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introduce catherine smith. catherine smith is a journalist and history writer with a long-term interest in fdr in his times. thehe biographer of marguerite o was fdr's private secretary counselor, confidantda from 1921 to 1941 and served as the de facto white house chief of staff. h in addition to the gatekeeper, catherine co-authors a mystery series. she also impersonates for the tell all talks about life with the roosevelts and has given more than 100 presentations at the venues including the eolibrary, the little white houe in georgia and the national world war ii museum. her most recent book is baptists and bootleggers the prohibition expedition through s the south with cocktail recipes. she considers the repeal of the amendment to be one of the

greatest achievements of the early new deal. catherine lives in anderson south carolina with her husband. please join me in welcoming catherine smith. [applause] i was telling patrick i had a sample that might have drawn. a bigger crowd and today we will have a good time without it. baptists and bootleggers you might wonder how ile came up wih the title and the answer is my father is an economist, academic economist who is taught for many years at clifton university and he had a theory of government regulation about 35 years ago that he called bootleggers and baptists and the way the theory goes the regulation will be more durable if there is a coalition of moral interests pushing forth

and capitalists that have a profit motive and of the example was on sundays in the south it was illegal to sell alcohol and in some places it still is. baptists are in favor of that because it is a sin to drink on sunday and most other days. the bootleggers are in favor of itar because that opens the mart for them. the only place to get alcohol so bootleggers and baptists. i have a son, adam smith, adam c smith and a few years ago he and my father co-authored a book about bootleggers and baptists it was a collection of case studies and i was so proud of them, 50 years difference in their ages and they wrote this book together and it was well done and as soon as possible to tell people and get the title out theyis would say bootleggers

into baptists that sounds like a fun book. i would then have to say it's an economics book. it's interesting but it's not really fun. then i thought what if i wrote a fun book about bootleggerstl and baptists the real bootleggers and baptists in the prohibition era so with their permission i took the original title and hoflipped it to college baptists and bootleggers because i thought it would t be a shame if somebody ordered their book and got mine and even worse if they ordered mine and got there's anna saying where are the cocktail recipes. [laughter] so that's what i did. to begin with i kind of go through the early part of america the colonial period in the earlier years so how did we ever get indisposition that by 1919 congress and the american public thought it would be a good idea to ban alcohol.

we were a nation of drunkards really almost fromt' the beginning. ken burns used to that as one of the titles for his series on prohibition a few years ago. it was just a tradition of heavy drinking. it began when the pilgrims came on thehe mayflower they got blon off course they were supposed to go to virginia and wound up in massachusetts and thehe reason they stayed on shore as they were running out of beer and felt we have to start growing something so we can make beer to drink and half of them died that winter anyway. it was a bad decision probably influenced by alcohol. but anyway you get things moving along and along. you think about washington and his men they didn't always have food at valley forge but they almost always have a rom. one of my favorite heroes of the revolutionary war is a man named francis from the low country of south carolina which, i mean,

near charleston. he was a continental army officer and the british already captured savannah and were headed to charleston and he went to ad dinner party hosted by someone else for some other officers in the army and the tradition at the time was if you had a dinner party you would lock the dining room doors and no one could leave until they were either all under the table or they'd run out of punch and wine. francis wasbs a fairly abstemios fellow and finally had enough so he decided he would just jump out of the second floor window or fellt or was pushed but anywy he landed in the street, broke his ankle and had to go home to recover in berkeley county which is outside of charleston. the british captured charleston meanwhile and all theer continental army officers had taken an oath that they would not fight anymore against the crown and even if they had to

fight for the crown or they were sent on to be imprisoned in florida or put on these awful in the charleston harbor and you know how hot it is therere right now. you can imagine what it must have been like. francis marion because he was out of town as soon as possible could get back on the horse which was a good look for him because he was this little guy about 5 feet tall. his legs were kind of deformed, to put him out on a horse he looked pretty good so soon as he could get on the horse again he started leading this band of guerrilla fighters in the swamps of south carolina said he was called the swamp fox by the british commander because he was impossible to catch and the place that he worked out of became known as hellhole swamp because the british commander said it was one hell of a swamp

and years later it became a hotbed of moonshine making but anyway francis and a few other leaders in south carolina turned the tide t r of the revolution, drove the british out and that was the end of the war but it wasn't the end of the drinking. .. today, it is about two and half gallons. that tells you something about people drank. by showing that fact at a tacos giving at a distillery one time for the man by the bar said some of you people are not doing your part. [laughter] however, the 1820s w and 1830s e

when people realize that there was a problem. for the most part it was realized by women in this movement began temperance that was led by people like elizabeth cady stanton and susan b anthony because women were suffering. they could not vote. as wrote laws about the properties a ghetto. very c uncertain. if a woman there is no divorce in most cases if the woman left a husband he could keep the children. and these drunken husbands were becoming a real problem. not that there were not some drunken women two. so that was the beginning of the temperance union. and susan b anthony asked to speak to an organization called the sons of temperance they would not let her speak. it went off and decided to work

for women's suffrage. in other right. the two movements were very tightly intertwined suffrage and prohibition. then the civil war come along. "abraham lincoln decides to raise money for the union army by putting excise tax on alcohol which we had not had since the jefferson administration. start out with a 2 cents a gallon it works up to $2 a gallon. the south was welcomed back into the bosom of the country, these people up in the mountains who'd been making moonshine for generations are being approached by a revenue agent saying hey buddy, we went that excise taxes got to pay the bills of the union army which was not really popular in the south at the time. what these men called themselves neand block caterers. they were having whiskey wars, gemoonshine for in the mountains rhetorician the moon shies maker see if the revenue agents. then it got to be that moonshine

were at war with each other fighting for the market share. well, in 1874 if the organization was started called the women's christian w temperae union. there are people here like me who had a grandmother who is a member. the lips that touch liver willno never touch mine motto. they had others. they were known for their big white ribbons. the lady was w their leader for many years was frances willard who was a genius at organizing, and speaking, and writing, and persuasion. i am really convinced she could have led the d-day invasion with much less loss of lives. so anyway were also very much allied witht suffragists. anything they could do to empower women. one of their causes was to raise

the age of essential consent from ten until 16 for it finally happened my state of cap of an 1875. my favorite person in the book was a member of the wctu. a radical member she was born in kentucky during the civil war. in her first husband was a very alcoholic doctor. she must've been pretty naïve she did not realize he was a drunk until after they married. he was a desk in the year leaving her at the small baby. she woke up a one year at age 52 living with their second husband in kansas. decided the lord told her she needed to start on a mission to destroy saloons. so she ramped up her weapon of choice that dave was rock

spreadsheet in the methodist minister went to a saloon insert methodist minister's wife at the hand organ yelling him to the top of the voices, throwing rocks, breaking nears breaking windows, wrecking the place. and eventually wiped out all of these saloons and medicines laws. kansas was supposed to be a dry state in practice it wasn't. then she moved on to bigger and better things, bigger and better towns and more effective weaponry. her favorite was a little hatchet she would get at hardware stores. it was never photographed without her bible in one hand and her hatchet in the other. she called himself karen ignatius your loving home defender. she cut a wide path of the country always to new york, i'll be down to miami. she to england, shoot to washington demanded have an audience with theodoreem

roosevelt. she was turned away. she went to congress demanded to seek a joint house of congress, she was turned away. instead she stayed up in the ladies gallery where she sold miniaturer hatchet pins to raise money for her cause. quite a character. by the time she died in 1912 been a lot of advances in states going dry, especially in the south. and after student bootleggers i decide to look at the south during prohibition because we went dry before much of the rest of the country. they gotten really, really good at producing, transporting and selling alcohol by the time the rest of the country got drive. but georgia went dry in 1907. bite 1919 every state in the south was dry except for one, should not surprise you it was louisiana. and it really never did go dry.

now, what these supporters of the template's house was eleanor roosevelt. which is not surprising for several reasons. one issues very involved in the suffragist movement. the other was her family history of severe alcoholism. her father had been severely alcoholic and died when she was a small child. she had alcoholic uncles, eventually an alcoholic brother. one of her children had pretty bad problems with it. she was not a fan of drinking. fdr on the other hand, was a social drinker but he himself a damp became before it became politic to become a wet period of the century is moving on. fdr becomes assistant secretary of the navy to daniels it was a newspaper publisher from raleigh, north carolina. a great advocate of temperance.

lee daniels as assistant secretary of the navy under woodrow wilson. w his big cause was wiping out sin which if you've ever met a sailor you know what a tall order that is. he banned any beverage stronger than coffee on ships and even in the officers mess wishes will we call a cup of coffee a cuppa joe. fdr was his lieutenant and that cause. the first decades of this century were very anti- immigrant. very anti- catholic and increasingly anti- german as we got into the war in europe. the anti- immigrant cause came because we had such a huge amount of immigrants coming into the country. many of whom were catholic. so you had the italians who were catholic and drinknk wine. you have the germans who were at lewis runabout they drink beer. and then you had the irish were everything. drink

[laughter] these nice protestants members of the wctu were just afraid of these people and did not trust them. think of the catholic religion something.odoo or there's also an organization that got started in the late 1900s called the anti- saloon league. it was especially aimed at saloons. where beer was sold. most of the breweries in the country were owned by germans who immigrated here. most of these saloons wereat affiliated with these breweries. so the anti- german fervor played in there. then congress passed the 16th amendment needed an income tax. the government was not as dependent on the excise tax. all these things started coming together. in october 1919 congress passed the 18th amendment made it illegal to produce, transport and sell alcohol in the united

states. much to the surprise of everyone, it was ratified in just 13 months. the 19th amendment followed. at first everything went pretty much as the temperance supporters about. had these rosy beliefs that everyone would just switch to milk in the prisons would empty, there would be no more crying for there be no more insanity it would be a beautiful, beautiful world. but what happened instead is the gangs and criminal interest realized we could make a lot of money here. the government stepped back. the only not letting anyone sell the scepter not collecting excise tax on it either. though, people still wanted to drink and they found ways to do it. there were some major loopholes in the volstead act which imposed to enforce prohibition. one allowed medicinal alcohol to bean made.

if any man, woman, child in the country couldou buy a pint of whiskey every ten days as long as you got a prescription from a doctor who said he had of additional reason to need it. oddly enough the american medical association had come to the conclusion some years before that alcohol had no buddhist medicinal value. when they found that doctors couldha cause a 3-dollar dispensing fee each time he wrote a script they change their mind and decide they did not want to be hasty here. that kept a lot of distilleries in kentucky in business. there tend licensed distillers in the country's i could make medicinal alcohol and salt little bottles. six of them were in louisville. another exception was religious purposes. if you were a catholic you could get your wine for communion. for the jewish sacraments they could get wine. it started out there were some

unusual people get into the rabbi business. and rabb' mcdonald's and rabbi who lives in a two room tenement claims he has a synagogue of 2000 members. and basically anyone bought a bottle of wine for him became a member of his synagogue. another exception points if you had had alcohol and probing a jump prohibition began you can keep it. i if you move from one house to the other you can take it with you. when roosevelt and his wealthy friends could do that. their own private clubs to keep alcohol they had on hand. a person filed this practice was the president of the united states of warren g harding. it been a senator so he used his catch of liquor to it from his house to the white house. it was widely suspected when he ran out of at the justice

department started supplying him with stuff that had been confiscated. he did not serve alcohol formal white house events. but his wife was the barmaid made us several times a poker party there drink themselves silly. of course fdr was lost the race for vice president during that election over harding and collegiate monopoly of the nexto year. a couple of winters he spent on his housecoat fooling around the caribbeanro where they would eny grog every night but what was in the grog i don't know. it may be another name for a martini. and then also the little white house where he was said to have had a bootlegger who supplied him with moonshine. the government was making efforts to control this out-of-control criminal activity. but they were so outmanned and

outgunned. it is so easy to bribe a prohibition agent. they were poorly trained from so many have been gotten the enforcement business just to reap the rewards of the bribery. of course most famous of the infamous gangsters was al capone. even though my book is about the south, and lo and behold i found out al capone was from chicago and had spent a lot of time in the south. are so many places he was said to have laid his head. it was kind of like washington slept here. i can tell you to that i know for sure what is the federal penitentiary in atlanta where he stayed for two years after being convicted of income second tax evasion. the others in the late 20s he bought a home outside of miami beach where he lived and built the largest slimming pool in

florida. and was seen parading around in a black one piece bathing suit one light fdr at war. why did anyone think wool was a good material for bathing suit? anywayay that is where he went after he got out of alcatraz pretty back to miami beach and died there. thank 19th 88 repeal had become a famous issue of the campaign. around the mid- 1920s the public opinion really startedll changing. the episcopalians, and i am one, reluctantly gone wonky that that is, the baptists and the presbyterians to support prohibition. they said we are out of it, or going back to work cocktail parties of what had happened with ther crime, the murder rate is twice what it is today in new york and chicago. so alex smith, the governor of new york was nominated for

president. fdr put the nominationan and. it became a very ugly race focus on his catholicism, his strong position as a wet. and people suggested accused him of being a puppet of the big tammany hall party machine in new york. when he lost in a landslide to herbert hoover. so herbert hoover wins in 19208. that february on st. valentine's day was when the happened brittle and spectacular murder that the country had seen. all capone was largely thought that would have been the cause of it. he said no, no, i was in miami when all this happens i f was on vacation. in fact as the district attorney's office being questioned at the very moment.

they never did find out who did it. that wasal s another thing that really started pushing public opinion against prohibition. well, took office the next month and then october stock market crashed. that was the beginning of the great depression. government, everybody's funds dried up, unemployment rose the government's funds were getting very dry. and hoover, when he took office promised to study prohibition and eventually a report came out that saidut it's not really working, it's not enforceable. but we think we should keep doing it and he said that sounds fine to me. a woman who had helped get him elected name polly, she was the first woman on the republican national committee. a powerhouse in fundraising, decided she had had enough.

she turned her back on hoover. she resigned from the republican party and she started the women's organization for national prohibition reform. what an acronym. but again, she was in the same mold of the lady that ran the wctu. she could organizeth anything. she and her wealthy lady friends and their rich husbands are writing checks to make the thing run. any woman in the country could join for free. they had this cute coalition of sharp girls, housewives, factory workers who were all working for national prohibition form. i the interesting thing is they use the same argument that the temperance movement folks had for that we are protecting families because since there was no alcohol in the country, there was no reason to regulate alcohol that wasn't there. so young girls and teenage boys were going to speakeasies and

there were no rules against it. a decent moment but have not gone in a bar before prohibition except maybe ms. kitty. jumped on the bandwagon with polly and she endorsed fdr in 1932, switch parties. now, fdr going along with the plank the democrats adopted wholeheartedly to appeal the 18th amendment. he won in a landslide. the winter congress repealed the 18th amendment bypassing the 21st. and it went to the states to be ratified. meanwhile the first acts in 100 days was to ask congress to l modify the code set out to legalize the sale of light beer and wine pretty quickly passed. roosevelt said think of a good time for a beer in the agreed. cap a lot of people back to work

in a legal business again also serve the excise tax going back into the treasury. he was thrown back to the states with the ratification of alcohol is a 21st amendment. which happened december 5 , 33. now in the south, interestingly, if they did not accept that amendment until 1966. so it was a dry state. lately until 1966. what is it through the regulation back of the individual state. each state could decide what they wanted to do. the southern states really dragged their feet except for louisiana. south carolina start allowing local option 35, georgia 1937. the fact they waited so long just kept the moonshine flowing. that is what led to the birth of

nascar. study sellingng moonshine but ae young reckless teenagers to drive their model ford -- model a ford's although down the mountains. on the weekends when they were not so busy they would race each other in cowow pastures. that led to stock car racing. some of the big stars in the early days of stock-car racing and even some of that later days had been moonshine is like junior johnson. so, could tell a story prohibition in my book it is indeed a series of expeditions through the south. i go to different places, visit, bar museums hotels distilleries, cemeteries all of them have something to do with the story. and i tell in first person it is a history book it does have hundreds of footnotes. so i did not make any of this stuff up. but it is fun history.

in each chapter i find recipes recipes from that recipes from that. or a friendly bartender was able to share with me. and give you a great idea for places to eat and drink in charleston, savannah, louisville, miami, all of that kind of stuff. step it was a very fun book to write. i'men happy to say my publishers give me a contract to write the sequel methodists ande moonshiners. [laughter] and people keep asked me what i'm going to do about the presbyterians both said the only thing that comes up in my mind is crusteded presbyterians and prostitution and i'm just not ready to delve into that form of sin yet. [laughter] but anyway. it was a lot of fun and my wonderful husband leo was my psychic doubletime. he's kind of like a character in the book.

so, what questions can i answer about prohibition? i think you c have to walk up to the bite, correct? they will catch you on both tv. come on, someone has got a question. go-ahead. actually, i have read the book. this is a friendly question. talk about dawsonville the event you went to that is still ongoing for that culture and dawsonville, georgia reflected a lot of places it really haven't changed a lot in the south. dawsonville, georgia is one of them. they called themselves the birthplace of stock-car racing. the people in north carolina heatedly disputed that it's almost like who makes the best barbecue. but dawsonville is the home ofe

bigger racing a family, awesome bill from dawsonville his son chase just one or the big nascar contest this year, chase elliott. it was a hotbed of moon shining. is not easy drive but it is a straight shot down mountain roads to atlanta. soou people in these communities are making the moonshine. originally it would've bartered it and sold it to each other. but when that markup got be so high they would start selling it to people they did not know in atlanta through bootleggers. the quality and stuff got to be really, really bad. moonshine would kill you. but they were using old radiators instead of copper tubing and that kind of thing. dawsonville has been moonshine festival every year. it was like that culture. i think i knew it i was getting into. before the election that was

2020 election. the guy who was running for congress had an outline of ak-47 on his campaign signs. he won, he comes a gun store. and a woman about my age from the club which is comically rotary was holding up a cardboard ak-47 because she was selling raffle tickets to win a real one, great christmas gift. anyway, they have a terrific stock-car racing hall of fame museumch there. which is attached to the city hall. which is attached to a distillery. when i went into the distillery case of little curved bones and the sign said dix, $6.54. the young lady at the counter, is this what i think they are? she said oh yes they are they are raccoon dix, genitalia.

why would someone buy one? she said oh, they are good luck or you can wear in a hatband or give it to someone as a sign of affection. i'm thinking give me diamonds i do not want a conductor. [laughter] that was kind of what the culture was like there. then they give out awards for people to be inducted into the moonshine hall of fame. some of them were dead and their relatives were accepting. one woman i talked about her father hijacked sugar tough trucks and things like that. she said you know i think that it would be a little surprised because we tried to keep that quiet. anyway it was a real experience. for barbecue and we got our barbecue mike grossman said she noticed the hatband of the guy in front of your line customer exit but did have internet conduct? said no it had a knife.

after that we decided to eat our barbecue and go home. [laughter] is a very interesting way of life that has not changed a lot. [laughter] i have a question about the time roosevelt was governor during prohibition. his assistant missy would host their happy hours you can talk without a little bit? missy ishe the subject of my biography, the gatekeeper. she was the hostess of his happy hour every day. eleanordo roosevelt very seldom darken the door butut she did nt approve of the drinking. she did not approve of the joking and this silliness and all of that kind of thing. he wasn't irish catholic. she was used to them being around people who drank a bit sloppy about herself pretty

good. his time in warm springs and the government's demand and in the white house, he always had a children's hour every day. he would call together usually is close to staff. i think the only child who actually came might have been diana hopkins harry hopkins daughter who also lived in the white house because her mothero had died. she told me should savannah slept during children's hour play with the toys pretty kept the funky toys on his desk. all the adults were talking at the issues of the day. they thought they were gossiping. dr certainly was not a drunk. but he liked his martinis. god'swe recipe in the book by te way if that is an inducement. it's a very good martini. i also met missing martini in thereru. other questions you have another minute or two don't be shy.

some people ask me what was the thing that surprised me the most when i do my research? it's that i really like bourbon. fountain carry nations birthplace it's falling down farmhouse the middle of a cast cow pasture. louisville and spent thehe weekd touring distilleries to beautiful grand hotel. it's the place for s scott fitzgerald got through to the bar several times while he was stationed there. it's got a very lively reputation. al capone said to have stayed there. you are al capone stayed he could tell he could get out b of

the building. there was a program around. sometimes two or three. i kind of began to take all the al capone slept two stories with a grain of salt. that's why i can say can only verify two for sure. >> thank you. and cute so much for your attention. [applause] >> be up-to-date on the latest in publishing podcasts with nonfiction book releases plus bestseller lists and trends through insider addition. you can write about books on c-span now reading your podcasts

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