Both the Pilgrims, who settled in southeastern Massachusetts around 1620, and the Puritans, who settled further north along the eastern coast of Massachusetts around 1630, cheerfully produced and consumed their own beer and wine. The conventional image of these two groups as opponents of alcohol is historically inaccurate.
More than a century later, George Washington oversaw the production of beer, wine, and distilled beverages, both at his home in Virginia, and at various army camps with his troops. Thomas Jefferson invested a great deal of thought and energy into growing specific breeds of grapes in order to make various types of wine. Samuel Adams was a maltster, making a key ingredient for beer.
Fermented apple cider was a popular beverage throughout North America.
In general, then, the area which was at first British colonies, and which was later the United States, had a culture which demonstrated no strong opposition to alcohol, and in which people of various social classes lost none of their respectability by consuming alcohol. This seems to have been the case for approximately two centuries.
There was very little legal regulation about who might consume alcohol, or where or when or how alcohol might be consumed. There was certainly some taxation of alcohol — hence the famous “whisky rebellion” in the early 1790s — but this taxation was for the purposes of raising revenue, and not for the purpose of changing social patterns of consumption.
This culture was also capable of clearly distinguishing between, on the one hand, the healthy and appropriate use of alcohol, and on the other hand, the excessive and unhealthy abuse of alcohol.
The fact that men who regularly enjoyed a glass of wine with supper were at the same time opposed to drunkenness was a fact so obvious that it did not need to be explained. A century later, however, that same fact was no longer obvious to many people, and required a great deal of explaining.
How and why did American society develop new attitudes toward alcohol?
One factor in this cultural shift was the distinction between various religious groups. The older and more established groups in North America were the Episcopalians (formerly Anglicans), the Lutherans, and the Roman Catholics. These groups had no objection to alcohol and forbade drunkenness.
Newer groups were represented initially and primarily by the Methodists. They argued for abstinence from alcohol in any form and in any amount. “Alcohol consumption,” writes historian Leah Rae Berk, “did not begin to decrease until the early 1830s,” indicating the era in which Methodist influence reached significant levels.
The Quakers and some branches of the Presbyterian Church also embraced the idea of abstaining from alcohol.
The anti-alcohol movement initially focused on distilled beverages, but eventually sought to eliminate all forms of alcohol.
From that point in time, it was less than a century until the passage of the eighteenth amendment to the Constitution prohibited the production, sale, and transport of almost all forms of alcohol in 1919. Leading up to that amendment was the growing Temperance Movement over the preceding century.
The goals of the Methodists and the Temperance Movement were clear: to reduce and eventually eliminate the consumption of alcohol.
Prior to the Prohibition Amendment, and after its repeal in 1933, the movement brought about incremental change in the forms of local and state laws. Such legislation limited when, where, and how alcohol could be produced, sold, or consumed, and who might consume it.
Their words and actions, however, were counterproductive. While the Temperance Movement was eventually successful in bringing about “blue laws” and finally Prohibition, it also set into motion the forbidden fruit effect.
The “forbidden fruit effect” is the desire for something which has been forbidden, precisely because it has been forbidden. In America during the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, alcohol was an unremarkable part of American life. Parents and grandparents often gave children small sips, or small cups, of beer or wine. There was no legal boundary — at age 18 or at age 21 — for purchasing or consuming. Public consumption was not noteworthy. Moderate consumption was as normal a part of daily life as eating bread. A glass of wine or beer at mealtime was so common that it was uninteresting.
When the Temperance Movement began to make itself felt, through regulations and especially through social and parental attitudes, alcohol became an object of fascination, especially for young people. Alcohol became desirable in the minds of young people because they were forbidden to have it. Possessing and consuming it became a goal.
The Temperance Movement created the exact thing which it hoped to avoid: binge drinking, increased drinking among the young, and a greater attraction to alcohol.
The social dynamic, especially in the form of parental attitudes, varied significantly across the various demographic segments of America. Parents who were very diligent to ensure that their children never drank alcohol, or at least never drank it until some arbitrary age, saw their children devise every scheme to obtain alcohol secretly. Such children were more likely to drink to excess, because they had never seen adults model moderate consumption. In places where a set age was culturally or legally enforced, it became a tradition to consume to excess on one’s birthday, having finally reached that age limit. By making it into a forbidden fruit, the movement had increased the focus on, and desire for, alcohol.
By contrast, parents who resisted the legal and social pressure, and who served their children small amounts of beer or wine at mealtimes, saw their children to be less likely to consume to excess, and generally less interested in alcohol.
Looking at the social and cultural development of North America, and especially that part of North America which would become the United States, there is a clear turning point: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were times in which alcohol consumption was unremarkable and moderate. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the rise of an alcohol phobia, and an attendant effort to impose legal and cultural restrictions designed ultimately to eliminate alcohol. This effort not only failed, but produced an increased fascination with alcohol, especially among young people.
