280 Chapter 10 The Making of Middle-Class America
uplift the deviant and dependent all too soon became
places where society’s “misfits” might safely be kept out
of sight.
“Demon Rum”
Women did much of the work in all antebellum
reforms, but they were especially active in the
temperance movement. The husband who squan-
dered his earnings on booze, or who came home
drunk and debauched, imperiled the family. Thus
middle-class women who believed that a woman’s
place was in the home were obliged to take on a pub-
lic role to protect the family.
Alcohol—“demon rum”—was perhaps foremost
among those threats. By the 1820s Americans were
consuming prodigious amounts of alcohol, more than
ever before or since. Not that the colonists had been
teetotalers. Liquor, mostly in the form of rum or hard
apple cider, was cheap and everywhere available; tav-
erns were an integral part of colonial society. There
were alcoholics in colonial America, but because nei-
ther political nor religious leaders considered drinking
dangerous, there was no alcohol “problem.” Most
doctors recommended the regular consumption of
alcohol as healthy. John Adams, certainly the soul of
propriety, drank a tankard of hard cider every day for
breakfast. Dr. Benjamin Rush’s Inquiry into the
Effects of Ardent Spirits(1784), which questioned the
medicinal benefits of alcohol, fell on deaf ears.
However, alcohol consumption increased markedly
in the early years of the new republic, thanks primarily
to the availability of cheap corn and rye whiskey distilled
in the new states of Kentucky and Tennessee. In the
1820s the per capita consumption of hard liquor
reached five gallons, well over twice what it is today.
Since small children and many grown people did not
drink that much, others obviously drank a great deal
more. Many women drank, if mostly at home; and
reports of carousing among fourteen-year-old college
freshmen show that youngsters did too. But the bulk of
the heavy drinking occurred when men got together, at
taverns or grogshops and at work. Many prominent
politicians, including Clay and Webster, were heavy
consumers. Webster is said to have kept several thou-
sand bottles of wine, whiskey, and other alcoholic bever-
ages in his cellar.
Artisans and common laborers regarded their
twice-daily “dram” of whiskey as part of their wages.
In workshops, masters were expected to halt produc-
tion periodically to drink with their apprentices and
journeymen. Trips to the neighborhood grogshop
also figured into the workaday routine. In 1829
Secretary of War John Eaton estimated that three-
quarters of the nation’s laborers drank at least four
ounces of distilled spirits a day.
The foundation of the American Temperance
Union in 1826 signaled the start of a national crusade
against drunkenness. Employing lectures, pamphlets,
rallies, essay contests, and other techniques, theThis plate, designed by Samuel Cowperthwaite, Convict #2954, celebrates the establishment of Eastern
State Penitentiary.
Source: Art Resource/Philadelphia Museum of Art.