Inn Civility

Urban Taverns and Early American Civil Society

Vaughn Scribner

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781479864928
• eBook ISBN: 9781479809455
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

Examines the critical role of urban taverns in the social and political life of colonial and revolutionary America

From exclusive "city taverns" to seedy "disorderly houses," urban taverns were wholly engrained in the diverse web of British American life. By the mid-eighteenth century, urban taverns emerged as the most popular, numerous, and accessible public spaces in British America. These shared spaces, which hosted individuals from a broad swath of socioeconomic backgrounds, eliminated the notion of "civilized" and "wild" individuals, and dismayed the elite colonists who hoped to impose a British-style social order upon their local community. More importantly, urban taverns served as critical arenas through which diverse colonists engaged in an ongoing act of societal negotiation.

Inn Civility exhibits how colonists' struggles to emulate their British homeland ultimately impelled the creation of an American republic. This unique insight demonstrates the messy, often contradictory nature of British American society building. In striving to create a monarchical society based upon tenets of civility, order, and liberty, colonists inadvertently created a political society that the founders would rely upon for their visions of a republican America. The elitist colonists' futile efforts at realizing a civil society are crucial for understanding America's controversial beginnings and the fitful development of American republicanism.

1 / Coffeehouse Coteries: Civil Dreams of Exclusivity and Consumer Power

On June 2, 1768, the Philadelphian Josiah F. Davenport advertised his “genteel House of Entertainment,” the Bunch of Grapes City Tavern, by appealing to elitist colonists’ civil aspirations. Realizing a growing demand for exclusivity within the messy bustle of British America’s urban centers, Davenport guaranteed prospective customers that his tavern would offer the “civilest treatment” with luxurious private lodgings, fine stables for their steeds and carriages, and the availability of “an elegant and spacious room” for a private ball (or meetings like those of the St. Andrew’s Society whose genteel members chose Davenport’s City Tavern as their gathering place). The shrewd Philadelphia publican also, importantly, played to elitist colonists’ need for commercial prowess. Located on “one of the grandest avenues in this city [Third Street] . . . in the neighborhood of many principal merchants and capital stores,” the City Tavern’s prime real estate automatically plugged its customers into a booming world of global consumerism. Taking such commercial expectations into account, Davenport “furnished his house with the best liquors” for gentlemen whose taste buds had grown fond of the cloying heaviness of Madeira wine and the burning smoothness of French brandy. He also assured prospective customers that “every other requisite suitable to [their] design” had been taken care of, from mahogany chests filled with fine china to well-furnished public rooms stocked with the latest newspapers and pamphlets. Davenport was hardly alone in his rush to satisfy a more genteel customer through a canny combination of exclusivity and commercialism. In fact, he joined a multidecade movement, as city taverns and coffeehouses like Philadelphia’s Bunch of Grapes sprouted up in every British American urban center at midcentury.1

British American gentlemen struggled to transplant their visions of civil society from the page to the pavement. Believing that they needed their own spaces through which to cultivate dreams of British American civility, elitist colonists followed in the footsteps of their London brethren by demanding (and sometimes opening) their own exclusive city taverns and coffeehouses. Anchored by Old World notions of spatial exclusivity, consumer power, and social capital, coffeehouses and city taverns emerged as concrete representations of certain colonists’ ultimate vision for civil society in which a small group of men might order the masses.2 Yet, like their efforts in realizing a civil society, middling- and upper-class colonial urbanites’ creations of their own coffeehouses and city taverns were not only inextricably linked to processes, goods, and ideas from across the Atlantic Ocean, but were also firmly tethered to North American environmental and social factors.3 Realities on the ground, once again, necessitated that British American men adjust these British and Continental traditions to the North American environment.

Specifically, colonial urbanites understood themselves as constantly bombarded by the supposed savagery of their New World environment and thus believed that their genteel drinking spaces needed to be more exclusive than those of their European counterparts. In many colonists’ minds, excessive interaction with uncivil factions of society like Native Americans, blacks, and poor whites would not only tarnish their civil sheen, but might also denigrate their minds and bodies. As the historian Jennifer Van Horn has demonstrated in the context of colonists’ “civil” consumer actions, “fear of the other was really Anglo-Americans’ fear of the savagery barely contained within themselves and provoked by the presence of Indians or African Americans.”4 Elitist colonials felt especially impelled to construct spaces of protection from the uncivil facets of society that supposedly lurked around every corner. In doing so, self-professed gentlemen were not simply attempting to bury their heads in the sand. Rather, these men also hoped to impose their ideals of civility, order, and genteel consumption on their urban localities.

Beyond transforming coffeehouses and city taverns into multifaceted spaces of polite exclusivity, British American gentlemen also hoped to use these spaces to fulfill expectations of consumerism. If colonists could achieve any tenet of civil society, many urbanites believed, it would be commerce and industry. British North America’s rampant population growth, agricultural production, urban development, and disposable wealth made it the ideal place in which to test such a commercial civilization. The Reverend John Barnard reflected on the development of Marblehead, Massachusetts, from a backwater village into a globally connected entrepôt in 1766. Where in 1714 the isolated town had “not so much as one proper carpenter, nor mason, nor tailor, nor butcher . . . nor any thing of a market worth naming,” and was filled with “rude, swearing . . . poor” people, the city’s steady inclusion in larger trading networks had a civilizing effect on its inhabitants. Barnard exclaimed that by midcentury Marblehead had “between thirty and forty ships . . . engaged in foreign trade” and was filled with “many gentleman-like and polite families.” Marblehead’s newfound commercial prowess apparently affected even lowly fishermen’s demeanor, as they “generally scorn[ed] the rudeness of the former generation.” Here, in Barnard’s opinion, was the importance of commercial success for a thriving civil society, and vice versa: “The manners of the people [were] greatly cultivated.”5

Such development resounded throughout British American cities by the mid-eighteenth century, helping to solidify the colonies’ commercial importance in the empire. Upon visiting Philadelphia in 1751, the Englishman James Birket argued that if built “according to the Plan,” Philadelphia would “be large enough for the Head of an Empire.” He especially attributed Philadelphia’s grandeur to its commercial viability, calling the city “the largest and best market in America.” The New York City resident William Smith Jr., meanwhile, asserted that his city was “the Metropolis and grand Mart of the Province.” “Through our Intercourse with the Europeans,” Smith continued, “we follow the London fashions. . . . Our affluence [has] introduced a Degree of Luxury in Tables, Dress, and Furniture, with which we were before unacquainted.” Residents of southern cities, finally, gained a commercial reputation of their own. As South Carolina’s slave trade steadily increased after 1700 and rice production boomed, for instance, Charleston emerged as the commercial center of the southern colonies. Charleston’s expanding population demanded more imported consumables than ever, and local merchants and tradesmen were happy to answer their pleas. In one resident’s opinion, “The way of living in Charlestown, [was] much after the English manner.” From Williamsburg to Boston, colonial urban centers thrived largely as a result of their integration in international consumer networks.6

Elitist colonists had arrived at a crossroads of consumerism. On the one hand, they were determined to consume as many foreign goods as possible, as “material objects offered colonial subjects a mechanism to mold their social identities as they associated to become members of the civil society that they formed on the margins of the British Empire.”7 Yet, if consumed “improperly,” without the guidance of gentlemen, leaders believed that these same goods and the spaces associated with them could represent the disintegration of civil society and, in turn, their own tenuous influence on the masses. For these self-styled leaders, consumerism, fashion, and gentility symbolized the possibilities—and pitfalls—of civil society. They proceeded with caution.

Coffeehouses and city taverns emerged as clear symbols of gentlemen’s hopes and anxieties surrounding the future of British American civil society. In struggling to adjust these Old World edifices to their emerging society, elitist colonists especially latched onto the exclusivity and consumer power they believed city taverns and coffeehouses promised. Not only did gentlemen desire social capital and distinction, but they also anticipated that their nascent cities might serve as more fertile nurseries for civil impulses like hierarchy and commercialism than the aged metropolises of Great Britain and the Continent. As Benjamin Franklin so famously opined in his “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind” (1751), where “Europe is generally full settled with Husbandmen, Manufacturers, &c. and therefore cannot now much increase in People,” North America had only just begun its period of commercial and population growth and would soon outstrip England in total Englishmen. “What an Accession of Power to the British Empire by Sea as well as Land,” Franklin continued, “What Increase of Trade and Navigation!”8 Gentlemen colonials like Franklin hoped to transform Old World institutions of civil society to fit—and ultimately shape—British North America into the purest realization of British power abroad. For many, this mammoth task began in individual spaces like coffeehouses and city taverns.

Global Beans, British American Sprouts

The popularity of coffee and coffeehouses throughout the British Empire was a product of early seventeenth-century British imperial penetration into the Ottoman Empire. As coffee made its way through the Ottoman Empire, moving up from Yemen through Arabia to Egypt, next to Aleppo, Anatolia, Smyrna, and finally Constantinople, globetrotting Englishmen sipped this caffeinated beverage while also familiarizing themselves with the ancient customs associated with coffee drinking. The English adventurer George Sandys remarked in 1610 that although Constantinople was “destitute of Taverns,” the city harbored “Coffa-houses, which something resemble [English taverns].” Sandys continued to note that in coffeehouses Turks conversed while imbibing “a drinke called Coffa . . . in little China dishes, as hot as they can suffer it: and black as soote, not tasting much unlike it.” Like the taverns of Sandys’s England, Turkish coffeehouses encouraged male sociability, drink, music, and conversation. Because Sandys’s Muslim associates did not generally consume alcohol, moreover, coffeehouses enjoyed unprecedented success throughout the Ottoman Empire. Coffee’s caffeine-induced buzz hooked English merchants, who found that “this All-healing-Berry” made them “at once . . . both Sober and Merry.” Combined with Ottoman coffeehouses’ hospitable nature, this addicting bean was practically unstoppable.9

Coffee’s consumer traditions made their way west when an English merchant sponsored his Greek Orthodox servant, Pasqua Rosée, in setting up the Western Europe’s first coffeehouse in London in 1652. London became “the pre-eminent city of coffeehouses” over the next hundred years as addicted gentlemen flocked to these spaces to sip coffee, read the news, and escape the bustle of the city. Coffeehouse owners often ground the beans at a customer’s table, allowing eager onlookers to “consume” the Mediterranean traditions of coffee drinking and coffeehouses.10 The Englishman Alexander Pope described one such experience in his early eighteenth-century poem, The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3:

For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crown’d,

The berries crackle, and the mill turns round.

On shining altars of Japan they raise

The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze.

From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,

While China’s earth receives the smoking tide.

At once they gratify their scent and taste,

And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.11

One can imagine the flood of excitement to an Englishman’s senses as the strange coffee mill crushed the fragrant berries, emitting their pungent scent throughout the room. “Shining alters” of Asian porcelain transferred these “grateful liquors” into the eager consumers’ mouths. Coffee and coffeehouses were consumables and spaces wholly devoted to making Englishmen feel connected to the world beyond their walls. They thrived on the “exoticness” of “scent and taste” that coffee represented.

Though English coffeehouses remained relatively exclusive during the second half of the seventeenth century, inclusiveness and social diversity defined these spaces by the beginning of the eighteenth century. It seemed that every Englishman had his own coffeehouse. Regional affiliations lured men to certain venues, while business and political allegiances called different men to others. So many coffeehouses lined London’s streets by midcentury that one Englishman disgustedly exclaimed that these once-proud establishments had “degenerated” into “mere alehouses.” Another worried, “Pre-eminence of place, none [at the coffeehouse] should mind. . . But take the next fit seat that he can find.” One English elite damned these supposedly egalitarian institutions for being “free to all Comers, so they have Humane shape.” “Here,” this angry author declared, “there is no respect of persons.”12 Another Englishman denounced coffeehouses’ inferior company, arguing, “As you have a hodge-podge of Drinks, such too is your Company, for each man seems a Leveller, and ranks and files himself as he lifts, without regard to degrees or order.” Whether elites liked it or not, English coffeehouses evolved into key spaces of commercial urban society where a diverse set of people could meet and commiserate.13 British American colonists were taking notes.

Many British American men had experienced English coffeehouses firsthand by the mid-eighteenth century. The Virginia gentleman William Byrd II visited Will’s Coffeehouse almost daily while living in London from 1717 to 1720. He also spent much time at Ozinda’s and Garraway’s Coffeehouses. Dr. Alexander Hamilton so missed the drinking culture of his native Scotland that shortly after moving to Annapolis in 1738 he asked his brother (who lived in Edinburgh) to “be so good as Remember me to all the members of the whin-bush Club. . . . Inform them that every Friday, I fancy myself with them. . . . I Long to see those merry days again.” Ever the aspiring gentleman, Benjamin Franklin also frequented London’s many coffeehouses while residing in the lively metropolis in 1725. He remembered meeting the famous English physician, Henry Pemberton, at Batson’s Coffee House: “[He] promis’d to give me an opportunity, sometime or other, of seeing Sir Isaac Newton, of which I was extreamly desirous.”14 English coffeehouses, in brief, would hardly have been foreign to the colonial gentlemen who most desired these spaces.

By midcentury, British America’s urban centers boasted numerous coffeehouses. New York City had the Exchange Coffee House, the Merchant Coffee House, the Whitehall Coffee House, and the Burns Coffee House. Philadelphia’s postmaster, Henry Flower, ran “the old Coffee House” in 1735; other genteel establishments such as Roberts’ Coffee House, the West Indian Coffee House, and the James Coffee House followed. Thirsty Bostonians could gather in the Crown Coffee House. Though not harboring as many souls as northern cities, Charleston, Annapolis, and Williamsburg each boasted at least one coffeehouse by midcentury as well.15 And while not officially restrictive like many of the fee-charging “penny universities” of seventeenth-century London, midcentury colonial American coffeehouses nevertheless operated according to a variety of exclusionary measures.16

British American newspaper advertisements were especially effective in conveying an air of civility surrounding coffeehouses. The Philadelphia publican Margaret Ingram, for example, gave “Notice to all Gentlemen” in 1748 that she “opened the West Indian Coffee House, where they may depend upon being genteely entertained” by virtually every material amenity that the empire offered. The owner of New York City’s Exchange Coffee House similarly advertised its grand opening in December 1749, assuring “all Gentlemen” that they “may depend upon the Best Entertainment from their humble servant.”17 Farther south, Mary Bedon, owner of the Charleston Coffee House in 1740, assured “all Gentlemen . . . so kind as to be her Customers” that they would “meet with the best Reception and Entertainment in her Power,” while Annapolis’s Coffee House played host to elitist clubs such as the Homony Club. Many shrewd midcentury tavern keepers also played to gentlemen’s need for civili...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Coffeehouse Coteries: Civil Dreams of Exclusivity and Consumer Power
• 2. “Citizens of the World?”: Coming to Terms with Cosmopolitanism
• 3. “We that entertain travellers must strive to oblige every body”: Urban Taverns and the Messy Reality of Civil Society
• 4. “Disorderly Houses”: Rakish Revelries, Unlicensed Taverns, and Uncivil Contradictions
• 5. “They will begin to think their united power irresistible”: The Stamp Act and the Crisis of Civil Society
• 6. “As far from being settled as ever it was”: The Revolutionary Transformation of Civil Society
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index