No Beer, No Peace

[Werner Presber]

Chicago, circa 1850, was a rough-and-tumble city crouching by the  
chilly, windy waters of Lake Michigan, a final outpost on the edges  
of the great western frontier. An argument can be made as to which  
was more hazardous — the city or the frontier.

The city’s population numbered some 80,000 souls, with newcomers  
arriving daily, most looking for work in the burgeoning stockyards or  
on the lake-front docks. The poor and working classes outnumbered the  
moneyed elite by almost five to one. Saloons, beer gardens, and  
taverns outnumbered other businesses two to one, and churches almost  
fifteen to one. The good people of Chicago liked to drink.

Crime, especially burglary and vice, was epidemic, a fact which  
disturbed many citizens, especially the upper crust. Chicago’s  
constabulary, believe it or not, was comprised of a whopping nine  
men, so little could be done to curb the city’s increasingly chaotic  
tendencies. The situation came to a head in 1855, and Chicago  
empowered its first official Police Department. A noted volunteer  
fireman and occasional private detective named Cyrus P. Bradley was  
appointed Chief of Police. He reported directly to the newly-elected  
mayor, Dr. Levi D. Boone, who, in addition to being Daniel Boone’s  
grand-nephew, was an important member of an up-and-coming political  
party called the Native Americans, or Know-Nothings. Generally  
speaking, the Know-Nothings were in favor of civic order and  
“traditional American values,” while being vehemently anti-foreigner,  
anti-Catholic, and anti-alcohol.

When Mayor Boone and his lackeys set out to restore order, they  
beganby asking themselves a question. Why was Chicago such a  
dangerous vice-sodden cesspool? Well, answered the Native Americans,  
two factors lurked at the center of the issue. One, there were too  
many foreigners in the city, particularly on the North Side, which  
was populated almost exclusively by Germans; and two, there was too  
much liquor, especially beer—beer brewed, as it happened, by those  
same treacherous, non-English-speaking Germans. So, you want to rid  
the Windy City of crime? All you gotta do is get rid of the beer and  
the Germans. And while you’re at it, you might consider doing  
something about those Irishmen and Scandinavians hanging around.

  Chicago’s German citizens were a standoffish, almost tribal lot.  
They maintained their own schools and churches, sanctioned their own  
quasi-legal law enforcement agents, published their own German- 
language newspapers, and stubbornly refused to learn English. To make  
matters worse, they operated dozens of breweries and literally  
hundreds of taverns and beer halls, which made them quite popular  
among local and national liquor interests. Before gaining its  
reputation as a vital hub of shipping and agricultural commerce,  
Chicago was, first and foremost, a beer town. A German beer town. The  
nativist Know-Nothings didn’t like that one bit.

Mayor Boone had been in office for all of about fifteen seconds when  
he went to the City Council and suggested that liquor license fees  
should be increased from 50 dollars a year to 300, and that the terms  
of each license would last only three months instead of the usual  
year. The Council passed both measures with the speed and alacrity  
common among lickspittles. Mayor Boone then ordered Police Chief  
Bradley to immediately begin enforcing an existing statute ordering  
all taverns and beer gardens to close on Sundays. (The blue law had  
been on the books for 12 years, but enforcement had been, for beer  
enthusiasts, blessedly lax.) And so, energized by a sense of mission,  
and some spiffy new uniforms, officers from Chicago’s new PD fanned  
out through the city intent upon showing tavern-owners and other  
dangerous nogoodniks the exact definition of the word “compulsory.”

Problems were evident from the outset. The cops hit joints on the  
North Side—German Town—like swarms of aggravated bees, closing doors  
and issuing enough tickets to throw a fair-sized ticker-tape parade.  
They also targeted Chicago’s central neighborhoods, where Irish-owned  
establishments received the same treatment. On the South Side,  
however, where “Americans” lived, taverns and other businesses  
serving alcohol were allowed to continue operating on Sundays using  
their rear and alley doors.

Mayor Boone, a strict prohibitionist, believed that a nationwide ban  
on hooch was imminent, and stated that the Sunday raids and licensing- 
fee increases were intended to “root out all the lower classes of  
dives, and leave the businesses in the hands of the better class of  
saloon-keepers, who, when the temperance law should go into force,  
could be rationally dealt with.”

For the ultra-conservative, xenophobic Know-Nothings, the phrase  
“lower classes” was shorthand for German, Irish, and Scandinavian  
immigrants in particular, and drunkards in general. Someone should’ve  
informed Mayor Boone that these were proud people, and that it would  
take a lot more than his signature on a piece of paper to make them  
roll over and play nice.

Tavern keepers, brewers and concerned citizens gathered to express  
their outrage over being persecuted. Many German and Irish beer  
joints adamantly refused to close on Sundays and, when faced with  
Boone’s contemptible license-fee hikes, simply continued operating  
without them. Over 200 men and women were arrested, but when it  
dawned on Boone and other city officials that so large a number of  
cases, each requiring a separate trial, would bung-up Chicago’s  
courts for years, they sought a compromise. The lawyer for the  
accused protestors met with the City Attorney, and they decided to  
conduct a single test case, the outcome of which would apply to all  
200 defendants. The trial was scheduled for April 21, 1855, and would  
be presided over by respected Police Magistrate Henry L. Rucker.

Rucker had barely settled into his chair before the proceedings were  
interrupted by a roar of angry voices outside the court house. A  
reporter named John J. Flinn was on hand and described what happened  
next.

“The…saloon-keepers had collected their friends on the North Side,  
and, preceded by a fife and drum, the mob, about 500 strong, had  
marched in solid phalanx upon the justice shop, as many as could  
entering the sacred precincts. After making themselves understood  
that the decision of the court must be in their favor if the town  
didn’t want a taste of war, they retired and formed at the  
intersection of Clark and Randolph, and held possession of these  
thoroughfares to the exclusion of all traffic. The uproar was  
deafening.”

The unrest lasted about a half-hour before Mayor Boone ordered  
Captain of Police Luther Nichols to disperse the protestors. Nichols,  
joined by 20 officers armed with cudgels, attacked the mob, beating  
them savagely and hauling nine away to jail. The demonstrators  
retreated back to their North Side stronghold, bloodied but not beaten.

The trial finally got underway. Meanwhile, on the North Side, the  
Germans and their allies summoned additional bodies to their cause  
and began planning another assault on the courthouse. Upon learning  
of the German’s intentions, Mayor Boone called in every police  
officer in the city and pressed into service an additional 150  
emergency deputies.

Around four o’clock that afternoon, the crowd of protestors, now  
numbering more than a thousand, marched down Clark Street, armed with  
shotguns, knives, clubs and assorted kitchen implements. They were  
met by a solid line of 200 lawmen blocking off street access to the  
court house. A yell arose from the German contingent—“Kill the  
police!”—and the two armies went for each other. The battle lasted  
well over an hour before the protestors fled North and the cops  
retreated South. Surprisingly, only a single death resulted from the  
action—a German named Peter Martin, who was cut down by a shotgun blast.

Realizing he had underestimated the protestors’ willingness to fight,  
Mayor Boone summoned two companies of the Illinois state militia,  
complete with artillery, to guard against further violence. The test  
trial was abandoned, and those arrested were freed on bail. An uneasy  
peace settled on the city, and it was decided that Boone’s  
prohibitionist statutes would be put to a city-wide vote at a special  
election to be held on the first Monday in June, 1855.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, temperance advocates arrived in  
Chicago from all over the country. They cooked up anti-alcohol  
newsletters and canvassed the length and breadth of the city decrying  
the evils of liquor, wine, and beer. They invaded saloons and hassled  
the peaceful patrons therein. They marched in solemn processions, and  
warbled depressing hymns, smugly confident that the coming vote would  
be a crippling body-blow against Demon Rum.

Oh, how wrong they were.

It’s estimated that nearly 75 percent of all Chicagoans showed up at  
the polls—the heaviest turnout in Illinois history. The people turned  
out, and they were heard.

The prohibitionist statutes lost by more than 15,000 votes—a  
shattering, crushing defeat for the forces of temperance. Beer halls  
all over town stayed open until dawn and, come the following Sunday,  
opened early to serve a thirsty, thankful populace.

American Prohibition didn’t spring to life, fully-formed and ready to  
rumble, like Athena from Zeus’ head, on that dark day in 1919. No,  
fanatical dries tried—and failed—many times before seeing the  
Volstead Act signed into law. The Chicago Beer Riot was one of their  
more spectacular failures. In 1855, prohibitionists went toe-to-toe,  
both physically and in the courts, with brewers and drunkards, and  
were thoroughly Whack-A-Moled. We can, and should, learn from this  
bit of our exciting drunken history.

Cheers. —Richard English

(Note: the Author is indebted to the works of Herbert Asbury; as well  
as the editors of the Encyclopedia of Chicago, and Gregg Smith at  
BeerHistory.com


Copyright 2007 Modern Drunkard Magazine






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