The Backstory: Tip One Back with the Founding Fathers

It’s the nation’s 250th birthday! It’s a time to celebrate . . . like the Founding Fathers, who certainly knew how to tip a few back. This is a look at their drinking habits. And it’s next on The Backstory.
Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . . On Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, this weekend, it'll be the fourth of July, the
two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States. Timed
a party like you're a founding father. You think I'm kidding,
I'm Patty Steele. Far from the very austere marble statues,
we see them as these guys knew how to enjoy
life and stir their creative juices. That's next on the backstory.

(00:26):
We're back with the backstory as we approach this weekend's
two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States of America.
It's really interesting to look back at the folks who
made all this happen all those years ago. And I
have to say, I kind of love knowing that these
guys that we see in formal paintings or as bronze
or marble statues were real people like you and me,

(00:49):
at least sort of. I get it. When you picture
America's founding fathers, you probably think of powdered wigs, solemn speeches,
and men carefully debating the future of a nation. Which
it probably don't picture is them partying and drinking a lot.
But honestly, alcohol wasn't just common in colonial America. It

(01:11):
was practically a way alive for everybody. Stats show that
in the late seventeen hundreds, a lot of Americans drank
a lot more alcohol than we do today. In fact,
they show that the average American drank about three times
as much alcohol as we do today. In fairness, problem
was clean drinking water wasn't always reliable. Beer and hard

(01:34):
cider were safer than water, and whiskey was everywhere. So
were the guys who founded the United States actually drunks? Well,
that's kind of an exaggeration. Okay, let's separate fact from fiction.
First up is the father of the founding Fathers and
a guy with one of the biggest reputations as a

(01:54):
drinker of all of them, George Washington. But he didn't
really earn that rep in awareness. Washington wasn't just a drinker.
He was one of America's largest whiskey producers. After leaving
the presidency, his distillery at Mount Vernon churned out almost
eleven thousand gallons of whiskey in just one year, making

(02:14):
it one of the biggest operations in this very young nation.
It's pretty clear Washington loved Madero wine with dinner as
well as hardsider, beer, and spiked punch at social gatherings.
But despite all that, alcohol historians say there's very little
evidence that Washington was actually drunk all that often. As

(02:35):
you can imagine, he believed in moderation and self control,
so running a whiskey distillery didn't necessarily mean drinking everything
you produced. Next up, there's John Adams. He began pretty
much every morning with hard cider. That may sound a
bit shocking these days, but again in the eighteenth century,
it wasn't all that unusual where it is. Adams drank

(02:58):
a full tankard of with breakfast almost every day of
his adult life. He also drank several glasses of Madeira
wine with dinner every night. Did it take a toll
on his health? Guess not. He lived to be over
ninety years old and unbelievably old age in those days,
and on top of that, he was mentally sharp as

(03:18):
attack almost until the end. Now let's move on to
Thomas Jefferson. He was what you might call a bit
of a wine snob. Whiskey wasn't really his thing, but
fine wine absolutely. During Jefferson's years in France as America's ambassador,
he really developed an appreciation for European wines, he went

(03:39):
on to eventually build one of the largest wine collections
in America. In fact, during his presidency he bought and
imported over twenty thousand bottles of wine from Europe, and
he received regular shipments of casks and kegs as well.
The household went through multiple bottles of wine every day. Monticello,

(04:00):
he had a massive wine selter built right next to
his hard cider seller and sharing a hallway with the
space for all the other hard liquors. Jefferson was a
big believer that wine encouraged civilized conversation and intellectual discussion.
He called it a necessity of life, so his spending
on it became legendary and expensive. But historians pretty much

(04:24):
agreed that he mostly just drank until he was very
happy and extra talkative, not falling down drunk. Now. Perhaps
the most colorful drinker among the founders had to be
the original party boy, Benjamin Franklin. Ben loved wine, women,
and song, so he adored taverns. He met friends there
top politics, printed newspapers in tavern backrooms, and negotiated business deals.

(04:49):
He even wrote some funny observations about drinking one famous
quote often attributed to him says, beer's proof that God
loves us. He probably never said that, but he did say,
behold the rain which descends from Heaven upon our vineyard,
to be changed into wine, proof that God loves us
and loves to see us happy. Ben Franklin definitely enjoyed alcohol,

(05:12):
but he was also about some moderation because he was
also a smart businessman. By the way, Ben Franklin published
over two hundred slang terms for being overserved, some of
which we still use today, including being well oiled. Now
for the guy who, in all likelihood was into heavy drinking,

(05:32):
Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton loved Madeira wine and was known to
drink heavily at political dinners. Some witnesses on the scene
described him as noticeably intoxicated during social events, giving him
a rep for over indulgence. In fact, his famous duel
with Aaron Burr came after years of political and personal conflict,

(05:54):
perhaps after loose talk after tossing a few back. Now
here's the thing. Colony politics themselves revolved around drinking. Campaigning
often meant buying voters drinks, believed or not. In fact,
when George Washington first ran for the Virginia House in
seventeen fifty five. He refused to provide alcohol, and he

(06:15):
lost the election. Three years later, he changed his strategy.
His campaign bought dozens of gallons of beer, rum, punch wine,
hard cider, and whiskey for just a few hundred voters,
and that was pretty much what the campaign spent, and
this time Washington won by a landslide. Today we'd probably

(06:36):
call that bribery, but back then it was considered a
perfectly acceptable campaign hospitality. So America's Founding fathers certainly weren't drunks,
but they were festive folks who mostly knew when to stop.
They for sure drank much more than modern Americans do.
For the most part, alcohol was part of breakfast, lunch, dinner, politics, business, celebrations,

(07:00):
and diplomacy, but most of them were big on moderation,
on discipline, education, and public service. Heavy drinking, that was
just what folks did back then, as long as they
knew when to turn their glass upside down. At the
end of the day, the Founding Fathers were human beings,
not marble statues. Yes, they celebrated victories with punch bowls,

(07:23):
debated liberty over glasses, of Madera toasted independence with rum
and sometimes drank far more than we'd consider normal today.
But they were far from a bunch of drunken revolutionaries,
just enthusiastic drinkers and thinkers. Their greatest intoxication, it turns out,
wasn't whiskey or wine. It was the radical idea that

(07:45):
ordinary people could govern themselves, and that idea proved far
more powerful. I hope you liked the Backstory with Patty Steele.
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have a story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook,
It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm

(08:18):
Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Duran Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Mike Pieseglia. Our writer is Jake Kushner. New episodes
are out every Tuesday and Friday, and feel free to
reach out to me with comments and story suggestions on
Instagram at reel Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.

(08:41):
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.