How Alcohol Acted as a Catalyst for American Independence

In the summer of 1784, Alexander Hamilton sat down in New York to write one of the stranger letters of his early legal career. The recent peace had allowed transatlantic wine commerce to restart, British blockades had vanished, and claret could once again reach the palates of the American elite in place of rum. Hamilton’s client, a London wine merchant named Hugh Seton, was owed 7,400 pounds — roughly half a million dollars today — by a man named John De Ponthieu Wilkes. Wilkes had received two shipments of wine to sell in New York on Seton’s behalf. The article How Alcohol Acted as a Catalyst for American Independence appeared first on VinePair.