Prohibition and Temperance in America. Organized efforts to stop or restrain the consumption of alcohol have existed in the United States for as long as its consumption has been part of American life. These movements, coming in successive waves from the late eighteenth century into the early twentieth century, dedicated themselves to regulating the sale of alcohol, combating alcohol abuse, and addressing the social and medical problems stemming from it. They drew support from a surprising cross section of society, but relied most heavily on evangelical Christians and women as their most steadfast supporters. At their most moderate, they advocated voluntary abstinence from drinking, especially distilled spirits; at their most extreme, they called for the complete prohibition of all alcoholic beverages, a goal ultimately attained in 1920 when the United States adopted Prohibition.
The most notable person in the early American temperance movement was undoubtedly Dr. Benjamin Rush (1746–1813), the Philadelphia-based physician and first surgeon general of the United States. A leading figure in the “American Enlightenment,” Rush expressed concern about the growing influence of “ardent spirits” in the newly independent United States. Consumption of alcohol, Rush argued, promoted crime, fostered diseases of the stomach, liver, and nerves, and ultimately led to madness and death. His 1790 treatise, The emergence in the early nineteenth century of the evangelical revival known as the Second Great Awakening gave temperance advocates a new boost. As the young nation expanded, alcohol in all forms became a mainstay of American life. (In 1810, one historian estimates, Americans consumed 21 million gallons of absolute alcohol, suggesting a per capita consumption of 7 gallons a year.) Alcoholism reached “epidemic” proportions, giving the temperance movement a greater sense of urgency. Filled with religious conviction and the desire to improve society, temperance activists formed new associations to promote abstinence from alcohol. Among the most well known was the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, founded in Boston in 1826 by the minister Lyman Beecher. Later known simply as the American Temperance Society (ATS), the organization grew to include eight thousand local chapters and 1.5 million members nationally by 1836. The ATS used lectures and “temperance plays,” published temperance literature, and promoted voluntary abstinence to curb the growing appetite for alcohol in the United States. It encouraged followers to “take the pledge” by publicly declaring their intent to abstain from alcohol. (One such pledge read “We, the undersigned do hereby promise to abstain from all intoxicating drinks, and in all suitable ways to discountenance their use.”) Citizens would line up to sign pledge books; those who pledged total abstinence from alcohol by writing a T next to their name signifying “total abstinence” became known as teetotalers; others simply swore off distilled spirits. Through these efforts, the ATS became the most prominent temperance organization of the period, but other temperance groups reflected the cause’s appeal to a diverse range of Americans. The Knights of Father Matthew, started by Irish Catholics and named after Ireland’s great temperance crusader, claimed half a million pledges; the International Order of Good Templars distinguished itself by its willingness to admit women and African Americans. The Washingtonians, begun by a group of reformed “drunkards” in Baltimore in 1840, preached sobriety and guided drinkers to abstinence through mutual support. Within a decade, the group grew 600,000 strong. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, temperance advocates began shifting their emphasis from abstinence to the need for legislative reform. The greatest milestone here was the passage of the landmark Maine Liquor Law of 1851. Engineered by Neal Dow (1804–1897), the mayor of Portland and an adamant temperance advocate, Maine adopted a complete prohibition of the sale of all alcoholic beverages. Soon, eleven other states passed similar laws (though several were struck down as unconstitutional). As the 1850s came to a close, however, the nation’s focus shifted to the issues of slavery, secession, and the Civil War. The Maine Law was repealed in 1856, and the temperance movement lost its hold. During the Gilded Age (1870–1900), the temperance movement experienced a new resurgence with the rise of the Prohibition Party, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Anti-Saloon League. Each of these organizations embodied a key characteristic of the temperance activism of the era. The Prohibition Party, founded in 1869, pushed the movement further into the political arena. It fielded candidates in every presidential election after 1872 and consistently threatened to play the spoiler in local elections by mobilizing “dry” voters. Though it had no ambition (or chance) to win the presidency, it kept Prohibition on the national political agenda. (The party also gave a prominent place to women, allowing them to serve as delegates when no other political party did.) The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), founded in Ohio in 1873, emerged from the period as the most well-known temperance organization in American history. While the Prohibition Party worked in the realm of politics, the WCTU took a broader approach to reform. Under the dynamic leadership of Frances Willard (1839–1898), the WCTU advocated not only for prohibition but for also women’s suffrage, child labor laws, prison reform, public health laws, and a host of moral and social reform causes. Willard’s motto, “Do Everything,” reflected both the broad agenda of the WCTU and its methods, as members engaged in lobbying, circulating petitions, publishing, and educational activities to promote temperance. At its peak, the WCTU claimed over 300,000 members, but its influence far exceeded its numerical strength. It gave American women a visible platform in politics, reached millions of Americans through its outreach efforts, and made temperance a key political issue of the era. Together, the WCTU and ASL cast the American alcohol industry as the problem, not the drinker. In this way, the distilling and brewing industries, the saloon trade, and the network of “wet” officials who supported them became the main targets of a coordinated dry campaign that would ultimately result in Prohibition. In the context of the Progressive Era, when reformers fought corruption and monopolies in the meat, pharmaceutical, and oil industries, the distilling and brewing industries made fitting targets. The Distilling Company of America, for example, controlled 90 percent of American distilleries at the turn of the twentieth century; the U. Brewer’s Association and the National Wholesale Liquor Dealers Association flooded American politics with money to protect their interests. Even Americans who doubted the wisdom of Prohibition had good reason to express concern about the power and influence of these industries. A half century of temperance activism by the WCTU and ASL finally culminated in the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919, which banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. However, the temperance movement owed its final success more to the US entry into World War I than anything else. Americans were swayed by the argument that the nation should sacrifice drinking for the sake of the war effort. This effectively silenced prohibition’s opponents, especially German American brewers, and gave Americans new reasons to support Prohibition when they might have opposed it under different circumstances. When Prohibition took effect in January 1920, it immediately proved unenforceable. The United States was not equipped to impose a complete ban on alcohol, and enforcement efforts fell short due to chronic underfunding and a poorly administered Bureau of Prohibition. As the “noble experiment” faltered, temperance advocates came to be caricatured by a society that quickly decided that Prohibition had been an unrealistic goal and a mistake. A final irony is found in the arguments that emerged for the repeal of Prohibition in the late 1920s. In response to the excesses of the era, the Women’s Organization for Prohibition Reform (WONPR) called for “true temperance” in the United States. Noting that prohibition had only produced crime, public drunkenness, and increased deaths from alcoholism, it called for the repeal of Prohibition in order to end excessive drinking and to protect children from the pervasive presence of alcohol. Their call was similar to the one that had rallied Americans to temperance in the first place. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 brought an end to most temperance activism in the United States. After Repeal, temperance organizations failed to attract any sizable support, and their ideology gave way to new thinking about alcohol abuse as a medical and therapeutic issue. Alcoholics Anonymous, founded in 1935, presented a new way of treating problem drinking through group support. (The approach was similar to the one espoused by the Washingtonians a century earlier.) With temperance ideology effectively a relic of the past, since the 1930s, efforts to regulate alcohol have relied primarily on the regulation of alcohol sales, establishing a legal drinking age, drunk driving laws, and taxation. Blocker, Jack S. American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform. Boston: Twayne, 1989. Kerr, K. Austin. Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Rorabaugh, W. J. The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Timberlake, James H. Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. By: Michael A. Lerner