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| | The spirits of 1776 - Salon |
 | | The colonists drank a lot of the New England rum they produced and sold the rest to the Indians, with devastating social results, or bartered the rum for slaves from West Africa, with equally devastating results there. |
 | | Even during the war, rum was the lifeblood of the opposing forces. |
 | | It is ironic that Gen. Washington thought so highly of the martial virtues of rum, since one of his few outright military victories in the field -- over the 1,300 Hessians at Trenton, N.J., on Christmas Day 1776 -- was reputedly because the enemy was overfortified with the Christmas spirit. |
| dir.salon.com /story/opinion/feature/2005/07/02/rum/index.html (961 words) |
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