On Food and Cooking

Service! In the early days of the colonies and
then the United States, molasses was more
plentiful than barley, and rum more common
than beer. Rye and barley spirits were also
being distilled in the northern colonies by
1700, and Kentuckycorn whiskey by 1780.
After the Revolutionary War, the new
American government tried to raise revenues
for its war debts by taxing distillation, and in
1794 the largely Scots-Irish region of western
Pennsylvania rose in the short-lived Whiskey
Rebellion. When President Washington called
out federal troops to put it down, the rebellion
went underground and “moon-shining”
became entrenched, especially in the poor
hills of the South where the small amount of
corn that could be grown would fetch a better
price if fermented and distilled. This evasion
led the federal government to form the Office
of Internal Revenue in 1862. Sixty years later,
the national taste for hard liquor was an
important stimulus to the temperance