George Barrell Cheever: Deacon Giles' distillery (1844)

About 1587, the French began the distillation of brandy from wine Over the north of Europe distilleries have frightfully multiplied. In Sweden alone, with three millions of people, 160,000 distilleries have been run; most of them, however, have been small, and more than 50,000 have been closed by the temperance reformation.

In America, the business of distillation commenced at Boston about 1700, with some merchants trading at the West Indies, who perceiving that the molasses at the sugar-houses was thrown away, caused it to be purchased by their agents and sent to Boston, where it was entered free of duty and speedily converted into New England rum. The business so increased that it was soon extended to the Dutch and Danish colonies -r and molasses was purchased in exchange for horses, mules, lumber, fish, &c. In 1715, the British islands complained of the cutting off their supplies, and the diminution of their trade. Fierce disputes followed, and in 1733 a duty of 6d. was laid on molasses imported into the colonies from any foreign port or place. But the New Englanders eluded it. A British fleet was sent to enforce it, and violent conflicts continued about the Molasses Act till the war of the Revolution.

The article thus manufactured, was soon extensively used by the Continental colonies in carrying on the Indian trade and its fisheries. Anderspn in his origin of Commerce, remarks, "The consumption of rum in New England is so great, that an author on the subject asserts, that there have been 20,000 barrels of French molasses manufactured into rum at Boston in one year, so vast is the demand for that liquor. And Sir William Douglass in a work printed at Boston in 1775 says, " that spirits (spiritus ardentes), not abovera century ago, were used only as official cordials, but now are become an epidemical plague, being a pernicious ingredient in most of our beverages."

In 1794, distilleries, chiefly for grain, had become numerous in the States, especially in Pennsylvania, a rich grain-growing region. Congress laid a duty upon spirits distilled in the country; but in the four western counties of Pennsylvania the collection of the duty was violently resisted in an open rebellion, which was suppressed only by the energy of Washington and the appearance of an armed force.

In 1815, the number of distilleries had increased to 40,000, consuming in successive years more than ten million bushels of bread-stuffs, and pouring over the land more than thirty millions of gallons of ardent spirit distilled from grain, and more than ten million gallons distilled from molasses.

In 1832, Judge Cranch, of Washington city, computed the distilled spirit consumed in the United States, much of which, indeed, was imported, at seventy-two million gallons, or six gallons to every man, woman, and child ; costing the nation, in purchase of the liquor, loss of the labor of drunkards, support of paupers, criminals, &c, 94,525,000 dollars annually, without taking into account loss from shipwrecks, fires caused by intemperance, costs of litigation, &c, &c.