“Brewing and consuming alcohol has long been regarded as a basic right in the United States” -Elaine Landau

During the eighteenth century the acceptance of the consumption of alcohol had already begun to divide Americans. At this time, Americans drank a fair amount of alcohol. In 1790, the average American drank 5.8 gallons of pure alcohol a year (O’Brien). Early Americans went as far as to rebel against the government for their liberty to purchase alcohol free of taxes. Scholar Elaine Landau dates the presumed “right” to consume alcohol back to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 to 1794, which was a protest by farmers against the taxation of whiskey (Evans 118). Landau argues that “brewing and consuming alcohol has long been regarded as a basic right in the United States” (Evans 118).

“Famous whiskey insurrection in Pennsylvania” (New York Public Library)

Despite this revolutionary fervor to fight for the right to drink without the burden of taxation, the fight for temperance was born in 1800, which was based in part on the Puritans’ spiritual striving for purity and abstinence. In this year, churches began to introduce the “abstinence pledge” to restrict the consumption of alcohol (Movement). The abstinence pledge marks the beginning of the pushback from churches against the unrestrained drinking culture, and the movement garnered support in the following decades.