Spirited Republic: A Tour Through America’s History with Booze

ABC News(WASHINGTON) — U.S. history does not walk a straight line when it comes to the country’s relationship with alcohol.

Americans have fluctuated between times when whiskey was as common to the breakfast table as coffee and other periods when an evening cocktail was considered a social taboo.

The National Archives Museum is now raising a toast to the nation’s complicated history with booze with the debut of a new exhibit, aptly titled “Spirited Republic.”

“The amount of alcohol we consumed went way up as the society became more individualistic, and the frontier became more prominent,” curator Bruce Bustard told ABC News/Yahoo! News on a sneak peek tour of the exhibit, which opens Friday.

Standing in front of a display that measures how many gallons worth of alcohol the average American drank over time, the year 1830 towers above the rest.

“In 1830, we consumed about 7.1 gallons of alcohol per person who was of legal age,” Bustard said.

To put the 1830 figure in perspective, that’s about two-and-half times today’s national average.

Though it’s a staggering number when compared to today’s consumption levels, Bustard explains that we weren’t a nation of stumbling drunkards. Instead, alcohol was integrated into daily life at the time.

“You’d start with a wee dram at breakfast, and then you’d have something at perhaps a mid-morning break of your labor, you’d have whiskey with lunch at the noon hour, you might have an ale, and then in the evening you’d have a night cap,” Bustard said. “It was not binge drinking. It was integrated into the lives of their community and their individual work and family.”

Drinking even had a role to play in lubricating American democracy in those early days.

One painting in the exhibit shows a community enjoying alcoholic merriment on Election Day, when Bustard said it was common practice for politicians to provide booze to those who gave them a vote.

“That was the one of the traditions, and sometimes it would come down to who provided the most alcohol to get out the vote, who would win the election,” he said.

But by the mid-19th Century, a powerful temperance movement had risen up in opposition of the free and generous flow of alcohol.

Bustard points out a 10-foot-long petition that called for ending the “spirit ration” for sailors in the U.S. Navy.

“Sailors were allowed to have a certain amount of spirits each day, and many people in the temperance movement thought this was going to lead to an unprofessional Navy,” he explained.

Also on display is a post card that was sent to Congress by a group lobbying in favor of Prohibition. “It reads, ‘I hate the liquor traffic for the grief that it causes womankind and for the shadow that throws upon the lives of children,’” Bustard recited.

“It was a time before the social safety net,” he continued. “If your father or if your husband became an alcoholic, he can lose his job, he can become ill, and he could die, and that could leave you without ways of supporting yourself.”

But as you continue through the exhibit, and pass through a room dedicated to the era of Prohibition, you come out the other side to a nation celebrating the re-legalization of alcohol’s sale and production.

As evidence, there’s a wall filled with a colorful display of various 1930s beer and spirits labels.

“There are familiar ones: Southern Comfort, Bacardi,” Bustard said, gesturing toward the wall. “But there are also some wonderful ones like Picnic Beer, Night Cap Whiskey, which is described as being the whiskey with a glow, and the cap actually did glow.”

The exhibit ends with a tour through the second half of the 20th Century, when the nation’s relationship with alcohol leveled out and turned toward raising public awareness about the dangers of drunk driving.

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