Loading...
Larger font
Smaller font
Copy
Print
Contents
  • Results
  • Related
  • Featured
No results found for: "".
  • Weighted Relevancy
  • Content Sequence
  • Relevancy
  • Earliest First
  • Latest First
    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents

    Chapter 8—The Crusade Against Alcohol

    Jerome L. Clark

    The advocates of temperance fail to do their whole duty unless they exert their influence by precept and example—by voice and pen and vote—in favor of prohibition and total abstinence. The Review and Herald, November 8, 1881, p. 290.WEGW 131.1

    Writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1821, Boston scholar George Ticknor stated, “If the consumption of spiritous liquors should increase for 30 years to come at the rate it has for 30 years back we should be hardly better than a nation of sots.”WEGW 131.2

    Ticknor spoke the truth, for per capita consumption of alcohol from all sources had increased from three gallons in 1800 to nearly four gallons in 1830. One observer wrote that Americans were “certainly not so sober as the French or Germans, but perhaps about on a level with the Irish.”WEGW 131.3

    This alcohol consumption cut across social class, age, sex, and race. Although there were other nations that consumed as much alcohol, the United States was, in the words of historian W. H. Rorabaugh, an “alcoholic republic.”WEGW 131.4

    To a large degree, this pattern of heavy drinking produced the temperance movement. One of those upset by American drinking habits was Lyman Beecher. While pastoring a church in East Hampton, Long Island, he began the preparation of an outline of several sermons on intemperance. Other matters intervened, including a move to the Congregational church of Litchfield, Connecticut. One day in 1825 he was visiting the home of one of his leading parishioners. This man had been one of Beecher’s first Litchfield converts, and his home had been the pastor’s home when Beecher was on preaching tours in the vicinity. Now the convert was drunk!WEGW 131.5

    The shock of the sight was so great that Beecher took out his East Hampton sermon outline and began filling it in. He was determined to preach against the evils of drink in the most powerful way he could. Beecher’s six sermons on intemperance, preached in the fall of 1825 and published in early 1826, exerted a wide influence.WEGW 131.6

    Also influential at the same time was the publication of Rev. Calvin Chapin’s total abstinence sermons as 35 articles in the Connecticut Observer. These sermons, originally delivered at Rocky Hill and Wethersfield, Connecticut, proclaimed that “entire abstinence from ardent spirits is the only certain preventive of intemperance.”WEGW 132.1

    Soon after the preaching of these sermons, 16 prominent citizens of Boston, where an antiliquor campaign had been launched 15 years earlier, met in February 1826 to form the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, popularly known as the American Temperance Society.WEGW 132.2

    By 1835 there were 8,000 temperance societies operating in the United States. Most of them were branches of the American Society, which took the name American Temperance Union the following year. In 1837 this organization called for total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages. Local societies followed its lead and by 1839 had convinced 350,000 people to sign total abstinence pledges.WEGW 132.3

    Total abstinence had not always been so popular among temperance folk. From the beginning of the organized movement in the 1780s, temperance advocates experienced divided opinions. Most of them were for partial abstinence, meaning abstention from strong intoxicants such as whiskey, gin, brandy, and rum—but not wine, beer, or cider. Only a few urged total abstinence from all alcoholic drinks.WEGW 132.4

    The total abstinence cause gained strength in 1836 when Rev. Thomas Hunt began in Boston the formation of Cold Water Armies for boys and girls. He started these “armies” in the Sunday schools, and soon there were hundreds of them. There was no central organization, but the movement was enthusiastic and successful in popularizing its cause. Boys dressed in blue and girls in white marched in temperance parades, dispensed cold water to spectators along the way, freely distributed temperance tracts, and endeavored to persuade drinkers to sign the total abstinence pledge.WEGW 132.5

    Total abstinence received a further boost in 1840 through the formation of the Washington Temperance Society. Six artisans—drinkers and gamblers—gathered one evening in Chase’s Tavern in Baltimore. Two of them had attended a temperance lecture in a nearby hall the previous evening; these now engaged the group in discussing the lecturer’s arguments. A few days later the men founded the Washington Temperance Society, probably so called because Parson Weems and other biographers had erroneously pictured George Washington as a teetotaler.WEGW 132.6

    Inviting other problem drinkers to its meetings, the society offered testimonies of personal experiences by members who had been rescued from drinking. Thus was born the “experience meeting,” which was to give dramatic impetus to the temperance crusade. Crowds gathered to hear the vivid and emotional stories. The Washingtonian movement spread like an epidemic across the Northeast, and even west of the Appalachians. John Hawkins, the movement’s most effective speaker, converted thousands to total abstinence.WEGW 133.1

    The most famous temperance orator of the 1840s, however, was John B. Gough, an Englishman who was sent to America in 1829 at the age of 12 to work as a bookbinder in New York City and earn money to bring over his parents and sister. But his father decided not to come in order to keep his pension, and John subsequently lost his job in 1833 as a result of a depression. The ensuing hardships killed his mother, and John turned to drink.WEGW 133.2

    Moving to Newburyport, Massachusetts, in 1839, he set up a bookbinding shop and married Lucretia Fowler but continued drinking. His wife and child died while he was drunk; he became homeless and unemployed. He found himself a wretched alcoholic at the age of 25.WEGW 133.3

    One October evening in 1842 he was staggering along a Worcester street when he was stopped by a stranger. “Mr. Gough, I believe?”WEGW 133.4

    “Yes,” replied John.WEGW 133.5

    “You have been drinking today. Why do you not sign the pledge?” The stranger, Washingtonian Joel Stratton, then urged Gough to promise to attend a temperance meeting the following night in Worcester’s lower town hall. John appeared, told of his terrible experiences with alcohol, and signed the pledge. He had an awful struggle but continued attending the Monday night meetings.WEGW 133.6

    Five months later, and again in 1845, he relapsed from his abstinence, but after the second defection he never again violated his pledge.WEGW 133.7

    When Gough told of being rescued from drink, his oratorical skill captivated his audience, and his confidence grew. He married May Whitcombe, a New England schoolteacher who helped convert him to Christianity, and in 1844 he joined the Mount Vernon Congregational Church of Boston. As E. Douglas Branch expressed it: “Then with his feet firmly set upon the Rock of Ages, with Mary Gough by his side, and with the accumulated sins of his past transformed into javelins for the battle, he was triply fortified to lead in the temperance war.”WEGW 134.1

    Gough spoke first to temperance groups in Massachusetts, but his fame soon spread to other areas. After delivering a speech at Broadway Tabernacle in New York, he became one of the most popular lecturers in the country, transforming temperance into entertainment.WEGW 134.2

    Getting individuals to sign abstinence pledges was but one tactic in the temperance cause. Beginning in the state of Maine, temperance advocates increasingly emphasized the need for prohibition laws.WEGW 134.3

    Although there had been some attempts in the 1830s to pass prohibition laws, a new push began when the Maine Temperance Union created a committee in 1845 to request the legislature to establish prohibition.WEGW 134.4

    In June 1846 Neal Dow, chairman of the committee, and his associates presented prohibition petitions bearing a total of 40,000 signatures to the Maine legislature. A few days later the group appeared before the legislative committee on license laws. Standing before a 59-foot petition, Dow persuasively painted a vivid picture of the results of intemperance. The plan was partially successful, for after many amendments a bill was passed banning the sale of spirits and wine in small quantities. Unfortunately, it provided only minimal fines for violators, thus making enforcement extremely difficult.WEGW 134.5

    After several unsuccessful attempts to obtain a stronger law, Dow in 1850 became president of the Maine Temperance Union. That fall, with the aide of a fraternal order, the Brotherhood of Temperance Watchmen, he helped defeat for reelection a number of anti-prohibitionist legislators. To strengthen his cause, a year later he ran for and was elected mayor of Portland. He wrote another prohibition bill entitled “An Act for the Suppression of Drinking-houses and Tippling Shops.” This bill forbade wholesalers and retailers to manufacture liquor or sell it as a beverage, but it permitted towns, through bonded agents, to sell liquor for “medicinal and mechanical purposes.” Imported liquor, in harmony with a Supreme Court decision, was not banned.WEGW 134.6

    Dow’s bill increased fines and added a jail sentence of from three to six months for repeat violations. Any three voters suspecting someone of harboring liquor for illegal sale could obtain a search warrant and destroy any liquor proven to be illegal.WEGW 135.1

    On May 26, 1851, Dow appeared before a legislative committee to urge passage of his bill. Within a week it had passed the legislature and was signed into law by the governor. Maine had become the first state to officially embrace total abstinence.WEGW 135.2

    The Maine law made Neal Dow a national temperance figure, and he vigorously enforced the law in Portland. A wave of pro-temperance fever swept the country. Taking advantage of the situation, the American Temperance Union called a special convention at Saratoga Springs, New York. There, on August 20, 1851, more than 300 delegates from 17 states gave their enthusiastic endorsement to the Maine law and called for other states to follow. Local organizations flooded the land with hundreds of thousands of tracts favoring the Maine law. It was a heady time for the temperance cause; 13 more states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest, jumped on the prohibition bandwagon by 1854.WEGW 135.3

    Although having attained a large measure of success, the temperance forces were unable to get the prohibition laws effectively enforced. Furthermore, wet—as antiprohibitionists were called—forces were able to unite and secure repeal of prohibition in 9 of the 14 states. Meanwhile, many members of the American Temperance Union became apathetic to state prohibition as the slavery issue caught their attention. But their movement had some permanent effects. By 1840, per capita consumption of alcohol from all sources had fallen to two gallons—half the level of 1830—a level that would change little to our own day.WEGW 135.4

    Once slavery was ended and the Civil War over, the temperance forces regrouped. In January 1867 in Detroit, Michigan, John Russell—later known as “Father of the Prohibition Party”—called a meeting to urge the formation of a state political party pledged to prohibition. But Illinois was the first state to organize a Prohibition party, and Ohio was the first state to have a Prohibition candidate for political office, Rev. Samuel Scott, a Methodist.WEGW 135.5

    On September 1, 1869, nearly 500 from 19 states and the District of Columbia assembled in Farwell Hall, Chicago. Following a motion from John Russell, the assembly adopted the name National Prohibition Party. It then elected James Black, a railroad lawyer from Pennsylvania, as its first president, and called for state and national prohibition of the liquor traffic.WEGW 136.1

    After nominating Black and Russell as presidential and vice presidential candidates in 1872, the Prohibition Party continued as a third party. It faithfully nominated candidates, but its vote was too small to affect the outcome of presidential elections. One exception might have been in 1884 when Prohibitionist General John P. St. John’s 25,000 votes in New York state may well have drawn enough support away from Republican James G. Blaine to prevent him from winning the state and thereby the presidency.WEGW 136.2

    Inability to win offices—although they did elect a congressman in 1914—did not bother the Prohibitionists, for that was not their goal. Rather, they sought to agitate the prohibition issue, hoping in time to influence one of the major parties.WEGW 136.3

    Women were even more successful in drawing attention to temperance. Hillsboro and Washington Court House, Ohio, and Fredonia, New York, share the honors as birthplaces of the Woman’s Temperance Crusade because of the labors of Dr. Dio Lewis, a lyceum lecturer and health reformer. He made three presentations in December of 1873: on the fourteenth in Fredonia, New York; on the seventeenth in Jamestown, New York; and on the twenty-third in Hillsboro, Ohio.WEGW 136.4

    He told of the closing of a saloon in his hometown of Clarksville, New York, in 1813 when he was a boy. His father, Major Lewis, habitually got drunk, and his mother frequently pleaded with the tavernkeeper not to sell to her husband. Because Major Lewis did not stop drinking, Mrs. Lewis and her friends decided to see if they could make some changes. Daily they entered the barroom as a group, placed Mrs. Lewis’s Bible on the bar, offered a prayer, and petitioned the owner. He surrendered.WEGW 136.5

    Dr. Lewis pleaded with the women in his audiences to follow his mother’s example. They caught the inspiration, met in their churches, and then went to the saloons to pray and implore the saloonkeepers to close their stores. Frequently they gathered in the tavern for an all-day session, crocheting and taking down the names of the saloon’s customers.WEGW 137.1

    Even though Fredonia was the first town in this movement, more prominence was given to the crusade in Hillsboro, Ohio, probably because of its leaders. The socially prominent Mrs. Eliza J. Trimble Thompson, later known as Mother Thompson, gathered the women into the Hillsboro Presbyterian Church, thereafter known as the Crusade Church. Marching to a saloon, the Hillsboro ladies sang “Give to the Winds Thy Fears,” which was to become world-famous as the Crusade Hymn. Praying on the sawdust saloon floors, or in the snow outside when denied entry, the Hillsboro women caused most of the town’s saloons to be closed.WEGW 137.2

    From Hillsboro, Lewis took the crusade to Washington Court House and then to other Ohio towns. Although the crusaders closed down 250 saloons in 50 days, within a short time most of these had reopened under the same or new management. By the summer of 1874 most traces of the crusade’s success had disappeared.WEGW 137.3

    Yet that same summer, Methodist minister John H. Vincent and Ohio Sunday school teacher Lewis Miller were instrumental in planning a Sunday school workers’ training course held in Fairpoint, later they held a course in Chautauqua, New York, not far from Fredonia. Attending were three women later to become famous in temperance history: Jane Fowler Willing, a faculty member at Illinois Wesleyan University; Emily Huntington Miller, an Evanston, Indiana, juvenile fiction writer; and Martha McClellan Brown, of Alliance, Ohio, a prominent figure in the Good Templars, one of the numerous temperance societies in existence.WEGW 137.4

    At the Chautauqua meetings, when Dr. Vincent allowed space on his program for temperance sessions, Mrs. Willing and Mrs. Miller came forward as speakers and announced a meeting to consider plans for a national temperance society of women.WEGW 137.5

    The following day 50 women met for prayer and a business session. These women authorized Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Willing to send out a circular letter asking the various women’s temperance leagues to elect delegates to an organizing convention to meet in Cleveland, Ohio, the following November. The circular letter, known as the “Call,” was enthusiastically received by the various women’s temperance groups around the country, and new groups were organized with the initial responsibility of electing delegates for the Cleveland meeting.WEGW 137.6

    The first convention of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union opened on November 18, 1874, at the Second Presbyterian Church in Cleveland, Ohio. More than 130 women, many of them previously active in the United States Sanitary Commission of the Civil War, and the Woman’s Crusade, attended the meeting.WEGW 138.1

    They issued a Declaration of Principles, written by Frances E. Willard, stating: “I hereby solemnly promise, God helping me, to abstain from all distilled, fermented and malt liquors, including wine, beer, and cider, and to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the same.WEGW 138.2

    “To confirm and enforce the rationale of this pledge, we declare our purpose to educate the young; to form a better public sentiment; to reform, so far as possible, by religious, ethical, and scientific means, the drinking classes.”WEGW 138.3

    Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer, already prominent in a number of voluntary social service organizations, served as the WCTU’s first president, from 1874 to 1879. Under her administration, 23 states organized as auxiliaries to the national WCTU, and a national paper, Woman’s Temperance Union Reform (now known as the Union Signal), was established.WEGW 138.4

    Elected WCTU president in 1879, Frances Willard held the office for the next 19 years. Following a “Do-Everything Policy,” she campaigned for prohibition amendments in state constitutions, supported the women’s suffrage movement and labor unions, advocated vegetarianism, opposed tobacco use, called for the creation of kindergartens, and on Sundays even sent ladies to the local jails to take bouquets with Bible texts attached for the prisoners. She also raised money to build the WTCU Temple and construct a national Temperance Hospital in Chicago.WEGW 138.5

    In all these activities Miss Willard urged woman power, which properly led, would guard the home from evil. She created the motto “For God and Home and Native Land” and structured the necessary departments—nearly 40 in number—within the WTCU to foster the reforms that she deemed paramount. The organization was especially effective on the local level, where women would set up fair booths, obtain temperance resolutions from meetings of professional groups, and circulate prohibition petitions.WEGW 138.6

    But more than any other group, it was the Anti-Saloon League that brought about national prohibition. The Oberlin Temperance Alliance was formed in Ohio in 1874. Three years later it began a campaign for a college town local option law that would give the towns the right to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages within their boundaries.WEGW 139.1

    Adoption of the Metcalf Local Option Bill by the state of Ohio in 1882 led to an 1887 meeting of the Alliance at which the group agreed to conduct a crusade for a statewide local option law for all townships. Rev. Howard H. Russell of Berea, Ohio, was hired to lobby for this law. With headquarters at Columbus, he devoted full time to the work, aided by a number of pastors (his own pulpit was occupied by another minister). The result was the formation of a Local Option League. Petitions were circulated throughout the state, and in 1888 the Beatty Township Local Option Bill became law.WEGW 139.2

    The success of the local option bill convinced Russell that the time was ripe for the formation of a statewide organization of churches and temperance societies. Reporting in 1888 to the Oberlin Temperance Alliance, Russell recommended such a plan and during the next few years continued to carry his message to Ohio audiences.WEGW 139.3

    Finally, in 1893, the Oberlin Temperance Alliance agreed to finance a state organization, called the Ohio Anti-Saloon League. The Ohio league inspired similar antisaloon leagues in other states. In early 1895 the District of Columbia’s league asked Ohio to join in a convention to organize a national association.WEGW 139.4

    The convention met in 1895, organizing the Anti-Saloon League of America. Its goal was clear: “The Saloon Must Go!” read its motto.WEGW 139.5

    Elsewhere the league explained, “We feel, as an organization, that we can well turn over to the churches, the schools, the temperance organizations, the consciences, and common sense of men, the final removal of the drink habit by means of instruction and moral suasion, if we can only eradicate the open saloon. It is the saloon that is the chief source of crime.... The Anti-Saloon League believes, as an organization, that if we get rid of the saloons, we could trust time, and education, and the spread of morality and religions to discourage and remove whatever private use of liquor as a beverage there may be.”WEGW 139.6

    The main agent in doing the League’s work was the church—the league believed that pastors should be in the forefront of the fight to mobilize public opinion against the saloons. In addition, the league’s agitation department used literature (40 tons a month was being produced by 1912), public meetings, and music to arouse public opinion. Through its legislative work it supported dry candidates and opposed wet ones, keeping voters informed of legislators’ voting records. It was effective, too. In 1904, for instance, the league took justifiable credit for the defeat of an Ohio governor who had supported weakening the local option law.WEGW 140.1

    But despite the league’s successes, including the banning of alcohol from the United States Navy, saloons continued to multiply. In 1913, therefore, the league changed tactics, calling for national prohibition. Soon it was allied with both the WCTU and the Prohibition Party in a new National Temperance Council.WEGW 140.2

    The time was propitious. With the outbreak of war in 1914, and the growth of anti-German prejudice, beer—brewed largely by Germans—grew in disfavor. Food shortages justified restrictions of distilled beverages, which used grains. Temperance, nationalism, and wartime needs thereby came together in support of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbade “the manufacture, sale, or transportation” of alcoholic beverages within the United States and its territories.WEGW 140.3

    The amendment was proposed by Congress in 1917 and ratified by the states two years later. At midnight, January 16-17, 1920, the amendment took effect, fulfilling the hopes of more than a half century of temperance activity. Prohibition was the law of the land.WEGW 140.4

    Larger font
    Smaller font
    Copy
    Print
    Contents