A number of factors led to an explosion of alcohol consumption in the early 1800s. First, the British halted their participation in the American molasses/rum trade, objecting to its connections with slavery, while the federal government also began to tax rum in the 1790s. At the same time, the settlement of the so-called “corn belt” in the Midwest created large new supplies of corn, which was cheaper and more profitable to convert into whiskey than it was to transport great distances without spoiling.
Thus, as Rorabaugh notes: “Western farmers could make no profit shipping corn overland to eastern markets, so they distilled corn into ‘liquid assets.’ By the 1820s, whiskey sold for twenty-five cents a gallon, making it cheaper than beer, wine, coffee, tea, or milk.”
In short, whiskey was extremely cheap and extremely available, and American consumption soared as a result. As Okrent describes in Last Call, the number of distilleries in the nation increased fivefold, to 14,000 in between 1790 and 1810. He writes that “in cities it was widely understood that common workers would fail to come to work on Mondays, staying home to wrestle with the echoes and aftershocks of a weekend binge. By 1830, the tolling of a town bell at 11 a.m. and again at 4 p.m. marked ‘grog time.’”
Even the English, no slouches in terms of consumption themselves (#25 in the world today, and 26 percent higher than the U.S.), noticed how sloppy their American cousins were getting. In English traveler Frederick Marryat’s A Diary in America, published in 1837, the writer remarks that the Americans seemingly drank for every conceivable occasion:
“I am sure the Americans can fix nothing without a drink. If you meet, you drink; if you part, you drink; if you make acquaintance, you drink; if you close a bargain you drink, they quarrel in their drink, and they make it up with a drink. They drink because it is hot; they drink because it is cold. If successful in elections, they drink and rejoice; if not, they drink and swear; they begin to drink early in the morning, they leave off late at night; they commence it early in life, and they continue it, until they soon drop into the grave.” – Frederick Marryat
By 1830, alcohol consumption reached its peak at a truly outlandish 7 gallons of ethanol a year per capita. Via Okrent:
“Staggering” is the appropriate word for the consequences of this sort of drinking. In modern terms, those seven gallons are the equivalent of 1.7 bottles of a standard 80-proof liquor per person, per week—nearly 90 bottles a year for every adult in the nation, even with abstainers (and there were millions of them) factored in. Once again figuring per capita, multiply the amount Americans drink today by three and you’ll have an idea of what much of the nineteenth century was like.
As if it really needs saying, 7 gallons of ethanol per year, per capita, is an insane number. Consider this: My significant other and I both drink alcohol. If we were drinking at 1830 levels, we would be plowing through roughly 3.4 standard, 750 ml bottles of Jim Beam White Label Bourbon per week, in a single household. Our livers would be sending us every conceivable manner of distress signal, assuming they didn’t immediately shut down.
So, how much do Americans drink now, in the modern world? Well, the best figure for the current American alcohol consumption rate seems to be roughly 2.42 gallons of ethanol per year, per capita—still a healthy figure, but nearly three times less per capita than in 1830.
At this point, you may be thinking something along the lines of “But does anywhere in the world drink as heavily as Americans did in 1830?” And it sure sounds like the answer is no—not even close, in fact. Today, the highest per capita alcohol consumption in the world belongs to the Eastern European nation of Belarus, which consumes roughly 4.62 gallons of ethanol per year, per capita. This is all to say the following: Even the booziest place on Earth in 2018 drinks at a rate that is only 66 percent as boisterous as Americans were doing in 1830.