of round vowels that rolls off the tongue with the same easy warmth as the spirit itself.
Thus the name got its foothold, although not until the Civil War would it take hold nationwide. Even so, the aged whiskey coming from the Ohio River Valley was making a name for itself—not as a brand, but as a distinctive style—and a national drink was born. Hall, an early champion of what he himself called “western whiskey,” wrote, “The French sip brandy; the Hollanders swallow gin; the Irish glory in their whiskey; surely John Bull finds ‘meat and drink’ in his porter—and why should not our countrymen have a nationalbeverage?”
• CHAPTER FOUR •
BY WHISKEY GROG HE LOST HIS BREATH
A merica was astonishingly drunk. This was the assessment of many foreigners visiting the young nation during the early to mid-nineteenth century. The roster of guests included luminaries such as Charles Dickens, Alexis de Tocqueville, Frances Trollope, and Harriet Martineau, all arriving with diaries and journals in hand to observe this new country and discover what made it tick. They all noted the whiskey: a binding force that knitted together the economy, infused political life, accompanied America’s strange diet, and was on everyone’s breath. In 1825, the French epicure Jean Brillat-Savarin wrote in his groundbreaking
The Physiology of Taste,
published after his own visit to the United States, that “the destiny of nations depends upon the manner in which they nourish themselves.” America was nourishing itself with whiskey, which was fast becoming a powerful symbol of the young nation’s psyche and forming important parts of an image the drink continues to hold today.
These foreign guests weren’t necessarily harping on Americans or insulting them with their observations. In fact, most of what they said about the new country was complimentary. They praised America’s sense of independence, self-sufficiency, work ethic, and egalitarian ideals. John Stuart Mill in 1840 wrote that every book written by travelers returning to England from America became a party pamphlet, used tourge positive political and economic change back home. One of the few common points attracting criticism rather than praise, however, was the subject of whiskey. The foreigners who criticized it often considered themselves the Americans’ friends—and indeed, their perspective as impartial outsiders allowed them to appreciate and point out qualities, as good friends do, about the United States that went unnoticed or underappreciated by Americans themselves. Mark Twain would return the favor several decades later when he published
The Innocents Abroad,
detailing his own travels in Europe and
observing the sometimes unflattering qualities about his hosts that they themselves were unlikely to notice or admit to.
The reasons for Americans’ heavy drinking were many. Whiskey was cheap, abundant, and by now firmly established as a patriotic workingman’s drink, an attitude held over from the American Revolution. Drinking it was a way to express national unity and one’s egalitarian credentials. The foreign journalists also noted, somewhat fretfully, that Americans seemed to use whiskey as a way to battle the difficulties of their unique environment: greater numbers of people were moving into a scattered and expanding frontier that was lonely and stressful. During the first third of the nineteenth century, an average of about one in seven Americans lived outside of established communities, creating the highest level of isolation experienced in U.S. history, according to contemporary historian W. J. Rorabaugh. These vast stretches of isolated land also produced most of the nation’s whiskey. Drinking roughly three to five times more than they do today, Americans, Rorabaugh noted, drank from “the break of dawn to the break of dawn.”
• • •
Just as modern critics of the American diet complain that corn is in everything, with high-fructose
Thus the name got its foothold, although not until the Civil War would it take hold nationwide. Even so, the aged whiskey coming from the Ohio River Valley was making a name for itself—not as a brand, but as a distinctive style—and a national drink was born. Hall, an early champion of what he himself called “western whiskey,” wrote, “The French sip brandy; the Hollanders swallow gin; the Irish glory in their whiskey; surely John Bull finds ‘meat and drink’ in his porter—and why should not our countrymen have a nationalbeverage?”
• CHAPTER FOUR •
BY WHISKEY GROG HE LOST HIS BREATH
A merica was astonishingly drunk. This was the assessment of many foreigners visiting the young nation during the early to mid-nineteenth century. The roster of guests included luminaries such as Charles Dickens, Alexis de Tocqueville, Frances Trollope, and Harriet Martineau, all arriving with diaries and journals in hand to observe this new country and discover what made it tick. They all noted the whiskey: a binding force that knitted together the economy, infused political life, accompanied America’s strange diet, and was on everyone’s breath. In 1825, the French epicure Jean Brillat-Savarin wrote in his groundbreaking
The Physiology of Taste,
published after his own visit to the United States, that “the destiny of nations depends upon the manner in which they nourish themselves.” America was nourishing itself with whiskey, which was fast becoming a powerful symbol of the young nation’s psyche and forming important parts of an image the drink continues to hold today.
These foreign guests weren’t necessarily harping on Americans or insulting them with their observations. In fact, most of what they said about the new country was complimentary. They praised America’s sense of independence, self-sufficiency, work ethic, and egalitarian ideals. John Stuart Mill in 1840 wrote that every book written by travelers returning to England from America became a party pamphlet, used tourge positive political and economic change back home. One of the few common points attracting criticism rather than praise, however, was the subject of whiskey. The foreigners who criticized it often considered themselves the Americans’ friends—and indeed, their perspective as impartial outsiders allowed them to appreciate and point out qualities, as good friends do, about the United States that went unnoticed or underappreciated by Americans themselves. Mark Twain would return the favor several decades later when he published
The Innocents Abroad,
detailing his own travels in Europe and
observing the sometimes unflattering qualities about his hosts that they themselves were unlikely to notice or admit to.
The reasons for Americans’ heavy drinking were many. Whiskey was cheap, abundant, and by now firmly established as a patriotic workingman’s drink, an attitude held over from the American Revolution. Drinking it was a way to express national unity and one’s egalitarian credentials. The foreign journalists also noted, somewhat fretfully, that Americans seemed to use whiskey as a way to battle the difficulties of their unique environment: greater numbers of people were moving into a scattered and expanding frontier that was lonely and stressful. During the first third of the nineteenth century, an average of about one in seven Americans lived outside of established communities, creating the highest level of isolation experienced in U.S. history, according to contemporary historian W. J. Rorabaugh. These vast stretches of isolated land also produced most of the nation’s whiskey. Drinking roughly three to five times more than they do today, Americans, Rorabaugh noted, drank from “the break of dawn to the break of dawn.”
• • •
Just as modern critics of the American diet complain that corn is in everything, with high-fructose
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