{"id":6467,"date":"2026-07-05T15:13:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T13:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6467"},"modified":"2026-07-05T15:13:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T13:13:00","slug":"colonial-taverns-the-unsung-heroes-of-the-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=6467","title":{"rendered":"Colonial Taverns: The Unsung Heroes of the Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today is the Fourth of July and America\u2019s 250th<\/sup> birthday. And a lot of us are just not feeling it. Oh, I get it. America is divided, we are torn and entrenched, and peanut butter is too expensive. Worse still, this division is seemingly encouraged and proliferated by Jabba the President sitting in the Oval Office. Not since Jack McCloskey chucked me a bang snap at the block party watermelon table in 1986 have I shed so many tears on a July 4th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if there is a July 4 holiday lesson, it\u2019s perseverance. America has faced tough times before and has fought through. Sure, we did so through rebellion, tenacity, and will. But we also did so through debate, discussion of ideas, communication, and working together. And that\u2019s why today\u2019s hammered history looks at the unsung hero of the American Revolution \u2013 taverns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no way to overestimate the importance of taverns in colonial America. First, you went there to drink your weight in rum. But they also served as post offices, courts, hotels, political meeting places, and local newspapers. Taverns in America served a similar purpose to that of coffee houses in London. They were petri dishes of society, throwing together a mix of people, opinions, and probably body odors. Since everyone shared tables, unlikely neighbors rubbed elbows. Literate drinkers read the news to illiterate table mates. It was a place to drink and talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not hard to see a dark parallel to today. We no longer sit face to face and talk. We chat with people from behind keyboards and at the first whiff of disagreement we resort to sending complete strangers seething epithets whose lacking wit is made up for with CURSES IN ALL-CAPS. Dialogue has become a thing as mythic as Santa Claus, the Jersey Devil, or a republican politician with a spinal column. In our separate places, we are being pitted against one another by those in charge \u2013 whose greatest fear is open discussion amongst us who disagree. What we need is to talk. What we need is a drink face to face with someone we may not agree with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we the people need is a tavern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In colonial America, it was not hard to find one. You could throw a rock backwards and hit a tavern door. Or, more likely, knock the tricorn hat off a drunk guy standing in a tavern doorway. In 1776 Philadelphia alone there were more than 120 taverns, inns, and ordinaries. Considering there were between 30,000\u201340,000 people living in the city, this makes about one place of drinking for every 250\u2013300 Philadelphians. Because we the people apparently believed that democracy worked best within spitting distance of a tavern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The Green Dragon Tavern in Boston is one of the most famous taverns. Known as the headquarters of the revolution, it\u2019s where Samuel Adams and Paul Revere and Johns Rowe and Hancock planned protests and actions. The Boston Tea Party was planned there, its barkeep probably providing a few shots of liquid courage to get the boys ready to dump East India\u2019s finest into the harbor. After the Marine Corps was conceived in 1775, they had Tun Tavern\u2019s barkeep Robert Mullan recruit from patrons at the bar. (Tun Tavern was on the waterfront so had its share of seagoing lads, sailors, and would-be Flyers fans \u2013 in other words, ideal marines). City Tavern hosted delegates of the First Continental Congress, becoming an unofficial boardroom for later discussions. Up in the wilds of Vermont, the Catamount Tavern served as the gathering place for (the esoteric) Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. The tavern was all important for meeting, gossip, and planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the booze mattered too. Because going to a tavern without alcohol was like throwing a snowball at a B-52. And there was booze for all. If you had money, madeira might be your drink. Or beer, porter, and ale. But by far the two most popular and common drinks in colonial America\u2019s taverns were hard cider and rum. For much of early American history, hard cider was an everyday drink for all. This tradition came from early English colonists who had been making and drinking cider for centuries. Ship records show saplings being brought across the Atlantic. Nary a New World farm was established that didn\u2019t have an apple orchard, and most of those apples were cider apples \u2013 cultivated for drinking. The colonies were full of apple trees and tipsy colonists.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And what cider couldn\u2019t do, rum could. That is, cider could get you drunk, rum could make you see God and then give him a wedgie. Rum arrived on the scene when workers on Caribbean sugar plantations realized that the black sludge that came out of the process (molasses) fermented if left alone. Or \u2013 some genius found \u2013 if you distilled it, it would become far more potent. Potent, yes. Delicious, no. Rum of the 18th<\/sup> century was incredibly harsh and smoky, which probably explains the nick name \u2018kill devil\u2019. Nobody ever called Peach Schnapps \u2018kill devil\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If rum tasted so badly, why was it so popular? Because it was cheap and incredibly effective.     Taverns often sold glasses of rum for 1 cent to help the city\u2019s poorer residents drink themselves silly. On a convalescence trip around the colonies, Dr. Alexander Hamilton (not that one) was astounded by the level of drunkenness attained by rum drinkers at local taverns. Rum was America\u2019s first spirit love; it lubed the colonies and fueled the revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this in mind, there\u2019s one drink that perfectly encapsulates the American Revolution and the colonial era in which it took place: the Stone Fence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Stone Fence combines those two drinks that are quintessentially American \u2013 cider and rum. It\u2019s an easily made two-part cocktail that was a colonies-wide favorite. Legend has it that the night before the predawn siege on Fort Ticonderoga, Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boys, and Benedict Arnold all got well juiced on Stone Fences to fortify for the fight. I guess old Benedict was able to keep is lips sealed after all that loud mouth chowder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, the Stone Fence is perfect because it really captures colonial American drinking in 1776 and not in, say, 1795. Because things changed quickly after the war. Soon after the revolution, the Caribbean trade that made rum so affordable and prevalent became expensive, disrupted, and more unreliable because of shifting political alliances and shipping routes. The ethanolic hero to step up? Whiskey. In the late 18th<\/sup> century, settlers were already moving west into regions where grain such as corn, rye and barley was rather abundant. Many of those settlers were Scots-Irish and Scottish, who had been distilling whiskey since their infancy to quell their own teething pains. In the years after the revolution, rum would be replaced by whiskey as America\u2019s favorite liver treat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cider also began its decline after the revolution. For eons in North America, making cider had been easy and as common as marrying off your 9-year-old daughter to a French-Canadian trapper. Beer, by contrast, was finicky to weather and other conditions and was thus harder to produce consistently. But a few years after the revolution, this changed. Millions of German immigrants brought to America skilled brewing traditions, refrigeration techniques, commercial breweries \u2013 presumably to make up for the lederhosen and sauerkraut. At the same time, more people moved to cities and towns and thus cider production dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tastes changed over time as well. Until the late 18th<\/sup> century, cider apples had long been the most commonly cultivated apple, but this was taken over by dessert (eating) apples. This provided one more \u2013 if delicious \u2013 nail in cider\u2019s coffin. Over a bit of time, cider was replaced by beer, which eventually became America\u2019s drink. So just a few years after the revolution, America was drinking totally different drinks. So, the Stone Fence is a perfect drink to celebrate this day and era.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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