#RUM November 2
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For the month of November, I am participating in the 30-Day Election Trivia Coach4aday Challenge. Today the focus is on RUM.
This Challenge has some simple guidelines
- Identify some interesting information about ELECTIONS not candidates or issues.
- Very briefly describe that info or fact.
- Share it with someone. That can be done in person or via social media. Just link it back to this post or use #Coach4adayChallenge in your share.
Day 2 Election Trivia
One of my good friends is Jeff Frederick the Provost at Wingate University. Jeff earned his Ph.D. in History and is a fabulous speaker and storyteller especially about Southern History and Presidential Elections.
RUM is one part of some of the tales he talks about early Presidential Elections in the US. This does include George Washington.
George Washington Elections and Rum
Sitting in an audience at a Lumberton Kiwanis Club Meeting I first learned of Jeff Frederick knowledge about US Presidential Elections. He pointed out that day that early US Presidents had a line item in their campaign budgets for RUM.
What he shared with us that day were the details and quantities of just how much alcohol (mostly RUM) that presidential candidate offered voters.
In the case of George Washington, the only election he ever lost was in 1757 for a seat in the Frederick County House of Burgess.
In that election George Washington did not conform to a Virginia custom. The tradition was to offer alcohol to the voters. Washington found this sort of electioneering distasteful in 1757 and ran instead on his own merits. The votes above provided him a political lesson.
In the next election Washington served up the following:
28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 46 gallons of beer, 34 gallons of wine and two gallons of hard cider.
Great article on RUM and its role in US elections at this link.
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