What Was the Temperance Movement?
The temperance movement was a social movement that promoted temperance or complete abstinence from the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
Participants in the movement typically criticized alcohol intoxication or promoted abstinence, and its leaders emphasized the negative effects of alcohol on people’s health, personality and family life. The movement generally promoted alcohol education and also called for new laws against the sale of alcohol, either to regulate the availability of alcohol or to prohibit it completely. In the late 18th and early 19th century, several factors contributed to an epidemic of alcoholism that went hand in hand with spousal abuse, family abandonment and chronic unemployment. Americans who used to drink low-alcohol beverages, such as cider, began to ingest much more alcohol when they drank more strong, cheap drinks such as rum (in the colonial period) and whisky (in the post-revolutionary period). Popular pressure for cheap and plentiful alcohol led to a loosening of the ordinances on the sale of alcohol and consequently its greater diffusion. In response, associations also sprang up that aimed to counter these excesses: the temperance movement arose with Benjamin Rush’s 1784 treatise, ‘An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind‘, which judged the excessive use of alcohol to be harmful to physical and psychological health.
How Did The Temperance Movement Start?
Influenced by Rush’s investigation, around 200 farmers in a Connecticut community formed a temperance association in 1789 to prohibit the production of whisky. Similar associations were formed in Virginia in 1800 and in New York State in 1808. Over the next decade, other temperance organizations were formed in eight states, some of them at the state level. The young movement allowed temperate or moderate drinking. Many leaders of the movement expanded their activities and took positions on Sabbath observance and other moral issues, and by the early 1820s political struggles had brought the movement to a halt. Some leaders continued to advance their cause. Americans like Lyman Beecher, a Connecticut minister, had begun lecturing his fellow citizens against the use of alcohol in 1825. The American Temperance Society was formed in 1826 and benefited from a renewed interest in religion and morality. Within 12 years it had more than 8,000 local groups and over 1,250,000 members.
In 1839, 18 temperance journals were published. At the same time, some leaders of Protestant and Catholic churches began to promote temperance. By the end of the 1830s, the movement split along two lines: between the moderates who allowed drinking and the radicals who called for total abstinence, and between the voluntarists who relied only on moral suasion and the prohibitionists who promoted laws to restrict or ban alcohol. Radicals and prohibitionists dominated many of the largest temperance organizations after the 1830s, and temperance eventually became synonymous with prohibitionism. In 1838, temperance activists pushed the Massachusetts legislature to pass a law restricting the sale of alcohol in quantities under fifteen gallons. In the 1840s, several states passed laws that allowed local voters to determine whether or not liquor licenses would be issued in their cities or counties. In the 1850s, 13 states and territories passed state-level prohibitionist laws (known as the ‘Maine Laws’). During this period, temperance reformers also tended to support Sunday laws that restricted the sale of alcohol on Sundays.
How The Civil War Affected The Movement
The Civil War dealt the movement a mortal blow. Temperance groups in the South were then weaker than their Northern counterparts and passed no prohibition laws at state level, and the few prohibition laws in the North were repealed at the end of the war. Both sides in the war made the sale of alcohol a part of the war effort, taxing brewers and distillers to finance much of the conflict. The slavery issue overshadowed the temperance issue and temperance groups faded until they found new life in the 1870s.
The Resurrection Of The Movement
When Reconstruction ended in the 1870s, many white reformers became disinterested in racial equality and invested more energy in temperance. Several temperance organizations sprang up during this period, including the prohibitionist Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU, from 1874) and the voluntarist Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America (CTAU, from 1872). Prohibitionist temperance became popular in the South because it embraced ‘Southern’ values of racial hierarchy, gender roles and honor. The national movement gained more religious support across the country, especially from evangelicals.
Conclusion
The last wave of temperance in the United States saw the rise of the Anti-Saloon League (ASL), which successfully pushed for national prohibition from its enactment in 1920 to its repeal in 1933. This strongly prohibitionist wave attracted a diverse coalition: doctors, pastors and eugenicists; Klansmen and liberal internationalists; business leaders and labor radicals; conservative evangelicals and liberal theologians. The Reverend Howard Hyde Russell founded the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) in 1893. The ASL achieved its main goal on 18 December 1917: the 18th Amendment. With ratification by three quarters of the state legislatures by 16 January 1919, national prohibition was established. The amendment came into force on 16 January 1920. Prohibition prohibited ‘the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States and its possessions’. Although the law did not outlaw private possession or consumption of alcoholic products, it was very strict and favored organized crime that illegally marketed alcohol.