#19th-century-america

#19th-century-america

One minor but arresting fact of U.S. history is the huge amount of alcohol the average American consumed in 1830: 7.1 undiluted gallons a year, the equivalent of four shots of 80-proof whiskey every day. Assuming some children wimped out after the first drink, this statistic suggests that large numbers of Jacksonian-era adults were rolling eight belts deep seven days a week, with all the attendant implications for social and political life.

In the beginning, not a whisper of a whisker-not on Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, or Monroe. In the early nineteenth century, John Quincy Adams and Martin Van Buren change things up with fluffy muttonchops that drift like snow from ears to laugh lines.