Lincoln had little use for liquor

 

February 8, 2022



By Tom Emery

A current television commercial for a well-known tequila brand depicts Abraham Lincoln, holding a drink and partying with other past celebrities. In reality, Lincoln had little use for the stuff.

Lincoln rarely drank liquor, and spoke out strongly on the ill effects of alcohol in society. Friends and relatives all marveled at his dislike for drink, from his younger days all the way to the White House.

It was an era when Americans drank freely, and many historians have written that “whiskey flowed like water.” One source reports that Americans drank three times more per capita in 1830 as compared to today. Though the consumption rate had dropped by mid-century amid a growing temperance movement, the presence of alcohol in society was indelible.

Lincoln, however, wanted no part of it. His stepmother, Sarah, once remarked that “he never drank whiskey or other strong drink.” Though he was “temperate in all things,” Sarah coyly added “too much so, I thought sometimes.”

Lincoln delivered a searing lecture against alcohol at a temperance meeting in Springfield on Feb. 22, 1842, declaring “In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of appetite (for liquor), than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have.” Scholar Mark Neely writes that Lincoln thought alcoholism was “a ‘bondage’ to be ‘broken,’ a vile ‘slavery’ to be ‘manumitted,’ and a ‘tyrant’ to be ‘deposed.’ Its use brought ‘want,’ ‘disease,’ and ‘sorrow.’”

In addition to its social hazards, Lincoln simply did not like the taste and aftereffects of alcohol. William Herndon, who was Lincoln’s third law partner and a well-known alcoholic, later remembered that Lincoln said “I am entitled to little credit for not drinking because I hate the stuff. It is unpleasant and always leaves me flabby and undone.”

However, Lincoln’s convictions may have been more personal than political. He was not a consistent supporter of temperance during his four terms in the Illinois legislature from 1834-42, and he was not active in prohibition movements of the era.

Lincoln was also not above buying alcohol to suit his needs. During his 1846 run for Congress, he joked that the campaign “cost me nothing, and my only outlay was 75 cents for a barrel of cider, which some farmhands insisted I should treat them to.”

In 1862, Lincoln answered critics of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, whose use of alcohol has often been exaggerated, by cracking, “I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals."

Still, he rarely saw a need to partake on his own. One of his White House secretaries, John Nicolay, wrote that Lincoln “never drank” with the possible exception that “sometimes at his own dinner table, and especially at state dinners, did sip a little wine, but even that in a merely perfunctory way, as complying with a social custom, and not as doing it from any desire…or habit of his own.”

During his New Salem days, many believe Lincoln ended a partnership with William Berry in a general store over a tavern license.

In that era, “grocery stores” were places where liquor was sold by the drink. By obtaining a tavern license, the Berry-Lincoln store, which also sold alcohol in bulk, became a “grocery.” The license, issued in March 1833, was in Berry’s handwriting. Interestingly, Lincoln sold his share in the store to Berry the next month.

A quarter-century later, the issue came back in the first of seven debates with Stephen A. Douglas, at Ottawa, Ill. on Aug. 21, 1858. Douglas declared that Lincoln had been “a flourishing grocery-keeper” at New Salem who could “ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town together.”

The statement clearly annoyed Lincoln, who replied that “the Judge is woefully at fault about his friend Lincoln being a grocery-keeper…Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world.”

Tom Emery is a freelance writer and historical researcher from Carlinville, Ill. He may be reached at 217-710-8392 or [email protected].

 

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