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Tobacco Events and the Civil War
By 1850, Phillip Morris was selling hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes in a London shop, but the trend really didn't catch on until French and British soldiers serving in the Crimean War returned home with a taste for Russian and Turkish smokes. Once considered the poor man's smoke in Europe, the cigarette--French for the diminutive form of le cigare--became fashionable in Paris, London, and Moscow. Still, its charm was lost on most Americans, including one New York editorialist who wrote in 1854: "Some of the ladies of this refined and fashion-forming metropolis are aping the silly ways of some pseudo-accomplished foreigners in smoking tobacco through a weaker and more feminine article, which was more delicately denominated cigarette."
Back before the Civil War, you wouldn't have caught many American men sucking on cigarettes. They were cigar smokers, and even though the European habit of smoking Turkish blends had made its way to East Coast cities, most men rejected the quick smoke as a diversion for dandies. Sophisticated women did pick up on the bohemian fad, although they usually sneaked their exotic puffs in secret.
But the war changed that. Northern soldiers, particularly those who marched into the Deep South with General Sherman, got their first taste of sweet-tasting domestic tobacco. They quickly developed a fondness for hand-rolled cigarettes, rolling their own with W.T. Blackwell's Bull Durham tobacco.
Roll-your-owns were cheap and popular in rural areas. Blackwell even sold his Bull Durham smoking tobacco in convenient muslin pouches, complete with rolling papers. Then came the hand-rolling factories, such as F.S. Kinney & Sons in Manhattan and Allen and Ginter in Richmond, Virginia, staffed largely by young women trained in their craft by Eastern European immigrants. The best ones could roll four to five cigarettes a minute.
The above entries were taken from the Discovery Online Site. They are contained in the article "Waiting to Inhale",Camp Chase Gazette.
IN THE BEGINNING . . .
Huron Indian myth has it that in ancient times, when the land was barren and the people were starving, the Great Spirit sent forth a woman to save humanity. As she traveled over the world, everywhere her right hand touched the soil, there grew potatoes. And everywhere her left hand touched the soil, there grew corn. And when the world was rich and fertile, she sat down and rested. When she arose, there grew tobacco . . .
PARTIAL TOBACCO TIMELINE--FULL TIME LINE CAN BE VIEWED AT:
http://www.tobacco.org/History/Tobacco_History.html
Thanks to tobacco researcher Larry Breed (LB) for his contributions. He recently found a little tome called "This Smoking World" (1927), and shared some of its events (TSW). I am also beginning to incorporate events referenced in Richard Kluger's monumental Ashes to Ashes (RK). Another important source is Bill Drake's wonderful The European Experience With Native American Tobacco (BD)
The Nineteenth Century: 1800-1864
1800: CANADA: Tobacco begins being commercially grown.
1826: ENGLAND is importing 26 pounds of cigars a year. The cigar becomes so popular that within four years, England will be importing 250,000 pounds of cigars a year
1826: MEDICINE: The purified form of the nicotine compound is obtained
1828: GERMANY: Heidelberg students Ludwig Reimann and Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt write exhaustive dissertations on the pharmacology of nicotine, concluding it is a "dangerous poison."
1830s: First organized anti-tobacco movement in US begins as adjunct to the temperance movement. Tobacco use is considered to dry out the mouth, "creating a morbid or diseased thirst" which only liquor could quench
1830: PRUSSIA: Prussian Government enacts a law that cigars , in public, be smoked in a sort of wire-mesh contraption designed to prevent sparks setting fire to ladies' "crinolines" and hoop skirts (BD)
1839: BUSINESS: Charcoal used in flue-curing for the first time in North Carolina. Not only cheaper, its intense heat turns the thinner, low-nicotine Piedmont leaf a brilliant golden color. This results in the classic American "Bright leaf" variety, which is so mild it virtually invites a smoker to inhale it(RK)
1836: USA: Samuel Green of the New England Almanack and Farmers Friend writes that tobacco is an insectide, a poison, a fillthy habit, and can kill a man (LB)
1842: Opium War. Treaty of Nanjing forces China to accept opium from British traders
1843: MEDICINE: The correct molecular formula of nicotine is established 1845: ART: Prosper Merimee's novel, Carmen, about a cigarette girl in an Andalusian factory, is published
1846-1848: MEXICAN WAR US soldiers bring back a taste for the darker, richer tobacco favored in Latin countries, leading to an explosive increase in the use of the cigar
1847: ENGLAND: Philip Morris opens shop; sells hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes
1849: BUSINESS: J.E. Liggett and Brother is established in St. Louis, Mo., by John Edmund Liggett
1852:Washington Duke, a young tobacco farmer, builds a modest, two-story home near Durham, NC, for himself and his new bride. The house, and the log structure which served as a "tobacco factory" after the Civil War may still be seen at the Duke Homestead Museum
1852: Matches are introduced, making smoking more convenient.
1853-1856: EUROPE: CRIMEAN WAR British soldiers learn how cheap and convenient the cigarettes ("Papirossi") used by their Turkish allies are, and bring the practise back to England
1854: ENGLAND: BUSINESS: Philip Morris begins making his own cigarettes
1857: BUSINESS: James Buchanan "Buck" Duke is born to Washington "Wash" Duke, an independent farmer who hated the plantation class, opposed slavery, and raised food and a little tobacco
1859: Reverend George Trask publishes tract "Thoughts and stories for American Lads: Uncle Toby's anti-tobacco advice to his nephew Billy Bruce". He writes, "Physicians tell us that twenty thousand or more in our own land are killed by [tobacco] every year (LB)
1860: The Census for Virginia and North Carolina list 348 tobacco factories, virtually all producing chewing tobacco. Only 6 list smoking tobacco as a side-product (which is manufactured from scraps left over from plug production)
1860: BUSINESS: Manufactured cigarettes appear. A popular early brand is Bull Durham
1860: BUSINESS: MARKETING: Lorillard wraps $100 bills at random in packages of cigarette tobacco named "Century," in order to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the firm (BD)
1861-1865: USA: THE CIVIL WAR: Tobacco is given with rations by both North and South; many Northerners are introduced to tobacco this way. During Sherman's march, Union soldiers now attracted to the mild, sweet "bright" tobacco of the South, raided warehouses--including Washington Duke's--for some chew on the way home. Some bright made it all the way back. Bright tobacco becomes the rage in the North
1862: First federal USA tax on tobacco; yields about three million dollars (TSW)
1863: BUSINESS: 12 million hand rolled cigarettes produced in the US.
1863: US Mandates Cigar Boxes. Congress passes a law calling for manufacturers to create cigar boxes on which IRS agents can paste Civil War excise tax stamps. The beginning of "cigar box art"
1864: BUSINESS: 1st American cigarette factory opens and produces almost 20 million cigarettes
1864: First tax levied on cigarettes |
