John Chapman was born in Massachusetts in 1774 and was a student of Emanuel Swedenborg, who espoused a secular humanist creed. This is similar to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam (תִּיקּוּן עוֹלָם). Secular humanism teaches that the world is innately good but that there is always room for us to improve it.  Ethics are, therefore consequential and can only be judged by the results (not by God).  Secular humanists seek to develop and improve the world and this is what John Chapman believed he was doing as he planted apple trees from the refuse of cider mills.

The itinerant, animal loving, humbly dressed John Chapman, planted apple orchards in Pennsylvania and up and down the Ohio Valley. Chapman had a system for growing apple trees. He would find seeds in the spent mash of cider mills and plant them along riverbanks and at the confluence of new roads to the western territories.  By the time a settlement was built, Chapman had apple trees to sell. Then he would leave the plantings in the care of local farmers and return every two years to oversee the crop.  Thus, Chapman came to be universally loved and known as Johnny Appleseed.

Chapman did not focus on growing edible apples, these species of apple are grown from grafts in which pieces of trees that bear a certain kind of apple are grafted onto other trees to create the best eating apples. Apples grown from seeds are usually small and sour and often called “spitters.” Chapman was focused not on apples for food but rather apples that could be made into cider.   Johnny Appleseed was bringing the gift of alcohol to the American frontier.

Apple cider is both a healthy drink (like beer, it is free of the endemic waterborne diseases that plagued 18^th Century settlements) and it can have a serious alcoholic punch about 10% ABV).   Apple cider can be further “jacked” by freezing and then siphoning off the alcohol (which freezes at a lower temperature) to make a distilled whiskey like drink called applejack (often 33% ABV).   

While the Temperance Movement argued against the ingestion of alcohol on moral grounds (stemming from absolutism – God mandated – morality), Chapman and his followers (he enlisted many others to spread his orchards westward) held that the EFFECT of their work was healthier, happier, and more prosperous settlers in the west; therefore, it was good.  Chapman produced the means of creating lightly alcoholic beverages which provided both social lubrication as well as the health benefits of fermented beverages. This work enabled settlement of the Ohio and ultimately Mississippi and Missouri river valleys.  By this same argument, Prohibition promoted organized crime and tax evasion and was therefore immoral. 

I will leave it to the readers to decide who is right.  I believe in striving for tikkun olam so lets make some cider!

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