Next, the American Revolution and the unexpected connection to coffee.

Discover the famous figures who loved a good jolt of Java.

- Would Benjamin Franklin have come through here?

- Oh, Benjamin Franklin only lived 4 blocks away from here.

- Absolutely.

Find out why historians say our nation owes its very existence to coffee houses all over the colonies.

And why don't we ever hear about such an important part of our past?

Drive By History starts now.

[Theme Music] Made possible by The Preserve New Jersey Historic Preservation Fund, administered by the New Jersey Historic Trust, State of New Jersey.

Also, The New Jersey Historical Commission, enriching the lives of the public by preserving the historical record and advancing interest in and awareness of New Jersey's past.

[Music] And, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

We explore, cultivate, and champion the public humanities in order to strengthen New Jersey's diverse communit.

Every day, thousands of motorists pass by countless history markers and say to themselves, One of these days Im going to stop and read that.

One of these days I'm going to find out what happened and why it mattered.

Well, this is that day.

- Im heading to a history marker that involves the spirit of 76 , and the fervor for freedom.

- But how do we go from just talking about abstract ideas to fighting a war for independence?

- I'm Ken Magos, and this is Drive By History.

[Sounds of colonial era warfa] Today's investigation, part of our special series on the American Revolution, begins in Trenton, the capital of New Jersey.

Located roughly 50 miles southwest of New York City, and 50 miles northeast of Philadelphia, Trenton's position has always shaped its story.

For much of its early history, that location worked to the advantage of the people who lived here.

But during the Revolutionary Era, the British Army moved through the area repeatedly, making its location something of a double-edged sword.

- During the Revolution, friends and neighbors in Trenton never knew when trouble might come calling.

- That makes it the perfect location for this marker.

- It says, Revolutionary War Patriots.

This marker commemorates the men and women who achieved American independence.

These patriots, believing in the noble cause of liberty, fought valiantly to found a new nation, 1775 to 1783.

- I'm off to find out more.

You'll see this same tribute in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, Woodland, California, and scores of other locations all over the nation.

And that takes me to my next stop, the Guggenheim Library, housed in this mansion, the former summer home of Murry and Leonie Guggenheim located on the campus of Monmouth University.

It's where Drive By History's Anthony Bernard is researching a time when Americans who stood up for independence could be quickly knocked down by the butt of a British rifle.

- Hey, Anthony, how are you doing?

- Ken, how are you?

- Good.

- Listen, I just came from a history marker that talks about patriots and the noble cause of libert.

- Now, I'm always looking for local events that fit into the national narrative.

- I think I found that here, right?

- I think you definitely have.

- Good.

- Okay, so that history marker is one of dozens that the Daughters of the American Revolution have made available to organizations all over the nation.

- And they all say the same thing?

- Pretty unique, isn't it?

- Yeah.

- However, by putting up these same history markers all over the place, all of which say the same thing, you start to see the different communities were coming together during the time of the Revolution, all for one shared cause.

- That means that these histoy markers literally connect each one of these places to one another and to the American story.

- That's right.

- And in this case, to one American ideology.

- Ah, one American ideology, thats very philosophical.

- Well, the Revolution was philosophical.

- Thats true, our founding fathers were looking to create a representative form of government.

- Which was a very different government.

- At the time, most governments were monarchies.

- Arguably, the United States established the first democracy in modern times.

- Arguably?

- Well, yeah, come with me.

- Okay, I can't wait to see what you pulled.

- Let me explain.

- I think that qualifier is important.

- There have been democracies before, smaller ones.

- And from the off, the American system was quite different from that of ancient Greece.

- But for our purposes, I would say it was a fundamentally new form of government.

- You know, it makes me think f Lincoln, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

- Shall not perish from this earth .

- He's referencing those patriots that fought and died for the cause.

- But do you think that the average soldier who was fighting during the time of the Revolution understood that he was fighting for such an abstract cause?

- You know what, you'd be surprised.

- So we all know that the Patriots wanted to break away from England, right?

- Everybody gets that.

- But what people don't know is that the average citizen knw that they were fighting for a novel and fundamentally different form of government.

- Well, come on.

- I can see our founding fathers saying that.

- You know, Franklin, Jefferson and Adams were all students of enlightened philosophy.

- Oh, totally.

- Our democracy draws on the works of John Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau.

- But did the everyday person know that?

- I mean, those are really elevated ideas.

- Did the average foot soldier march into battle as a champion for Voltaire?

- When you say it like that, Im not sure.

- But I do know that regular people were very interested in the philosophical ideas behind the war.

- They knew that they weren't just fighting attacks on tea or paper, but that they were actually creating a whole new society.

- A new kind of society.

- But that takes serious education.

- Ideas of enlightened philosophy then have to be transmitted to the masses.

- How do you do that?

- Well, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet.

- Oh, yeah, Common Sense.

- And there are others.

- Yeah.

- Check this out.

- Okay, Coffee Nation .

- Look at the author.

- Oh, Michelle Craig McDonald.

- I know her.

She's an amazing historian.

- She's incredible, and thats where the next leg of this investigation begins.

[Music] To find out more, Anthony sends me to Philadelphia to talk with Michelle Craig McDonald.

She's a familiar face on Drive By History, in no small part because Michelle is one of the nation's great historians, whose scholarship is helping us better understand the Revolutionary Period.

As Anthony said, Michelle is the author of Coffee Nation, How One Commodity Transformd the Early United States.

She picks up the story.

- So Anthony was talking about the ideological side of the philosophy behind the Revolutionary War.

- And a lot of that was based on Thomas Paine's Common Sens , but also coffeehouses.

- What can you tell me about coffeehouses in Colonial America?

- Hopefully quite a bit.

- I think so, yes.

You are the expert.

[Music] We all think of tea and the Revolutionary Era, but coffee played a vital role, too.

Tea was mostly consumed inside the home, and taxes on tea sparked outrage because the Crown was reaching into the cupboard.

Coffee, by contrast, was often consumed publicly, sometimes in a dedicated room inside a tavern, other times in a standalone building.

But it was regularly enjoyed outside of the home.

- So, the first coffee houses show up in colonial North America in the late 17th century, and they're modeled very much on those in Europe.

- And so they were places where people came together for social reasons, but also for business purposes.

Coffee houses have a fascinating history.

Across the centuries, they've been places of ideas and influence.

But we'll get to all of that.

Suffice it to say, by the 1770s, coffee houses had become centers of power and debate, incendiary places where conversation would ignite and tempers flare.

- OK, Michelle, you brought me to the substantial structure here, and I see a sign out front that says City Tavern.

- This was the City Tavern.

- It was founded in 1773.

- We are at Second and Walnut, and it was deliberately intended to be a showcase here in Philadelphi.

Steps from Independence Hall, Michelle tells me City Tavern was renowned for its coffee rooms, and since Philadelphia was the largest and most influential city in the colonies, these coffee rooms were among the most important spots, well, anywhere.

- This was a place of significant importance during the American Revolutio.

- This is where the Continental Congress met when they weren't in session over at the State House.

It's here where American independence was considered and contested.

It's here where democracy was discussed and debated.

It's here where the foundations of our nation gained a definitive foothold.

- Imagine that you're trying , for example, convince some of your colleagues who have not yet committed to independence to do so.

- Where better to do it?

- The State House, with its formality, or the tavern?

- Right.

- Its conviviality.

- Right.

[Music] The famous figures who frequented this coffee house reads like a who's who of the 1770s.

You can imagine Benjamin Franklin offering a cup of coffee to a reluctant delegate as he made an argument in favor of independence.

- George Washington was also here at the City Tavern.

- He was staying here in town, again, part of the Continental Congress, and he would have retired on a regular basis with Franklin and possibly others like, say, Thomas Jefferson.

- Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson would have come here as he struggled with one of the most difficult challenges of the day, selecting the appropriate language for the Declaration of Independence, words that he knew would define our nation for generations to come.

- And all of these men would have been talking about the language, the pros, the cons, the compromises that went into creating something like a Declaration of Independence.

Of course, independence was formally crafted in Independene Hall, but it was inside this coffee house, and others like it where the foundations of the nation first took shape.

It's a remarkable phenomenon.

Ideas that still define our democracy today were first stirred to life over a hot cup of coffee.

I've always been fascinated by the role food plays in our pa, so I want to shift gears for a moment and ask, why coffee?

Why did coffee and the coffee house become so important?

And why has that part of the story all but fallen off the pages of history?

To find out, I can't think of anyone better to ask than my Drive By History colleague and academic adviso, Doctor Libby O'Connell, food and culture historian and author of The American Plate.

She picks up the story from her studio in Cold Spring Harbor, New Yo.

- So, Libby, where do we begi?

- We begin not that long ago, compared to other of the worlds beverages.

- There's a long history on chocolate being consumed as a beverage.

- Okay.

- Tea: the history is lost in the mists of time in China, but thousands and thousands of years ago.

- Wine and beer, both enjoyed in ancient Babylon along with ancient Egypt.

- These were important beverages back then.

- Coffee doesn't really come up to our awareness level until around 1400.

There's a great deal speculation involving the discovery of coffee.

According to the folklore, a goat herder named Kaldi noticed his flock brimming with energy after feasting on the red berries of a mysterious plant.

- So he gathers some of these cherries, theyre called, and brings them down the mountainside.

- And there he encounters a Sufi mystic, an Islamic scholar whose role is to pray a lot and read a lot of scripture.

- He needs to stay awake.

- He ingests some of these berries and finds it makes him peppy.

The folklore goes on to suggest that coffee beans were first roasted by accident when a fire broke out.

But the aroma was so enticing, Sufi monks gathered the scorched beans, ground them, and steeped them in water, creating the world's first cup of coffee.

Although we may never know just how accurate that tale might be, like so many legend, it likely holds at least a kernel of truth.

- Now remember, the truth in here is that within the Islamic faith, alcoholic beverages were banned.

- Right.

So the idea that you could maybe produce a beverage that produced an uplifting sense was a very appealing idea.

- And that's eventually how coffee takes hold.

- It takes hold within the Islamic community.

- So there's a connection between Islam and coffee.

- That's right.

That connection involves one f the most sacred places in Isl, the city of Mecca, located in modern day Saudi Arabia.

- If you are a devout practitioner of the Islamic religion, you travel, you make the holy pilgrimage to Mecca... Mecca becomes the center of nes because people are coming in from all over the Islamic empe and sharing their information.

- One of the pieces of news they have is coffee.

Because the pilgrimage to Mecca is made by so many, word of coffee spread quickly - and equally important to this history, it became co-mingled with all kinds of news that people shared with one another.

To put it another way, not only were people telling each other about coff, they were drinking it as they shared all kinds of other information, too.

- And I'm seeing a strong parallel, then, between the spread of news and the spread of coffee.

- You are 100% right that it'.

I think it has to do with with chatter, right?

- People who drink a lot of coffee... - And youre awake enough to listen.

- Absolutely.

- You're absolutely right.

The first major city to embrace coffee was likely Constantinople, now called Istanbul, a bustling port and crossroads of culture and trade.

It wasn't long before the world's first coffee houses opened there as well, lively gathering places where people came to drink coffee and converse.

- Isn't it interesting we see a connection between the spread of coffee in the Islamic world and the spread of news.

- The information about coffee goes to Alexandria, a port ci, a center of scholarship.

- A ship from Marseille, Fran, comes by and picks up a lot of bags of coffee beans, and those bags go to Venice.

- So, we can track that information.

- So it sounds like it's very important that this, that coffee is an important commodity.

- Well, it's important that it's imported.

- It's important to our story of coffee.

- That's what I mean.

- Because ideas come along with the coffee bags.

- It's in the beans.

- Not literally, but as these ships come from port to port, they're bringing boatloads of information about whats going on.

[Music] Just like those early establishments in the Ottoman Empire, coffee houses quickly spread across Europe, becoming a popular place to grab a quick pick me up and keep up with the latest news.

The flow of information held a particular appeal for businessmen.

As a result, the merchant clas became regular patrons, turning coffee houses into hubs of commerce and conversation.

- And ideas that are passed bak and forth, in that case, and sometimes it's not necessarily business news, but news itself affects business.

- They want to know what's happening in the ports because it's going to affect the price of their crops.

This is the coffee house environment: professionals energized by caffeine seeking the latest news.

It's a group that was gaining economic power, and with it, increasing political influenc.

- So then how do we get from the spread of coffee to these coffee houses that are incubators, of debating ideas, ideologies?

- Well, I'd love to say it's all coffee.

- Yeah?

- But there are things that have a moment in time.

- Okay.

- This is the beginning of the modern age.

- This is the enlightenment, the ideas are on paper.

- People are writing up the ideas that theyve had for a long time about government.

- There are treatises on government.

- There are people talking abt something called the social contract.

- When you put that together with caffeine on the table in a coffee house, you end up with a lot of conversation.

The philosophers Rousseau and Voltaire were both familiar faces at coffeehouse.

They could often be found at Café Procope, a popular spot in Paris that, incidentally, is still welcoming guests toda.

This was the archetype for a coffee house, as the colonies were blossoming, and revolution was just starting to brew.

- So, how were colonial coffee houses different from those that you would find in London or Paris?

- Well, colonial coffee houses attracted a more diverse group because there werent enough people to have separate coffee houses for each party or each group that was leading, leaning towards one thing or another.

- That meant that people could come together and would come together for a cup of coffee, having paid ther penny for that coffee and listened to these conversation.

- They may be literate, but not highly literate.

- They may not have access to newspapers where they live, and theyre hearing the discussions of ideas that are very modern and very challengig to the traditional worldview.

- Wow, listening in on these world class debates.

- Well, that's one reason why they're called penny universities .

- You pay your penny and you get an education.

And that brings us straight back to Philadelphia 1776.

As we mentioned earlier, the conversations taking shape in coffee houses laid the foundation for our country as we know it today.

Michelle Craig McDonald picks up the story, explaining that by the time of the Revolution, coffee houses were more than places where ideas began.

They were places where those ideas moved, spread, and took on a life of their o.

- The real distinction that you see happening in the 1760s and early 1770s is that these ideas are now being translated into action.

- And so it's not enough to criticize a government.

- You are actively opposing a government.

- At the old London coffeehou, for example, they are postingn the wall pieces of stamped paper that they have burned.

- They are taking British officials and burning them in effigy on the front steps.

- These are more... these are taking... - In other words, the idea that an old imperial governmet is no longer working, but mobilizing them in very public and visual ways.

- Violent ways.

- Right.

This evolution from places where ideas were born to places where ideas were spread can't be overstated.

There was a real egalitarian aspect to the coffeehouse.

They were places where the educated co-mingled with people who couldn't read, side by side, as peers.

- But bear in mind, this, I think, is interesting.

- It is an educated group of people who are mobilizing this activity, but they are also displaying it for other classes within Philadelphia.

- But they don't even assume necessarily that members, nonmembers of coffeehouses could read these materials, and so they would schedule times to read them out loud.

- This idea of an oral literac, what I think of as a way of obtaining news when you couldt read or write regularly, became enmeshed in coffeehouse culture.

- And this was a way of including a broad range of people.

- The fight for the 13 Colonis could not just rest on the shoulders of an ideological or political elit.

- In order to have any chance at military victory, they had to mobilize popular sentiment.

One of the publications read aloud in coffee houses was Thomas Paine's Common Sen .

As it happens, Michelle was able to show us one of the oldest printings in existence.

- Excerpts of Common Sense would be read aloud in coffee house settings.

- Advertisements to purchase the book would be posted on coffee house walls.

- These are ways in which these ideas could circulate much broader than simply those who could purchase the books individually.

[Music] And as the day draws to a clos, that seems like the perfect place to button the investigation: with coffeehous a relatively unknown piece of the American story playing a central role in the circulation of Common Sense , one of the best known books of its time.

For this special episode, Ive asked historian Scott Stephenson, the President and CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution, to help me tie it all togethe.

- We have...as a people, can never know enough about the founding period of our histor.

- You know, America is an ongoing experiment in liberty, equality, and self-government, that quest for a more perfect union.

- And so if you see the work as continuing, then understanding how we've gotten to the point that we are and how that journey began is absolutely so important.

- And so I think that the cofe house is a great example of really digging in and understanding the roots of this great hope for mankin.

- Okay, well, that leads me to my next question, though.

- I'm curious, do you think that the events of the American Revolution would have unfolded differently had there not been coffee houses?

- This is the great dilemma of the butterfly, the flap of the butterflys wing.

- Right.

- I think it's not unreasonable to say that the particular way the revolutionary movement unfolded was given a unique shape and direction because of coffee houses.

- Do you think coffee houses actually helped move those debates into action?

- Oh for sure.

- Yeah.

- I mean, I had a pot of coffee this morning and look how active I am.

[laughter] - Good point -- very good point.

See you next time.

[Music] - Have you driven past a histoy marker and said to yourself, I should tell Drive By History about that?

- Well, drop us a line.

- You can reach us through our website, which is DriveByHistory.org, or through our Facebook page.

- Who knows?

- Your history marker could en up being our next investigation.

Made possible by the Preserve New Jersey Historic Preservation Fund, administered by the New Jersey Historic Trust, State of New Jersey.

[Music] And the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

We explore, cultivate, and champion the public humanities in order to strengthen New Jersey's diverse communit.

[Music] Also, the New Jersey Historical Commission, enriching the lives of the public by preserving the historical record and advancing interest in and awareness of New Jersey's past.