Late one afternoon in May 1913, Theodore Roosevelt motored to Grand Central Terminal, where he boarded the Lake Shore Limited. He was joined by enough friends, relatives and newspapermen to pack a Pullman car. Their ultimate destination: the county courthouse in Marquette, Mich., where the former president would take the stand to prove he was no drunk.

Over the years, many mistook Roosevelt’s high spirits for being under the influence of spirits. When T.R. ran for president on the “Bull Moose” ticket in 1912, the Roosevelt-haters insinuated that his bully bonhomie was nothing other than habitual drunkenness. “If this slander is ever printed in so many words,” Roosevelt warned during the campaign, “I will bring suit for damages and settle it once and for all.”

George Newett, editor and publisher of Iron Ore, the newspaper of record in Ishpeming, Mich., soon obliged. “Roosevelt lies and curses in a most disgusting way,” Newett wrote. “He gets drunk, too, and that not infrequently, and all his intimates know about it.” T.R. promptly charged Newett with libel, suing him for $10,000.

When the case went to trial months later, Roosevelt’s lengthy witness list included a former secretary of state, secretary of the Navy, secretary of the interior, a young cousin, one of his butlers, reporters and old comrades in arms. But the big show came when Roosevelt himself took the oath.

“I have never been drunk or in the slightest degree under the influence of liquor,” he declared at the start of his nearly two hours of testimony: “I never drank a cocktail or a highball in my life.” Instead, Roosevelt allowed that he might have one glass of “light wine” with dinner, a glass of champagne when protocol demanded it, and perhaps a “measured spoonful of brandy” in a glass of milk before bed when the doctor prescribed it. Oh, and yes, Mint Juleps.

“There was a fine bed of mint at the White House,” the old Rough Rider remembered. “I may have drunk half a dozen Mint Juleps in a year.” His lawyer got a good guffaw from the courtroom when he asked, “Did you drink them all at one time?”