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The author’s disapproval of the tavern is clear, yet the very things which he or she abhors demand further examination. Tavern patrons were more generous while in their cups. In fact it was noted that, “people urge[d] each other into the habit of intemperance.”23 The shared experience of the tavern entails far more than this author could ever understand. It transcended alcohol consumption and inebriation. This shared experience and the republican virtues extolled by the tavern spilled from the institution into the streets and into the hearts of its patrons. James Flint, a Scotsman, traveled through the area in 1820 noting that:
accustomed to mix with a diversity of company at tavern, elections, and other places of public resort, they do not well brook to be excluded from private conversations. On such occasions, they exclaim ‘This is a free country’ or a ‘land of liberty,’ adding a profane oath.24
Within the walls of the tavern, one could speak openly without fear of social position or ostracization from society. In fact they took umbrage to exclusion from discussions, public or private. Such social equality prompted noted alcohol historian W.J. Rorabaugh’s exclamation that, “All were equal before the bottle.”25
Despite the egalitariansm aspect of the tavern promoting republican values, it would be irresponsible to write an essay promoting the redeeming social and political qualities of the tavern without considering the social ills wrought by public drinking houses during the early Republic. Rural ordinaries functioned as escapes from socially confining shackles and a place to espouse overtly republican, egalitarian ideals, but did so while promoting “a drunkard’s life, a drunkard’s grave, and a drunkard’s place in hell”.26
Emily Nash kept a diary during her childhood on the Western Reserve. In it she recorded her abhorrence of liquor and her increasingly frequent incidents dealing with those under its influence. In 1824, Nash and her beau, Peter Beals, traveled by sleigh to visit neighbors. Nash described the resulting events in her journal:
I notised that Peter was fond of stopping at every tavern to get a glass of sling [an iced drink made with liquor, water, sugar, and usually lemon juice]. On the way home he stoped at every tavern. He began to feel lively and could not talk plain.27
Peter Beals’ frequent patronage of the taprooms on the Western Reserve ended the budding relationship between two young lovers. Nash concluded that, “he was fond of sling – too fond I think. I shall dispence with his company after the sleigh ride.”28
Perhaps even more telling is a report from “Cottager”, the pen-name of a regular columnist in the Western Intelligencer. Cottager relates the following story. “Two days since, while passing a bar-room door, I hear considerable loud talk, and profanity; the landlord said, ‘— if you do not leave the house, I will horsewhip you.’”29 The unfortunate drunkard stumbled out of that particular tavern and into another whose keeper followed through on this threat. The man “benumbed by liquor...till quickened by the lashes which he received from the whip of the landlord.”30 It would be difficult to somehow spin this incident into a pro-tavern argument. Keepers are vilified here as brutal men that both serve the intoxicating beverage and then punish their patrons for its excessive consumption. Drunkenness, while an unromantic byproduct of tavern life, can be viewed in a positive manner and was by many observers in that it promoted republican freedoms and social leveling.
