Before he was the first President of the United States, George Washington was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1758 until 1775. He actually lost his first election, however, and “attributed his defeat to his failure to provide enough alcohol for the voters,” according author Daniel Okrent. At the time, it was common for candidates to woo voters by plying them with food and liquor. Washington avoided the same mistake during his second run, spending nearly the entire campaign budget on 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider royal served to 391 voters — nearly a half-gallon per voter. (He also spent 3 pounds on dinner for friends, which very likely also included booze.) His campaign even rolled barrels of liquor to polling places on Election Day, a custom in Virginia at the time. The practice of winning over voters with booze was widespread despite being technically illegal, and was known as “swilling the planters with bumbo.”
Before he was the first President of the United States, George Washington was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses from 1758 until 1775. He actually lost his first election, however, and “attributed his defeat to his failure to provide enough alcohol for the voters,” according author Daniel Okrent. At the time, it was common for candidates to woo voters by plying them with food and liquor. Washington avoided the same mistake during his second run, spending nearly the entire campaign budget on 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider royal served to 391 voters — nearly a half-gallon per voter. (He also spent 3 pounds on dinner for friends, which very likely also included booze.) His campaign even rolled barrels of liquor to polling places on Election Day, a custom in Virginia at the time. The practice of winning over voters with booze was widespread despite being technically illegal, and was known as “swilling the planters with bumbo.”
By the Numbers
Number of biological children George Washington had
0
Total beer sales in the U.S. in 2022
$115 billion
Books in George Washington’s home library
1,200
Funds spent on the 2022 midterm elections
$8.9 billion
Did you know?
George Washington’s teeth weren’t made of wood.
You probably already knew that Washington had dentures, but you might not know what partially necessitated them in the first place: walnut shells. The founding father badly damaged his original set of chompers by using them to crack walnut shells, and he was only 24years old the first time he had a tooth pulled. He suffered from various dental maladies for the rest of his life, and rarely smiled because he was self-conscious about his teeth — but not because they were made of wood, which they weren’t. Washington’s dentures were mostly made from human teeth, including those of his enslaved workers, as well as ivory, cow teeth, and various alloys made of lead, tin, copper, and silver. By the time he was inaugurated at the age of 57, he was down to his last natural tooth.
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