Craft Beer in History – “Presidents’ Day” Abe Lincoln Edition

There have been several presidents in the history of the United States that have enjoyed their fair share of beer.

John Adams regularly drank beer for breakfast. Grover Cleveland and a political opponent agreed to cap their consumption at four beers a day during an election.

President Obama has topped them all by not only being a craft beer lover, but also by using the White House beehive to brew the White House’s first beers: a Honey Brown Ale, a Honey Porter, and a Honey Blonde.

Here at ACB, we wondered what would have happened if other past presidents followed suit. On this Presidents’ Day, we take a look at what could have been for one of our greatest presidents, Honest Abe Lincoln.

If Abraham Lincoln had been a craft beer drinker, then there would be no doubt that he would have avoided assassination at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865. Lincoln actually had a nightmare about his own assassination three days prior to the event.

He told his friends and his biographer, Ward Hill Lamon, about the omen where he saw people mourning over his body. We all know any craft beer drinker would be dying to tell this story to his or her buddies at their local drinking hole.

Abe rarely drank beer, and when he did, he only drank lagers due to doctor’s orders.

If Lincoln was a lover of fine craft beers, the president would have probably pounded a couple Imperial IPAs to ease the pain of sitting through sub-par community theater. Enabled by a hefty buzz, Honest Abe might have started to put the pieces together: creepy ghost death dream + Good Friday + being a savior of the union from destruction + a crappy play = not spending the evening at the Ford Theater.

Instead, Lincoln would have been itching to get to the tavern down the street. He couldn’t just ditch Mary Todd and not go to the theater at all (then Mary Todd would have been the one assassinated later on that night). He had to go to the theater, but needed a way out.

The cop assigned to guard Lincoln’s presidential box was John Frederick Parker, who actually went to a nearby tavern with the president’s footman and coachman while Booth pulled the trigger.

If the president was a big craft beer drinker, then word of this would have spread throughout the Union via the Guzzle Gazette, which was in large distribution back then.

Parker would have asked Lincoln to come with the crew to the tavern. Abe would have been itching to talk about his crazy dream to Whisky Pete down at the Rusty Spoke Tavern and would have told Mary Todd that an “important matter” came up.

Abe would have been tipping back stouts with his three bodyguards as John Wilkes Booth comes upon that empty chair next to Mary Todd at Ford’s. Booth may have gone to the Rusty Spoke, but only to turn away when he saw the crowd sipping on pints with the president, he would have realized that he was no match for a united group of craft beer drinkers.

Assassination foiled!