You can download or stream the audio version of this episode by clicking here. The following is the written script for first Bear Flag Libation episode, with appropriate footnotes. I have also added links and pictures for things I mentioned during the show.
Thank you for
downloading the introductory episode of this new California history podcast,
that will unpack the magnificent and varied chronicles of the Golden State by
exploring its oldest bars,
saloons, taverns, pubs, clubs, lounges, speakeasies, watering-holes,
dives, juke joints, honkey-tonks, grog-shops, taprooms, gin-mills, and
drinkeries. This is the Bear Flag
Libation.
“Upon all the new
settlements the Spanish make, the first thing they do is build a church, the
first thing ye Dutch do upon a new colony is to build them a fort, but the
first thing ye English do, be it in the most remote part of ye world, or
amongst the most barbarous Indians, is to set up a drinking house.”
So wrote Captain Thomas Walduck in a
1708 letter to his nephew in London.
I can’t help but think Captain Walduck,
an outspoken critic of the of his country’s colonial policies concerning slavery,
might have been playing at a bit of that famed dry British satire, but his
observation was fairly accurate.
Historian
Christine Sismondo explains that the local tavern in each colonized area served
as the unofficial town hall, the post office, the courthouse, the library, the
bulletin board, the meeting place for business and trade, the transportation
hub, the inn, the restaurant, and last, and possibly least, the place to get a
drink.
So it might be easy to joke
that the Brits conquered the world, one pint glass at a time, but it’s worth
remembering that small island nation had a colonial system that, for better or
for worse, actually did conquer approximately twenty-five percent of the
earth’s livable land.
If the sun
never sets on the British Empire, neither does set on happy hour.
You know that’s true because it rhymes.
But what I find
more interesting is Captain Walduck’s comment succinctly exposes the difference
in priorities European powers brought in the New World. The Spanish built churches with the aim
converting indigenous people to Catholicism. They hoped to make the American natives into Spanish
citizens by teaching the bedrock tenets of Spanish culture, to literally
instruct Indians on how to think and see the world as people in Spain did. In the next few episodes of this
podcast, we’ll see how well that worked out for them. The Dutch had little interest in the native population,
beyond the slaves who could be bought and sold. Anyone whose seen pirate or old navy movies has heard of the
Dutch East India Company and West India Company. This is because the Dutch were all about commerce and trade. So the Dutch military built forts, high
walled and well manned, and with the singular purpose of protecting their
business interests.
The British came
relatively late to the imperialism game, and their early American colonies,
while to be a source of pride and revenue for the Crown, mainly consisted of
people from England who wanted to go be English some place else. The establishment of a tavern in a new
colony, which served at the center of town life, was the transposing of culture,
making their new home a bit like the old one. It is often forgotten by Americans, who fondly remember
fighting a war of independence to free themselves of British tyranny, but
seventieth and eighteenth century British society was among the most
democratic, liberal and mobile in Europe.
I will not wade into the many and complex reasons for the American
Revolution here, nor the evolution of democracy in England from the Middle
Ages, but I believe there is a historiographical consensus to the idea
colonists arrived with some sensibilities of budding Enlightenment, and to them
personal liberty was not some radical concept. In time, events carried the divergent and isolated new
culture in the American colonies to develop democratic concepts faster than the
Crown was willing to allow. I
bring this all up, here at the beginning of a California history podcast on
bars, because I argue that the tavern, from its inception, to its importation
to the New World, and through the Revolution, was a hotbed democratic fervor
that was vital in the independence of this nation. In due time, we will also see how when Americans annexed
California in the mid-nineteenth century, reaching to the far side of the
continent and imposing their culture on to the existing Mexican culture, they
quite naturally take a page from their British grandfathers to build themselves,
first and foremost, bars.
By the next
episode, we will be solidly in California, at the Swallows Inn in San Juan
Capistrano to talk about the Spanish plan for colonizing the far western end of
the world.
But today we’re going
to spend some time in the thirteen colonies, primarily in New England, which is
actually the second place in North America to bear that name after, after where?
California, of course.
When Sir Francis Drake landed just
north of the San Francisco Bay in 1579, he buried to British coins, had good
relations with the native peoples and let them know they lived in Nova Albion,
which is Latin for New England.
It’s difficult to say if the name had stuck Northern Californians would
be saying “wicked pissah” instead of “hella tight”, but I do know there would
be far less awesome
taquerias.
First, let us
quickly consider the origin of bars themselves.
Obviously a place go to get some kind of alcoholic beverage
about as old as alcohol itself, which is to say it was hot on the heels of
other great ideas, such as agriculture and permanent human settlements.
The British did not invent using the
tavern as a means of societal expansion either.
When the Romans built their famous straight and well-maintained
roads throughout their empire, every fifteen miles they established a
tabernae deversoria (please forgive my
Lain pronunciation, actually my pronunciation all non-English words.
You’ll soon see that my Spanish, after
a lifetime in California and extensive traveling in Spanish speaking counties,
is nothing short of shameful).
Romans
could literally measure distance in how many taverns one passed between point A
and point B.
These taverns were
largely rest stops for travelers, perhaps akin to a Best Western but with a
decent hotel bar.
The local
working stiffs who sought a cup of wine and a dice game in place where
everybody knows their
nominis, had
the
tabernae meritoria, to drink away
the long hard day.
Public drinking
spaces mostly vanished in Western Europe with the decline of the Roman Empire,
but the consumption of alcohol did not.
Clean drinking water was often scarce, and though people did not
understand the science of it, they knew if people drank more fermented drinks,
such as beer and wine, less people got sick. Common sense usually predates scientific explanations. The making of beer was even a way to
preserve grain crops and drink some amount of nutrients with a morning brew for
breakfast. Mind you, the beer was low on alcohol,
high in nutrient, drank with extreme moderation and a means of survival, so
don’t try telling your boss the three Coors Light you downed before work were
for your health.
In fifteenth
century England, an economic boom and urban development led to the first
“publicans”, or “pub” for short.
For the first time in a long time, common people were not just drinking
with other people of different occupations and backgrounds, they were doing
what everyone loves to do while they drink: they talked.
Iain Gately describes pubs as being the
“nucleus of a popular culture” in which people enjoyed freedom of speech and
action not possible in feudal society.
Around the same time, a fellow in Germany named Gutenberg, invented a
fast printing press with moveable type.
Before there were public libraries, pubs had books for
patrons to read, so not only are exposed to new ideas, they are in a setting
with other people who were also books, and they’re getting a bit drunk so they
probably had strong opinions on it.
When common folk start reading and talking, well… a wise man once said, “Every
time there's a revolution, it comes from somebody reading a book about
revolution.”
Words departed from none other than Heavyweight Champion Mike Tyson, who also said, “Everyone has a
plan until they punched in the mouth.”
By the time the
British colonize North America in the seventeenth century, the drinking house was
deeply embedded in daily life.
In
the colonies, with the absence of other institutions, the tavern served as a perfect
substitute to house all governmental, commercial, legal and social
proceedings.
Puritans, those
notorious prudes, founded Boston in the year 1630 and used a tavern for all
official business until the first government building was completed in 1658.
Just up the road, the first town hall
meeting in this country ever held was in a tavern in Dorchester, Massachusetts in
1633.
As the settlement outside
the Dutch Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island became increasingly British in
character, the focus of local commerce moved to Stadts Herbergh Inn, or City
Tavern, which eventually became New York’s first city hall.
In rural areas the
tavern played an even more vital function.
The tavern functioned as not only the courtroom, but it also
housed the traveling magistrates who were like judges on tour, hearing cases
and dispensing justice in one town and then moving on to the next.
This raised the standards of all
taverns, for instance, Maryland law required each tavern to have four good
feather beds and in any establishment that held actually court, must have eight
to put up magistrates and clerks.
It
was apparently up to the magistrate to decide if drinking would go on during
any given trail, something you should certainly hope for if accused of a crime,
as drunken court rooms tended to favor acquittal.
In other words, you better remember to tip your bartender,
or else he might suddenly find he’s out of wine when Goodie Constance accuses
you of nicking boot buckles from the haberdashery.
Indeed,
with taverns playing such a key role in the community, the tavern owners were
required to be upstanding citizens and they were highly regulated.
In Virginia after 1638, there were more
laws regarding the licensing of taverns and their owners than on “roads, land titles,
care for the poor and general law and order.”
Despite the amount of time colonists spent in the tavern,
they seriously looked down on drunkenness.
A truism throughout the history of alcohol is that nobody
holds their booze as well as you do, and it always seems that those you already
don’t like are downright criminal when drunk.
Thus there were many laws designed to regulate who could
drink, how much, at which place at what time of day, all in an attempt to
curtail drunkenness and the antics it engenders.
It should be unsurprising that getting a drink in most areas
proved difficult for Indians, blacks, women and other people of weak
constitution who had not mastered the art of drinking well, regardless if any reputation
for rambunctiousness was well deserved or not.
As
usual the Puritans were able to take normal seventeenth century European
prudishness and paternalism and make it weird by turning every cup into a
battle for one’s immortal soul.
Increase Mather summed up their views neatly by saying, “Drink is, in
itself, a good creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but abuse
of drink is from Satan; the wine is from God, the drunkard is from the
Devil.”
One of the stranger fronts
in the war on drunkenness was an attempt to bans drinking “healths”, a sort of
competitive toasting.
In a crowded
barroom, a gentlemen would stand-up, buy a round for the all present, then
proceed to poetically espouse the greatness of King and Country, or the bravery
of the local fighting men, or to his good and loyal horse, for all it
mattered.
This kicked off what was
essentially a drinking game, in which all involved attempted to out do each
other for the eloquent or bawdy toasts.
And once everybody has bought a round, you can’t be the one cheap
guy who has drinks for free and goes home.
Thus, honor and competition could quickly turn a pint after
work into an all night bender.
Respectable New England Puritans warned that aside from the result of
getting crowd of young men properly shit-faced, “healthing” seemed a little too
heathen.
If a witch uses potions
and calls on Satan to curse people with ill fortune, was Satan not also being
called upon when somebody uses a alcoholic elixirs to wish somebody good
fortune? At best, this business is beginning to reek of Catholicism and the
creeping popery of King Charles is lamentable enough, but now our young men spend
their nights at the pub acting like dirty papists?
At least one man
who might have overrated this way was Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop,
famous for opening to door to the concept of American Exceptionalism with his
“city on a hill” sermon.
Winthrop waged a one-man war against drinking healths throughout the 1630s
and 40s.
First, by forbidding them
in his house, hope people would simply follow his example, then by declaring
the healthing had gone out of style anyway, then by passing a law that fined
anybody caught participating in a health.
Eventually, it became obvious it truly was a one-man war; with nobody
outside the Winthrop house giving a damn about enforcing the law and it was taken
off the books in 1645.
But the
fact that the governor took such a public stance against certain drinking
habits, and that a man so influential as Winthrop still feel ridiculously short
of actually altering tavern culture, speaks to how deeply seeded that tavern
culture was, even amongst the Puritans.
Generally, the sheer number of laws surrounding drinking and taverns clues
us in to how big a part taverns truly played people’s lives.
In Britain, the
pubs remained one part of the popular culture, but in the colonies, the taverns
emerged as the social, political and commercial center of each community. And, consider democratic effect this
would have on the colonists over time.
Forts or churches, for the Dutch and the Spanish, were structured with a
strict hierarchy and were sanctioned outposts of the mother country, where the
taverns were owned and managed privately, by citizens from within the
community. People of all walks of
life, even the abstainers, had some need of tavern services and they rubbed
elbows together here, not to mention contact with merchants and travelers from
other colonies. Every voice could
be heard, and on the night of many “healths”, some of those voices surely heard
quite loudly. God and the state
had no official representatives here; instead taverns were ruled by social
mores. Even with all the
laws designed to curb drunkenness, being drunk, as long as you were not a
public nuisance, was not illegal, so on most nights, your words and activities
were only tempered by degree of public judgment you were willing to endure the next
morning.
This democratizing
effect went from being theoretically culturally significant to tangibility
politically significant when taverns became the first places to buzz with talk
of rebellion against the British Crown.
Talking became speeches as taverns naturally became the best place for
revolutionary groups, like the Sons of Liberty, to recruit angry men into the
swelling ranks of the local militias.
Again, I don’t want to do a blow by blow of events leading to the
Revolution.
There are plenty of
books on the subject, and while I have not listened to any of the American
Revolution podcasts, I’m really enjoying the indelible and brilliant
MikeDuncan’s new podcast titled, “Revolutions”.
He is spending a few months of weekly episodes discussing
different revolutions from various times and places.
Currently, he is discussing the English revolt against King
Charles I, who I referenced just a few minutes agon, and that era, though not
often mentioned by American historians, is an incredibly relevant precursor to the
events in the colonies.
The year is
1758. You are a young, well-to-do,
white male born in Commonwealth of Virginia, a colony with a thriving autonomous
democracy while being fiercely loyal to King George II and the British
parliament. The global war that
has engulfed Europe and North America for the past two years has not been going
well for the British. To
boot, the harvest is lean this season and there are rumors of small pox raging
amongst the Indians to the west.
You awake and dress on the morning of Election Day with the solemn
responsibility of electing a representative to the House of Brugesses, and walk
to the polls. Upon arrival at the
tavern a jovial man greets you, slaps you on the back and declares himself a
personal friend of the young war hero named George Washington. He asks if you might like a
Whistle-Belly Vengeance before casting your vote. No, perhaps a Scotchem? A Rum Switchel? Mayhap a “bumbo”?
Now, since 1705,
Virginia law explicitly prohibits alcohol at the polls, but… Ah yes, a bumbo does sound quite nice
actually, and the happy back-slapper brings you a jar of rum, water, sugar and
nutmeg. As the warm booze slides
into your belly, expelling a familiar tingle about your body, you smile and say
to your new friend, “I like the sound of this Washington fellow. Can we discuss him further over
another?”
By the end of the
day, you’ve knock over the fishwife’s cart and been sick in the cooper’s
barrels and young George Washington has been democratically elected to the Virginia
legislature.
His bar bill for the
day only consisted of forty-seven gallons of beer, thirty-four gallons of wine,
two gallons of cider, three and half pints of brandy and a mere seventy gallons
of rum punch.
Considering there
are only 310 registered voters in this district, you are likely not the only
one sleeping it off in the holster’s stable.
Call it
“treating”, “vote-jobbing” or flat out “bribery”, but the exchange of drinks
for votes was common practice in this country for a very long time.
A century later, when the Edgar Allen
Poe was found dead in an Baltimore the morning after elections wearing somebody
else’s clothes, many speculated that hired thugs had taken the gravely ill man out
all day; keeping him liquored up as they forced him to vote at various polling
stations, then changing his clothing as they made and making the rounds
again.
When Poe’s usefulness ran
out, they simply left the master author for dead.
I want to be clear that this is only a theory and nobody
knows fore sure the circumstances of that day, or even the ultimate cause of
death, but it is commonly accepted that this type of voter fraud (called
“cooping” at the time) did occur and that the living national treasure was
enough of a hot mess for this to seem at least plausible.
Anyhow, back to
the eighteenth century, to Boston, to the men who, if did not invent that
practicing of buying votes with drinks, certainly mastered the practice in
establishing America’s first political machine, while simultaneously setting
the country on the road to Revolution.
An independently wealthy man named Elisha Cooke Jr. opened a bar on King
Street near the docks in the late 1710s with the express purpose of garnering
influence amongst the working populace.
Cooke’s and his friends, who included Samuel Adams Sr., wanted to affect
public policy in Boston and they saw the way to do this was to get groups of
friendly candidates elected to multiple offices in a single election.
They became known as the Boston Caucus.
In fact, the word “Caucus” as we know
it, is thought to have derived from a bastardization of “Cooke’s House”, the bar
on King Street.
They distributed
flyers in taverns with recommendations on how to vote and they sent agents to
make sure every sailor in the port on Election Day made his to the polls, but
not without wetting his whistle first.
The Boston Caucus was less like a political party or voting block, as
they were a shadowy cabal of puppet masters who met in smokey back rooms, like
that of Cooke’s bar.
Think of this
as a proto-version of Boss Tweed’s Tamney Hall in New York City; corrupt as all
hell, but incredibility effective and, as it had just been invited, not technically
illegal.
One item at the
top of the Caucus’s agenda was the laxation of liquor laws; through the 1720s
the number of licensed taverns in Boston increased by eighty percent. Throughout Massachusetts, during this
era, regulations were lifted on dancing, singing, drinking healths and tavern
closing times. According to
Revolutionary historian Gary Nash, the public referred to this movement simply
as the “popular party” and it didn’t hurt that the moralists who opposed them
made condescending comments toward the working class constituency, like
“ordinary people” were prone to “foolish fondness for Commodities &
fashions, excessive tippling in the taverns, laziness, sottishness, and a
hunger for things above their station in life.” Cotton Mather, son of Increase, the charming man who implied
drunk people were possessed by Satan, weighed in and said, “It is to be
demanded of the Poor that they do not indulge in an Affection of making
themselves in all Things appear equal with the Rich: But patiently submit unto
the differences, which the Maker of you Both, has put between you.” It would seem one member of the
Boston’s underclass did not appreciate this pompous Puritan declaring that the
poor’s lot in life to be divinely ordained, so best shut up and take it,
because shortly after Mather made the statement somebody threw a bomb through
his window.
Secret society or
not, Cook gained the well-deserved reputation as a champion of the working
people of Boston.
He was not
entirely altruistic in this cause, but neither was he exploiting the poor
without seeing to their interest.
The symbiotic relationship he forged stands as Cooke’s most lasting
contribution to American democracy: he recognized an underrepresented block of
voters, ran candidates who made policies that appealed directly to this block,
he mobilized them with get-out-the-vote-efforts and everybody involved rose
together.
One example of an attractive
platform: the tax assessors selected by the Caucus could be counted on for their
delightful incompetence in assessing taxes from the working class.
It turns out voters really like it when
somebody buys them a drink and tells them which candidate isn’t actually going
to collect their taxes.
Around 1764, the Caucus
moved their headquarters at Cooke’s House to the tavern where it is a said the
American Revolution was planed,
The Green Dragon.
Yes, Tolkien fans, I’m well-aware that in
The Hobbit and
Lord of the Rings that the spirited Shire pub of song and story is
also named
The Green Dragon, but I do not believe Tolkien was making a
reference to the base of American revolutionary activity because apparently the
England and Wales are littered with pubs with the name Green Dragon.
One of the renowned patrons of Boston’s
Green Dragon was Samuel Adams Jr., founding member of the Sons of Liberty,
cousin to the second president of the United States, but most widely known
today as the dude with a frothy tin of brew, smiling at you from the
label of a beer bottle.
Adams did briefly
work for his fathers malt business, but took less interest in brewing beer when
he could be drinking it.
He also
spent time in his father’s position of inadequately collecting taxes from his
friends at the various pubs around town.
Surely, Adams the Younger must not appeared a likely candidate to be one
of the most celebrated names in American history, as he spent most of his time
in low-rent drinking halls, toasting healths, dicing, and generally cutting it
up with the local riff raff.
However, the foundation of trust and friendship he built there would
prove tremendously valuable in the coming years.
While the sophisticated Whigs met the Bunch of Grapes tavern
to politely discuss moderate political action, Adams was building relationships
with the less educated and angry folks, more prone to the radical talk of which
Revolutions are made.
Adams was
the bridge between high-minded ideals and boots-on-the-ground action, capable
of whipping up a crowd with fiery speeches and an indispensable recruiter for
the patriots.
In 1763, the Seven
Years War, usually called the French-Indian War in the Americas, ended. Though, the British came out on the
winning side of the war, the victory was somewhat pyrrhic because of the
untenable amount of debt incurred by the Crown. To recoup some of the costs, Parliament levied a number of
heavy and unpopular taxes on their American colonies. The 1765 Stamp Act taxed all paper goods in the
colonies. The effects reached all
levels of society, but in the tavern this meant everything from playing cards,
to daily newspapers, to the liquor licenses, which needed to be renewed
regularly to stay in business. Everything
on paper required an official stamp; that stamp came at a steep cost all importers,
publishers and businesses; and, as usual, that cost was passed onto the
everyday consumer. The younger
members of the Boston Caucus at the Green Dragon morphed into the Sons of
Liberty in this time and used their connections to incite organized rebellion
to the Stamp Act. Sons of Liberty
chapters popped up across the colonies, usually meeting in the backrooms and
basements of taverns, and at least sixty-five riots broke out in different
locations over the ensuing year in response to Stamp Act. But beyond the rebellion being
organized from taverns: before rioters hit the streets, where do you think they
met, perhaps gaining a bit of liquid courage? After the riot, where do you think they met, perhaps winding
down and swamping stories? After
King George repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, were do you think the colonists celebrated? They celebrated at the same place they
had been commiserating, as people have for time immemorial, at the bar.
Many healths were
certainly drank when the news arrived: to victory, to the Sons of Liberty, to
themselves, to the power of the people, but surely less healths were being
heard across the colonies to King and Crown.
In fact, in New York slyly disguised a large celebration and
made the whole affair official when New Yorkers suddenly decided commemorate
King George’s birthday in 1766 with “Bear and Grog for the populace…, and a
cannon fired with each toast, accompanied by many huzzas.”
If the King cared about such things it
would have been rather awkward in the years that followed when the city partied
hard on the actual anniversary of the Stamp Act repeal and never again put too
much effort into George’s birthday.
The Declaration of
Independence was still ten years away, but the colonists saw the muscle of mass
protest they could flex to effect policy sent down from Parliament, and they
would well-remember the effective tool they discovered in the tavern network.
The model proved useful and was
repeated numerous times over the next few years when anti-British sentiment
came to a head.
In 1768, John
Hancock, smuggler, protégé of Sam Adams and man of a famously large signature,
was stopped bringing wine into the Boston harbor.
Apparently, Hancock’s ship was only carrying a quarter it’s
possible load, leading authorities to suspect Hancock had off-loaded the rest
of the wine someplace else without paying the high rate of taxes under the
Townshead Acts.
The Townshed Acts
were already so reviled that they created a boycott of British goods in the
colonies and kickstarted the first “Buy American” movement.
When the British seized Hancock’s ship,
rioting began anew down the Eastern Seaboard, as many felt customs agents were
unduly restricting trade.
In
Virginia, when the House of Burgess debated a legalized non-importation of British
goods, the British Governor, Norborne Berkeley dissolved the congress.
Where did that nice young man you voted
for, George Washington, go, along with Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry?
Why, of course, to the Apollo Room of
the
Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Can you believe they called their new legislature in exile,
“Showtime at the Apollo”?
Good,
you shouldn’t, that’d be super weird and more than a little ironic, they did
not call it that.
But Patrick
“Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death” Henry had been a bartender at the Raleigh
Room, as was his father.
In New York City,
in 1770, the redcoats fired shots into Bardin’s Tavern, the headquarters of the
local Sons of Liberty chapter.
When the bar reopened months later, the army ransacked the place, which
led to bloody fist fights in the streets between sailors and redcoats. There is considerable evidence that in
December of 1773, that the Boston Tea Party was decided on and plotted from the
basement of the Green Dragon. Suddenly, bars with names like “King’s Arms” and “Crown
Tavern” were sporting new signs with names like “Liberty Tree” and
“Congress”. An editor at the New-York Journal wrote for the need of
limiting the liquor licensees of these “hot-beds of sedition”, but somebody was
smart enough to realize that taking people’s booze away was no way to calm a
brewing revolt.
Even outside of
the major cities, taverns functioned as centers of communication and
recruitment.
Tavernkeepers, as
a group, tended to be friendly to the growing patriot cause because of the high
taxes they had paid under the Stamp Act and Townshed Acts, thus happily invited
someone like Sam Adams come speak or for copies of
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense to be distributed in their
establishment.
Lest it be thought
that taverns only played a role at the grass roots level, there are quite
taverns present at key moments in the lives of the Founding Fathers.
The first Continental Congress
officially convened at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, but the large and
elegant
City Tavern became an informal meeting place for colonial
representatives to take dinner, drinks and generally get to know each other,
cementing relationships that would shape this nation.
In 1774, the first and second presidents, George Washington
and John Adams met for the first time at the City Tavern before even going to
Carpenter’s Hall.
Christine
Sismondo suggests that, in 1776, that Thomas Jefferson and colleagues rehearsed
the first draft of the Declaration of Independence at the Raleigh Tavern in
Virginia, and that he finished it a the Indian Queen tavern in Philly.
I don’t mean to suggest that our third
president was an eighteenth century barfly who scrawled the document that
birthed our nation on the back of cocktail napkin, like some kind of Bukowski
in a waistcoat, but I want to reiterate my point that, for people of all social
classes, the tavern, in it’s many shapes and forms, was the natural place to be
with people outside of the home.
Another point I
should bring up is the negative effects of the tavern culture.
Up until now I’ve been listing the ways
taverns aided the Americans in the lead up to the Revolution, even in
conjunction with riotous behavior.
While end result, the founding of these United States, seems to justify
some of the more questionable means of the revolutionaries, on the ground this
behavior might not have looked as acceptable to our modern sensibilities.
Historian T.H. Breen describes some of
the methods of citizen mobs, which were surely fueled by alcohol before going
out into the night and dragging suspected loyalists from their houses.
One public display punishment for those
deemed not be significantly anti-British was the “wooden horse”, in which a
person was set on a long fence rail and bounced up and down for possibly hours
while others punched and kicked the victim.
In the months after the Boston Tea Party, a New Hampshire
man named John Taylor was overheard making statements sympathetic to Parliament
and forced to ride the wooden horse until a shape edge punctured a large hole his
groin, causing him to bleed to death.
One person was charged with manslaughter and three others for abetting
in this crime, but all were only lightly punished.
Breen also quotes a British official saying in 1774, “the
Americans were a strange set of People, and that it was in vain to expect any
degree of reasoning from them; that instead of making their claim by argument,
they always chose to decide the matter by tarring and feathering.”
Modern imagination tends to focus more
on the humiliating effect of the feathering, but consider the boiling tar
poured into the victim would peal off a person’s skin.
If this is not painful enough, consider
the whole body would become an open wound in a time before penicillin.
Breen does not always indicate drinking
or taverns being connected to mob-justice, but it is mentioned on occasions and
knowing what we do about time spent and taverns and human nature in of itself,
the torture of people within ones’ own community does not sound like the
actions of sober men.
On the morning
April 19th, 1775, the militia “minutemen” of Concord, Massachusetts gathered at
their ad-hoc headquarters, Wright’s Tavern.
Paul Revere had rode through in the early hours with the
warning that the British aimed to march to Lexington and Concord to seize the
weapons and disband the local militias.
Prudently, Colonel James Barrett, evacuated his men from Concord in order
to take up a better position for battling the redcoats coming up from
Boston.
When British Commander
John Pitcairn arrived, he made Wrights Tavern his headquarters.
According to Christine Sismondo,
Pitcairn marched up to bar, ordered a brandy, pricked his finger, dripping a
bit of blood into his drink and offered a toast to the rebel blood that would
be shed that day.
He was correct.
That afternoon the first shots
of the American Revolutionary War were fired.
Eight and a half
years later, on November 25
th, 1883, the British army left New York
on what would be called, “Evacuation Day”, and General George Washington
entered the city on something of a victorious pub-crawl.
The local chapter of the Sons Of
Liberty met the general in Harlem at the Bull’s Head Tavern.
On Broadway, he was stopped at Cape’s
Tavern for further revelry in his honor.
Finally Washington ended up at
Fraunces Tavern, owned by his friend “Black
Sam”, which is still at 54 Pearl Street today in Manhattan’s Finical
District.
At the celebratory party
drank fourteen healths were drank, one for each of the newly independent
colonies, and one more for the “close Union of these States” to “guard the Temple
they have erected to Liberty.”
Thank you for
listening to the episode zero of the Bear Flag Libation. I know it’s a lot of episode for not
having a number, but aside from not actually spending any time in California,
this episode is unique in that I drew entirely on secondary sources in creating
it. I relied heavily on Christine
Sismondo’s America Walks Into a Bar,
not only for information, but also as a roadmap to other sources. However, normally I will be conducting
original research and I will be centering a narrative on a particular bar from
around the Golden State. In the
next episode I’ll be visiting the Swallow’s Inn Saloon in San Juan Capistrano,
in South Orange County. You’ll be
hearing a bit about the Spanish colonization of California, the urban evolution
of the Southland and about the bar that was so rough that when I was a kid, my
mom made us cross the street to avoid even walking past it.
The Bear Flag
Libation is part of my master’s thesis project in Public History at Cal-State
East Bay, so I’d like to extend another big thanks to Dr. Linda Ivey who has
the vision and patience to allow me to do something like this to get my MA.
I’d also like to
thank Anthony Lukens of the brilliant San Diego band,
The Donkeys.
Anthony plays all the instruments on
this show’s theme song, “Lodi” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
And thank you to Mike Martin of San
Francisco for designing the Bear Flag Libation logos that you’ll see if you
visit
BearFlagLibation.blogspot.com.
There you can see fully sited copy of each script, a bibliography, pictures,
maps and news on upcoming shows.
I’m
not putting Mike’s designs to much good use yet, but hope to once this business
of actually producing content gets under way.
I hope release a new episode every three weeks, but
defiantly won’t go a month without bringing you a new show.
You can also
follow the show on facebook at f
acebook.com/bearflaglibation.
Please give us a like.
And please download the show in iTunes,
and if you like what you hear, give it a quick review so other people will be
able to find it.
If you don’t like
what you hear, tell me why in an email at
BearFlagLibation@gmail.com.
Feedback can only make this thing
better.
And, of course, tell your friends.
See you in a couple weeks at the
Swallow’s Inn.
