Alcohol

America's Founding Drinkers: Washington and His Men Knew How To Party

America was founded by drinkers, distillers, and maltmen whose consumption would be labeled problematic by today's public health authorities.

Peter Suderman | From the July 2026 issue

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google

Media Contact & Reprint Requests

(Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source image: Washington Crossing the Delaware; Emanuel Leutze/Wikimedia)

In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here.

There are a lot of words you could use to describe America's Founding Fathers: geniuses, visionaries, ideologues, perhaps even bros.

Here's another word you could use to describe them: drunks.

America was founded by drinkers, distillers, and maltmen whose consumption would be labeled problematic or worse by today's public health authorities. In a recent Supreme Court argument about marijuana and gun rights, Justice Neil Gorsuch noted the Founders' penchant for heavy boozing. "John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day," he said. "James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn't much of a user of alcohol—he only had three or four glasses of wine a night."

Gorsuch's point was that drinking norms were different, and so were standards for excess. "The American Temperance Society, back in the day, said eight shots of whiskey a day only made you an occasional drunkard." To be a habitual drunkard in the old days, he noted, one had to double that.

Certainly, by today's........

© Reason.com