Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution

Historian Barbier (King Hancock) offers an enlightening examination of the part alcohol played in America’s founding. The intoxicant was at the core of the colonies’ prerevolutionary discontent over taxes—the 1764 Sugar Act was a revision of the earlier Molasses Act, and both laws were understood as a regulation on alcohol production. (Molasses, a by-product of sugar refining, is the main ingredient of rum.) Another avenue of alcohol’s influence was the fact that taverns served as Patriot headquarters in each of the 13 colonies—including as after-hours hangouts for the Continental Congress. (It was these informal drinking sessions that allowed radicals like John Adams to warm up their fellow delegates to the idea of voting for independence, Barbier suggests.) As she traces events chronologically, highlighting ways that boozy meetups affected the course of the revolution (like a 1769 hangout on a field outside Boston organized by Sam Adams that helped lower the class inhibitions between legislators and tradesmen), Barbier provides satisfyingly rich mise-en-scène, including details about the founding fathers’ preferred beverages (wealthy John Hancock only drank the finest wines, naturally) and explanations of long-forgotten customs and controversies (Boston briefly tried to ban toasts—since returning a toast was socially mandatory—as a way of getting people to cut back). This one goes down easy. (June)