in a monarchy, the duty of the people is essentially to obey. but in a republic, the citizens must anticipate. they need to vote. they should follow issues. they should be involved in campaigns. and so, a republic asks much more of people. and this is the foundational generation for this american republic. yet, this is also the peak period for alcohol consumption in america. so, there is a paradox in which the political thinking, the political ideology said we need a republic with a virtue.

an electorate where the people are committed to the well-being, the common good of the country and should be willing to set aside their self interest to advance the common good. that is virtue. yet, this is a time when people are drinking as never before, and you can see the statistics here that historians have come up with. in 1790, the per capita alcohol consumption in the united states, in the equivalent of gallons of 90 proof alcohol -- what does 90 proof mean? everybody knows the answer to that. [laughter] i ask you about alexander hamilton's fiscal policy, and there are crickets in here. i ask you what 90 proof means, and everyone knows. 45% alcohol. per capita, that is also a term.

what does per capita mean? yeah? >> [indiscernible] >> ok, in the u.s. population, we say per capita, that includes women and children in newborn and that's and we are taking the quantity of alcohol consumed in 1790 and dividing by the total population and we are getting 3.5 gallons per person. i think we conclude men were drinking most of this, were drinking more than the infants, and probably were drinking much more than the women were. so, we can assume that men's consumption was probably on the order of 16 gallons per year, of the equivalent of 90 proof alcohol.

now that is higher than it was previously during the colonial era, and yet it will go up. you see by 1830, it gets up to four gallons per capita in the u.s. this is a time of peak consumption of alcohol in american history. you were wondering, how do you measure up? the last statistic i have for the year 2007, it shows alcohol consumption in this country is half of what it used to be, and yet there is plenty of evidence that alcohol can be, for much of the american population, still a problem. ok. so, we talked about the extent of drinking. we need to talk about what it was that early americans were drinking. so, here are the options.

you have to think about what were gentlemen drinking, and what were common people drinking? of these options up here, what the gentlemen of the early republic prefer? gentlemen like john marshall? madeira, that strong wine, imported wine. has a punch, but not nearly as powerful as what common people preferred. what the common people prefer? you are thinking beer because you're thinking in your own time, all right? what do you think of those choices would be the most popular for common men in america of 1830? whiskey, far and away. remember, we talked about the whiskey rebellion? how people were upset about the federal government putting a tax on whiskey? because that really hit home. that was a preferred item of

consumption. now, it is a good question. why did they drink so much whiskey and very little beer? a lot of it has to do with technology. go ahead. >> [indiscernible] >> it has a warming effect, more so than beer, and that is important because a lot of people working outdoors. yes? >> [indiscernible] >> it does not spoil as easily. there is no refrigeration in the early republic, so you can't go to your refrigerator and get a nice cold beer. if you are going to drink a beer, it has to be freshly made and you got to drink it pretty quickly before it goes bad. people are moving around a lot, so they like something that is portable, something they can put in a flask and stick in their pocket. whiskey is perfect for that. and will keep for a very long time. so, people drank a lot of whiskey and very little beer. and wine, they mostly drank these very strong wines like madeira, but wine drinking was a

phenomena of gentlemen rather than common people. so, foreigners commented on the very great extensive drinking in the early republic. one english visitors said that americans were "certainly not as sober as the french or germans, but perhaps about on the level with the irish." and americans recognized their own heavy drinking. john adams found it "mortifying that we americans should exceed all other people in the world in this degrading, beastly imbibe of intemperance." intemperance meant drunkenness.

it was not just working men. it was also gentlemen. for example in 1790, the governor of new york gave a public dinner attended by fellow gentlemen. they consumed 135 bottles of madeira, 36 bottles of port, 60 bottles of beer, and these would be bottles the same size as a wine bottle. so, the running total for those of you keeping score -- 135 bottles of madeira, 36 of port, 60 of beer, 15 bottles of rum, and this was at one public dinner. partly the drinking is so heavy at these political banquets because they are offering toasts to almost everything. there would be a toast to the united states, a toast to the constitution, a toast to the

heroes of the revolution, a toast to the president, a toast to the vice president, a toast to the american fair, by which they meant the women not attending the banquet. there would also be a toast offered for every single state in the union. [laughter] that is quite a challenge when you're just that 13 states, but they keep adding states to the union. indeed, i think this is one of their finest reason for adding states to the union. let's let in kentucky. that would be a toast. people drank at all occasions. they drink at home. they drink it work. they drink at taverns. they drank for pleasure.

they drank to numb pain. they drank from the crack of dawn to the crack of dawn. it was standard for many men to begin the day with what was called an eye-opener, which was a shot of whiskey, and then to continue through the rest of the day. a traveler declared "americans can do nothing without a drink. if you make acquaintance, you drink. you close a bargain, you drink. they quarrel in their drink and they make it up with a drink. they drink because it is hot. they drink because it is cold. if successful in elections, they drink and rejoice. if not, they drink and swear." so, now we have got a pattern. we have something we need to explain. we have to address the why question. why is it that americans are drinking so much in this period of american history? what explanations would you want

to put on the table for this? yes? >> maybe the water quality was not so good? >> water quality, poor water quality. that is certainly true. there was almost nothing in the way of public purified water, which we take for granted today. how did you get your water in the early republic? you went to the well and got it. even in the cities. in the cities, you can imagine how filthy the well water would get. if you are drawing water out of a river or a stream, because they also doubled as it worse. drinking the water was not a popular option. what else would you put for an explanation? >> the cost of alcohol was not very expensive.

>> to say the least, it is very cheap. why would alcohol be so cheap in the united states? >> [indiscernible] >> do you think that they are mostly importing their alcohol or consuming domestically produced alcohol? mostly. madeira is imported, but what about whiskey? ok, what is whiskey made from? grain. what do americans grow a ton off? grain. the number one grain producing country in the world. and agricultural country. they have a lot of surplus grain. and often the grain growers are at a distance from market. say, they are in western pennsylvania. they have to get their produce over the mountains to market in philadelphia. you want something that is more portable and higher value per volume. so, distilling your corn crop into whiskey makes it much more marketable in the east. so, there is more whiskey being produced in the united states

than in any other country in the world, and when you have got a big supply, it means the price is going to be low. another factor is the governments did not tax whiskey. you remember what happened when the government tried to tax whiskey. it did not go well. if any of you want to rush out and buy a bottle of whiskey after this lecture, you're going to find it is pretty expensive. and most of that cost comes in the form of federal and state taxes. in the 20th century, government has gotten in the habit of levying taxes on whiskey and got away with it. it but that was not the case in the early 19th century. so, you had a very common product with virtually no taxation on it. that meant it was cheap.

it was cheaper to get drunk in america than any other country in the world. and many americans thought that was their primary liberty. so, we have bad water. what about drinking other things? what about drinking soda or drinking juices? were those options? >> [indiscernible] >> no carbonation. and fruit juice again, you have the refrigeration problem. people might drink juice right away during harvest season, but there is no way to store it except to turn it into alcohol. so, you would turn apple juice into a hard cider or pear juice into a pear brandy. but there is very little to drink in america that is not alcoholic, other than water, and the water was bad. i asked one new yorker what he thought about the local water. he said, "it is very good for navigation."

you can sail on it, but you don't want to drink it. so we have the bad water. we have the fact that whiskey is quite cheap. any other explanations you can think of why people drink so much at this time? yes? >> being drunk makes you feel better about what is happening in your life. >> certainly it does, in the short term. so, there are stresses in this society. it is a very competitive society in terms of people seeking to make money, and not everyone is going to succeed. there will be a fair share of failures. just the stress of this more competitive society is going to leave a lot of people to drink to console themselves or to drink to celebrate that they are successful. any other things you can think of? yes?

>> [indiscernible] the cost of transportation between out west farms and cities -- >> ok, transportation costs are going down as transportation is being improved, particularly at this time with the steamboat but also canals, such as the. canal which is completed in 1825. that is helping to lower the cost of whiskey in the east when that whiskey is being brought from the west. let me also suggest to you that the high geographic mobility of americans contributes to this. that americans are moving around in pursuit of economic opportunity, not always finding it. and when they do move around, they are trying to form new social bonds with people, and they often found it easier to share a drink with some new acquaintance, to try to get to know them. and so almost every social occasion featured drinking.

every cornhusking, barnraising, funeral, marriage, birth called for alcohol. one farmer remembered a country funeral in maine. "the minister could not stand to preach without holding on by the side of the door. the bearers could not walk straight, nor the mourners keep the line of procession. yet it was not noticed in those times." the same man recalled a local wedding. "we all took so freely of the good cheer that the minister forgot his verses, so after trying several kinds of poetry and ditties, he gave up and said to the couple, you may consider yourselves married and i will

come out some other day and finish the ceremony." [laughter] these were stories told during the 1830's looking back on this earlier time of very heavy drinking. another factor is what americans ate. what do you suppose the diet was very heavy of at this time? a lot of health food? no? what do you suppose people ate massive quantities off? meet. we come to the refrigeration issue. could you go to the refrigerator and pull out a steak? were there any grocery stores to go to? no. how did you preserve meat at that time? you salted or you smoke it. in either case, if you eat a lot of that, you are going to be very thirsty.

then you will face the choice. water or whiskey. most americans will choose the whiskey. there was the belief that after you have had a heavy meal, heavy and salted or smoked meats, you need alcohol to settle your stomach. americans were notorious for eating massive quantities of food, and eating it as quickly as possible. european visitors were just astonished. they would bring stopwatches to time american meals. and they would marvel to see these huge quantities of hams and eat steak and bacon being bolted down in five minutes, and of course they have to settle their stomachs, and it is with whiskey. one visitor noted "as soon as food is set on the table, they fall upon it like wolves on an unguarded herd." yes?

>> [indiscernible] >> we are going to come down to those. because none of this is going to be without problems. we're going to talk about social consequences. in terms of causes, i also want to talk about the nature of work. it was the belief that alcohol help people work outdoors. it helped them deal with extremes of temperature, either very hot or very cold. help them cope with it raining or snowing. did most americans work outdoors or indoors at that time? outdoors, because what sorts of jobs did they have? they are farmers, overwhelmingly. that is the number one occupation in america. 80%. and then other common

occupations are also outdoors. being a sailor, being a logger, being a fisherman, being a dockworker. relatively few americans work indoors at desk jobs. if you believe this helps you cope with the weather outside, you will be drinking on the job. and even people who worked in shops -- let's say a blacksmith or a shoemaker -- they also drank during the job. the belief was it helps people do their daily work. so, it was a common practice. it was almost universal that employers would provide alcohol. if you were a farmer and you hired farm laborers, those laborers expected that in addition to the pay you were giving them you were going to feed them a meal and provide them with alcohol, so they could keep working.

you went into a shoemaker from shock, same story. the master would provide alcohol. it would be a bonds the between the master or the journeyman and the apprentice. question? >> did they also give it to slaves? >> no, slaves are the exception. with an exception during harvest season. a special bonus to get slaves to work harder during the cotton harvest or tobacco harvest, providing them alcohol at that season. otherwise, masters or trying to deny a call to their slaves. but slaves could see the free people around them drinking heavily. it becomes a goal to steal alcohol and share it with your friends in the slave quarters as an act of defiance, as a way to say, we are just as good as free people and we should be able to drink, too.

in the military, the army and the navy had to provide alcohol. george washington's army often ran out of food for long stretches of time. his army never ran out of alcohol. and washington understood, as did all other commanders, if you wanted to keep men in the ranks the number one thing you could do, even better than paying them, was to provide alcohol every day. same thing in the navy. we will see that this will start to change in the 1830's and it will produce a great deal of strain in the relationships between employers and employees when employers try to cut off providing alcohol. elections promoted alcoholic consumption. we might like to think people would be sober when they were making their very important political decisions, but in the early republic, most voters were

not sober. and indeed, the friends of different candidates would be at the polling places and they would have a glass of whiskey with them, and they would be up slapping people on the back, offering them free whiskey, and encouraging them to cast their vote for the candidate providing them with the alcohol. it was -- for example, a traveler reported "an election in kentucky last three days, and during that period, and apple toddy flowed through our cities and villages like the euphrates through ancient babylon. a number of runners, each with a whiskey bottle poking its long neck from his pocket, were busily employed bribing voters." today there are laws that say if you are promoting a candidate, you have to be a certain distance from the polling place, and you not allowed to be pressing alcohol a potential

voters, but there were no such laws in the early republic. george washington was one of the most successful politicians of his time in virginia, because he understood a practice known as treating, which is that a candidate should host a barbecue in the run-up to the election. invite all of the voters of the county to come to his barbecue and provide them with free food, heaping slabs of smoked and salted meat, and all the alcohol they could drink. the belief of the time was, a candidate who is so generous is proving that he is accessible to common people. he is not some sort of stuck up, distant aristocrat. washington, who was a very dignified man, would not show up at his own barbecue. he had friends who would run this and send him the bill.

and he was not the only one. particularly in the south, they did this. in one of his more successful campaigns, washington served 144 gallons of alcohol to 307 voters. that's about two votes per gallon, which was not considered a bad return. what about the politician who developed principles and decides he is not going to serve alcohol on a campaign? there was a rare example of this in his name was james madison. as a young politician in virginia, he refused to treat the virginia voters. he deemed the practice "inconsistent with the highest morals and republican principles."

how do you suppose james madison did in his campaign? he went down to defeat. the next time he ran for office, he treated the voters and he won. ok, so we explored the reasons behind this very heavy drinking in america of this time. we have to consider, what do you suppose the social consequences were of this level of alcohol consumption, particularly by men? what are some of the problems you would find? much more domestic violence, particularly of men hating wives, hitting children. that is a problem. yes? >> more violence in general. >> more violence in general. out at the taverns, surrounded by fellow drinks, you start arguing about politics. you start arguing about the weather. you start arguing about the color of people's eyes.

a brawl breaks out. yes? [indiscernible] >> bad decisions made in terms of? >> political? >> political. we can wonder about the decisions made by voters given the state they are and when they go to the polling place. that is why we now have laws saying it is not a good idea to get people drunk just before they go to vote. other consequences you might think off? yes? this is a level of alcohol consumption that could invite health problems. i'm not talking about people take an occasional drink at a meal. we are talking about people treating all day long, hard stuff. not all americans are doing that, but among american men, a majority were doing that at this time, and that is going to take a toll on people after a while. for some people, the toll will start pretty quickly.

but some people do not have the capacity for this. they feel pressured to do it because that is what everybody around them is doing. any other problems you can think of? yes? >> [indiscernible] >> in the workplace. this is going to become much more of a problem when you admission teams to the workplace. it is one thing if you are making a shoe by hand, but what if you are making issue with the help of machinery and you have had too much to drink? you can start to lose fingers and hands and arms pretty quickly. and employers did not like that because it messes up the machines. and they spent good money for those machines. what were you going to say? >> [indiscernible] if you are more drunk, you are not as coordinated. >> once you have machines, the level of production is more noticeable to the employer. the job of the employee is to

keep the pace of the machine. that is a brisker pace than people were used to working. now if you take a drink, and you can keep up with the machine, the shoes will come out all screwy because you, as the worker, did not do your part in the work process. this will be particularly of concern to people organizing new workplaces, particularly in factories. >> also the economic slowdown because the people who are drunk to not work so hard -- >> that's right. employers want to get more work out of people because they are engaged in a competitive marketplace. if your competitor manages to reduce the drinking by his workers and you do not, who is it that is going to be more successful in selling the product or producing more products? it is going to be your competitor and not you and you make a lot of business. yes?

>> [indiscernible] because the military and the navy are drinking so much, they might lose battles -- >> they might be. the good thing for the american military is the other militaries were also drinking. so, the military is going to be the last element of american society to change. and they are going to be continuing to provide alcohol to these soldiers through the civil war. other questions or comments? yes? >> is there a drinking age? >> no drinking age at that time. you could come in as a six-year-old and if you had the money, they would sell you a drink. ok.

this is good. you have covered the essential elements. if you think about it, it is a heavy level of drinking. it is going up. it is leading some americans to question because of thesenegati. if your husband is drinking up his wages, there will not be clothingod or decent for the wife and children at home. so women are becoming concerned that a heavy level of alcohol consumption is leading to high domestic abuse and it is impoverishing many families. we talked about this concept of republican motherhood where women feel that they have obligation to teach virtue to

their children. virtue in ao teach household where the primary male example is drunk a lot of the time. so, women would say our responsibilities as republican mothers means that we ought to be heard in the political sphere on issues that affect our households. and the number one negative issue affecting our households is a high level of alcohol consumption. really, kind of two strands of culture which are coming together. we could say three strands. one is this idea of republican motherhood. another strand is evangelical religion. the united states is primarily a protestant country at that time, and the most dominant form of the protestant faith was evangelical. and evangelical churches during this time, from 1800 until 1850

are increasingly coming to believe that drinking any alcohol is a sin that leads people to other sins. if you are to perfect your moral behavior, then the convert to your faith must stop drinking. earlier in the colonial period, they try to reduce drinking and little bit, but they had not really pushed on it. now churches are pushing very hard, especially in the time after 1830. republican motherhood is one strand of influence. we have evangelical churches as another strand. and the third is industrial capitalism. and we talked about how employers were in a more competitive marketplace. they wanted more productivity from their workers. they did not want to be spending their own money buying drinks for their workers when that is just complicating and reducing productivity.

yes? >> [indiscernible] >> well, it has deepened it. women are feeling the public sphere, particularly all of this drinking at militia musters or elections is causing a problem for them in their households. they say, if we're going to protect our sphere, this domestic sphere, we need to have a lot less drinking in the public sphere. if they succeed in this temperance movement and the public sphere becomes one that is much more temperate, then the argument is the domestic sphere and the public sphere will be and more harmony than they are when you have this high level of drinking, both public and private. yes? >> [indiscernible]

>> it might. but workers like to have their jobs. and this is a time in which the union movement was very weak. not all employers can get away with this, but most employers can get away with it, because even where people are unionized, there are other issues that are more important to them, such as having better pay. sometimes employers are improving pay a little bit at the same time they are taking away the provision of this alcohol in the workplace. i say sometimes. often the employer is just taking away the alcohol provision and not improving the pay, but workers have to take it because they are not unionized. this is a time in the country when the government, state and

national, do not recognize unions. that is a development of the 20th century. ok, so the workplace is changing. again, i want to remind you, most americans are farmers. and a lot of farmers are still providing alcohol. it is not so much the workplace is changing for farmers. it is that a lot of farmers are becoming evangelical christians and they want to reduce alcohol consumption because it is in their conviction the moral thing to do. some employers are not only a eliminating the alcohol they provide in the workplace. they are also telling the workers, don't you bring your own flask in here. no more drinking on the job. some employers go even further when they can get away with it. and they say, if you really want to keep your job here, i would

like you to go to the local evangelical church and i would like you to take a pledge of temperance. and preferably one of abstinence. now, this means of alcohol. a lot of workers would just say no way, but workers who were concerned about keeping their job might say, ok, i will see you in church on sunday. so, this is developing a tension. not all workers want to go along with what their employers want them to do in terms of changing their behavior -- not simply in the workplace, but also in their leisure time. some workers go along with it. some don't. it also becomes a class divide. which social class do you think is going to be pushing hardest for temperance? >> [indiscernible] >> yeah, the people who will be

owning these workshops or farms. what class would we call this? >> middle class and wealthier people would be pushing for temperance. and the people most resistant to it would be the ones who need alcohol to cope with their art or lives, and that would be more working people. again i am just talking about a general pattern. you will find plenty of working men who join temperance groups because they wanted to have better lives. i do not want you to go away from this thinking that workers just want to get drunk. many care about temperance. but the people who care the most about temperance are middle-class people. any questions so far? i also talked about a gender divide.

women care deeply about temperance. most of the resistance will be male. it is a class divide, stronger among middle-class people than working-class people. there is also an ethnic divide. people who were already born in the united states were more prone to embrace the temperance movement then were immigrants. and immigrants often felt that this was a form of cultural welfare. there was also the religious divide. many immigrants to america were catholics and they did not see the same problems with alcohol that protestants were identifying. they saw this as attacking their ethnicity and their faith. if you wanted to find a setting where you would find the greatest commitment to preserving the traditional custom of drinking, it would be a neighborhood with emigrants, often poor, often catholic.

and they would say, it is none of your business what we do on our own time. leave us alone. there becomes a political divide. by the 1830's and 1840's, we have a new pair of political parties. the old federalists, gone. the old jeffersonian republicans had evolved. what are the names of the two parties refined during the 1830's and 1840's. go ahead? the democrats and the whigs. the whigs drew very heavily on the social groups that favor temperance. the whig party pushed temperance. they were strong among business owners, strong among evangelical christians, although women could

not vote, if they could vote, they would have voted overwhelmingly for the whigs. the democrats draw from those who are the most skeptical of temperance. immigrants, rural americans. there is something of a cultural divide emerging in the country that has political consequences. the temperance movement does start to have an impact during the 1830's and 1840's. and initially, it is in the form of what we call moral suasion. that is like persuasion. for example, if you are watching television, you will see ads where there are warnings against the consequences of drunk driving. there are certainly laws against

drunk driving, but there is also a publicity campaign that is mounted by social groups and by the government to try to persuade people to change their behavior. similar efforts to persuade people today to stop smoking cigarettes. that is what we call moral suasion. an attempt to persuade people to make the choice themselves to change their behavior. and temperance and initially focused on moral suasion. and achieved some gains. it essentially became disrespectable to be a middle class person and be a heavy drinker. middle-class people start to police themselves. they don't like to associate with people who are heavy drinkers. so, it starts to dissipate in the middle class, particularly in the northeast and midwest. it persists in the working-class where the working class are

reinforcing more traditional behavior. temperance groups are finding there is kind of a cap to how far they can go in achieving the reduction of drinking if they just rely on moral suasion. so, the alternative is to get localities and states to pass laws that would forbid the sale, the consumption, the production of alcohol. you are thinking about the famous prohibition law that congress passed in the 1920's. we're talking about an earlier period where it is not a federal issue. it is a state issue. there are a number of states now that take up this question of should they ban the production, the sale, and the consumption of

alcohol? the first state to do this is the state of maine in 1851. so, this first attempt at prohibition and the country was done at the state level and the first state to try it was maine. maine is a northeastern state, had a lot of evangelicals, had a lot of middle-class entrepreneurs, was very strong for the whig party. so it is an ideal place to try this for the first time. during the next four years, another 12 states will adopt their own versions of the maine law. all of the states were in the north. all of the new england states adopted these laws. new york adopted it and about half of the states in the midwest.

did any southern states adopt such a law? no. so, we are seeing that the country is dividing over the issue of temperance. and particularly over the attempt to use political prohibition to force people to change their behavior. >> i have a question. >> go ahead. >> why does the southern part of the united states not -- not have -- >> this is a very good question. can anybody think of reasons the south might be particularly reluctant to jump on board with this northern phenomenon? yes? >> with the examples of the factories, there are not as many in the south. >> there are not as many factories. we talked about industrial capitalism being one of the three sources. that is weak in the south. >> people in the south work outside. >> is a very rural part of the

country. yes? >> they did not have the town hall meetings. >> it is harder to organize social groups in the south because the population is so dispersed. >> they're not giving alcohol to be slaves. >> they're not giving alcohol to the slaves, so? >> it is all for themselves. >> they think of it as an important rights as a free person to drink all you want. do they want outsiders telling them what to do? >> no. >> no. there is also a growing suspicion of the north and any social movement that develops there. it is perceived to be some sort of fat and northerners should d and northerners should not be telling southerners what to do. part of it is just trying to defend traditions in the south because they do not want to do anything that is new and comes

from the north. and traditions of drinking suit their way of living just fine. that is not to say there were not southerners who favored temperance. there were. but there were not enough of them to pass any laws. in general, southerners do not like an activist government. they do not like government passing laws that make people change behavior. they just don't like it. they don't like it when their own states do it. they especially do not like it if any outside government tries to do it. why do you suppose southerners are so sensitive about an activist government? what kind of activity by a government might be especially concerning to them? yes? >> the emancipation of the slaves? >> the slaves. temperamentally, white southerners do not want government to get it into their head that they can do things like mess with people's property.

messing with tavern keepers' or distillers' property is not as bad as messing with slavery, because slavery, there is so much is invested in that. but it is seen as a slippery slope. if government thinks it has the right to shut down distilleries or shut down taverns, what is to stop them from shutting down slavery? so, just to be on the safe side, southerners, meaning white southerners, like to say the government that governs best is the government that governs least. so, they did not like what they were seeing in the north because northerners were using state governments to change people's behavior. question? >> are they also mad about the tariffs? >> they are. and who is pushing the protective tariffs? the whigs. they just do not trust the messengers, who are the whigs. thank you very much.

see you next time. >> you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like c-spanhistory.at all weekend long, american history tv is joining our charter cable partners to showcase the history of st. louis, missouri. to learn more about the cities on our 2014 chore visit www.c-span.org/localcontent. we continue with our look at st. louis. this is american history tv on c-span3. >> in 2014, st. louis is celebrating 250 years of the city. they put together an exhibit called "250 in 250." it is 50 people, 50 places, 50 images, 50 moments, and 50

objects. the museum's public storage -- public historian shares with us selections from one of the exhibit's five selections. >> we are standing in front of the 50 people selection. -- moments is really interesting. unlike all the other sections, it is all audio. the objects are of course right in front of you, but moments is firsthand accounts from people who experienced or lived through the moments they're talking about. it is not just reading out of a history book. this is from the mouth of people who lived through it. most big cities industry have a fire story. theago had a huge fire in 1870's. st. louis's fire happened in 1849. a steamboat along the levee caught on fire and it