Updated: May 8, 2026
Introduction
In this interview: “What role did taverns, and let me just add on pubs, play in the American Revolution? … I would argue they were perhaps the most fundamental spaces in the coming of the revolution.”
Watch this segment in the video below (00:28:58).
Taverns and pubs were among the central gathering places of British colonial society. They were imperial spaces for socialization, political communication, religious activities, employment, lodging, and much more. Colonial taverns and pubs were also unmistakably British establishments — often carrying British names, symbols, customs, and political loyalties. Yet many eventually became centers of revolutionary resistance against the British Empire.
Why were these places so central to colonial life?
Why did political organizations meet there?
Why did taverns become hubs of communication, debate, and resistance during the imperial crisis?
What role did taverns play in organizing revolutionary activity?
Why did the Sons of Liberty gather there?
Why were liberty poles raised outside taverns?
And why did these establishments become so closely tied to the coming of the American Revolution?
At the same time, what do taverns reveal about class division, slavery, violence, exclusion, and everyday life in revolutionary America?
Were these places really about liberty alone?
Or did they also reflect the contradictions of colonial society itself?
In this interview, Dr. Vaughn Scribner explains how taverns became some of the most important political and social spaces in colonial America and the American Revolution. He discusses how colonists used taverns to exchange information, organize resistance movements, debate politics, coordinate boycotts, and build revolutionary networks long before modern communication systems existed. We also examine the contradictions embedded within tavern culture itself — including slavery, mob violence, elite exclusivity, and the transformation of British American identity in the years leading to independence.
How to Use This Post
Use this post as reference guide to the American Revolution through the lens of this interview and the broader Analyzing American Revolution program (AARevolution). Navigate using the interactive table of contents above and the timestamps below (in gray) to discover how this interview deepens the story of the Revolution—and to explore how the program unfolds: its key themes, insights, image gallery, scholars list, history quizzes, and related interviews across the series.
Watch the full interview (timestamps below)
Taverns Were the Communication Networks of Colonial America
By the mid-eighteenth century, taverns had become deeply embedded in the daily life of the American colonies. They served as gathering places for travelers, merchants, laborers, politicians, sailors, and local residents. In cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, taverns operated as centers of news exchange, political discussion, business activity, lodging, and public interaction. In rural areas, they often functioned as general stores, meeting spaces, and waypoints for travelers moving between towns.
Dr. Vaughn Scribner explains that taverns were especially important because they concentrated people, information, and communication in a single location. Newspapers circulated there. Pamphlets were read aloud there. Political debates unfolded there. Colonists gathered in taverns to discuss taxation, trade restrictions, imperial policies, and local grievances long before the outbreak of armed conflict.
These establishments also reflected the social hierarchy of colonial America itself. Some taverns catered to wealthy merchants and political elites through private rooms, subscription-based coffeehouses, and exclusive clubs. Others were rougher and often unlicensed spaces frequented by sailors, laborers, enslaved people, Native Americans, and the urban poor. Taverns therefore became what Dr. Scribner describes as “microcosms of empire” — spaces where colonists negotiated class, status, politics, commerce, and British identity in everyday life.
During the imperial crisis of the 1760s and 1770s, this existing tavern network became politically significant. Groups such as the Sons of Liberty met in taverns, organized resistance campaigns there, circulated anti-British material, coordinated boycotts, and mobilized support against imperial policies such as the Stamp Act. Many taverns that once celebrated loyalty to the British crown ironically evolved into centers of revolutionary resistance during the American Revolution.
Central Question
This conversation raises a central question:
How did taverns and pubs — ordinary, commercial, and often deeply British public spaces — become central sites for revolutionary communication, political mobilization, social conflict, and resistance to the British Empire?
About My 214th Guest Scholar: Dr. Vaughn Scribner
Dr. Vaughn Scribner is a professor of British American history at the University of Central Arkansas, where he teaches (1) British history, (2) Colonial & Revolutionary America, (3) the Enlightenment, (4) the Atlantic slave trade and (5) historical methods.
His scholarship reflects his broad interests, as evident in the following works:
- Under Alien Skies: Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America, a book that won The Society of the Cincinnati Prize;
- Merepeople: A Human History, a book about humanity’s obsession with merfolk since ancient times; and
- Inn Civility: Urban Taverns and Early American Civil Society, which is the subject of this interview.
To learn more about Dr. Scribner, you can visit her academic homepage and personal website.
AAR Essential Insights
Although the full video and transcript of my conversation with Dr. Scribner are included in this post, I’ve selected and summarized several insights that I found particularly revealing and worth emphasizing. These moments — some surprising, others that challenge familiar assumptions — help us see taverns and the American Revolution in a different light.
By the way, these insights are my own takes and interpretations from the interview. For Dr. Scribner’s perspective and exact framing, please watch the interview above and view the transcript below in the corresponding sections.
Taverns Were Far More Than Drinking Establishments
When many Americans hear the word “tavern,” they probably imagine a colonial bar — a place where people drank ale, exchanged gossip, and maybe argued about politics. But what struck me in this part of the interview is how incomplete that picture really is. Taverns were not peripheral spaces in colonial America. They were foundational institutions woven into everyday life.
Dr. Vaughn Scribner explains that “tavern” was essentially a blanket term for a wide range of public spaces. Some operated out of private homes or simple drinking rooms. Others were elite coffeehouses designed for wealthy merchants and politicians. In rural areas, taverns functioned simultaneously as inns, stores, meeting places, transportation hubs, and centers of local exchange.
That matters because it changes how we think about colonial society itself. Taverns were not merely places people visited. They were part of the operating infrastructure of British America. Even the comparison Dr. Scribner references — that the Spanish built churches while the English built taverns — reveals something deeper about British colonial culture: public sociability, commerce, and informal gathering spaces were deeply embedded in Britain’s expansion across the Atlantic.
What also stands out is the fragmentation within tavern culture itself. Colonial elites increasingly gathered in exclusive coffeehouses and “city taverns,” while unlicensed taverns often served people excluded from respectable public spaces — including enslaved people, Native Americans, indentured servants, and poorer laborers. So even at this early stage of the interview, taverns already reveal the contradictions of colonial America itself: hierarchy alongside sociability, openness alongside exclusion, public life alongside inequality.
Watch this segment in the video above (02:57, 21:19)
Taverns vs. Pubs
The distinction matters because “pub” and “tavern” were not always interchangeable terms. As Dr. Scribner explains, in Britain the “public house” was the broad umbrella term for licensed drinking establishments, while alehouses, taverns, and inns carried different social functions and clientele. But in colonial America, those distinctions blurred considerably, and “tavern” evolved into a much broader catch-all term for public drinking, lodging, sociability, and political life.
Watch this segment in the video above (06:52, 15:22)
Taverns Were Public — But Not Equal
One of the misconceptions Dr. Scribner pushes against is the romantic idea that colonial taverns were socially equal spaces where everyone simply gathered together as fellow patriots. In reality, elites constantly tried to separate themselves from the “rabble” through private rooms, subscription-only taverns, exclusive coffeehouses, and even physical barriers inside taverns themselves. Taverns brought different classes into proximity with one another, but colonial society still carried its hierarchies, exclusions, and anxieties directly into these public spaces.
Watch this segment in the video above (05:19, 10:06, 22:10, 48:37)
A Royal Disappointment
Watch this segment in the video above (39:21)
Taverns as “Microcosms of Empire”
One of the most important points Dr. Scribner makes in this interview is that colonial taverns were not originally anti-British spaces. Quite the opposite. They were deeply British institutions tied to the culture, commerce, identity, and social life of the British Empire itself. Colonists gathered there to drink imported rum punch, celebrate the monarchy, debate politics, consume British goods, and, as Dr. Scribner puts it, “feel British.”
I think modern Americans sometimes underestimate just how strongly many colonists identified with Britain before the imperial crisis escalated. Dr. Scribner argues that colonists often tried to prove their Britishness even more intensely than people living in Britain itself. They were thousands of miles away from London, surrounded by rival empires, Indigenous nations, and an unfamiliar environment, and taverns became one of the public spaces where this imperial identity was constantly performed and reinforced.
Even the rum punch example reveals how interconnected this world really was. The rum came from the Caribbean, the sugar from the West Indies, the spices from Asia, and the citrus from across the Atlantic world. Taverns were therefore not just local drinking establishments. They were gathering places built upon imperial trade, imperial consumption, and imperial identity. Which makes the later transformation all the more striking: many of these same taverns eventually became spaces against empire during the American Revolution.
Watch this segment in the video above (15:22, 18:59)
Taverns As Revolutionary Infrastructure
One of the most striking arguments in this interview is Dr. Scribner’s claim that taverns were “perhaps the most fundamental spaces in the coming of the revolution.” That is a remarkable statement when you think about it. We tend to associate the American Revolution with congresses, pamphlets, battlefields, and famous political leaders. But Dr. Scribner’s point is that before organized revolutionary institutions fully emerged, taverns already existed as dense communication networks embedded inside everyday colonial life.
When the Stamp Act crisis erupted in 1765, angry colonists did not need to invent new gathering spaces. They simply went where they already gathered: taverns, pubs, coffeehouses, and public houses. There they drank, exchanged news, read newspapers and pamphlets aloud, debated politics, organized boycotts, identified local British officials, and gradually transformed taverns into centers of resistance. In many ways, taverns functioned as the communication infrastructure of the revolutionary movement long before modern political parties, activist networks, or mass media existed.
What also stands out is how deeply British these early protests still were. The Sons of Liberty did not initially see themselves as anti-British revolutionaries. They believed they were defending the liberties of Britons against imperial abuses. Liberty trees, liberty poles, anti-Stamp Act meetings, and tavern protests emerged not outside British identity, but from within it. Which makes the later transformation even more dramatic: many taverns that once displayed portraits of King George III eventually turned those portraits upside down, renamed themselves after George Washington, and became active spaces of revolutionary mobilization and extra-legal violence during the war itself.
Watch this segment in the video above (00:28:46, 00:32:51)
Raleigh Tavern
Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Virginia.
Drawing by Benson Lossing, from the 1860 edition of his Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution. Public Domain. According to Lossing, this illustration shows the interior of the Apollo Room as it appeared during his visit in the 1850s, just before the building was renovated (note the tools on the floor). The Raleigh Tavern burned down in 1859, but you can see its full reconstruction today at the Colonial Williamsburg living-history museum.
Yes, taverns played a crucial role in the American Revolution—often serving as centers of political discourse, planning revolutionary actions (such as the Boston Tea Party), spreading news through pamphlets and declarations, mobilizing citizens, and even hosting meetings that shaped early colonial cooperation. They essentially functioned as the social and communication network of the budding revolution.
Did Taverns Make Colonists Feel A Bit British?
One point in this interview that I found surprisingly modern is Dr. Scribner’s argument that taverns across the colonies often tried to create a familiar and recognizable experience for travelers moving from colony to colony. He even compares them — cautiously — to something like McDonald’s: different local variations, but a broadly recognizable environment meant to feel familiar whether you were in New York, Williamsburg, or Charleston. That matters because colonial America was still geographically fragmented, decentralized, and slow-moving. Taverns helped create a shared British American culture across that fragmented world.
The South also reveals how uneven the coming of the Revolution actually was. Dr. Scribner points out that many southern colonists, especially wealthy landowners, were slower to embrace rebellion than people in places like Boston. In Virginia and the Carolinas, fears surrounding slavery — especially after Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation offered freedom to enslaved people who fled to the British — became one of the major forces pushing many white southerners toward the revolutionary cause.
And then there is Fraunces Tavern in New York City — still standing today near Wall Street — where George Washington delivered his farewell to his officers in 1783. But even here, the story becomes more complicated once you look closely. At the same moment Washington was celebrating victory inside Fraunces Tavern, New York City also contained the largest population of free Black people in America, many of whom had gained freedom by fleeing to the British during the war. History constantly does this. The deeper you go into these familiar Revolutionary stories, the more layered and unsettling they become.
Fraunces Tavern
On December 4, 1783 — just days after the British evacuation of New York City — General George Washington gathered his officers at Fraunces Tavern for an emotional farewell: “With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you.” Among those present were Baron von Steuben and Benjamin Tallmadge. Public Domain.
The Interview (S1E17): Adel Aali and Vaughn Scribner
In our conversation, Dr. Scribner addresses key questions about taverns, pubs and the American Revolution. Below is a structured outline to help you navigate the discussion, followed by the full transcript.
Outlline
Use the in-depth outline below to follow the discussion and navigate key moments in the interview.
Click for Timestamped Outline
- Selected Highlights (00:00)
- Guest Introduction (01:17)
- Defining Taverns and Public Houses in Colonial America (03:03)
- Taverns as “Blanket Terms” for Public Drinking Spaces (03:09)
- Taverns Operating Out of Private Homes and Riverbank Caves (03:23)
- “The First Thing the English Built Was a Tavern” (04:02)
- Licensed vs. Unlicensed Taverns (04:45)
- Taverns for Enslaved People, Native Americans, and Indentured Servants (05:04)
- Coffeehouses and “City Taverns” for Colonial Elites (05:26)
- Subscriber-Only Taverns and Private Clubs (05:50)
- Rural Taverns as Inns, Stores, and Community Centers (06:11)
- Taverns, Pubs, Alehouses, and Inns in the British Empire (06:52)
- Public Houses as Licensed Drinking Establishments (07:06)
- Alehouses for the “Lowering Sorts” (07:23)
- Taverns for the Middle Classes (07:39)
- Inns for Travelers and Lodging (07:58)
- Unlicensed Taverns, Rum, and Colonial Drinking Culture (08:13)
- Price Controls on Alcohol in the Colonies (09:03)
- “Bawdy Houses” and Underground Drinking Spaces (09:25)
- Rum Punch as the Most Popular Colonial Beverage (11:46)
- Water, Sugar, Citrus, Spice, and Rum (11:58)
- Colonial Elites and Class Hypocrisy About Drinking – Turning Point (12:45)
- Dr. Alexander Hamilton and Tavern Culture in the Colonies (09:58)
- Dr. Alexander Hamilton of Edinburgh and Annapolis (10:06)
- Gentleman’s Clubs, Wit, and Colonial Sociability (10:38)
- Hamilton’s Disgust at Drunken Tavern Customers (10:58)
- Tavern Owners as Businessmen Serving All Customers (11:23)
- Lodging, Shared Beds, and Masculinity in Taverns (13:23)
- Sharing Rooms and Beds with Strangers (13:58)
- Delegates to the Continental Congress and Tavern Lodging (14:33)
- Male Friendship and Public Affection in the Eighteenth Century (14:50)
- Imperial Pubs: Taverns as “Spaces of Empire” (15:26)
- Taverns as the “Most Numerous, Popular and Accessible” Colonial Spaces (16:06)
- Taverns as “Microcosms of the Empire” (16:23)
- Rum Punch and the British Atlantic Economy (16:58)
- Joseph Addison and The Spectator (17:11)
- Rum, Sugar, Citrus, and Spices from Across the Empire (17:48)
- Taverns as Spaces Against Empire – Turning Point (18:12)
- British Identity and Colonial Taverns (18:25)
- Colonists as “British People Living in America” (18:40)
- Colonists Trying to Prove Their Britishness (19:00)
- King George III, Royal Portraits, and Imperial Loyalty (19:14)
- Pope Day in Boston and Anti-Catholic Celebrations (19:38)
- Colonial Prosperity and Consumer Culture (20:06)
- Taverns as Places to “Feel British” (20:46)
- Ben Franklin, Taverns, and Colonial Social Life (21:39)
- Benjamin Franklin’s Arrival in Philadelphia (21:53)
- Taverns as the First Stop for Travelers (22:03)
- Taverns Instead of Private Homes for Meetings (22:28)
- Elite Taverns, Private Rooms, and “The Rabble” (22:48)
- Taverns as Masculine Spaces (24:16)
- Women Tavern Owners and Public Voice (24:42)
- Inn Civility and Early American Civil Society (25:16)
- Taverns and the Meaning of “Civil Society” (25:49)
- Who Could Enter Taverns — and Who Could Not (26:01)
- British American Civil Society and Revolutionary America (26:25)
- Religion, Taverns, and Colonial Contradictions (26:53)
- Church Services Held Inside Taverns (27:14)
- Taverns Before Churches in Colonial Settlements (27:20)
- Religious Leaders Attacking Taverns in Boston and Philadelphia (27:39)
- Taverns as “Spaces of Dissipation and Luxury” (28:00)
- Elite Disorder and Social Double Standards (28:20)
- Taverns and the Coming of the American Revolution (28:58)
- “Perhaps the Most Fundamental Spaces” in the Revolution – Key Moment (29:03)
- The Stamp Act Crisis and Tavern Politics (29:16)
- William Bradford’s Old London Coffee House (30:07)
- Anti-Stamp Act Propaganda and Taverns (30:14)
- Crowds Leaving Taverns to Attack Stamp Collectors (30:25)
- Liberty Trees and Liberty Poles Outside Taverns (30:40)
- British Troops Trying to Destroy Liberty Poles (31:04)
- William Bradford’s Old London Coffee House (30:07)
- The Sons of Liberty and Tavern Networks (31:15)
- Non-Importation Movements and Boycotts (31:49)
- Committees of Safety and Revolutionary Violence (32:12)
- Committees of Safety and Extra-Legal Violence (32:15)
- Tarring and Feathering Loyalists (32:29)
- Forced Loyalty Pledges and House Searches (32:44)
- The Green Dragon Tavern in Boston (33:01)
- Buckman Tavern and Lexington and Concord (33:11)
- “Liquid Courage” Before Confronting British Troops (33:29)
- Common Sense Read Aloud in Taverns (34:03)
- Taverns as Revolutionary Communication Networks (34:18)
- Taverns, King George III, and the “World Turned Topsy Turvy” (34:27)
- British Soldiers and Conflicts Over Liberty Poles (34:27)
- John Adams Encounters an Upside-Down Portrait of King George III – Key Moment (34:38)
- “Behold the Man…” Tavern Poem Against King George III (34:52)
- Tavern Names Changing from Royal Figures to George Washington (35:28)
- Taverns, Churches, and Revolutionary Gathering Spaces (35:52)
- Churches and Public Meetings in Boston (36:00)
- Tavern Keepers Encouraging Revolutionary Gatherings (36:27)
- Loyalist Churches and Divided Communities (36:49)
- Rural Taverns as Revolutionary Headquarters (37:00)
- Urban vs. Rural Political Identity During the Revolution – Turning Point (37:20)
- Prince William Henry and Loyalist Taverns in New York (37:39)
- The First British Royal to Visit the Colonies (37:41)
- Prince William Henry and Yorktown (38:26)
- “A Royal Disappointment” in British-Occupied New York (38:47)
- The Prince William Henry Tavern (39:14)
- Taverns as Loyalist Celebration Spaces (39:22)
- Rural Taverns as Hospitals, Headquarters, and Recruitment Centers (39:31)
- Taverns in Virginia, the Carolinas, and the South (39:58)
- Taverns Providing Familiar Experiences Across the Colonies (40:12)
- Shields Tavern and the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg (40:27)
- Plantation Hospitality vs. Tavern Lodging (40:46)
- Slavery and Southern Loyalism (41:33)
- Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation and Southern Fear – Turning Point (41:49)
- Fraunces Tavern and George Washington’s Farewell (42:13)
- Fraunces Tavern on Wall Street in New York City (42:13)
- George Washington’s Farewell to His Officers (42:50)
- New York City and Free Black Communities During the Revolution (43:00)
- George Washington and Re-Enslavement Controversies (43:28)
- New York City and Free Black Communities During the Revolution (43:00)
- Alcohol Consumption During Washington’s Farewell Gathering (43:41)
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, and Tavern Scholarship (44:17)
- Atlantic History and the British Atlantic World (44:36)
- Taverns as Spaces of Transatlantic Interaction (45:00)
- Sneaking Lord of the Rings References into Academic Writing (45:28)
- “Just One Point” About Taverns and the Revolution (46:35)
- Taverns as the “Internet” of the Eighteenth Century (46:42)
- Taverns as Libraries, Restaurants, Inns, and Political Centers (46:57)
- Violence, Slavery, and the Reality of Tavern Life (47:15)
- George Washington Choosing a Tavern for His Farewell Address – Key Moment (47:50)
- The Old London Coffee House in Philadelphia (48:42)
- Taverns Named After London and British Identity (48:57)
- Elite Coffeehouses and Colonial Branding (49:27)
- Coffee, Tea, Chocolate, and Colonial Consumption (49:48)
- Bitter Colonial Chocolate Drinks (50:14)
- Just One Point (50:59)
Transcript
Note: This transcript was generated automatically and may contain minor errors. It is provided for reference and accessibility only.
Click to View Transcript
Adel:
Dr. Scribner, it’s a pleasure to have you in our program’s special series. Thank you for taking the time for this conversation with me about the American Revolution. So, what was considered a tavern in the 18th century?
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah, that’s a great question, and it depends on who you ask and where. So, I’ll start off with the colonies. In colonial America, tavern was kind of a blanket term for all public drinking spaces.
Both licensed and unlicensed. So, it also goes back to the wind. So, in the 17th century, as the colonies were still really forming and their cities were actually kind of coming together, the tavern would often just be in the front of someone’s house, like the front room of their house.
They’d have a license to sell alcohol, and they might have a keg of beer and a hog’s head of rum, and they’d sell it out of the front of their house, or even out of a window in the front of their house. I mean, when Philadelphia was first forming, they dug out caves kind of on the banks of the Schuylkill River, and they’d sell alcohol out of there. There’s this saying, and I’m kind of murdering it here in some ways, but you know, the first thing that the English build when they get to America was a tavern, where they’d say the Spanish built a church, and the first thing that the English built was a tavern, because they’re so deeply ingrained in this public life.
And then by the 18th century, as the colonies become more diversified in the broadest sense possible, with more immigrants, and then more enslaved people forced over there, but also cities starting to hit maybe like 10,000 people, 15,000, taverns become kind of more of a blanket term for a more diverse array of spaces. So you’d have some taverns, maybe that were for the lower classes, where both licensed and unlicensed, where they’d be very simple affairs, one room with a bar. And then, you know, and this is important to note that for every licensed tavern in the city, you had an unlicensed tavern, where you have someone just selling alcohol without a license for people who traditionally weren’t allowed to go into licensed taverns, free and enslaved black people, Native Americans, indentured servants.
And then as you move up the line, you have fancier spaces. And then in the mid 18th century, people start opening what are called city taverns, or coffee houses. Now coffee houses was a misnomer, because in England, a coffee house would have actually sold coffee.
Now in America, they’re taverns, but they kind of have, they’re fancier. So they call themselves coffee houses. And they would usually be for more elite customers.
Oftentimes, elites, the city taverns were the same way. There were names for spaces that were for your wealthy merchants and your politicians. And oftentimes, in fact, you had to be a subscriber to even go into one of these spaces.
Oftentimes, in fact, That sounds like a club. It was. Yeah, New York, they built the city tavern, where they actually had a group of subscribers who paid to build this structure, and only they could go into it because they start wanting more exclusivity.
Now, you also have taverns in rural areas, where they’re oftentimes off a road or at a crossroads or a ferry crossing, where, you know, they’re not just giving your traditional, you know, food, drink, lodging, stables. And, you know, different taverns and cities did different things in that way. But they’re also like general stores as well, because out there, they were kind of catch all.
So you wouldn’t go just get some alcohol. You might also go buy, you know, a bobbin and thread and get your horseshoe. And because they were these central spaces, not just for travelers, but also, you know, local people as well.
So tavern was a broad, broad term.
Adel:
Okay, so given this broad term and different uses for different classes of people, what’s the difference between a tavern and a pub then?
Dr. Scribner:
That’s a great question. Now, the public house, pub short for public house, in Great Britain, public house was what it sounded like. It was a licensed space.
It was a public space that was licensed to sell alcohol. So public house was kind of the blanket term. And within that, you’d have, for instance, like ale houses, which were for the lowering sorts, as they’d known.
They were very simple drinking establishments, might have some lodging. And then in England, the tavern was more for, you know, kind of like the middle classes where they go to drink, but they’d also have like nicer drinks, more lodging, more rooms. And then the top of the echelon, you had the inn, which was primarily for travelers and locals to sleep, but also had food and drink.
So they were much more tiered spaces that they didn’t have those same kind of differentiation in America. So in England, it’s as simple as a public house was a blanket term for any space that was publicly licensed to sell alcohol on the premises and the lodge customers and other things.
Adel:
I see. So you’ve used the distinction between licensed versus unlicensed taverns and then pubs. I want to go back to America for a second, where you said in the 18th century, there were taverns for lower classes that were unlicensed slaves, natives, and indentured servants would go there.
They would have, I don’t know, rum, what have you, beer. Were the drinks in those unlicensed establishments smuggled?
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah, yeah. So they weren’t smuggled. I mean, how they got them was often somewhat circumspect.
There was smuggling going on. I mean, I’m sure a lot of the alcohol that was consumed in licensed tavern probably was smuggled in some way or another. Often, I mean, there are a few differences.
One, there were no, the same price. So the colony started to establish price regulatory systems on alcohol in the 18th century. So no matter where you went, this is how much rum should be.
This is how much beer should be. But that wouldn’t have been the case in one of these unlicensed taverns. They were going to have whatever they had, whatever they could get.
Because if you’re a, now a prostitution oftentimes ran rampant in these spaces too. They’re often known as bawdy, bawdy, B-A-W-D-Y houses. And so there were these underground spaces that could kind of be anywhere.
It’s not the kind of place where you’d have to know to know to go to these places. So they got whatever they could. So that, you know, I mean, it wasn’t hard to get rum at this time.
You know, a merchant comes in with rum from the West Indies or from Boston. Boston was a big rum producer. And, you know, you could go up to them if you, you probably have to pay a little bit more.
But if you’re paying in cash and you say, give me one of those, you’re going to get them. People want, you know, and that’s the other thing about these taverns is whether licensed or unlicensed, first and foremost, they’re about making money. They’re businesses.
So they’re going to cater to the customers that they have. One of my favorite examples of this is kind of the main character of my first book and a lot of my scholarship on early American taverns is a doctor from originally from Edinburgh who moved to Annapolis named Dr. Alexander Hamilton, not the one we’re thinking of. And in the 1740s, he’s got tuberculosis.
So he travels the Northeastern seaboard for his health. But also he doesn’t like Annapolis. He sees it as this backwater kind of backcountry place compared to Edinburgh.
He was a big, you know, taverns, a big thing that people do in taverns is they have the club, the gentlemen’s club where they come together and they drink and they debate and they laugh. And it was all about like wit and culture and education. He didn’t feel like he really had that in Annapolis.
So he’s like, I’m going to go up to the Northeast, not just for my physical health, but also kind of my social health as well to see if I could maybe find these spaces in these bigger cities that I’m looking for. And at one point he comes across a country tavern. And when he arrives, there are these drunk guys leaving and they can barely stay on their horses.
And they’re really gross. And he’s very elitist. He’s not elite because at the time he was a doctor.
He worked with his hands. He wasn’t considered an elite in England because he’s not an aristocrat. He has to work for a living.
But in America, he would have been considered kind of more of an elite. But he was elitist. And he’s looking at these men.
He’s like, oh, they’re gross. How dare they? I don’t want to go in there.
And the tavern owner comes out and he’s like, how dare you have these kind of people? And the tavern owner is like, look, I’m a business. And I’ve got to serve the customers that I have if I’m going to stay in business.
I’m more than happy to serve you. But they’re like the people around, too. So I’ve got to oblige everybody.
Adel:
It makes sense.
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you get money talks. And so basically, these unlicensed taverns were going to get whatever they could.
It would have been mostly probably rum. Rum was the most popular beverage. They would have had a lot of probably straight rum watered down.
Rum punch is the most popular beverage in the colonies at the time, which was five ingredients. Water, sugar, citrus, spice, and rum. I always tell my undergrad students, if you ever go to a party or something and they have authentic colonial rum punch, be careful because it’s really just mostly rum with everything else to kind of cut the flavor.
But they would have been consuming rum punch. But it would have been whatever they had, maybe some small beer, locally produced cider, probably not much Madeira wine. It would have been too expensive.
So a lot of rum, a lot of hard liquor. Oftentimes, the elites in colonial America looked down upon those lower sources, they called them, for just imbibing in rum and not being able to control themselves. Of course, when you look at the tavern ledgers, these elites were drinking just as much, if not more.
But you have this idea of class coming in like, well, we can control ourselves. And they can’t. They shouldn’t come in because they need to be working and being industrious.
It’s bad for them, but it’s good for us.
Adel:
I love that. Yeah. So let’s go back to the distinction between pubs and taverns.
You articulated that about Great Britain, England, and Scotland. In the colonies, did pubs also provide lodging? I know that taverns did, right?
Dr. Scribner:
Yes, they all did. So basically, they almost all provided some sort of lodging, except for basically your unlicensed tavern, or maybe you’re really kind of like what would be considered an ale house in England, where it was basically just a very bare bones drinking establishment, where you go into a room, they have some alcohol, maybe simple. There were no restaurants at the time.
The restaurant wasn’t a thing. But most taverns would have. The interesting thing is that a tavern or a public house, whatever you want to call it, whether it’s in the country or the city, if you rented a room, not only would you be sharing the room with a stranger, it’s more likely to be sharing a bed with a stranger.
Unless you’re top tier and you can literally reserve a whole room for yourself, and oftentimes your servant or enslaved person, who oftentimes would have slept at the foot of one’s bed, you probably were going to be sharing a room, if not a bed, with someone else. And you can imagine what that would have been like with lice and things like that.
Adel:
Delegates to the Continental Congress often did that, not because they didn’t have the money necessarily, but because there was just nothing else, and they had to. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Scribner:
Our ideas of cleanliness and masculinity, men showed their affection for each other in different ways at that time. There’s been a lot of scholarship on this, especially in the late 18th, early 19th century. What we would consider heterosexual men would regularly walk down streets holding hands.
They’d write very florid letters to each other. So sleeping in a bed, people complained about it. They often complained about noise.
People were being too loud down in the pub, or they were snoring, or they stunk, or they were coming in drunk and waking them up. The same kind of things we would complain about today if we had to share a room or a bed with someone we didn’t know.
Adel:
Let me take you a few years back in your life, if I can. I want to read the title of your dissertation. It’s titled Imperial Pubs, British American Taverns as Spaces of Empire, 1700 to 1783.
I like that time frame because we’re talking about the American Revolution. But let me go back to the title. Are you using the words pub and tavern interchangeably here?
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah. So you’ve got me. Okay.
So I love alliteration. I love a good alliteration. So when I came up with the name Imperial Pubs, I was like, that rings.
I make it clear in my dissertation pretty early that I use taverns as a catch-all. People did, colonists did refer to places as public houses as well. But I like the Imperial Pub.
I mean, you also see it in my book title, Inn Civility with Two Inns. And we’ll get to that. So I like a good alliteration.
But yes, in this sense, I’m referring to the public house as a British institution writ large. And then how in the colonies, people use these, what they call taverns. Sometimes they use public house more in the 17th century.
And then it evolves kind of in taverns. But colonists would also call them in sometimes in ale houses. But tavern was kind of the accepted nomenclature for this.
And so when it gets to like spaces of empire, kind of my line in both my dissertation and my book is that these are the most numerous, popular and accessible spaces in the colonies. Especially in cities. And so there are these kind of microcosms of the empire from everything from who you interacted with to what oftentimes elites projected how they wanted society to run onto these taverns, like who could go to them and who couldn’t, who ran them, how they should operate, what should be consumed there, how that consumption, what it said about you.
One of my favorite anecdotes with this is going back to the rum punch. This is from The Spectator, which was an English period, British periodical. And Addison wrote this piece, talks about two men sitting in a bar and they’re sharing a bowl of rum punch, which would have been a big, this big bowl.
You could have it for yourself, which people did. Or you can, it can be a communal beverage where you take a drink and then you pass it around the table. And these two men were sharing it.
And one of the men was like, ah, all this foreign trade is going to be the end of the British empire, end of Britain. We don’t make anything at home anymore. And the other guy paused.
He’s like, well, it’s funny you say that because you’re really enjoying that bowl of rum punch and everything. It’s all foreigners, except for the water. Everything in that bowl comes from somewhere else, though, you know, the rum comes from the West Indies.
So there’s the sugar, the citrus fruit comes from either Africa or the West Indies. And then those spices like nutmeg and cinnamon come from the East Indies. So you say this, but then at the same time, you want to eat your cake and have it too.
Yeah, that’s a foreign beverage. So there’s spaces of empire. And then, of course, as I talk about my dissertation, my book, they eventually become spaces against empire as well, where they use them as these they use taverns to break away.
Adel:
We’re going to get to that. Then that becomes part of the American Revolution. When you say spaces, let me just read the title once more of your dissertation.
Imperial pubs, British American taverns as spaces of empire, British American spaces of empire where taverns also spaces of empire in Canada or, let’s say, in Britain itself. Was it just an American thing?
Dr. Scribner:
Well, there’s two answers to that. So British Americans key in this title, because colonists in what we now call the 13 colonies, they consider themselves British first. They were British people living in America.
They were they called themselves the British Empire in America. Scholars have argued and I agree with them that British colonists living in, you know, the 13 colonies were in many ways actually more British than people living in, say, London. Because they here’s why they had a chip on their shoulder.
They live 3000 miles away. So they wanted to show, I mean, you know, when you’re living in it, it’s not the same. When you live in London, say, and you see Westminster and you see Windsor Palace outside, or, you know, Buckingham, it’s right there.
The King and Queen. But when you’re 3000 miles away, you feel like you want this more connection. You want to show that, like, a lot of British people like look down on colonists.
Like they said, you’re 3000 miles away. You’re rustic. You live among all these savage peoples in a savage environment.
So they’re constantly trying to prove how British they are. They’re celebrating the King and Queen’s birthday regularly. They have pictures of the King and Queen hanging in their home.
They have Boston has its own Guy Fawkes Day. They call it Pope Day, where the north and south end of the town march on each other with giant, what we call floats today. And they get drunk in taverns.
They fight each other. And whoever gets the other one’s float takes it back and they burn it as a sign of love for the British Empire and anti-Catholicism against France and Spain.
Adel:
So they’re sort of compromising, like making up, not compromising, making up for this insecurity. Exactly.
Dr. Scribner:
Yes. And this comes in with the coming of the revolution too. They’re consuming all these goods.
Mid-18th century colonists in America had a higher quality of life, scholars have argued, than any mass group of people up to that time. They made tons of money per capita. They had all these consumer goods.
They had this land. Now, of course, it was at the expense of many other people, enslaved Africans, Native Americans whose land they were taking, et cetera, et cetera. So they see themselves as British people in America.
Their job is to expand the British Empire. And so they see taverns as these spaces where they can come together and really feel British, whatever that meant.
Adel:
Okay. Two practical questions, follow-ups. I just want to make sure.
If I landed in Philadelphia, or let’s say Boston, in 1775, 74, just a year leading up to the revolution, and I said, hey, where’s the local pub? They would know that word.
Dr. Scribner:
A hundred percent.
Adel:
And tavern, they would know that as well.
Dr. Scribner:
They would know that. And that’s what you would do. When Ben Franklin ran away from home, from Boston to Philadelphia as a young man, he arrives in Philadelphia as like barely two nickels to rub together.
And the first place he goes is a tavern, because that’s what you would do. You’d go there and you’d be like, what’s going on? Who are the people here?
I can get something to eat here. I can get something to drink. I can kind of figure things out.
Maybe I can find where I can rent some cheap lodgings. Yeah, that’s what you do. If you said, where’s the nearest public house, they would understand what you meant.
Adel:
OK, let’s go back to 1774, 75 again. You and I are going to meet. Would you say, come to my place?
Or would I say, come to my home? Or did people generally meet in taverns and pubs? Go ahead.
Dr. Scribner:
They met in taverns. Sorry. Yes.
So unless there’s a few caveats here. If you were like a really rich person, you’d have your home. But you’d still probably meet in the tavern.
Now, what you would do is, according to your wealth, if you met with someone in a tavern, you probably, especially as a group, you probably want to rent out your own private room. So they want to do this to kind of divide themselves with the, quote, rabble. So that’s why you have these bigger, multifaceted spaces like the City Tavern or the London Coffeehouse that we’ll talk about in a bit, where they’d have rooms upstairs and things where you could rent those out for your private club.
They weren’t lodging rooms. And in those rooms, they would try to emulate what these wealthy people are used to, finer furniture, clocks, china. Oh, wow.
And if you were forced to meet in the great room, as it was known, you try to separate yourself. I mean, there are even accounts of like putting fire screens up and things. Because there’s kind of this, in my opinion, this misconception for a long time in the scholarship on taverns that like you go there and anyone can just rub elbows with anyone.
Everyone’s equal. And it’s like, no, it’s not that simple. Elites, you know, elites wanted them to be bifurcated spaces.
It didn’t always work out that way, especially in the colonies where class wasn’t the same as in England. But yeah, you would most likely, you would meet in a tavern. But especially by the, say, 1770s, 1760s, you’d be very intentional about the tavern that you met in.
You’d probably go farther away from the docks because the docks where the taverns were for like sailors and the lower sorts, you’d go farther inland, probably to an established coffeehouse or city tavern where you have more privacy and you’re around like-minded people. Women oftentimes, the home was oftentimes more of a female space where they’d have what was called the tea table, where they’d sit around and they’d drink tea. And allegedly, men would say they’d gossip.
Men sometimes participate in the tea table. John Adams, for instance, a few times, but not very often. So the private sphere was more considered the women’s sphere and the public sphere was that of, you know, taverns were very masculine spaces.
The only women who were expected to go in these spaces were either women as workers, which ironically though, women fairly often owned tavern or ran tavern spaces, which was the only chance they really had oftentimes of this public voice. But mostly women were expected to go in as either workers, as like servants or even prostitutes, or they would go to buy alcohol for at-home consumption. The only time they usually went to taverns was with their husbands for a ball or an event or something.
Adel:
Interesting.
Dr. Scribner:
You’d meet in the tavern.
Adel:
And a few moments we have left of this segment, please tell us about your book, In Civility, Urban Taverns and an Early American Civil Society. And I want to emphasize, in is I-N-N, in civility.
Dr. Scribner:
That’s a pun and it’s an intentional pun because this book is about inns, once again, taverns. I use pub and inn in my two titles of sub tavern. But it’s about inns, about how people came together in these spaces.
But it’s also about how they were arguing over how a British American and eventually an American civil society should operate. And they’re using taverns as these spaces to kind of argue and negotiate about this because, as I mentioned, the most numerous accessible and public spaces in America, where you have all different sorts of people coming in here and trying to negotiate what this should and shouldn’t look like. Who can go in?
Who can’t? How should people act in these spaces? What should they consume?
And so I use taverns as these ideal microcosms to understand kind of the rise of British American civil society and the destruction of British American civil society in lieu by being replaced by this kind of American revolutionary idea of civil society, which, of course, was in most ways just British American civil society repackaged and slightly altered with varying degrees of success. Yeah, that’s what the book’s about.
Adel:
Did religious, devout people go to pubs?
Dr. Scribner:
In fact, oftentimes, because they built pubs before church, because remember, these taverns, pubs were their businesses. Their job was to like food, feed clothes, feed and food, drink, lodging. So they build that first.
And oftentimes before a church was built, they’d hold church services in a room in the tavern. And, you know, you have people like, yeah, yeah, yeah, because that was their space. When you first started a city, you know, they were, you know, multi denominational spaces, unlike most of these churches.
So they would hold, you know, and they a lot of church leaders, they only get really worried about taverns in the 18th century when they become so numerous. So especially in Boston, you have church leaders writing into land Philadelphia. You have church leaders writing into the newspapers being like, there are way too many taverns.
They’re ruining us. And they fight back against pleasure gardens being open to which are themselves offshoots of taverns. I’ve written articles on pleasure gardens and mineral springs spas as well, which are offshoots and overlap with these tavern spaces.
And they’re worried about these spaces of dissipation and luxury, as they call them. But they themselves went to them. A big part of, you know, early American society, American society then and now is, of course, contradiction.
So oftentimes these very men who were damning taverns, whether they were religious leaders or elites and saying that they’re these lower class spaces or they’re these spaces of disorder. Well, then they go to them and they’d be more disorderly than the people they were saying were disorderly. But then they’d get away with it because they’re rich.
They have money.
Adel:
Let’s take a break here. In the next segment, I asked Dr. Scribner about taverns, pubs, and the American Revolution. We’ll be right back.
Dr. Scribner, what role did taverns, and let me just add on pubs, play in the American Revolution?
Dr. Scribner:
I would argue they were fundamental in the coming of the revolution.
Adel:
Fundamental? Fundamental, yes.
Dr. Scribner:
I would argue they were perhaps the most fundamental spaces in the coming of the revolution. Here’s why. They were well-established by the 1760s, same with the Stamp Act crisis that breaks out.
The Stamp Act crisis breaks out in 1765 because it’s the first real effort at taxation. People get really upset about it. We talked earlier about them kind of a chip on their shoulders and overcompensating.
They feel like they’re being looked down upon. Well, if you’re angry and you live in a city like Philadelphia or Boston or New York, and you want to meet with your friends, the first place you’re going to go is the local tavern because that’s where everyone goes anyway. Then you’re going to get there and, oh, look, they have all this alcohol.
You’re going to start drinking and you’re going to start getting even angrier. Because they’re so centrally located, you’re going to be close to the custom house and the townhouse. You’re going to know where the Stamp Act collectors live.
They just live right down the street. As early as 1765, these people start meeting at places like William Bradford’s Old London Coffee House. William Bradford himself, who owned this coffee house, also owned the local newspaper where he was printing all this anti-Stamp Act propaganda.
He encourages people to come and he opens up a keg of beer. Then you go there and you get angry and then you decide to take justice in your own hands and you go out and start ransacking the place and attacking customs and stamp collectors and burning their houses down. People like Oliver Hutchinson.
Where else would you meet? Then as things keep going, you start building. You have trees outside taverns.
You start calling them liberty trees and you start decorating them with pieces of paper with phrases and things about your British liberty. You’re not anti-British. You’re saying you’re trying to protect your liberty as a Briton and this is being infringed upon.
If you don’t have a tree, you put up a liberty pole. Then when officers like British soldiers try to cut it down, you put metal around the base so they can’t cut it down. These taverns become these spaces where you have the sons of liberty start to meet and you’re saying, I’m a son of Great Britain.
I’m all about protecting our liberty. At this point in the 1760s, these men who eventually become revolutionaries, they’re very British. They’re saying that we’re doing this to protect what Britain is.
When the Stamp Act is repealed, they love it. They’re saying this is why Great Britain is the best. This is why we love King George III and the parliament.
They listen to us. Then as this starts to unfold, these taverns start to become these communication centers where you have these sons of liberty meeting and sending letters to each other. Here’s what we’re doing here.
You have non-importation movements starting at taverns where they’re saying, look, we’re not going to import British manufactured goods anymore. They hang up posters in taverns that say, hey, this merchant is still importing British goods. Don’t buy anything from him because you know that’s where they’re going to be.
This is where the newspapers are going to be.
Adel:
You mean like the safety committees and inspection committees?
Dr. Scribner:
The committees of safety come around later. They’re especially vicious. The committee of safety is when the colonists really start to verge into extra legal violence where they’re attacking people, they’re tarring and feathering people.
This is when they’re starting to take over towns and they’re going door to door and saying, you’re either with us or you’re against us. You either sign this pledge of allegiance to us that says that you’re for the American Congress, not the British government, or we’re going to take the men of the house and capture them, make them our prisoners and send them to another town and we’re going to ransack the place.
Adel:
Are they also meeting in taverns?
Dr. Scribner:
Yes. The Green Dragon Tavern was a huge meeting place for the Sons of Liberty and eventually the committee of safety.
Adel:
That was up in Boston?
Dr. Scribner:
Yep. Sorry, in Boston. The Buckman Tavern, Lexington and Concord, speaking of Boston, they all met at the Buckman Tavern to attack the British troops as they’re marching up to Lexington and Concord, the colonists did.
They went there and had a few pops and then came out and had some liquid courage.
Adel:
Was Buckman Tavern in Boston or over in Lexington?
Dr. Scribner:
It was in Lexington. On the way there. But it made sense.
There are preachers giving sermons in churches about your patriotic duty, but where else would you meet if they’re ideal places? They didn’t have the internet. It’s not like they’re getting on message boards and things.
You’re coming to a tavern, you’re reading. People are reading out loud pamphlets like Common Sense or they’re reading out opinion op-ed pieces in their local newspapers and they’re getting angry and they’re drinking in the sanctuaries with troops before the revolution breaks out over these liberty poles and these liberty trees when the troops try to come in and cut down the liberty pole because they start to see the liberty pole as this sign of rebellion or aggression to the king. One of my favorite examples of this is in 1777. So this is like actual after the revolution has already begun.
John Adams walks into a Maryland tavern and he looks on the wall. And remember, I told you that in homes and taverns, they had pictures of the king and queen hanging on the walls. Oftentimes they named the taverns, you know, Queen Charlotte Tavern, King George, the King’s Head.
Well, he walks in this rural Maryland tavern and he looks up and the picture of the king has been turned upside down. And next to it, there’s a sign that says, Behold the man who had in his power to make a kingdom tremble in a door. Intoxicate with folly.
See his head placed where the meanest of his subjects tread. Like Lucifer, the giddy tyrant fell. He lifts his heel to heaven but points his head to hell.
So now they’re literally, you know, scholars have talked about this, the world turned topsy turvy, where they’re literally taking the picture of the king and turning it upside down in their tavern.
Adel:
Wow. That is fascinating. That is a great story.
Dr. Scribner:
And they start changing the names of taverns too. They start naming them after Washington instead of, you know, British figures like Pitt or King George.
Adel:
I think I know the answer to this question, but I’ll ask it anyway, Dr. Scribner.
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah.
Adel:
It’s not like they had other public meeting places. I don’t know what comes to mind, like Faneuil Hall or anything like that. Taverns was it.
Yeah.
Dr. Scribner:
They had public marketplaces and some like, some meeting houses.
Adel:
Oh, they did?
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah. Oftentimes they, so in Boston, they did have some like big meetings in churches, for instance, that are still, I was just in Boston a few months ago, and they would be like this, you know, they came together and made this decision here. But that was, they’d been at the tavern before and they went to the tavern after, you know what I’m saying?
Like they were, the taverns were still paramount to that process. And you had tavern keepers encouraging people to come to their taverns to do this because guess what? Remember these were businesses.
So you get a bunch of people in here and you start selling them alcohol too. So they wanted to, but they believed in what they were saying. So there were some other places, like I said, they’re not going to meet in a shop.
They had like promenades and bowling greens, but those were kind of elitist spaces. Churches, you know, they were loyalists too. Remember about 30% of the population was still loyalists.
So maybe this was more loyalist leaning church. Taverns rose as definitely the kind of preeminent space. And then I should say, as the revolution breaks out and the British start occupying all the cities in America, the rebels start taking these rural taverns now as their spaces of, so now you have this urban versus rural divide where urban starts to equal the British empire, like this, this luxury and dissipation and monarchy of these urban spaces.
Then these, these Americans start to say, no, we’re, we’re about the rural life we’ve got, you know, and this, you know, this still goes on to this day. You definitely have an urban rural divide in America and all the political stuff. And so they start to take these spaces and something really interesting that happens with that, with the tavern is quick side note here.
Another article I wrote, okay. The first member of the British Royal family ever to step foot in America comes in 1781. Not until 1781 did any member of the British Royal family ever step foot in the American colonies.
So you can take 13 colonies to take that word of this. He was the third son of King George III. His name was Prince William Henry.
He never thought, his dad never thought he was gonna become king because he had two older brothers, but he was also worried about the effect his older brothers were going to have on him. So he sends this six, 15, 16 year old brat Prince off to be in the Navy. And he comes over and he arrives in New York city in 1781.
And the loyalists there who are, it’s, you know, New York city is controlled by the British at this point. The loyalists are like, ah, this, this, this Royals here, they have all these, these celebrations form and balls. And he’s supposed to go down with Admiral Digby and rescue Cornwallis in Yorktown.
Well, they have storms and environmental factors, which is what I look at in my most recent book is like environment and revolution. They get, they get delayed. They finally make it down to Cornwallis in Yorktown.
They’re too late. He’s already been scuttled. So up William Henry goes back and he has to spend the winter in New York city where he fall, he falls.
He’s a Royal disappointment. He’s a brat. He drinks too much.
He breaks his arm. But he also, they name a Tavern after him in New York city, the Prince William Henry Tavern. And that’s where he spends all of his time.
So you see this like enduring attempt to use Tavern to connect to break Great Britain in these cities that the British occupy. And they, they have the, they celebrate the King’s and Queen’s birthday. Meanwhile, you have these rural Taverns, the Americans have commandeered that they’re using as, you know, military headquarters, hospitals, centers of recruitment.
Adel:
Yeah. Any, any pub or Tavern stories I’m putting you on a spot here now from, I don’t know, Virginia, the Carolinas or Georgia.
Dr. Scribner:
So yes. So they’re interesting because the only major cities, a major, if you want to call them that were like Charleston and Richmond. And then, you know, I’ve done a lot of, I’ve looked at Williamsburg.
That was not, I looked at Williamsburg a lot. So I have an article that basically argues that basically wherever you went in the colonies, the Taverns were going to basically look the same. Think about kind of like, like McDonald’s.
Now they want to give you this experience. You know, like they’re trying to give you this comfortable experience. There are going to be regional variations according to like what you ate because of what was local and things like that.
Some of the, some of the architecture. But generally speaking, they’re going to try to give you a similar experience because remember these weren’t just for locals, they were for travelers as well. So if you open up a Tavern in Williamsburg, you want someone from New York City to feel comfortable there.
And so they had majors like Shields Tavern and the Raleigh Tavern were two big ones in Williamsburg. Charleston, I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but they had their own major Taverns as well. They also had, they had a lot more country, but something also interesting about the South is if you were a traveler, you were most likely, you were just as likely to stay in a gentleman’s plantation.
If you’re a wealthy traveler as you were in a Tavern, because you get kind of a letter of credit to where you’d be like, oh, I’m, I know this person that I can say to be like, oh yeah, come on in because they’re out in these rural spaces where they didn’t have as much company. These plantation owners would go somewhere like Williamsburg once a month for like court days, but otherwise they’re pretty isolated out there on their plantation, other than there are hundreds of enslaved people that they ruled sway over. So they liked having a visitor.
They’re like, come on in. And a lot of the Taverns oftentimes in the South, if they weren’t urban, were kind of more rustic spaces. The South wasn’t, you know, it was, it was much more agricultural and rural down there.
They’re actually kind of slower on the uptake when it comes to rebellion because they want to make money. You know, George Washington gets angry about the proclamation line, but that’s because he was a major landowner. Most Southerners weren’t.
He wanted to expand. They don’t really get angry until a lot of them like Lord Dunmore’s proclamation in 1775 when the governor of Virginia promises any enslaved male of fighting age, if they make it to the British lines, they’re free. And that really scares them.
You know, you have some Stamp Act rebellions and taverns in the South, but they’re not as active in the lead up to the revolution. And then of course, you know, the Southern theater isn’t as active until like 1779.
Adel:
Are there any taverns or pubs from the revolutionary era that exist to this day?
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah. So one of my favorite favorites is in actually right in Wall Street in New York City, Francis Tavern. So the Francis Tavern was where George Washington actually gave his farewell speech to his troops in 1783.
So when the last city the British evacuated was New York City, because that’s the city they held the whole day. They took it in September 1776 and they didn’t leave until November 1780, October, November 1783, if I’m getting that correct. And Washington comes in with his troops.
And the first thing he does is so by this time, New York City is home to the largest group of free Black people in America at that time.
Adel:
Wow.
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah. Gage, the leader of, no, Clinton, sorry, the leader was the Clinton, the leader of New York City promised any enslaved person, you know, male or female, child or adult, if they could make their way into the city lines, they’re free. Well, the first thing Washington does when he comes in is he’s like, OK, you know, you’re all my property again now, like, so he tries to re-enslave all these people.
But then he meets with his officers in the Francis Tavern on the second floor. And, you know, it gives this tearful goodbye. Now, there were often, if you can look at the menu from that, there was so much alcohol consumed that night, too.
He probably wasn’t sober. I guarantee he wasn’t totally sober. But you can still visit the Francis Tavern.
It’s still right there. It’s really interesting because it’s a museum on the second floor. So the first floor you go in, they have food and drink.
You go up to the second floor and there’s a museum up there. They have it redone where he would have given his farewell address. And it’s just tucked right in there.
We’re on Wall Street with all these skyscrapers. And yeah.
Adel:
I’m so disappointed in myself. I’ve been there plenty of times, but next time, definitely. So here’s a question about you.
How did you get into this?
Dr. Scribner:
That’s a great question. Two reasons. One, I’ll give you my academic reason and my nerdy reason.
My academic reason first is when I got into grad school, when I was in undergrad and grad school, something called Atlantic history and the Atlantic world was really big where it’s really just another name for global history or British people outside of their locality. But I was really into that. I love this idea of people connecting with the world around them.
How did someone living in the colonies see themselves as part of a larger network and how they consume these goods and travel and things? So I was like, how can I study that? How can I look into this?
What’s a good way? Well, perhaps my favorite book is Fellowship of the Ring. Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring by Gerard Tolkien.
And there’s a famous scene where they go to Grieg and they talk about the tavern there. And the way they ascribe it, visitor, locals and travelers from all over the place. I was like, I remember reading that passage.
And I was like, aha moment. I was like, wait, there were taverns in early America. I bet they use this for the exact same thing.
This could be a great place to uncover these transatlantic currents and interactions I’m looking for. And so that’s where it came from. It came from Lord of the Rings.
And to this day, I try to sneak in Lord of the Rings references into any academic publication.
Adel:
I love it. So it seems like you combined academic and nerdy answers together.
Dr. Scribner:
Yes. Yeah.
Adel:
Yeah. I thought you were going to tell me that in my early 20s, I used to hang out in pubs a lot.
Dr. Scribner:
Well, I did that too. No, no, no. Don’t worry about that.
I mean, I was also hanging out at plenty of pubs. And it wasn’t a bad side effect that I had to do my research in a lot of early American and British pubs. That was going to a 13th century pub next to Norwich Cathedral isn’t a hard thing to do.
Yeah.
Adel:
I’ve had a lot of great experiences. Yeah. I bet a lot of your colleagues were jealous of you, of your research, of your scholarship.
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah, it was very good research.
Adel:
If you were in our audience, remember just one point about taverns during the American Revolution. What would that one point be?
Dr. Scribner:
Well, it goes back to this idea that we don’t have anything like 18th century taverns anymore. Even in England, pubs are closing at an alarming rate right now.
Adel:
I noticed that, yeah.
Dr. Scribner:
Yeah. Because of the rise of social media and apparently young people aren’t drinking as much anymore, which is pretty good. But they were these unique spaces that combined everything.
They were the internet, the library, the gas station, the restaurant, the bar, the auto shop, Walmart. They were these spaces all in one. And they provided this ideal place, not just to gather, but also the plot, plan, and they evolved with both sides as the war unfolded.
But they were also incredibly violent places. I would encourage people not to romanticize these places. It’s easy to look back in history and think, oh, I’d love to sit at a pub in the 18th century and have a drink.
Well, you probably wouldn’t. It’d be stinky. It would reek like smoke and alcohol.
You’d see enslaved people being bought and sold either in the room or right outside. You’d see enslaved people working. The past is a different world.
And so they’re incredibly important places to understand, especially the coming of the revolution. But it’s also not a coincidence that Washington chose a tavern to give his farewell address too. They’re in the very social fabric of the world at that time for British people.
And so if you went back to ask them, oh, why did you meet in a tavern? I would say, they’d say, well, of course we met in a tavern. Where else would we?
Where are we going to meet? My house? I don’t want those people in my house.
Adel:
Before I let you go, I just want to ask about something you mentioned a couple of times. You even said we’ll talk about it, but we failed to specifically mention it. London Coffeehouse.
You mentioned that several times. So first of all, it’s in London? Or was it a coffeehouse?
Dr. Scribner:
It’s in Philadelphia. So William Bradford, the paper owner, he opens this old London coffeehouse. That’s a perfect example.
So he opens it in the 1750s for elites. And elites help pay for it. Where it’s a coffeehouse.
It’s an elite space. But they put London in the name, because that’s what people want. They want to feel this connection.
And if you’re a merchant, there were some, not many merchants from London came over to America. But American merchants went to London a lot. And they’d actually have their own special American coffeehouses and taverns in London, to where it’s known.
Like, OK, that’s where the British colonists go. And so it’s brandy. It’s just like, I’ll try it.
We do the same thing today, where we have this branding that evokes a feeling of something. Exactly. So they call it the London Coffeehouse.
Those were two, just bam, bam, where you knew this is what I want. This is a British elite space. I belong here.
Adel:
Did they serve coffee, as well as tea?
Dr. Scribner:
They did serve coffee, yes. But they also served alcohol. And they served tea, and they served chocolate.
Would you and I recognize that coffee? We would recognize the coffee. We would not recognize the chocolate very well.
Chocolate, at this time, was consumed, if you’ve ever just had raw cocoa.
Adel:
No, I don’t think I have.
Dr. Scribner:
Well, yeah, like cocoa powder.
Adel:
Yeah.
Dr. Scribner:
OK, so they frothed it up in a hot beverage. They might put a little sugar in, but it was quite bitter. And so they would drink it for breakfast, chocolate.
It was very bitter to our palate.
Adel:
Oh, wow.
Dr. Scribner:
It’s not our milk chocolate. It’s like, you know, like 90% dark. And they drink it.
You can still get it. I wish I was sponsored by them. But Kukawa is a company there.
They have a location in Salem, Massachusetts, and locations in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They serve this authentic, it came from Mesoamerica. And they just took it from the mines in Athens.
But they serve it. And you can get, it’s almost like an espresso.
Adel:
Wow, that’s fascinating. Dr. Scribner, thank you so much for educating me and our audience about the American Revolution and taverns and pubs. And to our audience, if you know of any history that could provide more perspective about the American Revolution, please share it with us and tell us what’s your perspective.
Thank you so much. This was great.
Dr. Scribner:
Thank you.
About the Featured Image
The feature image brings together images of Dr. Vaughn Scribner and Adel Aali from the interview, superimposed on the Betsy Ross flag, along with the cover image of Dr. Scribner’s book Inn Civility: Urban Taverns and Early American Civil Society, which we discuss in this interview.
Unless otherwise indicated, all images in AAR—including those in this post—are in the public domain.
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Analyzing American Revolution (AAR) is a special series podcast production of the History Behind News program. In this series, 33 professors (and counting) analyze the American Revolution from 33 different angles through in-depth interviews with host Adel Aali.
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