Whiskey in Virginia in the 1860's

There's a lot of history and 'lore' behind bourbon so discuss both here.

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Unread postby gillmang » Mon Jan 14, 2008 8:55 pm

Thanks Mike, will do! But someone told me you have been made privy to Dan Tucker's notes of his tasting, want to transcribe them here? :)

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Unread postby cowdery » Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:40 pm

Notice the author of the Travelers' Protective Association article: Owsley Brown.
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Unread postby gillmang » Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:37 pm

Yes, and a very level-headed, modern-sounding analysis it was from this B-F forbear. He was light years away from the period of 100 years earlier mentioned in the article, yet when Brown wrote, that is almost 100 years behind our own time. Still, it seems as if less time has elapsed since he wrote than between 1810 and 1910 such were the advances (of many kinds) in that period. With respect to taxes, production methods and sheer output Brown's piece sounds like something that could almost be written today, except in one sense: the then-looming spectre of alcohol Prohibition that today seems a permanent mark of the past.

The visceral reaction against alcohol appears from other stories that can be searched in that archive. In one, the writer (I think an editorialist), sounding every bit as modern as Brown, writes that he hopes every whiskey distillery will leave Kentucky. He wrote that bourbon was one of the worst things ever invented but added that if anything good can be ascribed to something so bad, it has to be the quality of the product: even he had to acknowledge it! And so he came at the matter from a completely different angle than Brown, and history was on his side - for the next 30 years.

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Unread postby bunghole » Tue Jan 15, 2008 12:54 pm

Thanks for the birthday greetings, Gary.

All of Virginia is a wonderful place to time travel. Richmond is a good place to start. Colonial Williamsburg & Yorktown are only 70 miles east.
Revolutionary War & Civil War history abound. Our good friends at the A. Smith Bowman Distillery are just 65 miles north in Fredericksburg. Continue north to Mt. Vernon and visit George Washington's distillery & gristmill complex. Washington D.C. is just accross the Potomac River.

For the Civil War buff, Harper's Ferry is an easy trip from Mt. Vernon, and very worthwhile. From there you can continue north to Sharpsburg and then on to Gettysburg.

Or travel south on I-81 for a spectacular drive up the Shenandoah Valley. Even though you are going south you are driving up the valley as the elevation rises the further south you go. Tons of Civil War history and battlesites here. Drive as far south as Lexington and you will find V.M.I. and Stonewall Jackson's home and grvesite. Robert E. Lee is also interred in Lee Chapel on the campus of Washington & Lee University in Lexington. His old warhorse, Traveler is buried outside at the rear of the chapel. A true shrine that includes four orignal battleflags of the Army of Northern Virginia, and many of Gen'l Lee's personal effects that he carried with him from battle to battle.

From Lexington, VA hop on I-64 West and go about 450 miles to Lexington, KY. It's that easy!

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Unread postby gillmang » Thu Jan 17, 2008 10:03 am

Virginia sounds lovely, one day I'd like to spend some time there.

In reading numerous whiskey-related articles from on-line newspapers in the 1800's, I come away with an abiding impression how strong the temperance cause became as the decades wore on. And it was not just something based on the support of rural churches. There was a sense I can only call "modernist" that informed commentary in the larger centers too which went against the culture of drinking and saloons.

"King alcohol" was seen as antithetical to a society trying to create prosperous, well-regulated families. The saloon is pictured as a pure money machine, where men were forced to drink in a machine-like way without the comforts of family or communitarian spirit such as the churches and fraternal societies provided. Drinking is portrayed as occurring always in excess - to drink in America then judging by these screeds, was to get drunk almost automatically. Surely this was an exaggeration but also no doubt contained a lot of truth.

So, even the sophisticated urban viewpoint seemed, if not always in tune with Prohibitionism, somewhat sympathetic to it and certainly unwilling to stand strongly against it.

The arrival of Germans in the big cities with their cultures of beer gardens and lager beer saloons confounded for a time the Prohibition group. The beer gardens were places where families went, often after church on Sunday. It is clear that this social practice was hard to understand for the Prohibitionist mind. Either it was criticized as no better than the excesses of pre-exisiting saloon culture, with comments made on the amount of drinking that sometimes occurred (e.g., men drinking 30 or 50 glasses of beer in a session), or something that would lead people down the, well, garden path. Instead of being a model for Americans to emulate (since the German immigrants are well known for their industry and subsequent uncountable contributions to America and its prosperity), the approach to alcohol of these and other immigrant communities, based too mostly on wine or beer, was derided or ignored.

There is a particular fervour (but not always religious-based as I say) in the anti-alcohol crusade that comes through many of the tracts. It is akin today to the anti-smoking drive and to a degree to the environmental agitations. It became "the thing" in the later 1800's and even urban-oriented newspapers seemed afraid to be openly critical of the Prohibition mentality. It is no less clear that alcohol continued to be sold and advertised where permitted, as appears from numerous liquor ads that appear right though the 1800's, often in ways that little differentiate them from today's ads (serially listing rye, bourbon, their version of blends, Cognac, Champagne, Port, rums, Guinness Stout, Bass Ale, and so it goes - not that much as changed including as to aging).

Sometimes an interest in drinking subjects was conveyed subtly, as e.g., an article that treated of the supposed "day-after" remedies, which managed through this to convey many of the drinks current in the 1880's (most are known today like Martini and Manhattan although "Whiskey Skin" has disappeared). It will come as no surprise that the multiplicity of remedies was as large then as now, with as much skepticism whether any of them worked!

Reading so much Prohibition-boosting material, one comes away in part sympathetic to it. There was a concern, very real and understandable, not to see the young, especially, hurt their health and careers. Too many stories abounded of families hurt and destroyed in fact by alcohol. The reformers' solution then was to ban it. It didn't work, ultimately. A more nuanced solution would have been to encourage alcohol education. But such devices of sociology and modern education were beyond the abilities or interests at any rate of the zealots who ran and organised the Prohibition campaigns. It became an all-or-nothing proposition ultimately, with the consequences (not all bad of course) we know..

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Unread postby cowdery » Thu Jan 17, 2008 3:25 pm

Prohibition was the two-by-four upside the head that led to real, needed reforms in the post-repeal beverage alcohol industry. As a solution, it was too extreme because it was driven by ideology and fear. Its legacy is a reformed industry but an unintended consequence was, according to some commentators, the creation of international organized crime entities. My belief is a little different. Although illegal alcohol happened to be the crime organized crime rode to prominence, if it hadn't been that it probably would have been something else, as the repeal of Prohibition hardly put the mobs out of business.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:46 pm

Gary,
When you are looking at prohibition and the Temperance Movement you are looking at more than simple anti-alcohol forces. When the Temperance Movement gained power at the end of the 19th century you are looking at a time when other things were happening as well. The population was shifting from rural to urban areas. Cities were growing and with that growth you have more political power. One of the main reasons cities were growing was do to the influx of people from Europe (I say Europe because the government was working hard to limit the people who could come here from Asia, Africa and south of the border).

The center of political power in the cities was often the saloon. Immigrants would gather at their favorite saloon or bar to be with people of their own culture (Whether German, Irish, Italian, Russian, Swedish... you get the point). Once a percentage of them earned citizenship and could vote, then the saloons became the place to meet and influence them as voters. Many people saw Temperance as a way to end this "foriegn" influence and shut down the "Boss Tweeds" of the nation. In doing so they hoped to keep the political power with the land owners in the rural area. This is a major force in the "Temperance Movement" of the last half of the 19th century.

Chuck is right that prohibition did cause some needed reforms in the alcohol industry. Mainly the reforms of the saloons were reforms in the beer industry. The beer industry owned the vast majority of the saloons and it was their policies that allowed people to drink at the saloon and have the saloon collect your bill from your employer before you got paid. The distilling industry had its problems but they were being worked out with the Pure Food and drug Act and the Bottled-in-Bond Act and similar regulations. Then, like now, most people were getting drunk on beer, not whiskey. Whiskey did have the hard core alcoholics drinking it but it was generally too expensive for the common drunk. You could buy a pail of beer for 1/10 of the price of a pint of whiskey.

You also had the social reformers who wanted prohibition, but only for the working class. Henry Ford supported prohibition because he did not want workers out drinking the night before they went to work in his factory. He prefered a person to come in and work like a robot for 10 to 12 hours a day and then go home and to bed so he could get up and do it again. Besides, saloons were place where labor unions could meet large numbers of workers and fill their haeds with ideas like it should be safe at your workplace and you should earn a pension that would allow you to retire before you die. Ford could not have that type of talk influencing his workers so it was best to shut down those evil saloons. He could discuss this with other businessmen over cocktails at the club. Prohibition would never prevent that.

Prohibition is a complicated social experiment that was a big mistake. I agree with Chuck that organized crime did not go away with the end of prohibition. I think organized crime was going to happen sooner or later as communications and transportation improved allowing the "organization" of crime. Prohibition simply gave it a jump start and taught the mob how to take advantage of the technology. Since most Americans did not really believe in prohibition, they let organize crime take root with its rum running and speakeasys that help promote its prostitution and gambling and drugs and other vices.
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Unread postby cowdery » Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:27 pm

Very well put together piece, Mike. An early look at a chapter in your book, perhaps?
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Unread postby gillmang » Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:08 am

Indeed, very well-stated, Mike.

I don't doubt the various societal forces and tendencies of the time you described.

But what remains with me after reading countless Prohibition speeches and coverages thereof was the simple indignation against wanton drunkeness and a culture which took people away from productive activities. To me this had essentially a personal, ethical-based character (much as we feel today it was overstated and in its totality reflective of social engineering).

I think the question remained, and still does, whether drinking is good or bad for society in the sense mentioned. I think it is good overall provided alcohol education is administered early. This happens organically, via the culture, in places like Italy but in North America, with a different socio-cultural background to drink, the alcohol question needs a studied approach and implementation of proper education on a broad basis (starting with the schools). I believe this was as true of the 1800's as now.

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Unread postby bourbonv » Fri Jan 18, 2008 4:11 pm

Chuck,
I hope to expand quite a bit more, but this is some of my lines of investigation.

Gary,
There is a religious aspect to the movement, but it never would have succeeded without the other elements. Some of the elements include the anti-catholic and anti-semetic forces since many foriegners were Catholic or Jewish. The thing that put the prohibition movement in power was the fact that the breweries used the fact that to attack the saloon was to attack the German culture and as you point out there were a lot of Germans moving into the country. Then the U.S. got involved in the "Great War" and it became popular to attack German culture, assuring the passage of prohibition.
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Unread postby cowdery » Sat Jan 19, 2008 7:36 am

Prohibition was a product of a belief, popular at the time, that human beings could be "perfected." Well, maybe not perfected, but at least improved. The movement had religious roots and was very activist, in that it felt government should require better behavior from the governed.

One interesting aspect of Prohibition is who led it. Although there were men, mostly protestant clergy, in the leadership, most of the troops were women, at a time when drinking (especially publicly in saloons) was primarily a male pastime. Also, many of the leaders had been prominent in the abolitionist movement and, subsequently, were involved in the early women's rights movement.
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Unread postby Mike » Sun Jan 20, 2008 10:06 am

Immensely interesting discussions and speculations here, gentlemen.

I wonder how closely tied Prohibition is to the numerous 'Great Awakenings' of religious fevor that have occurred every 50 or 60 years or so in America.

By most accounts the third of these began in the 1880's and lasted well into the 1900s. These trace their roots to our Protestant heritage. The point has been made that they created many new sects and swept very quickly across the country because they were often from new cloth and did not have the need to 'reform' entrenced religious bureaucracies. Certainly the abolitionists fit in this category and, as has been pointed out, many of the abolitionists joined the Prohibitionist movement.

Too, as Mike V pointed out, the urbanization occuring in America (sigificantly abetted by immigration) caused a great alarm among the agrarians. The notion that cities were sources of corruption and degration (bars, saloons, thievery, prostitution, and 'foreigners') has a very long history in our country and owes a lot to the thinkers of the Enlightment and to Thomas Jefferson in particular in America.

I believe the Enlightenment is also the source of Chuck's thoughts on the perfectability of man. But that perfectability could only occur in a 'natural' state (Rousseau), which is corrupted by the evils of both cities and 'civilization'.

Lest anyone think, like Henry Ford, that History is 'bunk', all these various strains still exist and are very much in play in American today. America's messianic streak goes way, way back to our Puritan and Protestant beginnings and to the notion that we shall be 'a city on the hill' and a beacon to all mankind.

To be sure, there are contradictory and competing elements in this mix that make for lively and occasionally contentious public discourse.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas
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Unread postby brendaj » Sun Jan 20, 2008 2:17 pm

Although illegal alcohol happened to be the crime organized crime rode to prominence, if it hadn't been that it probably would have been something else, as the repeal of Prohibition hardly put the mobs out of business.

Exactly. Folks tend to overlook the fact that cocaine, opium and heroin were all in the process of becoming illegal as well. Up until the early 1900's, they were using heroin as a morphine step-down cure... :? In 1923 the government banned all legal narcotics sales and the race was on.

If you consider everything that had been so easily available, alcohol was no biggie. It was prolly just cheaper...
As a Kentuckian, I consider it my civic duty to drink Bourbon, smoke and bet the ponies. Its a tuff job, but someone has to do it...
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Unread postby gillmang » Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:43 pm

Well put by all.

It is the "competing" elements as Mike put it I find particularly fascinating. Henry Ford, who had reactionary, indeed unsavory ideas in some areas, was also a pioneer of modern urbanised living - the modern city is unthinkable without the car. Mass production is a hallmark of a sophisticated, modern civilisation: Detroit as an agglomeration is the result, to a large degree, of his vision.

John D. Rockefeller created the University of Chicago almost out of whole cloth although he issued from a strongly faith-based rural background that (amongst other things) abjured alcohol and other forms of entertainment and diversion.

Perhaps the agrarian tendency has the seeds of its opposite...

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Unread postby cowdery » Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:03 pm

Interesting, especially in light of the mention of Ford, how much Nazi mythology was driven by an agrarian utopian fantasy as well. Here, it's still playing out, as Blue America is essentially urban and Red America is rural.
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