Use the Mount Vernon material as a documented business case and treat the surrounding anecdotes according to their individual source strength. PDF307 gives December13 for Washington's death; Mount Vernon's institutional record gives December14,1799. Its five stills had combined capacity616gallons, so the book's thirty-gallon-per-still figure also needs correction. See https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/death and https://www.mountvernon.org/the-estate-gardens/location/distillery .
The chapter mixes well-documented enterprise history with shorter political anecdotes of varying evidentiary depth.
George Washington operated a substantial commercial distillery at Mount Vernon, while later presidential stories involving Lincoln, taverns, temperance, and taxes show whiskey's recurring place in American political and civic life.
Chapter 22, “Presidents Day”
Chapter 22, “Presidents Day”
Verified against extracted page text and the rendered PDF on 2026-08-27. Every rendered sheet was visually inspected; exact normalized-text comparison established that PDF sheets 140–275 duplicate sheets 4–139 and sheets 387–399 duplicate sheet 386. This record cites the first or unique occurrence; the split locator at pp. 137–139 and 276–280 is explicitly noted where applicable. Reader crosswalk checked 2026-09-16 against the supplied ebook headings and cited passage: Chapter 22, “Presidents Day”. Original internal coordinates: PDF p. 305; PDF p. 310. PDF positions and legacy Page are internal provenance, not print pagination; any earlier PDF-only citation policy is superseded. September 29 fresh audit: all unique text, bibliography and complete index read;399sheets visually surveyed and8details enlarged. Correct duplicate map:140–178=4–42;179=49;180–185=43–48;186–275=50–139. Final387–399 repeat final index content with OCR/navigation differences, not all exact normalized-text matches. PDF sheet coordinates are not print pages. Qualification: PDF307 gives December13 for Washington's death; Mount Vernon's institutional record gives December14,1799. Its five stills had combined capacity616gallons, so the book's thirty-gallon-per-still figure also needs correction. See https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/death and https://www.mountvernon.org/the-estate-gardens/location/distillery .
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Reader locator: Chapter 22, “Presidents Day”
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