Program: Rum: The Spirit That Fueled The Revolution

Potent Potables: It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere!

The Illinois Society’s November program brought close to 50 Dames and guests together to learn more about how and why rum was a very big deal in early America. In its early heyday, rum played a central role in tavern life. Town taverns were often the gathering places where political discussion took place and ideas were exchanged.  Perhaps as a social lubricant, rum fomented the colonial discussions of freedom and taxation that coalesced around a republican vision for a new governing order, the United States.

Rum was an economic force in the American colonies, but tied to the contemptible practice of human slavery. Through the infamous Triangle Trade, rum made in New England was shipped to Africa, where it was exchanged for slaves; the ships then headed to the Caribbean, where slaves were traded for sugarcane and molasses; finally, the ships returned to the Northeast with molasses to be distilled into rum.  Domestic rum business of the era helped early New England prosper. With the coming of the Revolution, Caribbean molasses became harder to source, and soon whiskey — made from domestically grown grain — took hold as the fledgling nation’s spirit of choice.

Dames and Guests

Among those attending were Lee Allen,  Jim Barr,  Nancy Berchem, Ann Berkeley, Cami Burgess, Carla Carstens, Mary and Allen Carter, Mamie Case, Christy Coon, Judy Dold, Laura Ekstrom, Mary Fields, Carla Funk, Lee Gantz, Laurel Gray, Chris Gretchko, Minnie Marie Hayes, Paula Henderson, Julia Jackson, Jonathan Jensen, Judith Konen, Julia Kyle, Claudia Lane, Suzanne McCullagh, Susan Michaelis, Nancy Mowry, Mary O’Hara, Janet Paine, Tobin and Libbet  Richter, Ryan Ruskin, Ed Rutledge, Katherine Saville, Jackie Schlosser, Cammie Schumacher, Joan Shannahan, Diane Stillwell, Cary Stone-Greenstein, Cynthia and Steve Szczepanski, Judy Thomas, Elizabeth and Fritz Thomas, Anne Tobey, Noren Ungaretti, Judith Urban, Jane Velde, Ellen Waller, Cathy Webb, Sonya Wolsey-Paige, and Courtenay and Noel Wood.