The ordinary colonial American drank roughly twice as much alcohol in 1770 as it does today—about three and a half gallons annually. Americans who immigrated to North America in 1600 were strong drinkers because they could import rum from the West Indies and brew peach juice and apple cider. Since importing beer was incredibly expensive, the colonists decided to produce their beer. Although Americans used to drink after every meal, barbecues, market days, and elections gave them another opportunity.
Alcohol was first introduced in America by the puritan settlers who came from England to the new world. In the early 1600s, these Puritan settlers arrived with a surplus of beer that even outnumbered the water supply (Kirk-Provencher et al., 2020). The primary cause of the introduction of alcohol was meant to purify water since it was considered contaminated. Consequently, alcohol was readily available to all ages during colonial times. Alcoholic beverages were primarily used to treat diseases and make celebrations lively and enjoyable, like weddings, public trials, and funerals.
Early colonists had to learn how to make beers, cider, and wine from ingredients that grew naturally in the new land, such as evergreen branches, fruits, and berries, as the need for alcohol developed (Luzi et al., 2019). However, before then, hop seeds from England could be brought to allow the immigrants to produce beer the old-fashioned way. After hop seeds, rum became a popular import to South America from the Caribbean, which was a distilled beverage and very popular across the other colonies.
Despite the fact the Early Americans regarded alcohol as a gift to human society, too much alcohol, which caused drunkenness, was termed as sin and a sign of immorality, which is very different from Today’s world, whereby it is regarded as a lack of morality and ungodliness rather than a gift to human society. The Early Americans believed that anyone who drank too much could sober up with enough effort. Benjamin Rush, a physician, was one of the first Americans to suggest that alcoholism is a disease that can only be treated by abstaining from alcohol. He worked in Philadelphia in the late 1700s (Kirk-Provencher et al., 2020). Although Rush’s theory was not well received by his contemporaries, his views on alcoholism would significantly impact American temperance campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Early Temperance Movement asserts that alcohol has been a fundamental component of American society since the founding of the first colonies. The rising popularity of rum, whiskey, and other distilled spirits sparked a backlash against the negative effects of binge drinking. The first American temperance society was established in Connecticut in 1789, marking the beginning of a public movement to promote temperance, defined as either limiting alcohol intake or abstaining entirely (Kent, C. 2019). Different organizations, such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, and the American Temperance Society, quickly emerged in other regions of the nation (Hammoud, N., & Jimenez-Shahed, J. 2019). Most of the victims of alcohol consumption, like women abused by their alcoholics’ husbands, and orphans abandoned by their alcoholic friends, formed temperance groups that strongly supported the abstinence and moderation of alcohol consumption.
In conclusion, the introduction of alcohol in America was meant for primary needs like treating sicknesses, coloring most events, and purifying contaminated water. However, too much alcoholism caused the emergence of temperance movements that advocated for moderation and abstinence from alcohol consumption. Most of these temperance groups were mothers mistreated by their drunk husbands, children abandoned by drunk parents, and women mistreated by drunk people.
References
Hammoud, N., & Jimenez-Shahed, J. (2019). Chronic neurologic effects of alcohol. Clinics in Liver Disease, 23(1), 141-155.
Kent, C. (2019). The Temperance Movement: Feminism, Nativism, Religious Identity, and Race. Relics, Remnants, and Religion: An Undergraduate Journal in Religious Studies, 4(1), 5.
Kirk-Provencher, K. T., Schick, M. R., Spillane, N. S., & Tobar-Santamaria, A. (2020). History of sexual assault, past-year alcohol use, and alcohol-related problems in American Indian adolescents. Addictive behaviors, p. 108, 106441.
Luzi, F., Pannucci, E., Santi, L., Kenny, J. M., Torre, L., Bernini, R., & Puglia, D. (2019). Gallic acid and quercetin as intelligent and active ingredients in poly (vinyl alcohol) films for food packaging. Polymers, 11(12), 1999.