Alternet is offering a nice set of articles [one, two] on Rum the booze that changed the world. One of our favorite excerpts:
As the Prohibition and Temperance movements grew in strength patriotic prints of the first president and his officers were bowdlerized. The Currier and Ives print of [George] Washington’s farewell toast to his officers that was published in 1848 showed a glass in his hand and a decanter on the table. By 1867, the glass had disappeared, leaving him with his hand on his chest in Nelsonian mode, and the decanter had been converted to a hat! Successive biographers of Patrick Henry turned him from a former tavern keeper to an occasional tavern visitor, before dropping the tavern entirely from his life story.
And then there is this gem:
On January 15, 1918, a 58-feet-high tank built by the Purity Distilling Company split open and disgorged its 2.3 million gallons — 14,000 tons — of molasses. Like some glutinous volcanic lava flow, it gurgled across the North End of the city in a flood 5 feet deep that ran at 35 miles an hour, taking over twenty people in its path to the stickiest of sticky ends.
Molasses drownings aside, maybe its time for a Rum Revival! Check out:
Rum Across the Border The Prohibition Era In Northern New York
A Coast Guard History of Rum Interdiction
The Epic Story of the Drink That Conquered the World
Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776
Rum, Romanism, & Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884
We like beer, though we’ve commented before on liquor in the North Country, and on Homeland Security and Prohibition. – in case you missed it.
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