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  Thus when war finally broke out, there was no doubt about its purpose. Along the Chesapeake Bay, the Revolutionary War was known as the Tobacco War.

  In the North, Samuel Badcock added chewing and pipe tobacco to his line of snuff. He saw the impending war as an opportunity to expand his business – after all, who chews and smokes more than soldiers? – but to which soldiers should he market his new products? The outcome of the war was far from certain, and it would pay to be on the right side.

  Samuel finally compromised by selling to both sides. To the British, he offered a pipe tobacco called Good King George (marked with the image of the celebrated monarch). To the rebels, he offered a chewing tobacco called Minuteman (marked with a musket and a plow).

  Samuel needed to know, however, whether his new products were acceptable; some market research was necessary. First he gave a generous supply of samples of Good King George to the garrison at Boston, where soon the British redcoats were puffing away contentedly. They seemed to like it, though there were complaints that it made them nervous and irritable.

  Later the same day, Samuel rode out to the village of Lexington, some 20 miles away, and delivered generous samples of Minuteman chewing tobacco to the rebellious Lexington Company of militia. The militia, who called themselves “minutemen”, were delighted that his product seemed to pay them tribute. On the morning of April 19, 1775, the rebels were chewing assiduously, though complaining of the bitter taste. They had assembled on Lexington Green at 2 a.m. to block the advance of the British, who were marching through town on their way to Concord.

  The two sides met under the most unfavorable circumstances. The British had marched all night, pausing only to smoke Good King George. They were jittery and quarrelsome, spoiling for a fight. The 70 minutemen, who had assembled to block the bridge, were supposed to be making only a silent protest, but the bitter tobacco had put them in a foul mood.

  Major John Pitcairn, leader of the British troops, screamed out, “Disperse, you damned rebels! You dogs, run!”

  The minutemen slowly and reluctantly began to withdraw. Their captain, John Parker, had told them not to fire unless fired upon first. But as they dispersed, one rebel stopped next to a broken plow which lay on the green. He looked back at the British and remarked, “This is disgusting! Damn it, I’ve had enough!” He referred to the bitter taste of the tobacco, which he now spat vigorously.

  The gob of tobacco whacked against the iron plowshare with a sound like a musket shot, and threw up a cloud of dust like gunsmoke. The jittery British troops immediately fired two volleys into the crowd. The rebels returned fire, and the War of Independence began.

  Jezreel Badcock and the Gettysburg Address

  “Give a man very many unemployed hours, and tobacco, if not a necessity, is a wonderful solace.” – Henry T. Johns of the 49th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry

  Jezreel Badcock

  Tristram Badcock

  The War of Independence may have been good for the tobacco business, but the Civil War would prove even better. Both branches of the Badcock family continued to prosper after the revolution, and on into the nineteenth century. There was talk of reuniting the Boston and the Virginia branches into one mighty family company. Alas, the Civil War would split them further apart than ever.

  Tristram Badcock, who now headed the powerful Virginia branch of the family, saw the war as a personal attack upon himself and his property. He believed that the dastardly Yankees wished him nothing but harm. If no one stopped these interlopers, they would strip him of his family heritage of fifteen plantations (totaling nearly a million acres), they would steal his 2,400 slaves, and they would lay waste to his crops of beautiful “Bright leaf” tobacco. There was nothing for it but to fight. Tristram formed a cavalry regiment and prepared to ride off in defense of his birthright.

  His wife, Scarlotta, said good-bye to him on the steps of the great white mansion. It was evening, the air was filled with the scent of magnolias and the melodious humming of devoted slaves. Tristram removed his magnificent hat, with its eight-foot ostrich plume (there was not a hat to match it in all the Confederate Army) and kissed Scarlotta. He told her not to fret, he would return in time for the Cotillion Ball. Then he put on his hat, tied it securely under his chin, and rode off to glory.

  Tragically, Tristram died in his very first skirmish. While charging up a hill, he passed under an oak tree where his splendid hat caught on a low-hanging limb. The hat, knotted securely under his chin with a leather thong, pulled Tristram from the saddle. His men, by then engaged in battle, were not immediately aware of his predicament. Tristram Badcock strangled to death before he could undo the knot.

  Meanwhile in Boston, Jezreel Badcock had no such illusions about the war. This was not a crusade, but a business opportunity for his General Snuff and Tobacco Company. As he put it in a letter to his congressman in 1862:

  Secession will mean the loss of most of our best supplies of tobacco. This is bound to drive up the price. On this account you and I must strive most assiduously to buy up ALL available and future crops, even those of the inferior (Pennsylvania) varieties. With very little exertion, we can, as the saying goes, “put a Corner on the Market” for this invaluable plant.

  We each have a part to play in this schema. As a legitimate tobacconist, I am in the best position to invest prodigiously, without arousing suspicions. Your part will be to ensure that Congress does NOT decide to provide tobacco rations for our troops. You must see to it that the Grand Army does NOT RECEIVE A SINGLE IOTA OF free tobacco. ALL rations are to be purchased by individual troopers from sutlers – at OUR PRICES.

  The scheme worked, forcing Northern troops to buy their supplies of tobacco from “sutlers,” civilians who ran small stores at every army post. The sutlers charged exorbitant prices for tobacco – up to $2.50 a pound, or ten times the normal rate. Union soldiers desirous of a smoke or a chaw had no choice. But in combat zones (where sutlers were not allowed) they soon discovered a new source of tobacco – the enemy.

  The Confederate government authorized a tobacco ration for “every enlisted man in the service of the Confederate states.” It was considered indispensable for army morale. On the other hand, Confederate troops often lacked other items, such as coffee, sugar, shoes, blankets and overcoats, which were plentiful in the North. They solved the problem with a barter: during a truce, ceasefire or any lull in the fighting, the two sides would signal they were ready to trade. Two men at a time would cross over, make a deal, and return to their own lines.

  When Jezreel Badcock learned of this, he was livid. He again wrote his congressman:

  We must put an end this unconscionable trading with the enemy! Not only is it treasonous, it is bad for business. If soldiers keep getting their hands on Virginia tobacco, what are we fighting this War for? All will be lost!

  We must change our plan. I see now that our only recourse is to win the War. We can ensure and consolidate our monopoly only if we make a speedy end to the War and thoroughly crush the Confederacy. We must take particular care to burn the tobacco plantations of the South entirely, thus ensuring a high and stable price for some time to come. Perhaps we can control tobacco for four score and seven years! Huzzah!

  Jezreel saw that he must act directly, taking a personal hand in the war to achieve this monopoly. He waited until the war was virtually won, then quickly formed a detachment of volunteers. (As their leader, he proclaimed himself a general.) At the head of this detachment of irregular troops, he rode out from Boston only days before the peace treaty. Badcock’s Irregulars galloped at a relentless pace night and day, whipping horses furiously, changing to fresh horses, and heading always for Virginia.

  Today, Badcock’s march through Virginia is almost as well-known as Sherman’s march through Georgia. Jezreel Badcock and his Irregulars made their way across the state, burning hundreds of tobacco plantations. He did not spare those of his own family. Indeed, he took particular care to seek out all fifteen of those be
longing to his cousin Tristram, and put them to the torch.

  On approaching one Badcock plantation, he beheld a woman on her hands and knees in the field, apparently eating something from the earth.

  The woman was filthy with grubbing in the mud, and her eyes gleamed with insane fervor. She was digging up a tobacco plant by hand and stuffing it in her mouth. I heard her declare, “As Godis my witness, I’ll never go without a chaw again!”

  I stopped and asked the poor woman if I might be of service. She informed me that her name was Scarlotta Badcock, and that she was waiting for her husband to return from the war.

  “Sir, I am in sore straits. The slaves have all run off (ungrateful wretches that they are). I must somehow manage the million acres myself until Tristram comes home. Oh, I know they all say he was killed in the war, but I cannot believe that. He promised to take me to the Cotillion Ball. I have received the invitation.”

  With this, she produced a mud-streak -ed card. “I know when he sees it, he will come home to honor his promise. Sir, I want you to take this invitation to Tristram and show it to him. And tell him to hurry home. Will you do me this service?”

  I said, “But madam, you and I have not been introduced. I am a stranger.”

  “I have always relied upon the kindness of strangers,” she said, and pressed the card into my hand.

  “But where shall I deliver it, madam?”

  “They gave me his address as Gettys-burg, Pennsylvania,” she said, and mentioned a road in that city. As it happened, I knew the address.

  “Begpardon, ma’am,” I said, “There is no one living on that road. That is the road to the graveyard!”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” she said. “You tell him to hurry along home.”

  I promised to deliver the pathetic missive, and bidher good-day. I could not bring myself to tell her that I was Tristram’s cousin Jezreel, or that I had come to lay waste to his plantation. Such explanations would only confuse the wretched creature. Instead, I continued on to the mansion house, made a torch of the invitation card, and used it to fire the place. As soon as my men had finished putting the outbuildings and fields to the torch, we rode off, heading for home.

  It should be noted that Scarlotta did not die alone and insane. After recovering her senses, she moved to Richmond and opened a boarding house. Soon her family became prominent hoteliers. A century later, one of her descendants would write a novel based on Scarlotta’s experiences, called Gone up in Smoke.

  Nor did Jezreel succeed in cornering the market in tobacco. Indeed, his General Snuff and Tobacco Company achieved only modest profits. To grow further, it needed a man of vision, a man of wide-ranging ideas – a man like Jezreel Badcock’s son, Fillmore.

  As American as Base Ball

  Fillmore Badcock

  It was during the Hayes administration that the company passed from Jezreel to Fillmore Badcock. Young Fillmore had grand ideas about everything. As he wrote in his diary,

  The nation is growing, and by jig, we must grow with it! Boston is not big enough to hold our great company. We can and must expand to fill this great continent, from sea to shining sea! Now that we are one great nation, I mean to make General Snuff a household name everywhere. Nay, General Snuff must become one with the very idea of America. All across this great continent, no man will count himself truly manly until he has bit off a chaw of our “Nonpareil” cut plug. It must and it will become as American as the Grand Old Flag, as American as the game of Base Ball.

  Possibly with that goal in mind, Fillmore began actually hawking Nonpareil at Fourth of July Parades. Each packet was wrapped in a small American flag.

  Alas, sales were disappointing. Fillmore wrote:

  No one wants Nonpareil. Why did I ever think I could set the world on fire? All is lost. The rent on the shop is past due, the snuff factory is mortgaged, and I have not the wherewithal to pay my laborers for another week. Sometimes I think of just giving it all up and taking a job (I hear they’re hiring factory hands in the Necco works in Cambridge).

  But maybe parades are the wrong place to sell! Maybe I should try selling Nonpareil at Base Ball games! After all, Base Ball maybe the national Pass Time, but it is infernally slow. A game can take hours, most of it spent waiting. Fielders must stand idle for long spells, waiting for a hit. Spectators must sit staring for hours. It may be that player and spectator alike would benefit from a hearty “chaw” to relieve the tedium.

  In addition, Fillmore tried one last marketing strategy to attract customers. With his rent money, he bought a rubber stamp and a cheap deck of baseball playing cards. The back of each card depicted a ballplayer from some popular team, such as the New York Nine, the Knickerbockers, or the Cincinnati Red Stockings. On the card face, Fillmore stamped “Nonpareil Base Ball Cards – Collect them! Trade them!” Then he slipped a card inside the wrapper of every packet of Nonpareil Chewing Tobacco.

  As we now know, the gamble paid off handsomely. Fillmore sold out his first deck of cards within two innings. He was obliged to leave the game and buy more decks. Nonpareil became wildly popular, as everyone scrambled to get one of the new “base ball cards.” Within a month, Fillmore Badcock was able to pay his rent, expand his business, and hire other men to hawk Nonpareil at ball games. He was able to print his own baseball trading cards.

  Within a year, he was truly national, shipping consignments of Nonpareil to every one of the 38 states. He later boosted his baseball game sales even further by altering the words of a popular new song:

  Take me out the ball game

  Take me out with the crowd

  Buy me some Nonpareil chewing tobac’

  I don’t care if I never get back

  This must be counted as the first, and the most successful sports-tobacco campaign in history. Chewing tobacco became forever linked with baseball in the public imagination. Indeed, it’s hard to think of baseball history without it. Ballplayers everywhere took up the “chaw.” The image of a batter with a “quid” in his cheek has persisted for over a century –many players in all leagues still chew.

  The Tobacco Gin

  By 1877, the General Snuff and Tobacco Company was so famous that the opening of its new factory in Richmond was national news. No less a personage than the President of the United States agreed to officiate at the opening ceremony – a ceremony which would have tragic consequences.

  The new factory was like nothing ever built before. At its heart was an amazing new processing machine, the “tobacco gin.” Just as the cotton gin eliminated the backbreaking labor of making cotton fiber, so the tobacco gin would automate the process of making chewing tobacco.

  The huge machine occupied the entire space inside a large building. Above it stretched a wooden scaffolding, hastily thrown up for the opening ceremony. Thence visitors crowded at the rail, gawking down while Fillmore pointed out the features of the awesome machine: tobacco leaves were sucked into one end of the building, while continuous Nonpareil cut plug chewing tobacco spewed forth from the other end. The structure above looked shaky, but it held.

  As the moment of opening approached, the Richmond Zouaves Silver Band began to play a selection of popular tunes. More dignitaries arrived to join the packed crowd upon the high platform. Some said later that they felt the timbers trembling even then, even before the President’s appearance. Yet the structure held.

  Finally President Cleveland’s entourage arrived. As the band struck up “Hail to the Chief,” Fillmore rushed to greet him at the factory door.

  Cigar Label Depicting President Grover Cleveland

  (before his accident)

  “Sir, I wasn’t expecting so many people in your party. The scaffolding isn’t quite -”

  “Yes, yes, a capital machine. Shall we get on with this?”

  Fillmore meekly led the way into the factory to the scaffolding stairs. The President, who weighed over 300 pounds, labored up the stairs and stepped out upon the platform to cut the ribbon. He was followed closely by a l
arge entourage of equally large men. All those on the scaffolding felt a tremor in their toes. Yet, even then, the structure held.

  “Tobacco is the road to the future,” the President started to say. “As we chew, so do we –”

  At that moment, a steam valve popped open, sending aloft a blast of steam with a terrific roar. This event, though harmless in itself, had the unfortunate effect of startling the visitors. They leapt back involuntarily, all of the portly dignitaries and the mighty President. This sudden shift of weight was finally too much for the wooden scaffolding; it sagged, groaned, and collapsed, spilling the entire group upon the monster machine.

  By some miracle, the President was saved (though some say he was never the same again) and not a single visitor was seriously hurt. Fill-more Badcock, however, tumbled headlong into the very maw of the metal monster, which rapidly converted him from a tobacco tycoon into ten yards of cut plug.

  President Grover Cleveland

  (after his accident)

  A Cure for Malaria

  Blessington Badcock

  After Fillmore’s untimely death, the company fell to his young son, Blessington. Blessington Badcock had been a sickly child, and it was feared he would not be up to the job. The fears were groundless. The time he’d spent recuperating out West molded him into a man – he returned an industrial genius, a two-fisted empire builder who brought the company to its “manifest destiny.”

  He was not averse to identifying the company with our nation. Glaring through his pince-nez, gnashing his teeth, and hammering on the boardroom table, Blessington declared that it was manifestly the destiny of General Snuff to take a keen interest in all American affairs, especially those involving “foreign entanglements.”