The Alcoholic Republic

It seems to me that once the liquor was being taxed the Americans did not want to pay the high prices and that is why the consumption probably dropped.
             Along with distilled spirits, Americans drank weaker fermented beverages such as: beer (5%), hard cider (10%), and wine (18%). "Until 1850 annual per capita consumption of commercial beer at not time reached 2 gallons, and it was not until the Civil War that it raised dramatically toward today's rate of more than 18 gallons" (9). Hard cider was a very popular drink especially in Virginia. The consumption of hard cider was an annual per capita of 15 or more gallons. Wine on the other hand was not being consumed as much as beer or hard cider. Between 1770 and 1870 less than a third of a gallon was being drank.
             Drinking in the young nation was obviously hearty, not to say excessive. "However, the charge made by alarmed clergymen and statesmen that in this respect America had outstripped every other nation was exaggerated" (10). During the early nineteenth-century the intake of alcohol in the United States with any other countries shows that Americans drank more than the English, Irish, or Prussians, but almost the same as the Scots or French, and less than the Swedes. Because Scotland, Sweden, and the United States were agricultural, rural, lightly populated, and geographically isolated from foreign markets they had stronger holds on distilled spirits. In Ireland and Prussia their economies lacked surplus grain and could not support a high level of distilled spirits production. In England taxes on distilled spirits were so high that people switched from whiskey and gin to beer. "Although through early nineteenth-century Americans did not drink more relatively affluent Europeans of that era, by modern standards they drank a lot" (11).
             Although men were the heaviest drinkers, women were not faint-heated abstainers. "The subject received scant attention because it was "too delicate" to be discussed" (12).