THE SPIRITS OF PATRIOTISM - PART II by Pam North The tavern was as red, white and blue American as apple pie, in the best tradition of the Founding Fathers. Benjamin Franklin "painted his nose" frequently; John Hancock was a rum-runner; George Washington drank hot toddies in a hundred taprooms, and ran up enormous liquor bills. Thomas Jefferson promoted home brewing of good native malt, as did John Hancock and Samuel Adams. In his younger days as a student at William and Mary, Jefferson, after an evening at Williamsburg's popular Raleigh Tavern, wrote, "I never could have thought the succeeding sun would have seen me so wretched as I am." The Lexington minutemen drank rum and lots of hard cider in Buckman Tavern immediately before stepping out on the village green where the "shot heard 'round the world" was fired on April 19, 1775. Monroe Tavern in Lexington was the headquarters for the British relief party during the Lexington-Concord battle. News of Lexington and Concord reached Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys while they were drinking in the Catamount Tavern on Bennington Hill, and the Green Mountain Boys were reportedly rip-roaring drunk as they followed Ethan Allen in the taking of Fort Ticonderoga. The relatively easy victory at the fort might not have been possible had not one of Ethan Allen's men, Phelps, managed to obtain, while rooming at one of the nearby taverns, crucial information concerning the fortifications of the fort. British officers spent the night drinking and revelling in the room next to that of Phelps, and secret information could be overheard in their discussions. Additionally, the next morning one of the still-inebriated officers let slip to Phelps that the fort could be easily taken, as all the powder had gotten wet. George Washington was a cider devotee, and a great deal of it was put up on his plantation. When Washington ran for the House of Burgesses in 1758, his campaign managers persuaded 307 voters to cast their votes for him by plying them with 40 gallons of rum punch, 43 gallons of beer, 28 gallons of wine, and 8 quarts of hard cider to achieve a victory that cost Washington a small fortune for the liquid refreshments. Rum had its unique place in the cause of patriotism; it played a part in stirring up the American Revolution. The British government taxed molasses, rum's main ingredient, in addition to tea, and the Boston Tea Party was a protest aimed at both these taxes. During the Revolutionary War, the British naval blockade was often breached by ships running rum into the New England states. John Hancock smuggled and molasses for the cause as well as profit; the high import duties threatened New England's economy. It is quite possible that rum actually altered the course of American history in one particular incident. One theory suggests that Paul Revere originally embarked on his midnight gallop simply to warn Revolutionary leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock to flee impending arrest, nothing more. En route, the silversmith stopped at the home of Isaac Hall, captain of the Medford Minute Men and proprietor of a thriving and famous distillery. After a brief respite and two draughts of Captain Hall's best Old Medford Rum, "he who came a silent horseman departed a virile and vociferous crusader, with a cry of defiance and not of fear." The aroused minutemen gathered at Bunker Hill, and the result was the first confrontation of the American Revolutionary War. The early history of whiskey was bound up with the government's attempts to tax and regulate and the corresponding resistance of distillers. One of fledgling America's first taxes, imposed in 1791, was an excise tax on whiskey. After three years of non-compliance from farmer-distillers, Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, sent U.S. marshalls to enforce the law. Western Pennsylvania's irate whiskey- makers not only refused to pay, they also tarred-and-feathered the "revenuers," and rode them out of town on rails. President Washington ordered out the militia to suppress the uprising, which went down in history as the Whiskey Rebellion. The incident served as a major political function, establishing the right of the new federal government to enforce its laws within the states, which was an important step in creating a strong central government in America. Spirits helped our forefathers to get through the hardships, and overcome the almost overwhelming challenge, of settling America. It was courage and a little bit of brightness in a bottle, and there's no question that it played a large part in the birth of our nation. Illustration for article is at: http://www.paulreverehouse.org/paul.html Caption: Paul Revere may have relied on rum for some of his courage for his historic ride.