Drink

by Iain Gately

  As the republic aged, the tie between free drinks and the ballot box grew stronger. Voters expected to be treated, and candidates budgeted accordingly. The tie was introduced to new states as they joined the union, as a kind of patriotic institution. In Kentucky, for example, where temperance, in theory, was rampant, King Alcohol still ruled at election time, as the following account of the 1830 polls, from the New England Weekly Review, illustrates:

  An election in Kentucky lasts three days, and during that period whiskey and apple toddy flow through our cities and villages like the Euphrates through ancient Babylon. . . . In Frankfort, a place which I had the curiosity to visit on the last day of the election, Jacksonianism and drunkenness stalked triumphant—“an unclean pair of lubberly giants.” A number of runners, each with a whiskey bottle poking its long neck from his pocket, were busily employed bribing voters, and each party kept a dozen bullies under pay, genuine specimens of Kentucky alligatorism. . . . I barely escaped myself. One of the runners came up to me, and slapping me on the shoulder with his right hand, and a whiskey bottle in his left, asked me if I was a voter. “No,” I said. “Ah, never mind,” quoth the fellow, pulling a corncob out of the neck of the bottle, and shaking it up to the best advantage. “Jest take a swig at the cretur and toss in a vote for Old Hickory’s boys.”

  George Caleb Bingham’s County Election

  “Old Hickory” was President Andrew Jackson, whose election campaign had taken alligatorism to new heights. Its manager, Martin Van Buren, a New York politician and power broker, was a master of promotion. Posters of his candidate were distributed across the country and reproduced in local newspapers. Speechwriters and speech makers were hired to refine their message and preach it through the states. The nickname “Old Hickory” was invented, and thousands of miniature hickory sticks were given away at rallies, in addition to sashes, badges, and the customary drinks. When Jackson won, his supporters descended on Washington in their hordes to attend his inauguration. Thirty thousand accompanied him to the Capitol and did their best to follow him into the White House. Those who had succeeded were lured back outside onto the lawn with barrels of whiskey and bowls of orange punch. For months after, Washington was crowded with a host of men from the backwoods, who very quickly drank it dry of booze, while they waited to be given government appointments as rewards for their votes. Most were disappointed—there were not enough minor posts to go around. However, in the higher echelons of the administration, there were sufficient sinecures to satisfy Van Buren and his coterie, who removed sitting officials and took their places for themselves, justifying their venality with the motto, coined by one of their number, “To the victors belong the spoils of the enemy.”

  The affair between drink and American politics peaked in the election campaign of 1840, when General William Henry Harrison, victor of a frontier skirmish, took on the Democratic Party, which had selected Van Buren as its candidate, at its own game. Armed with the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” which referred to the place of his victory, and the name of his running mate, Harrison’s campaigners set out to sing the praises of their candidate to the nation. Scarcely had they commenced when their opponents, intending to denigrate, provided them with a more compelling theme. Van Buren labeled Harrison the “Log Cabin and Hard Cider” candidate, expecting that the electorate would associate these things with squalor and inebriation. He was wrong. Americans held both cabins and cider in high regard and responded enthusiastically when the Harrison campaign gave out models of one, and gallons of the other, at its rallies. Voters liked the themes of self-sufficiency and the simple life apparent in these symbols of frontier life and deemed anyone who criticized them effete:

  Let Van from his coolers of silver drink wine,

  And lounge on his cushioned settee;

  Our man on his buckeye bench can recline.

  Content with hard cider is he.

  Harrison won by a slender margin of the popular vote. He celebrated his arrival at the White House with some cider, and many other drinks, and died of pneumonia after a month in office.

  20 WEST

  Notwithstanding the lusty drinking that went on during American elections, they were models of restraint and probity in comparison to the democratic process in Mexico. In 1821, America’s southern neighbor had followed it in throwing off the colonial yoke but, rather than organizing itself as a republic, had chosen to be headed by an emperor. Constitutional imperial rule was rejected in favor of a dictatorship two years later, the first of many changes in government that were to enliven Mexican politics for the rest of the century. Twenty-five years after its declaration of independence, a traveling English mercenary estimated that the country had had 237 revolutions over the same period of time.

  Excitement in the political sphere was counterbalanced by stability in drinking habits. In order to protect its exports, Spain had maintained severe restrictions on the production of wine and spirits in Mexico almost to the end of its rule, with the consequences that most wine was imported, and most spirits were moonshine. The principal legal drink in Mexico, in terms of volume consumed, was pulque, the favorite moon juice of 2-Rabbits. It was still prepared in a more or less Aztec manner, still spoiled quickly, and its consumption was concentrated in towns. It had come to be perceived of as a type of food, in particular for pregnant women, who were exhorted always to drink at least two cups—one for themselves and one for the child inside them. Pulque was also provided to nursing infants, in the belief that it nourished and strengthened them. This new role had diminished its reputation as an intoxicant and it had become a beverage that anyone, of every age, might enjoy at any time.

  Those Mexicans wishing to become their rabbits now drank mescal, i.e., distilled pulque. This was the most common alcoholic beverage in mining communities, and also on the country’s vast ranches and in the little villages that grew up to serve them. The rancheros produced mescal for much the same reasons as Kentucky settlers made whiskey: Distillation concentrated their harvest, extended its life, and rendered it transportable. They took pride in their stills and competed in the quality of their product, to which they attributed medicinal as well as organoleptic properties. Mescal was considered good “for everything bad, and for everything good as well.” The production of this panacea was concentrated in Jalisco, which had become an official part of independent Mexico in 1821. Jalisco was home to the first licensed mescal distillery in the Americas, founded by José Antonio Cuervo, who had received permission from the Spanish crown to distil “mescal wine” in 1795. Its products, and those of the multitude of other stills that sprang up postindependence, were drunk principally by men, who were expected to comport themselves with courtesy and dignity when under the influence. Mescal was used for ceremonial as well as recreational purposes. The Mexicans had kept many of their pre-Columbian festivals alive in the guise of Christian fiestas, the most important of which were Los Días de Muertos (the days of the dead), staged under the cover of the Catholic festivals of All Souls and All Saints. The dead were assumed to return to the world of the living for the duration of Los Días de Muertos and were supplied with offerings of food and drink. Spirits were the most popular libations, and their tendency to evaporate when left out in a glass was interpreted as proof that the departed had taken a sip.

  Notwithstanding the general limitations Spain had imposed on the production of wine in its colonies, the religious institutions it founded in Mexico had been permitted to plant vineyards so as to ensure a supply of wine for the altar. These introduced the grape to the country’s largest and emptiest province—California. Spanish California was a sleepy kind of place. While it had been explored in the sixteenth century and named after an imaginary island in a romantic tale, the Spanish had only begun to colonize it in the eighteenth century, and then in a dilatory manner. Settlement had proceeded via a string of military strongholds, or presidios, usually coupled with a Franciscan mission. The first of the latter was founded in 1769 at San Diego, followe
d by (traveling northward) San Juan Capistrano, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, and, in 1776, San Francisco.

  San Juan Capistrano, in what is now Orange County, was the first Californian mission to make wine. The man responsible for tending its vines was a young friar named Pablo de Mugártegui. The vines under his care had been delivered by sea in 1779, aboard the San Antonio, under Don José Camacho. The first vintage produced at the mission was probably the 1782, for in December 1781, Fra Junipero Serra, the supervisor of the Californian mission chain, had written to it expressing the pious hope that “your vines will survive and bear fruit” as “the lack of wine for the mass is becoming unbearable,” thus implying no grapes had been harvested that fall. By 1783, however, Fra Serra’s prayers had been answered. Writing from the mission at San Gabriel, once again to regret a dearth of communion wine, he revealed that the shortage had resulted from an accident. When a barrel “was being brought here from San Juan Capistrano it fell off the mule, broke into pieces, and all the wine was lost.” There was, however, sufficient wine from the same source at neighboring missions to avert a crisis.

  Enthused by the success of San Juan Capistrano, the Franciscans planted vines at every step as the mission chain was extended northward. They were also cultivated by the laity: Don Pedro Fages, commandante of Alta California, was growing them in his garden at Monterey by 1783. The vines in question were all the same variety—the black País, which became known as the Mission, in recognition of the pioneering work of the friars. The principal appeal of its grapes was their fecundity. According to a modern expert, the average example is “an early maturing dark-skinned bag of sweet juice: no more.” Few tasting notes on primitive Californian wine exist, and none of them are positive. According to an Englishman who traded for furs on the coast, “with the exception of what we got at the Mission of Santa Barbara, the native wine that we tasted was such trash as nothing but politeness could have induced us to swallow.” The shock to the palate may have resulted from the production processes. The wine was trodden by foot and fermented in cowhides slung from poles. It was stored in barrels acquired from the coastal trade, whose prior contents ranged from salted penguins to pickled sardines. Often it was stabilized with the addition of brandy—the friars ran stills at some missions for the production of medicinal aguadiente, which also was employed to improve the flavor of the contents of their daily chalice.

  However, by 1835, when a Harvard student named Richard Henry Dana visited California, even such unappetizing fluids were in short supply. Postindependence, the Mexican government had expropriated the assets of the Franciscans, and since the missions were the economic as well as spiritual center of each settlement, entropy followed. Dana’s account of his visit depicts a vast, almost empty coastline, washed by the long Pacific swells and dotted with occasional settlements, which were falling into ruin. Weeds grew up through the courtyards of their missions, and they were peopled with a few aging friars and their native slaves, and poverty-stricken hidalgos. The only really vibrant places ashore were the bars and grog tents set up by Yankees to cater to the coastal trade.

  The principal article of commerce in California was cattle hides, which were taken from the immense herds that roamed free across the unfenced land. Despite the distances (California was as far by sea from the United States as India) and the dangers of doubling Cape Horn, the trade was lucrative, as Dana explained: “The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy bad wine made in Boston and brought round by us, at an immense price, and retail it among themselves at a real (121 ⁄2 cents) by the small wine-glass. Their hides, too, which they value at two dollars in money, they give for something which costs seventy-five cents in Boston; and buy shoes (as like as not, made of their own hides, which have been carried twice around Cape Horn) at three or four dollars.”

  Dana had, however, prophetic words for one place in this dilapidated and sparsely populated part of Mexico. San Francisco, which in his day consisted of a ruined fort, a tumbledown mission, and a grog tent on the beach at Yerba Buena, was blessed with a first-rate natural harbor, and in his opinion, “if California ever becomes a prosperous country, this bay will be the center of its prosperity. The abundance of wood and water, the extreme fertility of its shores, the excellence of its climate, which is as near as to being perfect as any in the world, and its facilities for navigation, affording the best anchoring grounds in the whole western coast of America, all fit it for a place of great importance.”

  While Mexican California slumbered, another of the country’s provinces, Texas, attracted hordes of Yankee settlers. They were drawn by the size of the land grants offered by the Mexican government, which came in 4,428-acre blocks. By 1830, three-quarters of the population of Texas was American-born. This influx alarmed the Mexicans, who closed its borders to newcomers and tightened up their political control over the province. Moreover, existing immigrants were required to convert to Roman Catholicism. Texan Americans resented both the autocratic style of government and absence of religious freedom and in 1835, led by Sam Houston, a former governor of Tennessee, they declared independence and the foundation of their own republic.

  Mexico responded by sending an army over the Rio Grande that surrounded and massacred a band of settlers who had taken refuge in a fortified mission at the Alamo. Its victims included such luminaries of frontier life as James Bowie and Davy Crockett, who sank his last “horn” of spirits during the siege. They were revenged by Houston, who captured Mexico’s dictator, General Santa Anna, and forced him to recognize the new republic. Houston, true to his place of origin, was a renowned drinker, reckoned to consume, in the hyperbolic language of the age, “a barrel of whiskey a day.” The American Texans who comprised his forces were as fond of whiskey as their leader. Indeed, the habit of hard drinking was a distinguishing feature of their society and one that bound them together in a new land. As a Texan periodical observed of its readership, “Drinking was reduced to a system, and had its own laws and regulations. Nothing was regarded as a greater violation of established etiquette than for one who was going to drink not to invite all within reasonable distance to partake; so that the Texians, being entirely a military people, not only fought but drank in platoons.”

  Texas continued as an independent republic until 1845, when it was annexed by the United States to become the twenty-eighth state. The following year, a territorial dispute between Mexico and the United States over their borders led to war. American settlers in California took advantage of the conflict to declare independence in the Bear Flag Revolt of June 1846. The fighting ended quickly with a comprehensive victory for the United States. Peace negotiations and compensation claims took time to reconcile, but in February 1848 Mexico accepted the Rio Grande as its northern frontier and ceded California and New Mexico to the United States.

  These territorial gains coincided with the peaceful settlement of the border between British Canada and the United States at the forty-ninthparallel of longitude, effectively extending the existing line between them all the way west across the continent. With the northern and southern limits fixed, and the Pacific fringe in Yankee hands, Americans hurried to occupy the places in between. Their mantra was “Manifest Destiny,” for they believed that God had selected them to rule: “This continent was intended by Providence as a vast theater on which to work out the grand experiment of Republican Government, under the auspices of the Anglo-Saxon race.” When gold was discovered in California in 1848 it was taken as further proof of divine backing. A stream of Americans and European immigrants flowed west, some of them to settle, others in transit for the gold diggings. They carried copious amounts of alcohol with them, for the spirit of temperance that had possessed people in the eastern states seems to have had little influence west of the Mississippi.

  The terrain the migrants crossed was not entirely empty. The United States recognized much of it as belonging to various Indian tribes,
seventy thousand of whom it had removed there from their traditional homes. The Indians had been compensated with cash payments and annuities, and assurances that their titles to their new domains would be respected in perpetuity. In the event, few of the transported tribes enjoyed them for more than a generation. The migrants were hot on their heels, and the booze they carried with them contributed to the devastation of Native American culture in the West. Its tribes still exhibited the dipsomaniacal tendencies that had so alarmed white settlers in prior centuries and drank themselves to death with the same abandon. In 1842, for example, David Mitchell, the superintendent of Indian affairs at the St. Louis Agency, advised Washington that over five hundred transported Indian males had been killed by drinking within the past two years and that alcohol was “as destructive and more constant than disease” to the health of his charges.

  These casualties had occurred notwithstanding the existence of federal legislation intended to place alcohol beyond the reach of the tribes. In 1802, the government had made it a criminal offence to sell liquor in Indian Country. The laws had been amended, supplemented, and restated in 1822, and again in 1832 and 1834, all to no avail. They were ineffective because liquor was already in Indian country; indeed it had gone west before both the Indian removals and the wagon trains. Lewis and Clark had included whiskey in their rations on their pioneering mission across the continent in 1804. The Yellowstone expedition of 1819-20 found that its taste had not been forgotten. Well west of the Missouri, they had come across a Pawnee warrior who had dropped to his knees in front of them, grabbed his throat with his hands as if dying of thirst, and called out, “Whiskey, whiskey!”