had once dealt with mobs attempting to tear down Boston’s whorehouses: by repression. Students at Harvard were rioting over living conditions and the entire Sophomore class was being not merely expelled but hauled before a court.
28. In this year Pennsylvania became the first state to move executions away from the public eye and carry them out only within prison enclosures. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Records of faculty meetings from this period show that in the shifting minority of professors who opposed and attempted to moderate Quincy’s crackdowns, Professor Charles Follen was alone in constancy of opposition.29 Freshman David Henry Thoreau evidently made himself scarce during the tearing of shutters off windows and the building of bonfires in front of doorways and his only contribution to the rebellion was a comment he appears to have made in Dr. Beck’s examination room –apparently sarcastically– “Our offense was rank.”30
(shutters awaiting the arrival of students)
One midnight during the great Harvard Rebellion Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar lay on his back in the belfry of Harvard Hall and sawed off the tongue of the bell that summoned the students to morning chapel. Fortunately he was not caught destroying property, or perhaps later he would not have been able to become Attorney
29. Professor Karl Follen’s brother Paul Follen was at this point emigrating to the United States, and would settle in Missouri. We’ll allow you three guesses as to what is about to happen to Professor Follen himself. 30. At Harvard at this time, the offense of “grouping” in Harvard Yard, that is, students assembling for some purpose not condoned by the faculty (such as, for instance, free speech), was grounds for being asked to “take up one’s connexions,” that is, grounds for permanent expulsion from college. (Such rules are of course not limited to the Harvard of the 19th Century: my own memories are of smelling tear gas on the steps of Widener Library as I came away from my carrel and found out that there had been a “Pogo Riot” in which the police had rioted and cleared the intersection in front of the student bookstore of passersby in 1960-1961, and then of being vomit gassed by US Marine guards on the street outside our embassy in Tehran, Iran in 1978 for the offense of attempting to obtain entry thereto as a US citizen in an Iran in which soldiers were authorized to kill anyone “assembling” in any public place in a group larger than two persons.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM General of the United States of America:
Of his college life little remains to say. In his Junior and Senior years he attracted the attention of Edward Tyrrell Channing, then the valued Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, and received the highest marks for English Composition. He also won the second Bowdoin prize for an essay, and at the Exhibition in his Senior year had, as his part, the English oration, taking as his subject “Reverence.” His part at Commencement when he graduated was an English oration on “The Christian Philosophy; its Political Application.” Only fifty-two of his class received degrees at Commencement [80 had entered this class of 1835, and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. had been forced to drop out on account of his eyes], largely a result of the “Rebellion,” but five more were allowed their Bachelor’s degree years later. Rockwood Hoar was third scholar. The refined and attractive Harrison Gray Otis Blake of Worcester, later Thoreau’s near friend, was chosen Orator by a large majority, but his modesty made him decline, and Charles C. Shackford, later a minister, and a professor at Cornell University, was then chosen. Blake, however, gave the Latin Salutatory. Benjamin Davis Winslow was the Poet. Hoar was chosen a member of the Class Committee.
It need only be added to this, that the student who was first scholar in the Harvard College class of 1835, a class that included Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, and who was chosen to replace H.G.O. Blake, who was that class’s fourth scholar, as the class Orator, Charles Chauncy Shackford, after graduation went out to Concord and became a schoolteacher and romanced the local lasses, before going on to study law, and becoming a minister in 1841, and eventually becoming a professor at Cornell University. At Cornell, he would be their professor of rhetoric and literature, and, incidentally, would make himself one of the pioneers in the field now known as Comparative Literature. COMPARATIVE LITERATURE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1835
Hosea Hildreth died (after being expelled by Congregationalists during the previous year from ministering over their First Parish Church of Gloucester, Massachusetts, he had been serving as minister for a Unitarian congregation in Westboro, Massachusetts).
Dr. Charles Follen was no longer to be the Professor of Germanic Literature at Harvard College, new funding having failed to appear perhaps on account of his often-proclaimed abolitionist sympathies but more likely because he had been such an outspoken opponent of the disciplinarian President of Harvard, Josiah Quincy, Sr. His widow and his friend Samuel May would be convinced he had been dropped for being indiscreetly vocal about antislavery, but the attitude taken by Harvard’s Dr. Reginald H. Phelps toward this has been that there is nothing whatever in the record which might substantiate such an accusation: outside funds for his professorship, which initially had been being supplied by his wife’s relatives, had run out with the Corporation simply neglecting to endow a more permanent professorship in German. Phelps points out that Follen might have elected to continue on at an instructor’s status and salary, a point which seems to have been neglected by those who hold that he had been dismissed. The maximum case that might be made for persecution on account of antislavery activities would be, not that he had been sluffed off, but that the powers that be in the academic world had failed to prefer him.
He had an alternative, because the friendship of the Reverend William Ellery Channing had drawn him into the Unitarian Church. In this year he was ordained as a minister and called to the pulpit of the 2d Congregational Society at East Lexington, Massachusetts (in 1839 he would build himself an octagonal church, that is now the Follen Church Society-Unitarian Universalist). Instead of continuing at Harvard, but on an instructor’s salary and with an instructor’s status, this energetic gentleman had simply opted for a different sort of career.
In this year efforts to break down the barriers –social, educational, and theological– between Unitarians and Restorationist Universalists ended, with the death of the Reverend Bernard Whitman. After this untimely death, although Adin Ballou would remain a Restorationist, he would take little part in apologetic and ecclesiastical affairs. Instead, already won to the temperance cause, he would devote his energies to social reform.
Edgar Allan Poe became Assistant Editor of the Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond, Virginia, but was fired for sarcasm and drunkenness. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM March 15, Sunday: John Henry Kagi, the best educated of the raiders at Harpers Ferry, was born as a son of the blacksmith for Bristolville, Ohio, in a family of Swiss descent (the name originally having been Kagy).31 He would be largely an autodidact, but his letters to the New-York Tribune, the New-York Evening Post, and the National Era would testify to the adequacy of his cultural self-grounding. A debater, public speaker, stenographer, wannabee writer, and total abstainer from spirits, he would turn out both cold in manner and rough-hewn in appearance. He would be a nonparticipant in organized religion, but an able man of business.
December 18, Friday: The New-York city fire was finally out after 654 (674? 700?) buildings had been destroyed, much of the property between South Street, Coenties Slip, Broad Street, and Wall Street. The damage would be estimated at $15,000,000 ($20,000,000?) and would bankrupt all but three of the city’s insurance companies. Thus even some insured losses would go uncovered — the impact upon the local economy would be severe.
By this year the volunteer firefighting company had become a ubiquitous form of association in America’s cities and towns. (The unfortunate and unseemly tradition, with its attendant after-fire drunkenness and street rioting, would not be brought to a final conclusion until 1871.)
31. In CROWN OF THORNS: POLITICAL MARTYRDOM IN AMERICA FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (NY: New York UP, 1990, page 31), Eyal J. Naveh incorrectly characterizes John Henry Kagi as having been a black man: “Even though black followers of Brown, such as John Henry Kagi, were also executed in Virginia, for blacks, John Brown became the most famous martyr for their freedom.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1836
500 townspeople of Rochester, New York signed a temperance petition urging the federal Congress to address the nation’s alcohol problem.
Samuel Green of the NEW ENGLAND ALMANACK AND FARMERS FRIEND wrote that tobacco was an insecticide, a poison, a filthy habit — and could kill a man.
THE RHODE-ISLAND ALMANAC FOR 1836. By Isaac Bickerstaff. Providence, Rhode Island: Hugh H. Brown. This year the letter “k” was omitted from the word “almanac.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1838
April 10, Tuesday: Franz Liszt arrived in Vienna from Venice.
A rather more than less typical society for abstinence from alcoholic beverages, the Cork Total Abstinence Society, was founded in Ireland by Father Theobald Mathew. In this token preserved by the sworn adherents, the Reverend is depicted doffing his hat and gesturing in benediction before a kneeling group of men and women. “MAY GOD BLESS YOU AND GRANT YOU STRENGTH / AND GRACE TO HELP YOUR PROMISE” The obverse records upon a cross the exact words of their standard pledge of total abstinence, “PLEDGE / I PROMISE TO ABSTAIN FROM ALL INTOXICATING DRINKS / EXCEPT USED MEDICINALLY AND BY ORDER OF A MEDICAL MAN AND TO DISCOUNTENANCE THE CAUSE & PRACTICE OF INTEMPERANCE.”
THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1839
Our national birthday, Thursday the 4th of July: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 35th birthday.
Ground was broken in East Lexington, Massachusetts for a unique octagonal Unitarian church structure, designed by the Reverend Charles Follen (this octagonal building still stands, as the oldest church structure in Lexington). In his prayer at the groundbreaking the Reverend declared the mission of his church — and this mission statement now on a memorial to him in the churchyard: [May] this church never be desecrated by intolerance, or bigotry, or party spirit; more especially its doors might never be closed against any one, who would plead in it the cause of oppressed humanity; within its walls all unjust and cruel distinctions might cease, and [there] all men might meet as brethren.
In Hagerstown, Maryland, the only two soldiers of the American Revolution of that vicinity still alive sat proudly in a carriage drawn by white horses.
On Staten Island, between 20,000 and 30,000 children were gathered to celebrate a Sunday School Scholars National Jubilee while, in New-York harbor, 1,000 ships were “gaily dressed in honor of the day.”
In Boston, 1500 men gathered at Faneuil Hall in support of a Temperance Reformation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM In Norwich, Connecticut, at a sabbath school celebration, one of the students read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence while wearing “the identical cap” that had been worn by William Williams of that state at the time he had placed his signature upon that document.
In Tennessee, the McMinnville Gazette published a “Declaration of Independence for an Independant Treasury,” and the text of this would be reprinted in the Washington DC Globe.
At Norfolk, Virginia, an elephant “attached to the menagerie” was induced to swim across the harbor from Town Point to the Portsmouth side and back. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM There was a 91-scalp victory dance on the east shore of Lake Calhoun, just south of Minneapolis in the Minnesota Territory. One of the scalps was of the bride from the wedding at the fort (one can’t help but notice that in none of the accounts has any white recorder of these events gone to the trouble of recording her name). In regard to that scalp dance, one of the white people did register a comment:
“It seemed as if hell had emptied itself here.”
Henry Thoreau was inspired to perpetrate a poem, in honor of an illustrated 3-volume set of famous British poems which he was at the moment perusing, THE BOOK OF GEMS. THE POETS AND ARTISTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. EDITED BY S.C. HALL (London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street): THE BOOK OF GEMS, I THE BOOK OF GEMS, II THE BOOK OF GEMS, III
July 4. THE “BOOK OF GEMS”
With cunning plates the polished leaves were decked, Each one a window to the poet’s world, So rich a prospect that you might suspect In that small space all paradise unfurled.
It was a right delightful road to go, Marching through pastures of such fair herbage, O’er hill and dale it led, and to and fro, From bard to bard, making an easy stage;
Where ever and anon I slaked my thirst Like a tired traveller at some poet’s well, Which from the teeming ground did bubbling burst, And tinkling thence adown the page it fell. Still through the leaves its music you might hear, Till other springs fell faintly on the ear.32
32. Thoreau’s extracts from these three unremarkable volumes assembled at London by S.C. Hall between 1836 and 1838 are to be found in his Literary Notebook 1840-1848 and his Miscellaneous Extracts 1836-1840. SAMUEL CARTER HALL HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
December 21, Saturday: Using a metaphor of a legislature passing a temperance law while by its drunkenness promoting drunkenness, Nathaniel Peabody Rogers published the following paragraph in Concord, New Hampshire’s anti-slavery paper Herald of Freedom:
Some of our temperance friends are in love with legislative reform in this state, in this behalf. We are decidedly opposed to it. It is an illegitimate mode of reform, and is, we believe, resorted to by those clergymen and politicians, and other great men, who are afraid of the effect of moral agitation upon their influential positions in community. We say, let every man sell as much rum and drink as much rum as he chooses, for all legislation. If we can’t stop drunkenness without the paltry aid of our state house, let it go on. It is a less evil than sumptuary legislation, — and a legislative reformation would be good for nothing, if it could be effected. It would be a totally unprincipled reformation. And as much as we loathe drunkenness, we had as lief witness any bar-room scene we ever saw, as some scenes enacted at our stone state house. Why, we have to keep the legislature itself, sober, in the very session time, by influence of the Temperance society. Stop that influence, and the legislative session would be a time of general drunkenness, gambling and debauchery, wherever the legislature should hold its sittings. And is the country to look to legislation for the preservation of its morals! We would as soon look to the general muster, as the general court. We say this with all deference to our public servants, as they call themselves when they want our votes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1840
Since the high point of consumption during the late 1820s, American males seemed to have been consuming less prodigious amounts of ethanol. Intake, which had been calculated at four gallons per man per year, of 200- proof, was down to a calculated 1.5 gallons per man per year, of 200-proof.33
Since the turn of the century American consumption of coffee had increased by some 500%.34
Edgar Allan Poe was fired by Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine for drunkenness. His TALES OF THE 00 GROTESQUE AND ARABESQUE were collected in two volumes. “The Gold Bug” won a $100. top prize in a contest sponsored by a Philadelphia paper.
The Reverend Issachar J. Roberts , despite his lack of any training in the Chinese language, had picked up enough to be able to create by this point four tracts, Tzu Pu Chi Chieh or “Explanation of the Radical Characters,” Chen Li Che Chiao or “The Religion of Truth,” Chu Shih Chu Yeh-su Hsin I Chao Shu or “New Testament of the Saviour Jesus,” and Wen Ta Su Hua or “Catechism in the Macao Dialect.” This last tract included a small map of Asia with its surrounding lands and seas.
The Opium Wars ended mandarin control of British trade with China. (This would be followed by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking which would cede Hong Kong to the British and open numerous ports to Europeans and Americans. Under a further 1858 treaty, foreigners would be enabled to travel anywhere in the interior of the empire. That the Chinese were humiliated by this was irrelevant.)
It had become apparent that opium use was on the increase in Britain, but there was not agreement as to how harmful this was. On the whole the dangers of the use of this substance were being downplayed, and few people saw any parallel with the Chinese situation. Concerns over abuse did not rise to the same level as the British concern over the abuse of alcohol.
Thomas De Quincey’s “Style” and “The Opium and the China Question” appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine. De Quincey was again prosecuted for his debts.
33. Larkin, RESHAPING OF EVERYDAY LIFE, pages 285-6, 295-7. This makes for an interesting comparison with today’s Russia, where I understand your average man downs an average of half a bottle of vodka each day. 34. 19th-Century doctors disapproved of coffee. As for prostitutes, so for medicos, or that is the way the situation is made to appear in a standard joke: the question “What do you like to do?” is said to be followed automatically in the one calling by the remark “Well, that’ll be extra,” and automatically in the other calling by “Well, that’s bad for you.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM It would become in this decade the fashion for ladies to be pale and appear slightly ill, and so less rouge would be being used, and some ladies would take to drinking vinegar. That’s vinegar, in addition to all the other stuff:
Ethanol Consumption in Annual Gallons per US Adult
1790 5.8
1830 7.1
1840 3.1
1860 2.1
1890 2.1
1900 2.1
1920 0.9
1940 1.56
1980 2.76
Since the high of the late 1820s American males seemed to have been consuming less prodigious amounts of ethanol. Intake, which had been calculated at four gallons (that’s four gallons at 200-proof absolute alcohol) per man per year, was down to a calculated 1.5 gallons per man per year, a third of what it had been at its peak.35 This year marked the founding of the Concord Total Abstinence Society.
DOPERS
35. Larkin, RESHAPING OF EVERYDAY LIFE, pages 285-6, 295-7. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Farmers were cutting down their apple orchards for lack of demand for hard cider. Horace Greeley would note that whereas “consumers of strong drink” had been “the whole people,” at that point they had become “a class.”36
From the turn of the century into the 1840s American consumption of coffee was increasing by some 500%.37
36. RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE, NY 1868. 37. Generally, 19th-Century doctors disapproved of coffee. As for prostitutes, so for medicos, or that is the way the situation is made to appear in a standard joke: the question “What do you like to do?” is said to be followed automatically in the one service industry by the remark “Well, that’ll be extra,” and automatically in the other service industry by “Well, that’s bad for you.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1841
Perry Davis removed from Taunton to Fall River within Massachusetts, and began to distil his “Pain Killer” patent medicine out of opiates in ethanol in his family residence, assisted by his wife and daughter.
That this was a supremely dangerous thing to do seems not to have occurred to any of them! Here’s a Richard Pryor joke, after his accident while freebasing: “When you’re on fire and running down the street, people will get out of your way.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM May 24, Wednesday: William Whiting was born in Dudley, Massachusetts. In 1873 he would be a member of the Massachusetts state senate. In 1878 he would be the mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts. In 1883/1889 he would be a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts 11th District. He would die in Holyoke, Massachusetts on January 9, 1911 and the body would be placed at Forestdale Cemetery in Holyoke.
Election Day night was considered to be an appropriate occasion for drunkenness and celebration, and thus for high-spirited pranks and for the settling of old scores. Henry Thoreau was living with the Emersons and was up very late, studying, when he heard the fire bell clanging, jumped over Mill Brook, and ran out in advance of the fire “tub” or wagon, which would presumably have been manned by his father John Thoreau, Senior as a regular member of the Concord volunteer fire brigade.
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WALDEN: Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed’s location, on the other side PEOPLE OF of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground famous for the pranks of WALDEN a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part in our New England life, and deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have his biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family, –New England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious tradition says that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered the traveller’s beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and went their ways again. Breed’s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over Davenant’s Gondibert, that winter that I labored with a lethargy, –which, by the way, I never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to read Chalmers’ collection of English poetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods, – we who had run to fires before,– barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. “It’s Baker’s barn,” cried one. “It is the Codman Place,” affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted “Concord to the rescue!” Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure, and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless.
JOHN C. BREED JOHN CODMAN HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
WALDEN: So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through speaking trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witness, including Bascom’s shop, and, between ourselves we thought that, were we there in season with our “tub”, and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief, –returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondibert, I would except that passage in the preface about wit being the soul’s powder, – “but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder.” It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered the only survivor of the family that I know, the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been working far off in the river meadows all day, and had improved the first moments that he could call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides and points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones, where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. The house being gone, he looked at what there was left. He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence implied, and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had been fastened to the heavy end, –all that he could now cling to,– to convince me that it was no common “rider.” I felt it, and still remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family.
The cellar hole of this habitation is located just into the Walden Woods off the northern end of what is now the Fairyland parking lot on Walden Street. ALEXANDER CHALMERS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1842
In Albany, New York, Stephen Myers, who had worked as a grocer and as a steamboat steward, and his wife Harriet Myers, began their abolitionist Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate. (Later there would be other publishing ventures including the Pioneer, and Telegraph and Temperance Journal.)
In Rochester, New York, temperance forces prevented a reduction in the price of liquor licenses.
The Sons of Temperance came into existence, at, the same time the Order of Rechabites was organized, and the Congressional Temperance Society of 1833 was revived on the basis of total abstinence. In the meantime, however, the United States government, which had heaped honors upon Father Matthew, would conclude a HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM treaty with King Kamehameha III of the Hawaiian Islands in 1850 permitting the introduction and sale of liquor on his island.
Our national birthday, Monday the 4th of July:38 William Johnson of Natchez, a free black man who was himself a slavemaster (!) as well as being a barber and a successful businessman, kept a diary of short entries, hardly missing a day between 1836 and 1851. This diary has seen publication as William Johnson’s NATCHEZ, THE ANTE-BELLUM DIARY OF A FREE NEGRO, ed. William Ransom Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis (1951, 1979, and a Louisiana State UP paperback in 1993). Here is one of a series of Johnson’s 4th-of-July entries: “Two of the Companies turned Out to day and of all the Music that I Ever herd in my Life. Mr. Sorias Jonh and some other Boy, oh it was dreadfull indeed, past anything that I Ever Herd in my Life.”
Horace Mann, Sr. delivered the Fourth of July oration in Boston.
In Poughkipsee, New York, Richard A. Brown watched the town’s 4th of July parade and reported to his wife in Rhode Island that “I had an opportunity to see part of the procession which was very large and respectable being made up of Military Oddfellows Sabath Schools Citizens niggers &c.”
In New-York harbor, the US North Carolina, the frigate Columbia, and the English frigate Warspite were exchanging artillery salutes, but meanwhile the real work of the harbor was going on, as Samuel Colt’s “sub- marine experiment” for blowing up enemy ships was being tested, and was passing its tests.
In Washington DC, William Bacon Stevens’s “History of the Declaration of Independence was published in the National Intelligencer. To work against the traditional drunkenness of the holiday, several of the city’s temperance societies had gotten together for a “Grand Total Abstinence Celebration.” At Parrott’s Woods near Georgetown, although the speaker’s platform collapsed and District of Columbia Major William W. Seaton, G.W.P. Custis, and others were dumped to the ground, no one was injured. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
38. This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 38th birthday. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1843
Walt Whitman’s FRANKLIN EVANS, OR THE INEBRIATE, a temperance tract in novel form.
The 1st prohibitionist cure for the evils of ethanol ingestion was enacted, in the territory of Oregon (but five years later this would be repealed).
William Wells Brown would give an account of his year: In 1843, I visited Malden, in Upper Canada, and counted seventeen in that small village, whom I had assisted in reaching Canada. Soon after coming north I subscribed for the Liberator, edited by that champion of freedom, William Lloyd Garrison. I had heard nothing of the anti-slavery movement while in slavery, and as soon as I found that my enslaved countrymen had friends who were laboring for their liberation, I felt anxious to join them, and give what aid I could to the cause. I early embraced the temperance cause, and found that a temperance reformation was needed among my colored brethren. In company with a few friends, I commenced a temperance reformation among the colored people in the city of Buffalo, and labored three years, in which time a society was built up, numbering over five hundred out of a population of less than seven hundred. In the autumn, 1843, impressed with the importance of spreading anti-slavery truth, as a means to bring about the abolition of slavery, I commenced lecturing as an agent of the western New York Anti-Slavery Society, and have ever since devoted my time to the cause of my enslaved countrymen.
February 6, Monday: At the age of 34 Kit Carson got married a 3d time, with 14-year-old Josefa Jaramillo, daughter of a prominent family of Taos in the New Mexico territory. The couple would produce eight children the descendants of whom are still to be found in the Arkansas Valley of Colorado.
Hector Berlioz arrived in Dresden. He met Richard Wagner whom he found “self-satisfied but warm” and enjoyed Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen and Der fliegende Holländer. Wagner had written unkind remarks about Berlioz which would appear in the Zeitung für die elegante Welt during Berlioz’ stay, but would regret these remarks once he heard Berlioz’ music.
The Virginia Minstrels made their New York debut at the Bowery Amphitheatre.
Lidian Emerson wrote to Waldo Emerson: HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM It is now Monday the sixth day of the month. We had no conversation last night but all Concord (and many other places besides) was entertained with a magnificent snow storm. Soft and pure words innumberable fell all around us — might we but have understood them! Our trees are richly laden; and gorgeous to behold is the large evergreen in front of my chamber window. I trust kind nature will gently unladle them before they find their riches so cumbrous as to endanger their future well being. Henry [Henry Thoreau] has so far improved in health to be quite able, as he thinks, to shovel snow once more, deep though it be. He has made very handsome paths from both doors and the great blocks of snow lie on each side attesting that they were no trifle to dispose of — I don’t know that I ever saw the snow deeper on a level. It is not much drifted.
Lewis Tappan had a headlock on human righteousness, and was inordinately proud of the manner in which constant close surveillance of the American business community by the agents of his Mercantile Agency was policing our morals and enabling our lives: Indeed, “moral regulation” was among the industry’s founding objectives. The Mercantile Agency grew now only from Lewis Tappan’s business failures but also from his success in reform movements. Building associations and communications networks, antebellum do-gooders papered the land with temperance pledges and codes of conduct to keep drunkards dry and factory girls pure. They installed “Overseers of the Poor” and built panopticons, octagonal prisons and asylums that facilitated central observation of oddballs and miscreants. Similar disciplinary aims moved Tappan to deploy surveillance and to devise performance standards. In a private letter about his firm in 1843, he bragged, “it checks knavery, & purifies the mercantile air.” ... Branding weak men, bad men, and madmen, a credit agency was a panopticon without walls.
July 3, Monday: His business burned out in Fall River with severe injury to himself, Perry Davis would need to relocate to Providence, Rhode Island.
One day a large can of alcohol caught fire, and the sudden flame HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM of the burning liquid in its rapid ascent to the ceiling enveloped Mr. Davis, burning his body to the bone. Mrs. Davis and his daughter, Mrs. S. Dennis were left powerless in their attempts to rescue the sufferer, and rushed to the street for aid. When help arrived the flesh on his arms hung in shreds, the thick fleshy portions on his hands falling off. His face was one solid burnt sore, and his kidneys were so injured that he passed nothing but blood for nearly two days. The family pleaded for a physician, but Mr. Davis was inexorable and said if his medicine could not save him he would go with it. The Pain Killer was used as directed. The sufferings of the patient were terrible. Noone thought he could survive, and the second night following it was supposed he was dying, but he finally passed off into a quiet sleep, and from that time began to gain. In four weeks from that time he drove a wagon to Apponaug. The first Pain Killer taken to Boston Mr. Davis carried in a basket on his arm, walking there and back. He called on the druggists, but they shrugged their shoulders and said they could not sell it without the assistance of advertising and that they made mixtures equally as good themselves. After canvassing the city with but little success, and at last discouraged, he went among the crowd upon the street and to each poor, sick, lame person he met handed a bottle of Pain Killer. This done he returned home more discouraged than ever. In the meantime his medicine at home grew more popular every day and soon afterward the cholera made its appearance in the United States and Pain Killer was suddenly brought into general notice by the astonishing cures of this dreadful disease which it effected. Orders now began to come in to such an extent that Mr. Davis had to cast aside his pestle and mortar and commence the manufacture of Pain Killer upon a larger scale. It was now found that each bottle given away in Boston and elsewhere, had created a demand for many more; the sale increased from day to day, while everybody who used this wonderful compound was either writing or telling his friends of its powers in relieving pain and suffering. It was soon after its discovery that Perry Davis’ Pain Killer was introduced into a factory at Providence, and the employees there found a cure for all those little ills and numberless hurts of accidents which factory hands are constantly subject to. In various ways the medicine became advertised until now it is used by every people on the Globe and known elsewhere. The North American Indians prize it above gold. The miners of South Africa and Brazil have christened it the “Miner’s Friend,” while the natives of India and other warm climates find it a sure antidote against the bite of the most poisonous reptiles. The Hudson Bay Company, whose business reaches out through all the vast territory between Alaska and the coast of Labrador, are among the largest dealers of this article. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Our national birthday, Tuesday the 4th of July: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 39th birthday.
In the Moravian community of Lititz, Pennsylvania, a town annual tradition of lighting their Spring Park with candles for the 4th of July, a tradition that is going on to the present day, began with this year’s celebration of our nation’s birthday.
In Boston, Charles Francis Adams, son of President John Quincy Adams, delivered an oration in Faneuil Hall. (This was the first celebration in this historic building.)
When a group from the Association of Industry and Education desired to hold an Independence Day antislavery meeting in the town of Northampton itself, they were denied access not only to the town meetinghouse but also to any and all of the local churches. Their speaker William Lloyd Garrison therefore proceeded to deliver his lecture to the crowd in the main street of the town — from atop a stump.
In Washington DC, the cornerstone of Temperance Hall was laid (if you are gonna lay a cornerstone to temperance, for sure the day to stage the celebration is the day that the culture is devoting to public drunkenness).
Water was officiously let into the extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal created by an aqueduct above the Potomac River.
In Poughkeepsie, New York, due to a holiday firecracker “carelessly thrown by a boy,” God caused a church to be burned to the ground. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Frederick Douglass was in the Town Hall of Kingston, Massachusetts at the annual meeting of the Plymouth County Anti-Slavery Society. This was the period of the “Hundred Conventions,” in which Douglass was lecturing in conjunction with John A. Collins, Charles Lenox Remond, Jacob Ferris, James Monroe, George Bradburn, William A. White, and Sydney Howard Gay. During the month of July Douglass would be in Middlebury, Vermont and then in Ferrisburgh, Vermont with Collins, Bradburn, and Gay, before winding up by himself again, at the end of the month with a lecture in Syracuse, New York:
BONDAGE: In the summer of 1843, I was traveling and lecturing, in company with William A. White, Esq., through the state of Indiana. Anti-slavery friends were not very abundant in Indiana, at that time, and beds were not more plentiful than friends. We often slept out, in preference to sleeping in the houses, at some points. At the close of one of our meetings, we were invited home with a kindly-disposed old farmer, who, in the generous enthusiasm of the moment, seemed to have forgotten that he had but one spare bed, and that his guests were an ill-matched pair. All went on pretty well, till near bed time, when signs of uneasiness began to show themselves, among the unsophisticated sons and daughters. White is remarkably fine looking, and very evidently a born gentleman; the idea of putting us in the same bed was hardly to be tolerated; and yet, there we were, and but the one bed for us, and that, by the way, was in the same room occupied by the other members of the family. White, as well as I, perceived the difficulty, for yonder slept the old folks, there the sons, and a little farther along slept the daughters; and but one other bed remained. Who should have this bed, was the puzzling question. There was some whispering between the old folks, some confused looks among the young, as the time for going to bed approached. After witnessing the confusion as long as I liked, I relieved the kindly-disposed family by playfully saying, “Friend White, having got entirely rid of my prejudice against color, I think, as a proof of it, I must allow you to sleep with me to-night.” White kept up the joke, by seeming to esteem himself the favored party, and thus the difficulty was removed. If we went to a hotel, and called for dinner, the landlord was sure to set one table for White and another for me, always taking him to be master, and me the servant. Large eyes were generally made when the order was given to remove the dishes from my table to that of White’s. In those days, it was thought strange that a white man and a colored man could dine peaceably at the same table, and in some parts the strangeness of such a sight has not entirely subsided.
Waldo Emerson visited Fruitlands and observed some 100 feet of shelving, needed for their library of some 1,000 volumes contributed by Charles Lane, almost all of which were treatises on mysticism.39
Margaret Fuller would write of the events of this day, in her SUMMER ON THE LAKES, IN 1843: A little way down the river is the site of an ancient Indian village, with its regularly arranged mounds. As usual, they had chosen with the finest taste. When we went there, it was one of those soft, shadowy afternoons when Nature seems ready to weep, not from grief, but from an overfull heart. Two prattling, 39. When the colony collapsed Waldo Emerson would purchase some of these volumes, those which are now in the collection of Houghton Library of Harvard College. The remainder of the volumes would be taken by Thoreau to New-York and sold, with the proceeds being sent to Charles Lane. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM lovely little girls, and an African boy, with glittering eye and ready grin, made our party gay; but all were still as we entered the little inlet and trod those flowery paths. They may blacken Indian life as they will, talk of its dirt, its brutality, I will ever believe that the men who chose that dwelling-place were able to feel emotions of noble happiness as they returned to it, and so were the women that received them. Neither were the children sad or dull, who lived so familiarly with the deer and the birds, and swam that clear wave in the shadow of the Seven Sisters. The whole scene suggested to me a Greek splendor, a Greek sweetness, and I can believe that an Indian brave, accustomed to ramble in such paths, and be bathed by such sunbeams, might be mistaken for Apollo, as Apollo was for him by West. Two of the boldest bluffs are called the Deer’s Walk, (not because deer do not walk there,) and the Eagle’s Nest. The latter I visited one glorious morning; it was that of the fourth of July, and certainly I think I had never felt so happy that I was born in America. Woe to all country folks that never saw this spot, never swept an enraptured gaze over the prospect that stretched beneath. I do believe Rome and Florence are suburbs compared to this capital of Nature’s art. The bluff was decked with great bunches of a scarlet variety of the milkweed, like cut coral, and all starred with a mysterious- looking dark flower, whose cup rose lonely on a tall stem. This had, for two or three days, disputed the ground with the lupine and phlox. My companions disliked, I liked it. Here I thought of, or rather saw, what the Greek expresses under the form of Jove’s darling, Ganymede, and the following stanzas took form. Ganymede to his Eagle. Suggested by a Work of Thorwaldsen’s.
Composed on the height called the Eagle’s Nest, Oregon, Rock River, July 4th, 1843.
Upon the rocky mountain stood the boy, A goblet of pure water in his hand; His face and form spoke him one made for joy, A willing servant to sweet love’s command, But a strange pain was written on his brow, And thrilled throughout his silver accents now.
“My bird,” he cries, “my destined brother friend, O whither fleets to-day thy wayward flight? Hast thou forgotten that I here attend, From the full noon until this sad twilight? A hundred times, at least, from the clear spring, Since the fall noon o’er hill and valley glowed, I’ve filled the vase which our Olympian king Upon my care for thy sole use bestowed; That, at the moment when thou shouldst descend, A pure refreshment might thy thirst attend.
“Hast thou forgotten earth, forgotten me, Thy fellow-bondsman in a royal cause, Who, from the sadness of infinity, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Only with thee can know that peaceful pause In which we catch the flowing strain of love, Which binds our dim fates to the throne of Jove?
“Before I saw thee, I was like the May, Longing for summer that must mar its bloom, Or like the morning star that calls the day, Whose glories to its promise are the tomb; And as the eager fountain rises higher To throw itself more strongly back to earth, Still, as more sweet and full rose my desire, More fondly it reverted to its birth, For what the rosebud seeks tells not the rose, The meaning that the boy foretold the man cannot disclose.
“I was all Spring, for in my being dwelt Eternal youth, where flowers are the fruit; Full feeling was the thought of what was felt, Its music was the meaning of the lute; But heaven and earth such life will still deny, For earth, divorced from heaven, still asks the question Why?
“Upon the highest mountains my young feet Ached, that no pinions from their lightness grew, My starlike eyes the stars would fondly greet, Yet win no greeting from the circling blue; Fair, self-subsistent each in its own sphere, They had no care that there was none for me; Alike to them that I was far or near, Alike to them time and eternity.
“But from the violet of lower air Sometimes an answer to my wishing came; Those lightning-births my nature seemed to share, They told the secrets of its fiery frame, The sudden messengers of hate and love, The thunderbolts that arm the hand of Jove, And strike sometimes the sacred spire, And strike the sacred grove.
“Come in a moment, in a moment gone, They answered me, then left me still more lone; They told me that the thought which ruled the world As yet no sail upon its course had furled, That the creation was but just begun, New leaves still leaving from the primal one, But spoke not of the goal to which My rapid wheels would run.
“Still, still my eyes, though tearfully, I strained To the far future which my heart contained, And no dull doubt my proper hope profaned. “At last, O bliss! thy living form I spied, Then a mere speck upon a distant sky; Yet my keen glance discerned its noble pride, And the full answer of that sun-filled eye; I knew it was the wing that must upbear My earthlier form into the realms of air. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
“Thou knowest how we gained that beauteous height, Where dwells the monarch, of the sons of light; Thou knowest he declared us two to be The chosen servants of his ministry, Thou as his messenger, a sacred sign Of conquest, or, with omen more benign, To give its due weight to the righteous cause, To express the verdict of Olympian laws.
“And I to wait upon the lonely spring, Which slakes the thirst of bards to whom ’t is given The destined dues of hopes divine to sing, And weave the needed chain to bind to heaven. Only from such could be obtained a draught For him who in his early home from Jove’s own cup has quaffed “To wait, to wait, but not to wait too long. Till heavy grows the burden of a song; O bird! too long hast thou been gone to-day, My feet are weary of their frequent way, The spell that opes the spring my tongue no more can say.
“If soon thou com’st not, night will fall around, My head with a sad slumber will be bound, And the pure draught be spilt upon the ground. “Remember that I am not yet divine, Long years of service to the fatal Nine Are yet to make a Delphian vigor mine. “O, make them not too hard, thou bird of Jove! Answer the stripling’s hope, confirm his love, Receive the service in which he delights, And bear him often to the serene heights, Where hands that were so prompt in serving thee Shall be allowed the highest ministry, And Rapture live with bright Fidelity.”
The afternoon was spent in a very different manner. The family whose guests we were possessed a gay and graceful hospitality that gave zest to each moment. They possessed that rare politeness which, while fertile in pleasant expedients to vary the enjoyment of a friend, leaves him perfectly free the moment he wishes to be so. With such hosts, pleasure may be combined with repose. They lived on the bank opposite the town, and, as their house was full, we slept in the town, and passed three days with them, passing to and fro morning and evening in their boats. To one of these, called the Fairy, in which a sweet little daughter of the house moved about lighter than any Scotch Ellen ever sung, I should indite a poem, if I had not been guilty of rhyme on this very page. At morning this boating was very pleasant; at evening, I confess, I was generally too tired with the excitements of the day to think it so. The house —a double log-cabin— was, to my eye, the model of a Western villa. Nature had laid out before it grounds which could not be improved. Within, female taste had veiled every rudeness, availed itself of every sylvan grace. In this charming abode what laughter, what sweet thoughts, what pleasing fancies, did we not enjoy! May such never desert those who reared it, and made us so kindly welcome to all its HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM pleasures! Fragments of city life were dexterously crumbled into the dish prepared for general entertainment. Ice-creams followed the dinner, which was drawn by the gentlemen from the river, and music and fireworks wound up the evening of days spent on the Eagle’s Nest. Now they had prepared a little fleet to pass over to the Fourth of July celebration, which some queer drumming and fifing, from, the opposite bank, had announced to be “on hand.” We found the free and independent citizens there collected beneath the trees, among whom many a round Irish visage dimpled at the usual puffs of “Ameriky.” The orator was a New-Englander, and the speech smacked loudly of Boston, but was received with much applause and followed by a plentiful dinner, provided by and for the Sovereign People, to which Hail Columbia served as grace. Returning, the gay flotilla cheered the little flag which the children had raised from a log-cabin, prettier than any president ever saw, and drank the health of our country and all mankind, with a clear conscience. Dance and song wound up the day. I know not when the mere local habitation has seemed to me to afford so fair a chance of happiness as this. To a person of unspoiled tastes, the beauty alone would afford stimulus enough. But with it would be naturally associated all kinds of wild sports, experiments, and the studies of natural history. In these regards, the poet, the sportsman, the naturalist, would alike rejoice in this wide range of untouched loveliness. Then, with a very little money, a ducal estate may be purchased, and by a very little more, and moderate labor, a family be maintained upon it with raiment, food, and shelter. The luxurious and minute comforts of a city life are not yet to be had without effort disproportionate to their value. But, where there is so great a counterpoise, cannot these be given up once for all? If the houses are imperfectly built, they can afford immense fires and plenty of covering; if they are small, who cares, — with, such fields to roam in? in winter, it may be borne; in summer, is of no consequence. With plenty of fish, and game, and wheat, can they not dispense with a baker to bring “muffins hot” every morning to the door for their breakfast? A man need not here take a small slice from the landscape, and fence it in from the obtrusions of an uncongenial neighbor, and there cut down his fancies to miniature improvements which a chicken could run over in ten minutes. He may have water and wood and land enough, to dread no incursions on his prospect from some chance Vandal that may enter his neighborhood. He need not painfully economize and manage how he may use it all; he can afford to leave some of it wild, and to carry out his own plans without obliterating those of Nature. Here, whole families might live together, if they would. The sons might return from their pilgrimages to settle near the parent hearth; the daughters might find room near their mother. Those painful separations, which already desecrate and desolate the Atlantic coast, are not enforced here by the stern need of seeking bread; and where they are voluntary, it is no matter. To me, too, used to the feelings which haunt a society of struggling men, it was delightful to look upon a scene where Nature still wore her motherly smile, and seemed to promise room, not only for those favored or cursed with the qualities HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM best adapting for the strifes of competition, but for the delicate, the thoughtful, even the indolent or eccentric. She did not say, Fight or starve; nor even, Work or cease to exist; but, merely showing that the apple was a finer fruit than the wild crab, gave both room to grow in the garden. A pleasant society is formed of the families who live along the banks of this stream upon farms. They are from various parts of the world, and have much to communicate to one another. Many have cultivated minds and refined manners, all a varied experience, while they have in common the interests of a new country and a new life. They must traverse some space to get at one another, but the journey is through scenes that make it a separate pleasure. They must bear inconveniences to stay in one another’s houses; but these, to the well-disposed, are only a source of amusement and adventure. The great drawback upon the lives of these settlers, at present, is the unfitness of the women for their new lot. It has generally been the choice of the men, and the women follow, as women will, doing their best for affection’s sake, but too often in heartsickness and weariness. Beside, it frequently not being a choice or conviction of their own minds that it is best to be here, their part is the hardest, and they are least fitted for it. The men can find assistance in field labor, and recreation with the gun and fishing-rod. Their bodily strength is greater, and enables them to bear and enjoy both these forms of life. The women can rarely find any aid in domestic labor. All its various and careful tasks must often be performed, sick, or well, by the mother and daughters, to whom a city education has imparted neither the strength nor skill now demanded. The wives of the poorer settlers, having more hard work to do than before, very frequently become slatterns; but the ladies, accustomed to a refined neatness, feel that they cannot degrade themselves by its absence, and struggle under every disadvantage to keep up the necessary routine of small arrangements. With all these disadvantages for work, their resources for pleasure are fewer. When they can leave the housework, they have not learnt to ride, to drive, to row, alone. Their culture has too generally been that given to women to make them “the ornaments of society.” They can dance, but not draw; talk French, but know nothing of the language of flowers; neither in childhood were allowed to cultivate them, lest they should tan their complexions. Accustomed to the pavement of Broadway, they dare not tread the wild-wood paths for fear of rattlesnakes! Seeing much of this joylessness, and inaptitude, both of body and mind, for a lot which would be full of blessings for those prepared for it, we could not but look with deep interest on the little girls, and hope they would grow up with the strength of body, dexterity, simple tastes, and resources that would fit them to enjoy and refine the Western farmer’s life. But they have a great deal to war with in the habits of thought acquired by their mothers from their own early life. Everywhere the fatal spirit of imitation, of reference to European standards, penetrates, and threatens to blight whatever of original growth might adorn the soil. If the little girls grow up strong, resolute, able to exert their faculties, their mothers mourn over their want of fashionable delicacy. Are they gay, enterprising, ready to fly about in the various ways that teach them so much, these ladies lament that HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM “they cannot go to school, where they might learn to be quiet.” They lament the want of “education” for their daughters, as if the thousand needs which call out their young energies, and the language of nature around, yielded no education. Their grand ambition for their children is to send them to school in some Eastern city, the measure most likely to make them useless and unhappy at home. I earnestly hope that, erelong, the existence of good schools near themselves, planned by persons of sufficient thought to meet the wants of the place and time, instead of copying New York or Boston, will correct this mania. Instruction the children want to enable them to profit by the great natural advantages of their position; but methods copied from the education of some English Lady Augusta are as ill suited to the daughter of an Illinois farmer, as satin shoes to climb the Indian mounds. An elegance she would diffuse around her, if her mind were opened to appreciate elegance; it might be of a kind new, original, enchanting, as different from that of the city belle as that of the prairie torch-flower from the shop- worn article that touches the cheek of that lady within her bonnet. To a girl really skilled to make home beautiful and comfortable, with bodily strength to enjoy plenty of exercise, the woods, the streams, a few studies, music, and the sincere and familiar intercourse, far more easily to be met with here than elsewhere, would afford happiness enough. Her eyes would not grow dim, nor her cheeks sunken, in the absence of parties, morning visits, and milliners’ shops. As to music, I wish I could see in such places the guitar rather than the piano, and good vocal more than instrumental music. The piano many carry with them, because it is the fashionable instrument in the Eastern cities. Even there, it is so merely from the habit of imitating Europe, for not one in a thousand is willing to give the labor requisite to insure any valuable use of the instrument. But out here, where the ladies have so much less leisure, it is still less desirable. Add to this, they never know how to tune their own instruments, and as persons seldom visit them who can do so, these pianos are constantly out of tune, and would spoil the ear of one who began by having any. The guitar, or some portable instrument which requires less practice, and could be kept in tune by themselves, would be far more desirable for most of these ladies. It would give all they want as a household companion to fill up the gaps of life with a pleasant stimulus or solace, and be sufficient accompaniment to the voice in social meetings. Singing in parts is the most delightful family amusement, and those who are constantly together can learn to sing in perfect accord. All the practice it needs, after some good elementary instruction, is such as meetings by summer twilight and evening firelight naturally suggest. And as music is a universal language, we cannot but think a fine Italian duet would be as much at home in the log cabin as one of Mrs. Gore’s novels. The 6th of July we left this beautiful place. It was one of those rich days of bright sunlight, varied by the purple shadows of large, sweeping clouds. Many a backward look we cast, and left the heart behind. Our journey to-day was no less delightful than before, still all new, boundless, limitless. Kinmont says, that limits are sacred; HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM that the Greeks were in the right to worship a god of limits. I say, that what is limitless is alone divine, that there was neither wall nor road in Eden, that those who walked, there lost and found their way just as we did, and that all the gain from the Fall was that we had a wagon to ride in. I do not think, either, that even the horses doubted whether this last was any advantage. Everywhere the rattlesnake-weed grows in profusion. The antidote survives the bane. Soon the coarser plantain, the “white man’s footstep,” shall take its place. We saw also the compass-plant, and the Western tea-plant. Of some of the brightest flowers an Indian girl afterwards told me the medicinal virtues. I doubt not those students of the soil knew a use to every fair emblem, on which we could only look to admire its hues and shape. After noon we were ferried by a girl (unfortunately not of the most picturesque appearance) across the Kishwaukie, the most graceful of streams, and on whose bosom rested many full-blown water-lilies, — twice as large as any of ours. I was told that, en revanche, they were scentless, but I still regret that I could not get at one of them to try. Query, did the lilied fragrance which, in the miraculous times, accompanied visions of saints and angels, proceed from water or garden lilies? Kishwaukie is, according to tradition, the scene of a famous battle, and its many grassy mounds contain the bones of the valiant. On these waved thickly the mysterious purple flower, of which I have spoken before. I think it springs from the blood of the Indians, as the hyacinth did from that of Apollo’s darling. The ladies of our host’s family at Oregon, when they first went, there, after all the pains and plagues of building and settling, found their first pastime in opening one of these mounds, in which they found, I think, three of the departed, seated, in the Indian fashion. One of these same ladies, as she was making bread one winter morning, saw from the window a deer directly before the house. She ran out, with her hands covered with dough, calling the others, and they caught him bodily before he had time to escape. Here (at Kiskwaukie) we received a visit from a ragged and barefooted, but bright-eyed gentleman, who seemed to be the intellectual loafer, the walking Will’s coffee-house, of the place. He told us many charming snake-stories; among others, of himself having seen seventeen young ones re-enter the mother snake, on the approach of a visitor. This night we reached Belvidere, a flourishing town in Boon County, where was the tomb, now despoiled, of Big Thunder. In this later day we felt happy to find a really good hotel. From this place, by two days of very leisurely and devious journeying, we reached Chicago, and thus ended a journey, which one at least of the party might have wished unending. I have not been particularly anxious to give the geography of the scene, inasmuch as it seemed to me no route, nor series of stations, but a garden interspersed with cottages, groves, and flowery lawns, through which a stately river ran. I had no guide- book, kept no diary, do not know how many miles we travelled each day, nor how many in all. What I got from the journey was the poetic impression of the country at large; it is all I have aimed to communicate. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM The narrative might have been made much more interesting, as life was at the time, by many piquant anecdotes and tales drawn from private life. But here courtesy restrains the pen, for I know those who received the stranger with such frank kindness would feel ill requited by its becoming the means of fixing many spy-glasses, even though the scrutiny might be one of admiring interest, upon their private homes. For many of these anecdotes, too, I was indebted to a friend, whose property they more lawfully are. This friend was one of those rare beings who are equally at home in nature and with man. He knew a tale of all that ran and swam and flew, or only grew, possessing that extensive familiarity with things which shows equal sweetness of sympathy and playful penetration. Most refreshing to me was his unstudied lore, the unwritten poetry which common life presents to a strong and gentle mind. It was a great contrast to the subtilties of analysis, the philosophic strainings of which I had seen too much. But I will not attempt to transplant it. May it profit others as it did me in the region where it was born, where it belongs. The evening of our return to Chicago, the sunset was of a splendor and calmness beyond any we saw at the West. The twilight that succeeded was equally beautiful; soft, pathetic, but just so calm. When afterwards I learned this was the evening of Allston’s death, it seemed to me as if this glorious pageant was not without connection with that event; at least, it inspired similar emotions, — a heavenly gate closing a path adorned with shows well worthy Paradise.
Late Summer: Perry Davis mixed up a batch of his patent vegetable painkiller consisting of opiates in ethanol to sell at the annual Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry fair in Pawtuxet. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1844
The historian George Bancroft, from his summer “cottage” Roseclyffe at Newport (see following screen), weighed into Rhode Island’s “Dorr War” on the side of Governor Thomas Wilson Dorr. BANCROFT AND DORR
The Reverend John Stetson Barry began to serve the Universalist congregation of Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
At the foot of Meeting Street at the corner of Town Street, the Friends put what had been their 2d meetinghouse in Providence (Moshasuck), Rhode Island on heavy sledges and had it tugged (by a team of horses, we are told, although perhaps it was oxen) over snow down Town Street, then up Wickenden Street on Fox Point, and then uphill to 77 Hope Street, where it became a 2-family residence. Thus its century-and-a-quarter old foundation was cleared, to hold up the west half of a new larger meetinghouse (the east half of this 3d structure would be on top of a crawl space). This 3d meeting house would last us 112 years, until the city of Providence needed a central site for a proposed new Fire Station. Another site would be available to the city, but a brick building on it would be more expensive to clear and its location between North Main Street and Canal Street would HDT WHAT? INDEX
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PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM offer inferior access for fire equipment. So we would sell our lot to the City, and erect a 4th-generation brick meetinghouse with a slate roof at the top of College Hill, at the corner of Olney and Morris on Friend Moses Brown’s donated property, in about 1952.
Belatedly recognizing the dangers of freebasing in your home kitchen in the presence of your children, Perry Davis purchased a building on Pond Street in which to mix up his patent vegetable painkiller consisting of opiates and ethanol. It would be asserted that freebie “cases of Davis’ medicine were shipped with every Baptist missionary bound for India and China.”
(Doesn’t that seem a bit like carrying coal to Newcastle? But it is not at all unusual –or so I have heard– for drug pushers to offer young people free samples in order to get them on the hook.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM January: Since the Dexter Asylum was incapable of offering any treatment to its insane inmates more sophisticated than simple confinement, and since it was only available to the problem people of Providence rather than available to the entire state, the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations chartered the establishment of a “Rhode Island Asylum for the Insane.” The Committee of Incorporators for this new mental hospital appealed to Cyrus Butler, who was in all likelihood the richest man in New England, for assistance in their efforts, and received a conditional pledge of $40,000. To obtain this money, they would have to gather a matching amount from other members of the Rhode Island community. The committee would raise an additional $54,000 by their efforts and the name of the hospital would be changed to “Butler Hospital for the Insane.” ASYLUM
This American community had been taking steps to limit the influence of alcohol on its public life since April 1827, when the 1st public meeting on the subject of temperance had been organized at the 1st Baptist Church. A “City Temperance Society” had been formed on November 1, 1836, a “Providence Washington Total Abstinence Society” on July 8, 1841, a “Young Men’s Washington Total Abstinence Society” on July 9, 1841, a “Sixth Ward Washington Total Abstinence Society” on April 8, 1842, and a “Marine Washington Total
Abstinence Society” on August 29, 1842. The aggregate number of white citizens making pledges of total abstinence from alcohol in such societies by 1843 had risen to more than 5,000. At this point William J. Brown and his friends organized a new type of temperance society –one that would accept persons of color as members– calling their creation the “Young Men’s Union Friendly Association.” RACE POLITICS PAGES 122, 127-131: Among the varied causes which came up for consideration, and in which the colored people became interested was the temperance cause. Meetings were held and a temperance society was formed ... which was called the Young Men’s Union Friendly Association. It continued to grow and become very prosperous. I became a very active member in it being called upon to fill many prominent offices, and although all our members were married men, they still kept up the organization, proposing to get incorporated. I wrote the petition ... and gave it to Mr. Wingate Hayes to carry into the general assembly, and was noticed in the papers. The society expressed great surprise at our next meeting to find that our petition had gone into the general assembly, and at the next meeting I had the pleasure of informing them that our charter was granted. It was the first HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM charter ever granted to a colored society of Rhode Island. The society were proud that they had made such an advancement, and proposed having a banner and paying a visit to some place where we could show ourselves. Some of our members went to a man on Westminster street who did that kind of painting, and asked what he would charge to paint a banner for our society. He inquired about the society, and was told that we had just been chartered. He wanted to see our constitution. We let him see it, and after examining our charter he said that he would get us up a banner for fifteen dollars, but did not wish to have it known as he would paint one for any one for less than fifty dollars. He got us up one with a house and a weeping willow on one side, over which was a star and the letters Y.M.U.F. Society, instituted 1828, and on the other side was a white and colored man joined hands with a flag staff between them, bearing the American flag and encircled by a wreath, having at the bottom the word Union, and above the wreath in a semi-circle form were the words Young Men’s Union Friend Society, incorporated January, 1844. Our uniform was black caps, with glazed tops. On the left breast was a gilt star with a blue ribbon attached, and cream colored patent leather belts with a brass clasp in front, and white pants, dress coats, and white gloves. They made a contract with Mr. Comstock, master of transportation, to carry us at half price. On the morning of the first we started with a large company. It was quite foggy, and rained hard before we reached New Bedford. They had postponed the celebration until the next day. The committee were in waiting for us at the depot, as the rain had ceased, and escorted us up, our banner being covered. The day was clear and bright, and at half-past nine we marched to the place where the line was to be formed. The procession moved at ten a.m., having a cavalcade of one hundred mounted men in front, followed by the Anti-Slavery societies, then our society, making a fine appearance. We marched to the Town Hall, escorted in and welcomed by the citizens. After being addressed by some of the officials the line was again formed and made a parade through some of the principal streets. We then repaired to the grove. A stage was prepared for the speakers and music. The society appointed me as the orator... The next morning we went home well pleased with our visit. After we got our charter, the Young Men’s Friendly Assistant Society, and the Seaman’s Friend Society, applied for an act of incorporation and received charters. We then had three incorporated Societies in our city, besides The Mutual Relief, The Young Men’s Morning Star, The Temperance Society and the Anti-Slavery Societies, making in all seven active societies, ready to unite on any occasion requiring their services. They were called out every year on the first of August, as we generally had a grand demonstration on that day, with a procession which paraded the principal streets of the city, and retired to a grove and spent the day in speaking and partaking of refreshments. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM June 15, Saturday: At the Temperance Hall in Jersey, Friend Joseph John Gurney made a presentation opposing the ingestion of alcoholic beverages the gist of which would soon be printed up as an 8-page tract, WATER IS BEST.
THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
Thomas Campbell died at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. The body would be interred in Westminster Abbey. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Waldo Emerson and Isaac Hecker went to Harvard, Massachusetts for a weekend with the Alcott family in their three rooms in the Lovejoy home (Fruitlands was no more) and with Charles Lane, and to tour the Shaker community. Emerson commented in his journal:
A second visit to the Shakers with Mr Hecker. Their family worship was a painful spectacle. I could remember nothing but the Spedale dei Pazzi at Palermo; this shaking of their hands like the paws of dogs before them as they shuffled in this dunce- dance seemed the last deliration. If there was anything of heart & life in this it did not appear to me: and as Swedenborg said that the angels never look at the back of the head so I felt that I saw nothing else. My fellow men could hardly appear to less advantage before me than in this senseless jumping. The music seemed to me dragged down nearly to the same bottom. And when you come to talk with them on their topic, which they are very ready to do, you find such exaggeration of the virtue of celibacy, that you might think you had come into a hospital-ward of invalids afflicted with priapism. Yet the women were well dressed and appeared with dignity as honoured persons. And I judge the whole society to be cleanly & industrious but stupid people. And these poor countrymen with their nasty religion fancy themselves the Church of the world and are as arrogant as the poor negroes on the Gambia river. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1845
A ruffian named Ingood who specialized in rolling drunken sailors attained the distinction of being the 1st white man to be hanged in Hong Kong. CHINA
Our national birthday, Friday the 4th of July: This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 41st birthday, and the flag was gaining another star as the State of Florida was entering the Union as our 27th state, making the score in this land of the free and home of the brave to amount to 14 states for human slavery versus 13 states agin it:
Ordinance of the Convention of Texas.
In Washington DC, the cornerstone of Jackson Hall was being laid and a good time was being enjoyed by all these American patriots who were equating patriotism with inebriation, but on the grounds south of the Executive Mansion, some drunken celebrant fired off a dozen rockets into the crowd, killing James Knowles and Georgiana Ferguson and injuring several others — collateral damage due to friendly fire.
In Ithaca, New York, a celebration cannon, evidently overcharged with powder, blew apart, killing three. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Ex-president John Tyler delivered an oration at William and Mary College.
In Nashville, Tennessee, the corner-stone of the State House was laid. CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
What to the slave is the 4th of July? On this day and the next Frederick Douglass was lecturing in Athol, Massachusetts. Henry Thoreau began to sleep in the open frame of the new shanty “as soon as it was boarded and roofed…” not only on the anniversary of independence, but also on the day on which the US took the Texas territory from Mexico. Had he remained in Concord that day, he would have been subjected not only to offensive parades with flag-waving, but also to much offensive pro-war oratory. TIMELINE OF WALDEN EMERSON’S SHANTY
WALDEN: When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident was on Independence Day, or the fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night.The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited the year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music.The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth every where. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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We need not presume that he intended the date to have any metaphorical significance, as in the idea that moving to the shanty was his Declaration of Independence from human society. On this day of Thoreau’s removal, an article appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune calling for a return to “the narrow, thorny path where Integrity leads.” This article was authored in full awareness of the course Thoreau was following in Concord, for this sentiment had been penned by Margaret Fuller.
Years later, on May 1, 1850 to be exact, Thoreau recollected an incident of this day, that “The forenoon that I moved to my house –a poor old lame fellow who had formerly frozen his feet –hobbled off the road –came & stood before my door with one hand on each door post looking into the house & asked for a drink of water. I knew that rum or something like it was the only drink he loved but I gave him a dish of warm pond water which was all I had, nevertheless, which to my astonishment he drank, being used to drinking.”
Thoreau lived HDT WHAT? INDEX
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“At Walden, July, 1845, to fall of 1847, then at R.W.E.’s to fall of 1848, or while he was in Europe.”
At about this time, more or less, a number of people’s acquaintance’s lives were changing: for instance, Giles Waldo, whom Thoreau had chummed around with in New-York, was sailing to become vice consul at Lahaina in the Sandwich Islands, and George Partridge Bradford was abandoning the private school he had attempted to set up in Waldo Emerson’s barn to begin a private school in Roxbury MA.
Thoreau wrote the following sometime after he moved to his new shanty at Walden Pond, about the drumming of the ruffed grouse:
After July 4: {one-fifth page blank} When I behold an infant I am impressed with a sense of antiquity, and reminded of the sphinx or Sybil. It seems older than Nestor or Jove himself, and wears the wrinkles of Saturn. Why should the present impose upon us so much! I sit now upon a stump whose rings number centuries of growth– If I look around me I see that the very soil is composed of just such stumps — ancestors to this. I thrust this stick many aeons deep into the surface — and with my heel scratch a deeper furrow than the elements have ploughed here for a thousand years– If I listen I hear the peep of frogs which is older than the slime of Egypt — or a distant partridge [Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge)] drumming on a log — as if it were the pulse-beat of the summer air. CURRENT YOUTUBE VIDEO I raise my fairest and freshest flowers in the old mould. –Why, what we call new is not skin deep — the earth is not yet stained by it. It is not the fertile ground we walk upon but the leaves that flutter over our head The newest is but the oldest made visible to our eyes. We dig up the soil from a thousand feet below the surface and call it new, and the plants which spring from it.
After July 4: Night and day — year on year, / High & low — far and near, / These are our own aspects, / These are our own regrets…. / I hear the sweet evening sounds / From your undecaying grounds / Cheat me no more with time, / Take me to your clime. 1842, 1845, 1848: Night and day, year on year, / High and low, far and near, / These are our own aspects, / These are our own regrets…. / I hear the sweet evening sounds / From your undecaying grounds; / Cheat me no more with time, / Take me to your clime. (WEEK 389) (Johnson 388-9) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1846
Boston republication of Bronson Alcott’s cousin Dr. William Andrus Alcott’s THE YOUNG MAN’S GUIDE — a publication which may help us understand how very novel Thoreau’s advice for this generation, in his two books, actually would be:
INDUSTRY (page 38): Nothing is more essential to usefulness and happiness in life, than habits of industry. “This we commanded you,” says St. Paul, “that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” Now this would be the sober dictate of good sense, had the apostle never spoken. It is just as true now as it was 2000 years ago, that no person possessing a sound mind in a healthy body, has a right to live in this world without labor. If he claims an existence on any other condition, let him betake himself to some other planet.
Henry “Space Cadet” Thoreau! Betake yourself to some other planet! INDOLENCE (page 48): An indolent person is scarcely human; he is half quadruped, and of the most stupid species too. He may have good intentions of discharging a duty, while that duty is at a distance; but let it approach, let him view the time of action as near, and down go his hands in languor. He wills, perhaps; but he unwills in the next breath. What is to be done with such a man, especially if he is a young one? He is absolutely good for nothing. Business tires him; reading fatigues him; the public service interferes with his pleasures, or restrains his freedom. His life must be passed on a bed of down. If he is employed, moments are as hours to him — if he is amused, hours are as moments. In general, his whole time eludes him, he lets it glide unheeded, like water under a bridge. Ask him what he has done with his morning, — he cannot tell you; for he has lived without reflection, and almost without knowing whether he has lived at all. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Henry “Good-For-Nothing” Thoreau! –What have you done with your morning? Have you lived at all? MARRIAGE (pages 244-245): Whatever advice may be given to the contrary by friends or foes, it is my opinion that you ought to keep matrimony steadily in view. For this end, were if for no other, you ought to mingle much in society. Never consider yourself complete without this other half of yourself. It is too much the fashion among young men at the present day to make up their minds to dispense with marriage; - an unnatural, and therefore an unwise plan. Much of our character, and most of our comfort and happiness depend upon it. Many have found this out too late; that is after age and fixed habits had partly disqualified them for this important duty.
Henry “Bachelor Slacker” Thoreau, get out there and mix it up with the fair sex!
On the other foot, it should not be presumed that Thoreau would be going against the common wisdom on just each and every topic. On the following topics, for instance, one suspects that Thoreau would not issue any quibble: DRUNKENNESS (page 62): “Be temperate in all things,” is an excellent rule, and of very high authority. Drunkenness and Gluttony are vices so degrading, that advice is, I must confess, nearly lost on those who are capable of indulging in them. If any youth, unhappily initiated in these odious and debasing vices, should happen to see what I am now writing, I beg him to read the command of God, to the Israelites, DEUT. XXI. The father and mother are to take the bad son “and bring him to the elders of the city; and they shall say to the elders, this our son will not obey our voice: he is a glutton and a drunkard. And all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die.” This will give him some idea of the odiousness of his crime, at least in the sight of Heaven. DRESS (page 75): Dress should be suited, in some measure, to our condition. A surgeon or physician need not dress exactly like a carpenter; but, there is no reason why any body should dress in a very expensive manner. It is a great mistake to suppose, that they derive and advantage from exterior decoration. For after all, men are estimated by other men according to their capacity and willingness to be in some way or other useful; and, though, with he foolish and vain part of women, fine clothes frequently do something, yet the greater part of the sex are much too penetrating to draw their conclusions solely from the outside appearance. They look deeper, and find other criterions whereby to judge. Even if fine clothes should obtain you a wife, will they bring you, in that wife, frugality, good sense, and that kind of attachment which is likely to be lasting? Natural beauty of person is quite another thing: this always has, it always will and must have, some weight even with men, and great weight with women. But, this does not need to be set off by expensive clothes. Female eyes are, in such cases, discerning; they can discover beauty though surrounded by rags: and, take this as a secret worth half a fortune to you, that women, however vain they may be themselves, despise vanity in men. BATHING AND CLEANLINESS (pages 88-89): Cleanliness of the body has, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM some how or other, such a connection with mental and moral purity, (whether as cause or effect -or both- I will not undertake now to determine) that I am unwilling to omit the present opportunity of urging its importance. There are those who are so attentive to this subject as to wash their whole bodies in water, either cold or warm, every day of the year; and never to wear the same clothes, during the day, that they have slept in the previous night. Now this habit may by some be called whimsical; but I think it deserves a better name. I consider this extreme, if it ought to be called an extreme, as vastly more safe than the common extreme of neglect. Is it not shameful -would it not be, were human duty properly understood- to pass months, and even years, without washing the whole body once? There are thousands and tens of thousands of both sexes, who are exceedingly nice, even to fastidiousness, about externals; -who, like those mentioned in the gospel, keep clean the “outside of the cup and the platter,”- but alas! how is it within? Not a few of us, -living, as we do, in a land where soap and water are abundant and cheap- would blush, if the whole story were told. THEATERS (pages 176-177): Much is said by the friends of theaters about what they might be; and not a few persons indulge the hope that the theatre may yet be made a school of morality. But my business at present is with it as it is, and as it has hitherto been. The reader will be more benefited by existing facts than sanguine anticipations, or visionary predictions. A German medical writer calculates that one in 150 of those who frequently attend theaters become diseased and die, from the impurity of the atmosphere. The reason is, that respiration contaminates the air; and where large assemblies are collected in close rooms, the air is corrupted much more rapidly than many are aware. Lavoisier, the French chemist, states, that in a theatre, from the commencement to the end of the play, the oxygen or vital air is diminished in the proportion of from 27 to 21, or nearly one fourth; and consequently is in the same proportion less fit for respiration, than it was before. This is probably the general truth; but the number of persons present, and the amount of space, must determine, in a great measure, the rapidity with which the air is corrupted. The pit is the most unhealthy part of a play-house, because the carbonic acid which is formed by respiration is heavier than atmospheric air, and accumulates near the floor. (page 177): There are however other results to be dreaded. The practice of going out of a heated, as well as an impure atmosphere late in the evening, and often without sufficient clothing, exposes the individual to cold, rheumatism, pleurisy, and fever. Many a young lady, -and, I fear, not a few young gentlemen,- get the consumption by taking colds in this manner. Not only the health of the body, but the mind and morals, too, are often injured. Dr. Griscom, of New York, in a report on the causes of vice and crime in that city, made a few years since, says; “Among the causes of vicious excitement in our city, none appear to be so powerful in their nature as theatrical amusements. The number of boys and young men who have become determined thieves, in order to procure the means of introduction to the theatres and circuses, would appall the feelings of every virtuous mind, could the whole truth be laid open before them.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM FEMALE SOCIETY (page 230): No young man is fully aware how much he is indebted to female influence in forming his character. Happy for him if his mother and sisters were his principal companions in infancy. I do not mean to exclude the society of the father, of course; but the father's avocations usually call him away from home, or at least from the immediate presence of his children, for a very considerable proportion of his time. HATS AND RUDENESS (page 367): By rudeness I do not mean mere coarseness or rusticity, for that were more pardonable; but a want of civility. In this sense of the term, I am prepared to censure on a practice, which in the section on Politeness, was overlooked. I refer to the practice so common with young men in some circumstances and places, of wearing their hats or caps in the house; - a practice which, whenever and wherever it occurs, is decidedly reprehensible. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1847
David Greene Haskins was preaching “as supply” (that is, on occasion by special arrangement) in Christ Church, Gardiner, Maine (he would be, in addition, 1st rector of Grace Church in Medford, Massachusetts until sometime in 1852).
In Camden, Maine, the 1st doughnuts with holes were devised by a 15 year-old baker’s apprentice, Hanson C. Gregory, forever solving a problem of uneven cooking of the dough.
The “Waterford Water Cure,” which over the years would offer its nostrums under 15 different names including “Maine Hygienic Institute” and “Dr. Shattuck’s Water Cure,” was opened by Dr. E.A. Kittridge and Calvin Farrar. Dr. Shattuck would purchase the property, now known as the Lake House and annex, on June 1, 1854.
A prohibitionist cure was enacted, for the state of Maine. Delaware, on the heels of Maine, would enact its first prohibition law — only to find it declared unconstitutional the following year. Similar laws would during the next few years be enacted in Ohio, Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York. They would meet with varying fates, including veto by the governors, repeal by the legislatures and invalidation by the state supreme courts. Notwithstanding this record, prohibitionists would take heart. “This thing is of God,” Lyman Beecher would declare from the pulpit. “That glorious Maine law was a square and grand blow right between the horns of the Devil.” Temperance societies, established in all but three states by 1832 and destined to proliferate, began to consolidate as well. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1848
The building of the Corn Exchange in the marketplace of the town of Saffron Walden, on the site of the mediaeval timber-framed Woolcombers Hall, indicated the dominance of cereal crops during that period of malting and beer brewing.
Patrick Branwell Brontë, a tuberculosis victim, died of his ethanol and opium addictions. Emily Brontë died, a tuberculosis victim.
April 6, Thursday: Charles Wesley Slack wrote from Bellow’s Falls, Vermont to Evelina E. Vannevar Slack in Boston, describing his trip to Vermont on behalf of the temperance movement. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1849
The 1st known use of the term that would be popularized by Warren Harding’s “Return to Normalcy” campaign slogan: “normalcy” appeared in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Eureka.” During this year Poe learned that a childhood sweetheart, Mrs. Sarah Elmira Royster, his “lost Lenore, nameless here forevermore,” had become a widow, and so he went to Richmond VA and proposed and was accepted. After two months there, however, he would need to go to Philadelphia for a business engagement and in Baltimore along the way, after six days of drunkenness (or rabies) and four days of delirium, he would die.
From this year into 1851, a new temper of the temperance movement would become apparent during a tour of the United States of America by Father Theobald Mathew of Ireland. This missionary evangelist for abstinence would be administering a pledge of total abstinence in 25 states, to some 600,000 persons. There would be a White House dinner and a Senate reception to stamp official approval upon his visit. Thus would temperance drift into a new phase, with its ardent spokesman Congressman Gerrit Smith crying that: I would that no person were able to drink intoxicating liquors without immediately becoming a drunkard. For, who, then would ... drink the poison that always kills, or jump into the fire that always burns? It would be in this totalizing atmosphere that the first prohibition experiments would be being undertaken on a statewide basis. “Until the liquor traffic is abolished ... all efforts at moral reform must languish,” one of the earliest prohibitionists would opinion. In “Grappling with the Monster,” T.S. Arthur would assert: “The CURSE is upon us, and there is but one CURE: Total Abstinence, by the help of God, for the Individual, and Prohibition for the State.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1850
The Board of Aldermen of Providence, Rhode Island voted to limit Dexter Asylum inmates to 180. ASYLUM
Perry Davis’s son Edmund Davis joined him in the patent medicine business located at 43 Pond Street. ETHANOL OPIATES HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1851
1 The average per capita US consumption of coffee, which had been 1 /4 pounds in 1821, had risen at this point 1 to 6 /4 pounds — primarily as a result of the national crusade against drunkenness.
June 1, Sunday: In official endorsement of the powerful temperance movement, the State of Maine was the first state to prohibit alcohol (although 13 other states would follow, by 1865 this 1st wave of prohibition would have receded). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1852
Our national birthday, Sunday the 4th of July: To avoid having a bunch of public drunkenness and carousal on the Lord’s Day, Marblehead, Massachusetts had already celebrated its 4th as of the 3rd.
In Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass laid it on the line. Listen up, you people: “To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot St., Fells Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves the slave-ships in the basin, ... with their cargoes of human flesh, ... There was at that time a grand slave-mart kept at the head of Pratt street, by Austin Woolfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland announcing their arrival through the papers, and on flaming ‘handbills,’ header, Cash for Negroes. These men were generally well dressed, and very captivating in their manners, ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother, by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.” ... “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages.”40 CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY
40. This was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 48th birthday. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Fifteen of Douglass’s relatives had been sold south. To illustrate Douglass’s childhood memories of Austin Woolfolk’s activities in Baltimore, Maryland, here is one of Woolfolk’s actual ship manifests, depicting him in the process of shipping south for sale a coffle of 26 black Americans in 1821: HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1853
In 1827 Leroux had extracted Salicin, an ingredient of willow bark used to relieve fever and rheumatic pain. In 1838, salicylic acid had been manufactured from salicin. At this point, acetylsalicylic acid was synthesized by Charles Gerhardt. (From 1884 to 1894 the aspirin family of pain and fever relievers would be being introduced by the German chemical industry — think Bayer.)
Although at mid-century the role of opiates in medical practice in Britain and the USA had yet to be challenged, soon events would begin to cloud the traditional sunny picture. In this year the development of the hypodermic needle first made possible the direct injection of such drugs. In addition there would be the introduction of morphine, increased advertising, overprescription, mass production, and use of opium-laden patent medicines, introduction of the smoking of opium, increasing concerns over the use of cocaine, greater advances in precise identification and analysis of drug effects and an increasing understanding of the phenomenon of habituation, the prevailing spirit of moral reform as exemplified by the temperance and Progressive movements in the US, the direct involvement of America with the opium problem in the Philippines, the discovery of painkillers and anesthetics that involved fewer hazards, attention generated by the debate over opium trade, and highly publicized confessions by addicts such as De Quincey. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM September: Before the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, the case of Perry Davis vs. George Kendall (as reported in THE AMERICAN LAW REGISTER for 1852-1891, Volume 2, Number 11 for September 1854, pages 681-685). Evidently a drug dealer named Kendall had been manufacturing and vending a compound similar to the Providence drug dealer Davis’s “Pain-Killer” “Manufactured by Perry Davis” “The original inventor, No. 74 High St.” under the name “J.A. Perry’s Vegetable Pain-Killer,” in bottles of similar size though of somewhat different shape, thus pirating Mr. Davis’s trade-mark under which said compound had become extensively and favorably known. The attorney for the defendant drug dealer Kendall pointed out to the court that there was no copy-right on words of the English language such as “Pain-Killer.” The Supreme Court held that the whole question in this case was, whether the defendant drug dealer’s label was liable to deceive the public, and to lead them to suppose they are purchasing an article manufactured by the plaintiff drug dealer Davis instead of by the defendant drug dealer Kendall. The majority of the court ruled for the plaintiff drug dealer, agreeing that his copy-right had in fact illicitly been infringed and that he would therefore be entitled to legal redress.
ETHANOL OPIATES
(The past is a foreign country — you will instantly notice that our courts no longer proactively protect the entitlements of drug dealers in any such manner.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM November 9, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau surveyed a woodlot Charles Gordon was purchasing from Littleton Buttrick.
Perry Davis of Providence, Rhode Island was ordained to the Baptist ministry.
Since Mr. Davis was a world-class drug dealer specializing in opiates and ethanol, we may be pardoned for turning at this point to an insight about the heartlessness of capitalist society by Karl Marx:
“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”
— Karl Marx, CRITIQUE OF HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT (February 1844)
Excerpt from “Thoreau as Storyteller in the Journal” by Professor Sandra Harbert Petrulionis: On November 29, 1853, sandwiched in between the Journal’s discussion of a rare beetle and a local boy’s find of a Native American artifact, Thoreau records a story told to him by local farmer George Minott—a tale of a rabid dog which met its demise in Concord many years before. Francis H. Allen included this tale in his 1936 Men of Concord, a compilation of the Journal’s character sketches. As a way of leading in to it, Thoreau relates the fact that recently a boy in nearby Lincoln had been fatally bitten by a rabid dog. Thoreau —who calls what he’s about to write a “story”— justifies the digression as “worth telling for it shows how much trouble the passage of one mad dog through the town may produce” (Journal V 522). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM [5] In classic storytelling fashion, Thoreau begins by establishing the time and setting: “It was when he [Minott] was a boy and lived down below the Old Ben Prescott House—over the Cellar Hole on what is now Hawthorne’s Land.” The following excerpts summarize Minott’s description of the dog’s progress through town: When the dog got to the old Ben Prescott Place ... there were a couple of turkies—[it] drove them into a corner— bit off the head of one.... They then raised the cry of mad dog ... his [Minott’s] mother and Aunt Prescott ... coming down the road—& he shouted to them to take care of them selves—for that dog was mad— Minott next saw Harry Hooper—coming down the road after his cows ... & he shouted to him to look out for the dog was mad—but Harry ... being short the dog leaped right upon his open breast & made a pass at his throat, but missed it. (522- 523) [6] the name of Fay—dressed in small clothes” was waylaid by the dog and bitten twice because he failed to heed Minott’s warning that the oncoming dog was mad. Thoreau writes that “Fay ... well frightened, kicked the dog, “seized [it] ... held him ... fast & called lustily for somebody to come & kill him.” Unfortunately, when a man named Lewis “rushed out” to help, his axe was somewhat “dull,” and after a worthless “blow across the back,” the “dog trotted along still toward town” (523-524). [7] The dog proceeded to bite two cows, both of which later died, to grab “a goose in the wing” and “kept on through the town” (523). Finally, however, it met its demise at the hands of the story’s unlikely hero: “The next thing that was heard of him— Black Cato ... was waked up about midnight ... he took a club & went out to see what was the matter— Looking over into the pen this dog reared up at him & he knocked him back into it & jumping over—mauled him till he thought he was dead & then tossed him out” (524-525). Unfortunately, Cato discovered the next morning that the dog was in fact not dead and had disappeared. Later that day, he encountered the dog again, “but this time having heard the mad dog story he ... ran—but still the dog came on & once or twice he knocked him aside with a large stone—till at length ... he gave him a blow which killed him— & lest he should run away again he cut off his head & threw both head & body into the river—” (525). Cato succeeds where esteemed white citizens fail; his heroic act rids the town of danger. [8] From the vantage of our safe hindsight, the story’s humor is inseparable from its potential tragedy. Anyone who comes in contact with this dog could, of course, be killed. Nevertheless, Thoreau has a bit of fun at the expense of the townsfolk. Mr. Fay was possibly Grant Fay, a local farmer whose son Addison was a contemporary of Thoreau. As “a large and stout old gentleman ... dressed in small clothes,” twice bitten by the dog largely through his own ineptitude, Fay suffers at Thoreau’s hands. Moreover, Thoreau concludes with the information that “Fay went home ... drank some spirit ... went straight over to Dr. Heywoods ... & ... was doctored 3 weeks. cried like a baby. The Dr cut out the mangled flesh & ... Fay ... never experienced any further ill effects from the bite” (525). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1855
In Ireland, the endemic poverty, temperance crusades, and high taxes on alcohol were causing recourse to ether as a cheap, readily available alcohol substitute, especially by lower-class Catholics. By 1869 priests would be denouncing this sort of inebriation as sinful. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
A public demonstration against Chicago’s prohibition of the sale of beer on Sunday resulted in more than 60 arrests (you have three guesses as to what sort of accent the people had, who got locked up).
This year would represent the peak of the alcohol-abstinence movement for 19th-Century America.
Legal prohibition was in effect for 13 of the 40 states of the Union. (The next such spasm of prohibitionism would begin in 1920. The social cycle from inebriation to dryness seems to approximate 70 years, or about three generations.) About one in every three Americans lived in a place where the sale of alcohol was being HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM prohibited, if not entirely prevented.
Ethanol Consumption in Annual Gallons per US Adult
1790 5.8
1830 7.1
1840 3.1
1860 2.1
1890 2.1
1900 2.1
1920 0.9
1940 1.56
1980 2.76 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1856
In America during this timeframe, immigrant Chinese laborers were introducing the habit of opium smoking.
When some drunken Englishmen murdered a Chinaman in China but the foreign government refused to turn them over to the local authorities for trial, there began what would become known as the “Anglo-French Expedition” or “Arrow War” or “2d Opium War.” The lorcha Arrow was searched by Chinese police, and of course the white men couldn’t put up with that sort of conduct. England’s opium traffic at this point was amounting to 50,000 to 60,000 chests per year. The war would go on for some years and be concluded by the Treaty of Tientsin in which opium was legalized. DOPERS
Thomas De Quincey seized upon the opportunity offered by a collected edition of his writings, to rewrite his famous CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER of 1821/1822.
CONFESSIONS, SUSPIRA...
This appeared as Volume V of SELECTIONS GRAVE AND GAY.
De Quincey began to contribute to James Hogg’s monthly magazine The Titan. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1857
May 26, Tuesday: Thomas Cholmondeley, in London, was writing to Henry Thoreau to let him know that he had received, and had read in their entirety, the copies that had been posted to him of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, Waldo Emerson’s POEMS, Walt Whitman’s LEAVES OF GRASS, and Frederick Law Olmsted’s book on the Southern states.
May 26. 1857 London. My dear Thoreau I have received your four books & what is more I have read them. Olmstead was the only entire stranger. His book I think might have been shortened–& if he had indeed written only one word instead of ten – I should have liked it better. It is a horrid vice this wordiness– Emerson is beautiful & glorious.– Of all his poems the “Rhodora” is my favorite. I repeat it to myself over & over again. I am also delighted with “Guy” “Uriel” & “Beauty” Of your own book I will say nothing but I will ask you a question, which perhaps may be a very ignorant one. I have observed a few lines about Now there is something here unlike anything else in these pages. Are they absolutely your own; or whose? And afterward you shall hear what I think of them. Walt Whitmans poems have only been heard of in England to be laughed at & voted offensive– Here are “Leaves” indeed which I can no more understand than the book of Enoch or the inedited Poems of Daniel! I cannot believe that such a man lives unless I actually touch him. He is further ahead of me in yonder west than Buddha is behind me in the Orient. I find reality & beauty mixed with not a little violence & coarseness, both of which are to me effeminate. I am amused at his views of sexual energy – which however are absurdly false. I believe that rudeness & excitement in the act of generation are injurious to the issue. The man appears to me not to know how to behave himself. I find the gentleman altogether left out of the book! Altogether these leaves completely puzzle me. Is there actually such a man as Whitman? Has anyone seen or handled him? His is a tongue “not understanded” of the English people. It is the first book I have ever seen which I should call “a new book” & thus I would sum up the impression it makes upon me. While I am writing, Prince Albert & Duke Constantine are reviewing the guards in a corner of St James Park. I hear the music. About two hours ago I took a turn round the Park before breakfast & saw the troops formed. The varieties of colour gleamed fully out from their uniforms– They looked like an Army of soldier butterflies just dropped from the lovely green trees under which they marched. Never saw the trees look so green before as they do this spring– Some of the oaks incredibly so– I stood before some the other day in Richmond & was obliged to pinch myself & ask “is this oak tree really growing on the earth they call so bad & wicked an earth; & itself so undeniably & astonishingly fresh & fair”.? It did not look like magic. It was magic. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM I have had a thousand strange experiences lately – most of them delicious & some almost awful. I seem to do so much in my life when I am doing nothing at all. I seem to be hiving up strength all the while as a sleeping man does; who sleeps & dreams & strengthens himself unconsciously; only sometimes half-awakes with a sense of cool refreshment. Sometimes it is wonderful to me that I say so little & somehow cannot speak even to my friends! Why all the time I was at Concord I never could tell you much of all I have seen & done!– I never could somehow tell you anything! How ungrateful to my guardian genius to think any of it trivial or superfluous! But it always seemed already-told & long ago said – what is past & what is to come seems as it were all shut up in some very simple but very dear notes of music which I never can repeat. Tonight I intend to hear Mr. Dow the american lecture in Exeter hall– I believe it is tonight. But I go forearmed against him – being convinced in my mind that a good man is all the better for a bottle of Port under his belt every day of his life. . . . I heard Spurgeon the Preacher the other day. He said some very good things: among others “If I can make the bells ring in one heart I shall be content.” Two young men not behaving themselves, he called them as sternly to order as if they were serving under him– Talking of Jerusalem he said that “every good man had a mansion of his own there & a crown that would fit no other head save his”. That I felt was true. It is the voice of Spurgeon that draws more than his matter. His organ is very fine – but I fear he is hurting it by preaching to too large & frequent congregations. I found this out – because he is falling into two voices the usual clerical infirmity.
. . . The bells – church bells are ringing somewhere for the queens birthday they tell me– I have not a court-guide at hand to see if this is so. . . . London is cram-full. Not a bed! Not a corner! After all the finest sight is to see such numbers of beautiful girls riding about & ri ding well. There are certainly no women in the world like ours. The men are far, far inferior to them. I am still searching after an abode & really my adventures have been most amusing. One Sussex farmer had a very good little cottage close to Battle – but he kept a “few horses & a score or two of Pigs” under the very windows. I remarked that his stables were very filthy. The man stared hard at me – as an english farmer only can stare: ie, as a man stares who is trying to catch a thought which is always running away from him. At last he said striking his stick on the ground– “But that is why I keep the Pigs– I want their dung for my hop-grounds” We could not arrange it after that! I received a very kind note today from Concord informing me that there was a farm to be sold on the Hill just over your river & nearly opposite your house. But it is out of the question buying land by deputy! I have however almost decided to settle finally in America– There are many reasons for it. I think of running over in the trial-trip of the Great Eastern which will be at the close of the year. She is either to be the greatest success – or else to sink altogether HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM without more ado! She is to be something decided. I was all over her the other day. The immense creature musical with the incessant tinkling of hammers is as yet unconscious of life.– By measurement she is larger than the Ark. From the promenade of her decks you see the town & trade of London; the river –(the sacred river)–; Greenwich with its park & palace; the vast town of Southwark & the continuation of it at Deptford; the Sydenham palace & the Surrey hills. Altogether a noble Poem. . . . Only think, I am losing all my teeth. All my magnificent teeth are going. I now begin to know I have had good teeth. This comes of too many cups of warm trash– If I had held to cold drinks – they would have lasted me out; but the effeminacy of tea coffee chocolate & sugar has been my bane. Miserable wretches were they who invented these comforters of exhaustion! They could not afford wine & beef. Hence God to punish them for their feeble hearts takes away the grinders from their representatives, one of whom I have been induced to become. But, Thoreau, if ever I live again I vow never so much as to touch anything warm. It is as dangerous as to take a Pill which I am convinced is a most immoral custom. Give me ale for breakfast & claret or Port or ale again for dinner– I should then have a better conscience & not fear to lose my teeth any more than my tongue. Farewell Thoreau. Success & the bounty of the gods attend you yrs ever Thos Cholley. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Cholmondeley wrote Thoreau about losing his teeth, speculating that this was due to warm drinks: “Only think, I am losing all my teeth. All my magnificent teeth are going. I now begin to know I have had good teeth. This comes of too many cups of warm trash– If I had held to cold drinks — they would have lasted me out; but the effeminacy of tea coffee chocolate & sugar has been my bane. Miserable wretches were they who invented these comforters of exhaustion! They could not afford wine & beef. Hence God to punish them for their feeble hearts takes away the grinders from their representatives, one of whom I have been induced to become. But, Thoreau, if ever I live again I vow never so much as to touch anything warm. It is as dangerous as to take a Pill which I am convinced is a most immoral custom. Give me ale for breakfast & claret or Port or ale again for dinner– I should then have a better conscience & not fear to lose my teeth any more than my tongue.”
The Dred Scotts became free at last. See, life isn’t always totally vicious, especially when your case has gotten lots of media attention. What happened was that the surgeon/owner, John Emerson, had died while the Dred Scott lawsuit had been dragging through the courts, and Emerson’s widow had remarried, and her new husband was more easily embarrassed than her old. So Dred Scott was able to go to work as a hotel porter in St. Louis. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM Friend Daniel Ricketson leaving Concord, to his journal:
Left Concord at 7 1/ A.M. Had a long conversation with ELLEN EMERSON 2 Miss Ellen Emerson, eldest daughter of R.W. Emerson, LOUIS AGASSIZ who attends the school of Professor Agassiz at Cambridge. She is a very sensible, open-hearted, intelligent young lady, but quite peculiar and original in her ideas upon many subjects; modest of her own qualities, but evidently a strongly marked person, one that will grow in strength and finally make a noble woman. I was on the whole quite interested and pleased with her. DR. WALTER CHANNING In Boston called about noon at Dr. Walter Channing’s, in Bowdoin St.; there saw besides the doctor the two ELLERY CHANNING eldest children of my friend Wm. Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller C. and Caroline Sturgis C., daughters RGARET FULLER CHANNING worthy of a poet and of whom any father might be proud: ROLINE STURGIS CHANNING sweet sensitive girls, Margaret not 13 and Caroline about 10. How tenderly I regarded them, deprived of their lovely mother and so neglected by their talented and wayward father! Dined with Arthur B. Fuller, the MADAM OSSOLI brother, and Mrs. Fuller, the mother of the revered and lamented Margaret and Ellen — Madam Ossoli and Mrs. ELLEN FULLER CHANNING William E. Channing. After a long and instructive as well as interesting conversation, the latter part with Mrs. Fuller, I left, deeply impressed with their genuine goodness and beauty of character, about 5 P.M. In the dining-room were three engravings (saved from the wreck) of Madam Ossoli’s, to wit: “Tasso’s Oak,” “Pine in the Colonna Gardens, Rome,” Michael Angelo’s “Cypresses, Rome;” also a scene in Rome, with her residence there. In Mr. Fuller’s own room upstairs were several line engravings from paintings by Zampieri. In the front parlor was a raised plaster head of Margaret, and the engraving underneath the same, placed in the memoirs of her by her brother, very much like the original daguerreotype of Miss Ellen Channing with a child in her arms — a sweet motherly face, truly lovely; also a fine portrait of the deceased wife of Mr. Fuller, a sweet open face. In the dining-room was a portrait of the Hon. Timothy Fuller, the father of Margaret — reddish hair, blue eyes, and rather mild countenance — the portrait resembling in style that of Fisher Ames. Mr. F. presented me with several manuscript pieces of Margaret’s, and Mrs. Fuller with a volume of poems by J.W. Randall, a friend of hers. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM At a later point he added the following observation to his journal, about this meal with the Fullers:
The short stay at my friend Arthur B. Fuller’s, where I only dined, was very agreeable from the cordiality of Mrs. Fuller, the mother of the celebrated M.F. Ossoli. I was introduced to Richard H. Fuller, Esq., of the legal profession, but also a farmer, or rather the owner of a farm at Wayland, some twenty miles north of Boston. He as well as the rest of the family are very devout and intelligent people.
May 26. Pink azalea in garden. Mountain-ash a day; also horse-chestnut the same. Beach plum well out, several days at least. Wood pewee, and Minott heard a loon go laughing over this morning. The vireo days have fairly begun. They are now heard amid the elm-tops. Thin coats and straw hats are worn. I have noticed that notional nervous invalids, who report to the community the exact condition of their heads and stomachs every morning, as if they alone were blessed or cursed with these parts; who are old betties and quiddles, if men; who can’t eat their breakfasts when they are ready, but play with their spoons, and hanker after an ice-cream at irregular hours; who go more than half-way to meet any invalidity, and go to bed to be sick on the slightest occasion, in the middle of the brightest forenoon,—improve the least opportunity to be sick;—I observe that such are self-indulgent persons, without any regular and absorbing employment. They are nice, discriminating, experienced in all that relates to bodily sensations. They come to you stroking their wens, manipulating their ulcers, and expect you to do the same for them. Their religion and humanity stick. They spend the day manipulating their bodies and doing no work; can never get their nails clean. Some of the earliest willows about warm edges of woods are gone to seed and downy. P. M.—To Saw Mill Brook. It is very hazy after a sultry morning, but the wind is getting east and cool. The oaks are in the gray, or a little more, and the silvery leafets of the deciduous trees invest the woods like a permanent mist. At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air. I see the common small reddish butterflies. Very interesting now are the red tents of expanding oak leaves, as you go through sprout-lands,—the crimson velvet of the black oak and the more pinkish white oak. The salmon and pinkish-red canopies or umbrellas of the white oak are particularly interesting. The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise. Now, at last, all leaves dare unfold, and twigs begin to shoot. As I am going down the footpath from Britton’s camp to the spring, I start a pair of nighthawks (they had the white on the wing) from amid the dry leaves at the base of a bush, a bunch of sprouts, and away they flitted in zigzag noiseless flight a few rods through the sprout-land, dexterously avoiding the twigs, uttering a faint hollow what, as if made by merely closing the bill, and one alighted flat on a stump. On those carpinus trees which have fertile flowers, the sterile are effete and drop off. The red choke-berry not in bloom, while the black is, for a day or more at least. Roadside near Britton’s camp, see a grosbeak, apparently female of the rose-breasted, quite tame, as usual, brown above, with black head and a white streak over the eye, a less distinct one beneath it, two faint bars on wings, dirty-white bill, white breast, dark spotted or streaked, and from time [to time] utters a very sharp chirp of alarm or interrogation as it peers through the twigs at me. A lady’s-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. At Abel Brooks’s (or Black Snake, or Red Cherry, or Rye) Hollow, hear the wood thrush. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
In Thrush Alley, see one of those large ant-hills, recently begun, the grass and moss partly covered with sand over a circle two feet in diameter, with holes two to five inches apart, and the dry sand is dark-spotted with the fresh damp sand about each hole. My mother was telling to-night of the sounds which she used to hear summer nights when she was young and lived on the Virginia Road,—the lowing of cows, or cackling of geese, or the beating of a drum [this is a reference to the drumming of the male Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus in the woods] as far off as Hildreth’s, but above all Joe Merriam whistling to his team, for he was an admirable whistler. Says she used to get up at midnight and go and sit on the door-step when all in the house were asleep, and she could hear nothing in the world but the ticking of the clock in the house behind her. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1860
Frederick Douglass was not being overly impressed by the new Republican Party and its reliance upon the thinking of Hinton Rowan Helper. In a letter to his “British Anti-Slavery Friends” in this year, he explained that in the USA these Republicans were “only negatively anti-slavery.” He specified to them precisely what he meant by such a strange locution: It is opposed to the political power of slavery, rather than to slavery itself. Douglass was registering the Irish Catholic American hatred of American blacks, especially the ones who were free, and as one might expect, he was responding in kind: Irish Catholics, and especially Irish Americans, are not simply ignored or critiqued, they are systematically cast out of Douglass’s circle. — Richard Hardack, “The Slavery of Romanism: The Casting Out of the Irish in the Work of Frederick Douglass,” page 116, LIBERATING SOJOURN His rhetoric was full of drunken Irish, usually caught in the act of voting while needing to be propped up by two able-bodied helpers, but that wasn’t the worst of it for Douglass was not merely a victim of but also a master at racist rhetoric: [W]e want no black Ireland in America. We want no aggrieved class. [T]hese people lacked only a black skin and wooly hair, to complete their likeness to the plantation Negro. The open, uneducated mouth, ..., [etc., etc.]
During the decade of the 1860s in California, “Charley” Parkhurst did something she very rarely did, she got drunk one night with her boss Andrew Clark. Putting her to bed in his house, pulling her clothing off her drunken body, her boss discovered that his stage driver was a woman. Well, but he kept her secret. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1862
Partially to deal with the expenses of the US Civil War, the federal Congress established a Commissioner of Internal Revenue. One tax collected would be on whiskey: beginning at $0.20 per gallon in 1863, by 1865 the tax would rise to $2.00 per gallon. The very 1st federal tax on tobacco was also instituted. This would yield in total about $3,000,000 and –since it was benefiting to such a great extent– our federal government would be in no position to notice that the use of this leaf was causing its citizens to develop respiratory and oral cancers.
There are a number of standard texts on the history of American drinking/temperance and there is the organ of a scholarly group called the Alcohol & Temperance History Group, Social History of Alcohol Review. None of these treat the question of the history of actual consumption in any great detail, the historiography in this field having long been tethered to the temperance movement — in effect, to focuses on “thought” and “political action” rather than upon “social history” and “historical ethnography.” However, the period of Henry Thoreau’s lifetime, 1817 to 1862, fell across what is believed to be the great historical divide in American drinking—going from an era in which there had been little restraint on consumption (alcohol had generally been regarded as “The Good Creature of God”) to a much more temperate sensibility characterized by: • a long-term shift from whiskey to beer • consumption down to about 1/3rd the “pre-shift” level • drinking confined by and large to men only
Part of the heritage of the Civil War would be the tax on liquor and beer imposed in this year. Rates would increase several times between 1863 and 1868, so that the tax initially imposed at the rate of 20 cents per gallon would rise by a full order of magnitude, to $2 per gallon. At the same, time, however, the industry would go into revolt, leading to massive tax evasion schemes and the organization of their first industry lobby, the United States Brewers Association. The Association would rapidly launch a legislative campaign and would succeed temporarily, in 1863, in reducing the tax rate of beer from $1 to 60 cents. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM May 12, Monday: The following notice of the funeral of Henry D.Thoreau appeared in the Lowell Daily Citizen & News:
The funeral of Henry D. Thoreau, which took place in Concord on Friday, was attended by a large company of citizens of that and neighboring towns, and services are described as unusually impressive. Selections of Scripture were read, and a brief ode, prepared for the occasion by W.E. Channing, was sung, when Mr. Emerson read an address, marked, says the Transcript, by all his felicity of conception and diction — an exquisite appreciation of the salient and subtle traits of his friend’s genius.
The following notice of that funeral appeared in the Boston Post:
The funeral of Henry D. Thoreau took place in the meeting house in Concord on Friday and Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered a feeling and characteristic address. Men of note from Boston and elsewhere were present. Mr Thoreau was 44 years old. He is said to have been engaged, at the time of his death, on several literary works, some of which were so nearly finished as to enable survivors to publish them. Mr Emerson will doubtless undertake this friendly work.
Perry Davis died. His son Edmund Davis would continue dealing drugs at 43 Pond Street, Providence, Rhode Island in the manner which his father had initiated. During the Civil War this patent compound of opiates with ethanol would be marketed as “good for man or beast” — since a horse on painkillers would be able to haul heavy loads until it dropped in its traces and was shot. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1863
The chemist Angelo Mariani, after reading Dr. Paolo Mantegazza’s 1859 paper on the beneficial effects of coca, innovated a wine he labeled “Vin Mariani,” which he made by suffusing coca leaves in ordinary Bordeaux. The ethanol extracted enough cocaine from the leaves to provide 6 milligrams per fluid ounce of wine (later, to be competitive with similar drinks in the USA, the level of cocaine in Vin Mariani would be raised to 7.2 mg per ounce). Pope Leo XIII would keep this wine in his hip flask, award a gold medal to the chemist, and allow his image to be used in the wine’s advertising. Thomas Edison would describe this drink as enabling him to work longer hours in his laboratory by doing without sleep. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM March 17, Tuesday: On St. Patrick’s Day, the streets of Syracuse NY were taken over by bands of drunken celebrators looking for black people to beat upon. Frederick Douglass was scheduled to speak at the church of the Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen, as part of his effort to raise black recruits for the 54th Massachusetts
Volunteer Regiment, but these Irishmen –trying, of course, to demonstrate to the white people in the usual manner that they also were white people– were making threats which necessitated that the event be postponed. (Waldo Emerson would comment, in regard to the Democratic party of this period, that it it could in some way be deprived of its “wild Irish element, imported in the last twenty five years into this country, & led by Romish priests, who sympathize, of course, with despotism,” it would lose its “numerical strength.”)
Meanwhile, at Kelly’s Ford / Kellysville, people were killing each other for real, with guns. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1865
Margaret Fox published Dr. Elisha Kent Kane’s letters to her, possibly somewhat altered, as THE LOVE-LIFE OF DR. KANE; CONTAINING THE CORRESPONDENCE, AND A HISTORY OF THE ACQUAINTANCE, ENGAGEMENT, AND SECRET MARRIAGE BETWEEN ELISHA K. KANE AND MARGARET FOX, WITH FACSIMILES OF LETTERS, AND HER PORTRAIT. THE LOVE-LIFE OF DR. KANE
(By this point both Mrs. Margaret Fox-Kane and Kate Fox had become heavy consumers of alcohol.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1866
Eighteen-year-old Jack Newton Daniel established a whiskey distillery in Tennessee.
The cholera spread to the US from Russia and Europe, killing 50,000 Americans this year, including 2,000 in New-York alone. That city responded to such recurring epidemics, not only of cholera but also of scarlet fever, measles, typhoid fever, typhus, diphtheria, whooping cough, and yellow fever, by creating the 1st municipal board of health. (Refer to Charles E. Rosenberg’s THE CHOLERA YEARS: THE UNITED STATES IN 1832, 1849, AND 1866.)
Perry Davis & Son opened a branch depot in London for the exclusive sale of their Pain Killer in Great Britain — a painkiller consisting of a solution of opiates in ethanol which was alleged to be just the very thing with which to cure this cholera. Extensive agencies also have been opened up in China, India, Japan, Turkey, Australia, Africa, New Zealand and other countries both in the new and old world, until now the manufacture and sale of this medicine exceeds that of any other. Mr. Davis’ liberality has also contributed largely to the advertisement of this medicine. Missionaries to heathen lands, especially those of the Baptist church, have been furnished medicine free of charge to take with them. This alone has brought the remedy into great notoriety with the natives of heathen lands. When a young man Mr. Davis became converted to God, and from that time till his death lived a consistent Christian life. He was baptized by Elder Job Borden of the First Baptist church in Tiverton, R.I. In church work Mr. Davis was also active. He was very liberal with his money to all classes of society, and was a generous, kind hearted man to the needy and distressed. On the day of his burial the streets about his door were lined with the poor and the needy of the city, who loved him for the many benevolent acts of his life. Although almost in poverty himself till after 50 years of age, he always gave freely and sometimes of all he had to others in distress. His donations to the church were extensive. He first built a chapel on Broad street, used for several years; then the little chapel on Stewart court, then called High Street church; then the Stewart Street church, which cost him $36,000. He himself was an earnest preacher and was HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM ordained to the ministry November 9th, 1853. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
W.R. Bowling, M.D.’s CHOLERA AS IT APPEARED IN NASHVILLE IN 1849, 1850, 1854 AND 1866. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1867
Edmund Davis relocated the patent medicine manufacturing conducted under the name “Perry Davis & Son” in Providence, Rhode Island to 78 High Street. ETHANOL OPIATES HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1869
Gerrit Smith published his address to a temperance convention in Chicago, and a letter to prohibition foe John Stuart Mill. A national Prohibition Party was founded. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1870
James Boyle sent to Sojourner Truth the stereotype plates that had been used in the 1850 printing in Boston of her NARRATIVE, for her use in preparing, with Frances Titus, an expanded edition which would appear, eventually, in 1878.
At this point Sojourner began to speak conspicuously against alcohol, tobacco, and fashionable dress. From this point into 1874 Truth would be campaigning from Massachusetts to Kansas, for the fulfillment of the promise of western land for the freed slaves. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1871
Edmund Davis took in Mrs. Sarah D. Dennis as a partner in the patent medicine business conducted under the name “Perry Davis & Son.” They would relocate the manufacturing facility to 136 High Street, Providence, Rhode Island. ETHANOL OPIATES
Losses in the great Chicago fire caused the complete liquidation of the assets of the Washington Providence Insurance Company of Providence. The business would need to be revived through the infusion of new capital.
The Yearly Meeting School of the Religious Society of Friends received $17,732.75 from the city of Providence for a plot of land that had been cut off from the school grounds by an extension of Thayer Street. This money would be spent on an addition to Alumni Hall. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1874
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, so beloved of my mother, was founded by Annie Wittenmeyer of Iowa. Within a few years the new organization would have 25,000 members, and under the leadership of Frances Willard, would be providing important support to the suffrage movement.
Prostitution became illegal in Los Angeles.
May 4, Monday: Having appeared before the Board of Excise in the town hall of Whitesboro, New York to urge them to prohibit intoxicating liquors, Beriah Green was waiting at the head of a line of citizens to place his vote in the ballot-box — and dropped dead. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1876
The 1st prohibition amendment to the federal Constitution was introduced in the US Congress. Amendment XVIII Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress. READ THE FULL TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1880
When Edmund Davis died at the age of 57, his son Edmund W. Davis took over the family’s patent medicine business conducted under the name “Perry Davis & Son” at 136 High Street, Providence, Rhode Island. ETHANOL OPIATES HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1881
Mrs. Sarah D. Dennis died and Edmund W. Davis took in a new partner in the family’s patent medicine business, Horace S. Bloodgood. The company, still called “Perry Davis & Son,” relocated to 594 Westminster Street in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. ETHANOL OPIATES HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1882
Due to subversion by the liquor industry, the suffragists lose electoral battles in both Nebraska and Indiana. FEMINISM HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1884
Kate Greenaway, author of children’s books, published her LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS, one of the more popular dictionaries on this topic. PLANTS
In 1827 Leroux had extracted Salicin, an ingredient of willow bark used to relieve fever and rheumatic pain. In 1838, salicyclic acid had been manufactured from salicin. In 1853, acetylsalicyclic acid had been synthesized by Charles Gerhardt. Beginning in this year and continuing to 1894, the aspirin family of pain and fever relievers would be being introduced by the German chemical industry — think Bayer.
In Finland, drunkenness had come to be such a major problem among unskilled urban laborers that a prohibition movement had developed. In this year all beverages containing over 22% alcohol came to be regulated, and in the following year rural sales would be banned. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
Between 1880 and 1904 the prohibition movement in the USA would succeed in enacting many new laws against alcohol at the state level.
An assistant to Sigmund Freud touched purified cocaine to his tongue and discovered a numbing sensation. Dr. Freud termed cocaine “magical,” suggesting its use in localized anesthesia. Carl Koller demonstrated its usefulness in eye surgery. (Eventually, however, when this drug would turn out to be more addictive even than morphine, Freud would be attacked for having participated in loosing “the third scourge of mankind.” A similar chemical compound would be produced synthetically, “procaine” commonly sold under the trade name ‘Novocain,” and by now this has replaced cocaine for medicinal purposes.)
1885 In Finland, drunkenness had come to be such a major problem among unskilled urban laborers that a prohibition movement had developed and all beverages containing over 22% alcohol had come to be regulated. In this year all rural sale of alcohol came to be banned and various cities began to establish the Gothenburg system. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1888
In the Canadian case of In re Perry Davis & Son, 58 L.T.N.S. 695; 15 App. Cas. 315, the facts were that in 1877 Perry Davis & Son had registered as proprietors of a trade mark consisting of the words “Pain Killer” in respect of which they claimed user for forty years prior to registration in connection with a medicine sold by them. On the application of another person for the removal of the name from the Canadian copyright register, the evidence shewed that although the medicine had been spoken of and ordered as “Pain Killer,” it had not been sold under that name alone — the words “Perry Davis” and “Davis” had also been used at times in connection therewith. The court ruled therefore that the words “Pain Killer” were not a proper mark for registration, and removed the words from the Canadian copyright register. ETHANOL OPIATES HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1890
Ether drinkers were becoming more numerous and diverse in Ireland as ether became more available and cheaper, and temperance campaigns and fiscal policies make alcohol less desirable, less available, and costlier. By the 1890s, the use of ether as an intoxicant by sophisticate upper classes has declined, possibly in part because of a rise in the availability and popularity of morphine which is pleasanter to use and leaves no tell- tale smell. Use continues to grow among lower classes and peasant communities of Prussia, Hungary, Austria, Russia, Norway, France, and Great Britain. As in Ireland, heavy alcohol taxes may have contributed to this phenomenon.
Parnell’s divorce case at this point led to his being deposed from the leadership of the Irish Party. In a year he would be dead. It is estimated that at this point 1/8th of the population of Londonderry and Tyrone counties in Ireland were reduced by the unavailability of alcohol to the use of ether, not for purposes of anesthesia but for purposes of recreational intoxication. The spread of ether into the other counties of Ireland would be driven back by Catholicism and by the law before it could take root (helped along by the fact that a less marginal peasantry would find the drug to be less appealing than alcohol and would therefore abandon it after limited experimentation). THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
Vermont legislated that oleomargarine could be sold in that state only if it was colored pink.
At this point 26 states and territories had outlawed the sale of cigarettes to minors (the age of majority in any particular state was varying between 14 and 24). During the 1890s the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement would be distributing E.B. Ingalls’s NARCOTIC, a pamphlet discussing the evils of numerous drugs including tobacco as well as cocaine, ginger, hashish, and headache medications. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1892
July 2, Saturday: Kate Fox-Jencken died in poverty in New-York, probably at age 53 — after leading a life impacted to a serious degree by alcohol. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1893
The Prohibition Party’s venture into partisan politics having collapsed, an Anti-Saloon League took over leadership of the abolition movement. The movement’s appeal was spreading primarily among middle-class, nativist Protestants, who had become so desperate to maintain their prerogatives in society against threats from massive immigration, industrialization, and urbanization that they were embracing “family values” such as industry, frugality, sobriety, and religiosity.
The state of Washington banned the sale and use of cigarettes.
Under pressure from Joshua Rowntree and the Anglo Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, the British Government of India appointed a royal commission to inquire into the prevalence of opium use on that subcontinent. The commission would discover oral use to be so common as to be impossible to prohibit, but would describe this primarily medical or quasi-medical use as nonproblematic. The commission would report that the East’s reliance upon opium was rather similar to the West’s reliance upon alcohol, in that it was a practice against which the government would have no real need to crusade. The smoking of the substance, although more dangerous, was found to be still “comparatively rare and novel.”
Initial presentation of the Glass Flowers to Harvard University (created under the guidance of Harvard Professor Ware by artists Leopold Blaschka and his son, Rudolph).
A Supreme Court decision written by Justice Horace Gray declared the tomato to be a vegetable based on common usage of the term “vegetable” as opposed to the term “fruit.” On this basis tomato importer John Nix would be obligated to pay a 10% vegetable tariff on shipments of tomatoes (declared to be honorary vegetables for tax purposes) grown in the West Indies.41 PLANTS
March 8, Wednesday: Margaret Fox-Kane died in poverty in Brooklyn, New York, probably at age 59, after leading a life impacted to some degree by alcohol.
Had Henry Thoreau been very much impressed by her contribution to society?
41. It would be on this basis that, eventually, the Reagan administration would determine that in the planning of the child’s nutritional needs in the public school lunch program, french fries with catsup was to count as “two servings of vegetables.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM “...Borrowed Brigham the wheel wright’s boat at the Corner Bridge– He was quite ready to lend it –and took pains to shave down the handle of a paddle for me, conversing the while on the subject of spiritual knocking –which he asked if I had looked into –which made him the slower– An obliging man who understands that I am abroad viewing the works of Nature & not loafing –though he makes the pursuit a semi-religious one –as are all more serious ones to most men. All that is not sporting in the field –as hunting & fishing– is of a religious or else love-cracked character.....” — Henry Thoreau, JOURNAL, July 1, 1852 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1895
Sigmund Freud developed a new treatment that would be the basis of psychoanalysis. “No neurosis is possible with a normal sex life,” he would opinion, but he would himself give up sex at age 42, and would suffer much of his life from stomach upsets, migraine headaches, and nasal catarrh, for which he prescribe for himself cocaine.
When the patent medicine company Perry Davis & Son relocated its operation from Providence to New-York City, Edmund W. Davis stayed behind in Narragansett, Rhode Island. ETHANOL OPIATES HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1897
The USDA section on Seed and Plant Introduction was formed, with David Fairchild as the “Explorer in Charge.”
The last of Salem’s proud square-riggers was repurposed, as a coal barge. PEPPER SPICE
Having discovered major improprieties in bourbon production, the US Congress passed the Bottled-in-Bond Act, controlling bourbon production at the source and setting standards for proof and aging. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1902
Dr. T.D. Crothers, reflecting the considerable medical opposition to coffee use, in his MORPHINISM AND NARCOMANIAS FROM OTHER DRUGS classified caffeine addiction with morphinism and alcoholism. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1905
K.S. Merezhkovsky suggested that chloroplasts had originated as a cyanobacterium swallowed by a protozoan, i.e., that the cells of algae and plants have resulted from a combination of two independent organisms, that became symbionts by one learning to survive inside the cell wall of the other (this bold idea would be largely forgotten until in the 1960s it would be suggested again). THE SCIENCE OF 1905
Frederic Clemens created the first ecology text of influence authored in the United States of America, RESEARCH METHODS IN ECOLOGY. His “climax theory of vegetation” would dominate plant ecology during the first decades of the century.
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, an improved milk chocolate product, was introduced.
Employees elected members for a Men’s Committee, and then for Women’s Committee. The committees would meet weekly and their work would influence government actions.
Friend Joseph Burtt spent 6 months on Sao Thome and Principe at the suggestion of Friend William Cadbury of Cadbury Chocolates and observed that at one of the cocoa plantations nearly half of the workers died within one year of their arrival.
The Gothenburg system was made obligatory in Swedish cities, but soon there would arise criticism of the system’s loopholes and of its failure to create temperance. Many local authorities would become financially dependent on the system’s profits and therefore begin to encourage sales of alcohol. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1907
Between this year and 1917, in the US, while the Anti-Saloon League would be growing in strength and succeeding in electing “dry” politicians to the federal Congress, a 3d wave of state prohibition legislation would also be occurring. Most of the temperance activists would abandon broad reformist concerns and place their focus solely on the issue of the prohibition of alcohol. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1909
A prohibition movement developed in Sweden, and the failed Gothenburg system would finally be replaced in 1917 by the Bratt system of monopoly sales rationing of alcohol based on the use of a pass book. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT
A prominent British medical textbook, A SYSTEM OF MEDICINE edited by Allbutt and Rolleston, attacked all caffeine drinks, while regarding opium as relied upon in the Orient as “a reasonable aid in the work of life.”
An international commission, the Shanghai Opium Conference, met in China to consider the opium problem.
Import of opium into the US for smoking or nonmedical use was banned. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1910
Fritz Haber patented the Haber process.
A Paris fashion for imitation sable and sealskin led amateur hunters to trap Manchurian marmots, many of which were infected with the bubonic plague. The disease would be transmitted to humans and in the following nine years in China and India an epidemic would kill 1,500,000.
At about this point 20% of a sample of United States Army soldiers stationed in the Panama Canal Zone admitted to smoking more than 5 marijuana cigarettes per day. (The use of Cannabiss Indica would not be stigmatized in the United States until the 1930s, when American petrochemical manufacturers would become interested in eliminating hemp as a competitor for their new synthetic fibers. Soldiers stationed along the Mexican border, however, were preferring to consume Cactus Wine, a drink which combined homemade tequila with peyote tea. Alcohol consumption was high — surviving bar bills show that a consumption rate of 30 shots of whiskey a day was not uncommon among those who could afford it, and Dr. B.J. Kendall’s blackberry balsam, “a remedy for diarrhea, dysentery, cholera morbus, biliousness, and costive liver,” amounted to a 122-proof whiskey reinforced with opium. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1917
US troops were landed at Chungking to protect American lives during a political crisis. US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS
The dowager empress of China, in coordination with the British, brought opium trade to an end.
Prohibition was enacted in Finland, but would quickly fail as illicit distribution of alcohol would overly burden the police and smuggling would become widespread.
The Swedish prohibition movement succeeded in replacing the failed Gothenburg system of alcohol regulation with the Bratt system of monopoly sales rationing based on the use of a pass book. THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1918
President Woodrow Wilson had declared that through America’s participation in World War I we would “show the world a new and heretofore unheard of motive in warfare,” to wit, righteousness. The righteous might of our arms had made the world safe for democracy.
(deathmask of a self-privileger) Fort Bragg was established in North Carolina. Our War Department had organized “moral zones” around military camps such as this to protect our boys from liquor and loose women (one in eight of these Johnnies was currently getting it in his gun, contracting syphilis). We would continue the great crusade against the Demon Rum back home – Prohibition. AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM WORLD WAR I
“Killing to end war, that’s like fucking to restore virginity.” — Vietnam-era protest poster
Woodrow Wilson’s ethos was found to be an unattractive one, by Dr. Sigmund Freud, who considered it as merely a projected mask for self-privileging: HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM When a pretension to free the world from evil ends only in a new proof of the danger of a fanatic to the commonweal, then it is not to be marveled at that a distrust is aroused in the observer which makes sympathy impossible.42
42. Freud spent his final years, while dying of cancer in England, in the writing of a Presidential biography. Freud assures us that Wilson, the highbrow president-elect, had asserted, before witnesses, that “God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States,” and that “Neither you nor any other mortal or mortals could have prevented it,” and commented in regard to these sound bites that “I do not know how to avoid the conclusion that a man who is capable of taking the illusions of religion so literally and is so sure of a special personal intimacy with the Almighty is unfitted for relations with ordinary children of men. As everyone knows, the hostile camp during the war also sheltered a chosen darling of Providence: the German kaiser. It was most regrettable that later on the other side a second appeared. No one gained thereby: respect for God was not increased.” Freud’s observations may now be generalized from President Wilson into remarks about a lowbrow President not yet born, George W. Bush, who, we know, has made similar self-privileging assertions. “There is only one way to accept America and that is in hate; one must be close to one’s land, passionately close in some way or other, and the only way to be close to America is to hate it; it is the only way to love America.” — Lionel Trilling HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1919
In Finland, the smuggling of liquor was rising to the level that the nation’s prohibition effort was being entirely defeated.
Idaho law (this would be amended in 1921) declared marriage between whites and Mongolians, Negroes, or Mulattoes to be illegal and void; the penalty for cohabitation was established as imprisonment for up to six months with a maximum fine of $300. A rise in heroin use was reported among urban male youths, that would promote in 1924 a ban of its manufacture and import. By the end of this period, the fear of the “dope fiend” would be firmly established.
The Convention of St. Germain-en-Laye.
The Reverend Thomas Dixon, Jr.’s THE WAY OF A MAN. Racial conflict is an epic struggle with the future of civilization at stake. Maybe we can’t have human slavery anymore but American blacks cannot be allowed to be politically equal with American whites as that would lead to social equality, and social equality would lead to miscegenation, and miscegenation would lead to the destruction of the family, and the destruction of the family would lead to the destruction of civilized society. Everything we admire and respect would fall like a row of damn dominoes, you fool.
January: The 18th amendment to the federal Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes, was ratified and would go into effect a year later. Amendment XVIII Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress. READ THE FULL TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1920
January 16/17, midnight: Prohibition, which is to say, the 18th Amendment to the federal Constitution, went into effect. Amendment XVIII Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. Section 2. The Congress and the several states shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several states, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the states by the Congress. READ THE FULL TEXT
During Prohibition, nonalcoholic “near beer” and soft drinks would be frequently spiked with ether for greater narcotic effect. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1922
In Sweden, alcohol use declined and prohibition was voted away.
In England, George Cadbury died. CHOCOLATE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1925
In Jamaica, the Great Depression, the rise of Rastafarianism, and racial fears increased concern over the use of marijuana. The Panama Canal Zone Report concluded that there was no credible evidence that cannabis was habit forming or that it was having any “appreciably deleterious influence” on American soldiers in the Zone, and recommended that no action be taken. However, urban legends that associated horrible crimes with marijuana and Mexicans were given credence in a Surgeon General’s Report.
During the era of prohibition, Sanka would be introduced and coffee consumption would reach new highs. By this year, in the United States, a widespread illicit liquor trade had become well established. “Speakeasies” had made their appearance, and consumption had increased particularly among women. A local businessman named Al Capone, none too smart, none too efficient, and not at all charismatic, was able to seize primacy in Chicago’s underworld due to opportunities offered by prohibition of the legal sale of alcoholic beverages.
In the midst of all this, a young graduate of Englewood Technical Prep Academy on the South Side of Chicago, Milton Sanford Mayer, matriculated at the University of Chicago. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1927
General Election in Free State; Fianna Fáil entered Dáil Éireann.
Further restrictions on indulgence in ether in Ireland permitted registered sales only to doctors. This, combined with on the one side with greater availability of cheap alcohol and on the other with rising incomes, would bring about reductions in use.
The bans against cigarettes had by this point been rescinded in all states, and taxes upon tobacco products had become a major source of government revenue. A wave of mortality due to respiratory-system cancers was about to sweep over the nation. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1931
The Wickersham Commission acknowledged that prohibition was being so generally flouted that enforcement efforts had become largely ineffective. The Great Depression was strengthening the sentiment that the nation simply could not afford the expense of bringing this situation under control.
Amphetamine, which had been around since 1887, was generally regarded as safe, and was available without prescription, would come into extensive use during the Great Depression and World War II in the US to raise blood pressure, enlarge nasal and bronchial passages, and stimulate the central nervous system. The important thing was efficiency in industries and in the military, regardless of how this was obtained.
Al Capone was found guilty of evading $231,000 in income taxes and fined $50,000 and sentenced by a Chicago federal court to eleven years in prison.
The Smith-Goodspeed BIBLE, a translation into modern speech. The Old Testament had been prepared under the editorship of J.M. Powis Smith and the New Testament had been prepared under the editorship of Edgar J. Goodspeed of the University of Chicago. –Just the thing for prison reading. HISTORY OF THE BIBLE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1932
In Finland, prohibition was repealed by referendum. Henceforward a State Alcohol Monopoly would manage the production, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages through passbooks and buyer surveillance. Retail sales of alcohol would continue to be banned in rural areas, while in the cities the government would attempt to set prices in such a manner as to encourage consumption of “mild” beer and wine rather than hard liquor.
At both national conventions of the major political parties in the United States of America, Democratic and Republican, planks were approved to do away with the prohibition experiment. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1933
December 5, Tuesday: The committee from the League of Nations departed Asuncion heading for La Paz, Bolivia by way of Formosa, Argentina.
The 20th and 21st amendments to the federal Constitution changed the dates on which the president and members of Congress were taking office in order to eliminate so-called “lame duck” sessions of Congress, and repealed the prohibition amendment (the 18th). The Du Pont family, and John D. Rockefeller, had reason to celebrate, for as might be readily anticipated, the resumption of federal tax revenues from alcohol would enable them to lobby for reductions in their income-tax and corporate-tax burdens (it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1935
June 10, Monday: Two alcoholics, Dr. Robert Smith of Akron, Ohio, and New York stockbroker William Wilson, founded Alcoholics Anonymous, the group meetings and 12-step program of which have been the model for many other mutual support therapeutic groups. The Smiths’ house at 855 Ardmore has become a National Historic Landmark.43 PSYCHOLOGY
43. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 1994 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1936
May 5, Tuesday: As Italian forces march into Addis Ababa, Duce Benito Mussolini declared the end of the Ethiopian war and announced Italy’s annexation of Ethiopia.
Didn’t have the sense God gave a goose WORLD WAR II
In Moscow, “Chatterbox,” the first of the Three Children’s Songs op.68 for voice and piano by Sergei Prokofiev, was performed for the initial time.
The Prohibition Party met in Niagara Falls.
May 7, Thursday: The Prohibition Party adjourned, having nominated New York’s Dr. D. Leigh Colvin and Tennessee’s Sergeant Alvin C. York. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1938
The US Congress passed a Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act providing that a commercial product sold for human food would be considered to be “adulterated” if it contained any “poisonous or deleterious substance” which might render it injurious to health, unless the poisonous substance is inherent or naturally occurring and its quantity in the food does not ordinarily render it injurious to health, or if the poisonous or deleterious substance is unavoidable and is within an established tolerance, regulatory limit, or action level (partly-hydrogenated cottonseed oil sold as oleomargarine was, of course, perfectly OK, as long as the manufacturer wasn’t making it resemble butter).
In Sweden, people began to criticize the Bratt system for high operating costs and for permitting too much consumption of alcohol.
Amphetamine began to be widely advertised in Sweden as a pep pill.
In England, at Cadbury’s Bournville facility alone, 10,000 men and women were employed. CHOCOLATE HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1955
US cigarette consumption resumed its rise after a 2-year drop as the industry increased expenditures for advertising, especially on network television. The chief brands being promoted were filter-tipped Winstons, Tarytons, Benson & Hedges, Kools, and Raleighs.
As criticism of the Bratt system mounted in Sweden, it was abolished. Liberalization would be followed, however, by increased consumption of alcohol.
Ancel Keys and his wife Margaret Haney Keys, who had developed K-rations as balanced meals for combat soldiers during World War II, developed a lipid hypothesis and began to popularize the “Mediterranean diet.” The American Heart Association began warning about the dangers of saturated fat and its link to heart disease (oleomargarine, of course, was the healthful substitute for butter). The dairy industry lobbyists were overcome by the oleomargarine lobbyists and it became possible to purchase oleo that already appeared yellow like butter. Not only that, but the material could be made hard enough and sufficiently temperature insensitive, that it could be brought to the table in a rectangular shape on a “butter plate” and served out as patty portions with a “butter knife.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1958
Liberalization of the Bratt system in Sweden had been followed by increased consumption of alcohol. At this point the price control system, by raising prices, managed finally to decrease consumption.
At the US Army’s Chemical Warfare Laboratories, LSD was tried out for its effect on intelligence, with 95 volunteers. SECRET MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM
1969
The great drought of 1963-1966 was over. Walden Pond, recovered, was re-opened for bathers. Because of the limited parking in the area, the entire length of Route 126 might be lined on both sides with parked cars, from Route 2 well into Lincoln. It is presumably at this point that the parking lot across from Walden Pond acquired its hot-dog and ice-cream stand with the sign that read “Walden Breezes.” There was a train station/stop at the far end of the pond, and a dance-hall atmosphere. Alcoholic beverages caused numerous problems in the late afternoons and early evenings. On a hot summer weekend day it would require the entire shift of local police officers to deal with the problems. There is an oil painting, a serious work, entitled “Rape at Walden,” and presumably that painting dates to this period.
Cadbury Group, Ltd. merged with Schweppes, Ltd. to become Cadbury Schweppes, Limited. CHOCOLATE
The righteous firm of Cadbury Schweppes would offer no alcoholic beverages (customers intent upon iniquity would therefore need to mix in their own gin or vodka, purchased separately, to help its best-selling Indian Tonic water go down a little better).
Following the repeal of prohibition in Finland, the temperance movement, still with government support, remained strong. The abolition of prohibition in rural areas and the lifting of beer restrictions resulted of course in an increase in consumption. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2016. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: April 19, 2016 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX
PROHIBITION ALCOHOL AND ALCOHOLISM the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with