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CHAPTER THREE

The Vicious Triangle

Rum, molasses, and slaves—

Dr. Benjamin Rush—

The Whiskey Rebellion

The economy of New England and New York rested largely on rum and on an ingenious three-way trade that developed as soon as the colonies got away from England’s stifling commercial grip. Merchants, in particular those of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, sent ships to the Guinea coast of Africa and purchased slaves from the native kings. The slaves were then taken to the West Indies, where there was always a demand for them but where, because of harsh home-country restrictions imposed by France, England, and Spain, there was very little money. But there was plenty of molasses, especially in the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe, because the brandy interests in Paris had seen to it that rum imports were forbidden in France. So the slaves were exchanged for molasses, which was taken to New England, where it was distilled into rum. Rum was everywhere.

By the early nineteenth century there were forty distilleries in Boston, twenty-one in Hartford, and eight in Newport, all making rum. Some of the rum was sold in the colonies, some was transported to Europe, and a generous quantity was drunk at home. The rest of the rum was shipped to the Guinea coast to pay for more slaves, who were then taken to the West Indies and traded for molasses, which was taken to New England and made into rum, which was sent to the Guinea coast to purchase slaves. ... So it went for many years. It was a vicious, but lucrative, triangle. Some of the stuffiest New England families owe their current affluence to this trade.

The man who inaugurated the Guinea coast slave trade, that stout old Elizabethan sea dog Sir John Hawkins of Plymouth, was granted in honor of his achievement a coat of arms featuring a Moor, as all Negroes were called then, in chains. Many a present-day Brahmin of Boston might well display a similar escutcheon, perhaps supplemented by a cask of rum.

It was largely because of this cunning commercial arrangement that “rum” came to be a generic word in the United States for all hard liquor, as in phrases like “demon rum,” “rum- pot,” “rum row.” It is not so used anywhere else in the world.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, the surgeon general of the Continental middle army during the Revolutionary War, was by all odds the best-known, most outspoken physician practicing in the colonies and later in the new United States. He had studied in London and Edinburgh. He was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, a member of the Second Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. When such a personage came forth with a formal statement on the health of the soldiers under his care during the war, remarking that the regular rum ration was not essential to the well-being of the troops, and in the long run might even be detrimental, it caused a shock. Few were convinced, but many were jolted. Dr. Rush was not a man whose assertions could be scorned.

It is possible that the appearance of a new drink in America, a liquor called whiskey, was in part responsible for Dr. Rush’s startling statement. The whiskey came from the mountainous western sections of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina, and it was distilled from rye, barley, and corn in just about every cabin. It was the mountaineers’ money, their only means of buying supplies from the seaboard settlements. Of course they could have sent the grain itself, but a horse could carry five to six times the value in whiskey that it could in grain, so it made sense to distill the stuff first.

Some of this whiskey found its way into Continental Army camps, and when there was a shortage of rum for the usual daily ration the whiskey was passed out instead. A few of the men even said they liked it better.

Dr. Rush had nothing against whiskey, any more than he had anything against rum, but he persisted in his belief that hard liquor did not keep up the strength of the men, and he suggested that malt drinks or light wine might better quench the martial thirst. Milk or even water would do no real harm, he said. This would have caused a less illustrious person to be written off as balmy, but the doctor’s friends generously assumed that he was only having a bad moment. He would come to his senses soon.

Dr. Rush did not. In fact, in 1785, when he published a paper entitled Enquiry into the Effects of Spiritous Liquors upon the Human Body and Mind, it was clear that his opinions had not changed, only hardened. He still thought that liquor was bad for people and that its curative powers had been exaggerated. This time, however, the doctor found a few people who agreed, and he went on to become a major prophet of the American temperance movement.

That fervent fluid from the mountains was to trouble the new government of the United States early in its existence. During George Washington’s first administration, his sharp young secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, persuaded Washington and Congress to put a tax on all whiskey manufactured in the country, a tax he estimated would being in $826,000 a year. The tax range was only from nine cents to twenty-two cents a gallon, depending upon local conditions and the distance the whiskey had to be sent for sale, but the mountain men were furious. How could they pay a tax? They had no money and never expected to have any. A few revenue collectors, venturing into western Pennsylvania, were roughly handled, and at least one was treated to a dose of tar and feathers.

Hamilton took umbrage immediately. This was rebellion. It must be put down.

Washington wavered, hoping to take advantage of the counsel of some of his government associates. However, the attorney general was not available, and the secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, was at Monticello for the summer. The only other member of the Cabinet, the secretary of war, had just resigned. Hamilton was not abashed. He proposed that he act as temporary secretary of war and, backed by Washington’s prestige, raise a large force of militia in eastern Pennsylvania. His intention was to lead the militiamen against the defiant mountaineers and bring them to heel. Washington acceded.

Alexander Hamilton had always craved military fame. He had behaved well as an artillery captain at Trenton and later had covered himself with glory when he led an attack on a British redoubt at Yorktown. Between those two occasions, however, he had been stuck with staff work. It was the sort of occupation that suited his talents, but it did not win him any medals. Now he was going to quell, in person, what was already being called the Whiskey Rebellion or Whiskey Insurrection.

To give Hamilton credit, although he did seek honors in the field and in this respect only succeeded in making himself look ridiculous, his main aim was elsewhere. He foresaw the need for an early showdown between the states, which were acting as though they were utterly independent, and the federal government. Hamilton himself was a dedicated Federalist. Why not seize this opportunity to show the states where the real strength lay?

Hamilton raised nine thousand foot and three thousand horse soldiers, all of them poorly disciplined, and with much fanfare set forth on his mission. The soldiers looted a great deal along the way and were guilty of other breaches of discipline. The expedition cost the federal government $1,500,000, almost twice what Hamilton (too optimistically, as events proved) had estimated that the tax would bring in each year. Furthermore, Hamilton had hardly started to march before the whole matter was settled quietly by civilian government agents. Nobody was killed or injured, and there was no fighting of any sort.

It had been rather like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly. But the government had made its point.