COCKED AND BOOZY: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution, by Brooke Barbier
In the category of “quintessentially American” creations, country music and the Super Bowl both rank high. But they’re united by more than patriotism: Pay attention for even five minutes and you’ll realize how many country lyrics involve hard drinking and how many football ads hawk beer (sometimes with bald eagles).
Alcohol’s long relationship with American identity hardly merits a push alert. But the intensity of that link — and its influence on the nation’s creation — anchors the Boston-based historian Brooke Barbier’s new book, “Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution,” a jaunty survey of 18th-century drinking and its ramifications for resistance, rebellion and economic resilience.
Judging by the book’s copious endnotes, Barbier spent a significant amount of time trawling through the National Archives, contemporaneous correspondence and newspaper accounts, previously published biographies and other sources for relevant material to weave into her narrative. She includes colonial-era drink recipes as well.
“Cocked and Boozy” is not one of those doorstop tomes. In fewer than 200 pages of text, Barbier highlights various points where alcohol played a role in the American struggle to peel off from Britain. Yes, there was pub-based plotting and a few drunken mobs. But as she explains, liquor also helped sustain colonial industry and kept the people going during hard times.
Tavern culture is dominant in Barbier’s telling; even hard cider and beer for breakfast were commonplace. “Imbibing in the morning was not deviant or a cause for concern,” she writes. “It was simply a part of colonial life, much as eating was.”
In one sign of the era’s evident demand, Boston alone supported 63 distilleries in 1750. (For comparison, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association currently counts 86 distilleries across the entire state.) Just 20 years later, “a crowd of unruly Bostonians — including one who was ‘a little in drink’ — taunted nine soldiers while throwing projectiles at them”; the infamous massacre that ensued galvanized colonial outrage.
Given the European heritage of most colonists, alcohol ran in the blood. The London Gin Craze kept the locals tippling in the early 18th century. A 17th-century Germanic “Order of Temperance” decreed that its members should limit themselves to no more than seven glasses of wine at a sitting. Then there were the claims that alcohol was medicinal, and anyway better than dirty water. (Pollution was indeed an issue in London, Barbier notes — but in America “the water was fine, drinking beer was just more enjoyable.”)
But the combination of a booze-soaked culture and nation building proved to be a volatile cocktail. “This was the power of alcohol,” Barbier writes. “It brought people together and loosened usual comportments. It fostered community and a shared identity.”
Along the way, the book humanizes George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and other founding figures with accounts of their tavern time and appreciation of adult beverages. Adams once “drank Madeira at a great Rate and found no Inconvenience in it,” as he wrote in his diary, and Jefferson spent about 13 percent of his salary on wine during his first presidential term. Washington even became a distiller in his retirement. And yes, that son-of-a-maltster (and modern Boston lager namesake), Samuel Adams, shows up, too.
The book’s title is culled from entries in “The Drinker’s Dictionary,” a lengthy list of euphemisms for drunkenness (which included “Cherry Merry” and “Wamble Crop’d” among the bangers) that Benjamin Franklin published in a 1737 edition of The Pennsylvania Gazette. Barbier includes the list as an appendix.
She offers plenty of examples about how alcohol revved up the colonists in protest and war, but she also explores a less-traveled path — namely, the era’s societal and racial notions about who could acceptably drink to excess. John Adams “was uncomfortable if people thought of the Sons of Liberty as intoxicated,” she writes. “That was the behavior of others: British soldiers got drunk, Native Americans got drunk. Respectable, liberty-loving men did not.”
The book tends to emphasize the jollier side of consumption, though Barbier does explore colonial temperance movements and early examples of addiction. But perhaps for pacing’s sake — or perhaps because losing battles are such a buzzkill — she skips some of the more detrimental behavior attributed to alcohol on the Continental Army’s part, as when Gen. Adam Stephen was accused of such frequent intoxication (among other things) after screwing up the 1777 Battle of Germantown that he was booted from the service. (Sometimes, America runs on drunken. Sometimes, not so much.)
Even though medical guidelines and modern temperance practices have slowed sales and swilling these days, Barbier’s observations about alcohol’s influence provide a shot of national self-awareness, especially as America celebrates its 250th year. And listen closely: Every time “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays, you can hear echoes of the country’s drinking DNA. That’s because Francis Scott Key paired his 1814 lyrics with a tune called “To Anacreon in Heaven” — an old British club ditty praising the god of wine.
COCKED AND BOOZY: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution | By Brooke Barbier | Chicago Review Press. | TKK pp. | $29.99
