American Whiskey History
Impact of the Civil War
The 28-year-old Hesgart lives in the mansion of Tara Manor in Georgia. She inherited her mother's French aristocratic ancestry and her father's rough and slightly exaggerated Irish facial features, although they are not very harmonious. On a sunny afternoon on April 15, 1861, Hestgart and a pair of twin brothers sat in the shady corridor of the manor. All the men's topics revolved around the upcoming war...
"Gone with the Wind" (Gone with the Wind), published by Margaret M. Mitchell in 1936, is one of the best-selling novels in the history of American literature. The film "Gone with the Wind" adapted from the original work was released in 1939 It was released and became a classic in the history of Hollywood movies. I guess most readers are very unfamiliar with the novel or the movie, but if you have seen this old movie, which is over 80 years old, you will never forget the last scene, where Hestgart stands, played by Vivien Leigh. On the steps, I watched Rhett Butler, played by William Clark Gable, turn around and leave. In despair, a look of perseverance rekindled on his face. At that time, the failure of the Confederate States of America in the South had been revealed, and the states to which it belonged were in ruins. Withering, the four-year Civil War is coming to an end, and the federal government is preparing to pick up the pieces.
Abraham Lincoln won the support of northern and western states in the presidential election in November 1860 and was elected as the sixteenth president of the United States and the first Republican president. However, among the 34 states in the United States, 15 states were southern states with cotton as the main economic body, which required a large number of black slaves to cultivate and pick cotton, so Lincoln lost 10 of them. These southern states believed that the Republican Party's intention to abolish slavery would not only infringe on constitutional rights but also strangle their economic power. Therefore, before Lincoln took office, seven states immediately declared independence and formed the federal government (Confederacy), while the other eight states temporarily refused. split, but four states also joined the federal camp the following year.
In order to maintain unity, Lincoln declared in his speech that his government would not start a civil war, and spoke directly to the South (Southern countries) in an attempt to calm their panic about the abolition of slavery. It was only then that the federal army occupied many forts in the southern federal territory, causing the southern army to open fire on Fort Sumter (Fort Sumter) on April 12, 1861, which opened the prelude to the American Civil War.
So when Hescar, who had just begun to fall in love, was teasing two men in her comfortable southern home, the war in the distance had already been ignited. At first, the Union army achieved significant results on the Western Front, but continued in the East, so the outcome in the first year after the war was uncertain. President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, turning the war into a battle to end slavery. As the federal army destroyed the Confederate Navy, swept through the Western Front and occupied Orleans, New York.
The following year, the famous southern general General Lee (Robert E. Lee) launched his army to conquer the North for the second time. He fought with the federal army for three days at Gettysburg. Both sides invested a total of 160,000 troops, but more than 50,000 were still killed. This was the worst battle in the Civil War. A brutal battle. After this battle, the Northern Army won a decisive victory, ending General Lee's intention of another Northern Expedition. In 1864, he was elected as the 18th President of the United States. His face is now printed on the 50-dollar bill. He launched an increasingly severe naval blockade, mobilized resources to attack the Confederate army from all directions, occupied Atlanta and pushed to the seaside. . The final battle was the Battle of APPomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. General Lee surrendered to General Grant. The Civil War ended. About 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers died on both sides, which exceeded the death toll of the U.S. military in all other wars. sum.
In this war, Kentucky, which was sandwiched between the northern and southern camps, adopted a wait-and-see attitude at first because it supported slavery and the southern states were originally the main markets for selling whiskey. Even because it could buy wine to both sides at the same time, Some distillers made huge war profits. However, President Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky, believed that this intermediate state was very important. If it was lost, he would probably lose the support of Missouri or Maryland one after another, so he tried his best to win over it. Sure enough, the year after the war began, most states and territories fell to the Northern Alliance, but some people still favored the South, such as James 'Jim' B. Beam, the fourth generation of the Jim Beam family, who was born in 1864, and his middle name was Beauregard. It is used to commemorate General Beauregard, the commander of the Confederate Army in the Battle of Fort Sumter; in addition, the Samuels family, before they founded Maker's Mark, had been secretly supporting the underground guerrilla group Quantrill's Raiders, and this guerrilla group This team was the last army of the Confederacy to surrender.
As for Tennessee, which is located south of Kentucky, it was not one of the first seven states to secede, and originally leaned towards the federal government. However, after the war at Fort Sumter, the Tennesseans considered this a threat to (southern brothers), so Voted to secede, becoming the last state to join the Confederacy. Because it is located on the north-south border, it was the main battlefield second only to Virginia in the entire war, and it was also the only state where battles occurred in every county, including the Battle of Appomattox Court House, where General Lee defeated and surrendered. Happened in Tennessee. As it should be, and their sympathy for Southern gangs, Tennesseans have not understood Kentuckians for a long time, thinking that their change of flag from swing neutrality to the North was a betrayal. This historical reason has become their disapproval of the name of bourbon. One of the reasons why (Tennessee Whiskey) was created.
The war is bound to severely damage industries, whether it is agriculture, industry, commerce or transportation, and of course the whiskey industry. As for the latter, the foundation was originally laid by agriculture. Once a war broke out, grain and grass became the primary logistical supply. Although distilled spirits were extremely useful in war, in addition to boosting the spirits of soldiers and numbing the pain of witnessing the casualties of their compatriots, they also It can be used as a substitute for medicine and has been a necessary military material since ancient times. However, both the farmland and the farming population have been greatly reduced, and the harvested grain must be used as food first. There are fewer and fewer grains that can be diverted to produce whiskey.
However, the situation between the North and the South is still different. The Northern Confederacy was relatively wealthy before the war, especially in the east coast states where commerce was developed. Most of the troops were stationed in military camps close to cities. After controlling the shipping ports, they could import molasses to make rum. Moreover, the federal states of California and Maryland , Ohio and Illinois are all traditional distilling states. In addition, after General Grant controlled most of Kentucky in 1863, he ensured a worry-free supply of whiskey.
Compared with the Northern Federation, the agricultural products of the states of the Southern Federation are mainly cotton, and they originally lack the tradition of making wine from grains. After the war broke out, drinking spirits was banned as a military drug, and stills were forcibly confiscated, which were dissolved and used to cast weapons. Lacking both grain and supplies from Kentucky, there was a severe shortage of whiskey and prices skyrocketed. According to records, the price of southern whiskey was 25 cents per gallon in 1860, and soared to 35 US dollars in 1863. Even if it could be purchased, the quality was so poor that it could often only be replaced by cleaning solvent, so it was called (coffin varnish) or (rust remover Chain-lightning).
Most of these so-called "wines" came from private brewing and were sold privately through soldiers. Due to the lack of containers for holding wine, soldiers may have to use the barrel of a gun as a straw to drink the wine directly from the barrel. In this poor quality environment, the distilling industry was strictly controlled by the federal government, but each state also planned to keep the finished whiskey in its own hands as much as possible and was unwilling to accept the boycott of the federal government, such as Virginia. The state stipulated that distillers were not allowed to sign contracts with the federal government, otherwise they would be severely punished.
