An Increase in Consumption

According to many antebellum reformers, intemperance (drunkenness) stood as the most troubling problem in the United States, one that eroded morality, Christianity, and played a starring role in the perceived corruption of American democracy. Americans consumed huge quantities of liquor in the early 1800s, including gin, whiskey, rum, and brandy. Indeed, scholars agree that the rate of consumption of these drinks during the first three decades of the 1800s reached levels that have never been equaled in American history. There were a number of factors that caused the level of alcohol consumption to skyrocket in the early 19th century. As the Midwest became cover over with farmland, it was more profitable for farmers to turn their corn into whiskey and then ship it out than it was to ship corn, which might spoil en route. This caused the market to become flooded with cheap whiskey at a time when many of the working poor had not previously been able to afford spirits and needed a release from the drudgery of their new industrial manufacturing jobs. Alcohol was also easier and cheaper to come by than milk, coffee, or tea and was safer to drink than water, which was not treated and could carry serious diseases. Some estimates place the amount of alcohol consumed (in terms of pure ethanol) at just under two bottles of 80-proof liquor per person per week in 1830.^[1]

This dramatic increase in drinking by the American public was a cause for concern amongst many. Business owners were concerned that their employees would either miss work while sleeping off a hangover or come in to operate heavy machinery while intoxicated (previously, when many people worked on family farms, drinking during work hours was normal, as was a mid-day nap break). Health enthusiasts worried about the long-term effects of alcohol on the body. Christian groups preached the effects of alcohol on the family unit, including higher rates of domestic violence, poverty, adultery, patronizing brothels, and gambling. There was also an overall concern about crime, violence, and rowdiness in the streets.

Temperance Organizations

A variety of reformers created organizations devoted to promoting temperance, that is, moderation or self-restraint. Each of these organizations had its own distinct orientation and target audience. The earliest ones were formed in the 1810s in New England. The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance and the Connecticut Society for the Reformation of Morals were both formed in 1813. Protestant ministers led both organizations, which enjoyed support from New Englanders who clung to the ideals of the Federalist Party and later the Whigs. These early temperance societies called on individuals to lead pious lives and avoid sin, including the sin of overindulging in alcohol, which could also, in turn, lead to other sins such as gambling, lust, adultery, or violence. They called not for the eradication of drinking but for a more restrained and genteel style of imbibing.

The Drunkard’s Progress

Figure 1. This 1846 image, The Drunkards Progress. From the First Glass to the Grave, by Nathaniel Currier, shows the destruction that prohibitionists thought could result from drinking alcoholic beverages.

This 1840 temperance illustration charts the path of destruction for those who drink. The step-by-step progression reads:

Step 1. A glass with a friend.
Step 2. A glass to keep the cold out.
Step 3. A glass too much.
Step 4. Drunk and riotous.
Step 5. The summit attained. Jolly companions. A confirmed drunkard.
Step 6. Poverty and disease.
Step 7. Forsaken by Friends.
Step 8. Desperation and crime.
Step 9. Death by suicide.

Notice the figures in the center/bottom of the image: the woman and child. They appear to be leaving their home and the woman is obviously devastated. It was a common belief that a man who began drinking had doomed his family to poverty and homelessness because he would lose his job, spend all his time and money drinking, gamble away what little money he had, and eventually die and leave his wife and children penniless.

Who do you think was the intended audience for this engraving? How do you think different audiences (children, women, drinkers, nondrinkers) would react to the story it tells? Do you think it is an effective piece of propaganda? Why or why not?

Temperance and the Second Great Awakening

In the 1820s, temperance gained ground largely through the work of Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher. In 1825, Beecher delivered six sermons on temperance that were published the following year as Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance. He urged total abstinence from hard liquor and called for the formation of voluntary associations to bring forth a new day without spirits (whiskey, rum, gin, brandy). Lyman’s work enjoyed a wide readership and support from leading Protestant ministers as well as the emerging middle class; temperance fit well with the middle-class ethic of encouraging hard work and a sober workforce.

In 1826, the American Temperance Society was formed, and by the early 1830s, thousands of similar societies had sprouted across the country. Members originally pledged to shun only hard liquor. By 1836, however, leaders of the temperance movement, including Beecher, called for a more comprehensive approach. Thereafter, most temperance societies advocated total abstinence; no longer would beer and wine be tolerated. Such total abstinence from alcohol is known as teetotalism.

Teetotalism led to disagreement within the movement and a loss of momentum for reform after 1836, because some temperance activists believed that beer and wine were acceptable and some did not. However, temperance enjoyed a revival in the 1840s, as a new type of reformer took up the cause against alcohol. This new burst of enthusiastic temperance reform came from the Washington Temperance Society (named in deference to George Washington), which organized in 1840. The leaders of the Washingtonians came not from the ranks of Protestant ministers but from the working class. They aimed their efforts at confirmed alcoholics, unlike the early temperance advocates who mostly targeted the middle class to try and prevent alcoholism from developing.

Washingtonians welcomed the participation of women and children, as they cast alcohol as the destroyer of families, and those who joined the group took a public pledge of teetotalism. Americans flocked to the Washingtonians; as many as 600,000 had taken the pledge by 1844. The huge surge in membership had much to do with the style of this reform effort. The Washingtonians turned temperance into theater by dramatizing the plight of those who fell into the habit of drunkenness. Perhaps the most famous fictional drama put forward by the Washington temperance movement was Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1853), a novel that became the basis for popular theatrical productions. The Washingtonians also sponsored picnics and parades that drew whole families into the movement. The group’s popularity quickly waned in the late 1840s and early 1850s, when questions arose about the effectiveness of merely taking a pledge. Many who had done so soon relapsed into alcoholism and more radical members of the temperance movement began to rally around the idea of codifying abstinence into law.

Temperance and the theater

Cheap stage plays, which could be performed in many different locations for a wide variety of audiences, were popular entertainment during the 19th century and also acted as a way to quickly spread a political or social message. The temperance movement adapted these plays to act as a sort of “revival meeting,” except they were for proclaiming the evils of alcohol instead of the Christian message. The message was boiled down into a simple, quick form that could be visualized and easily understood by those with little education. Theater performances, particularly the low-budget, outdoor, traveling affairs were somewhat taboo in many Protestant Christian circles, and so these were normally aimed at working-class, Catholic, and immigrant audiences.

Figure 2. An illustration from an 1882 print of Ten Nights in a Barroom, showing the death of Joe Morgan’s daughter.

The first of these plays was called The Drunkard and was first shown in 1844. It tells the story of a nefarious lawyer named Mr. Cribbs who tries to ruin his employer, Edward Middleton, by getting him drunk one night. When Edward returns to his home, he finds his mother-in-law dead and assumes that he is responsible because he was drunk. He abandons his family and Cribbs takes advantage of this by trying to obtain the rights to the wealthy estate. Edward’s wife and daughter are left starving and homeless while they search for him in the city. The play ends with Edward giving up his drinking and returning to his family, but the hyperbolic lesson that The Drunkard attempted to portray to 19th-century audiences was that simply one night of heavy drinking was enough to ruin a person, particularly a respectable man.

This and other influential temperance propaganda, such as the 1854 novel Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There, by Timothy Shay Arthur were aimed at demonstrating the evils of alcohol. The narrator tells the story of Joe Morgan, a pitiful town drunk who spends all his time at the local tavern being served by a shady barman named Simon Slade. Their alcohol consumption leads to brawls, death, heartache, and remorse.

The anonymous narrator also makes a pointed attempt at supporting temperance legislation. He makes sure to mention how the tavern patrons seem to be supporters of the Maine Law, an 1851 statute that essentially made Maine a “dry” state, despite their own drinking habits. The author’s goal was to demonstrate that even heavy drinkers knew that it was wrong, but that they were powerless against the temptation of alcohol. This paternalistic notion was behind much of the legislation associated with the temperance movement because it assumed that people could not control themselves when drinking. This type of theatrical propaganda was quite effective and by 1855, twelve other states had also passed total prohibition laws, more than 65 years before nationwide prohibition went into effect.

Temperance and the Law

Temperance reformers lobbied for laws limiting or prohibiting alcohol, and states began to pass the first temperance laws. The earliest, an 1838 law in Massachusetts, prohibited the sale of liquor in quantities less than fifteen gallons, a move designed to make it difficult for ordinary workmen of modest means to buy spirits. The law was repealed in 1840, but some Massachusetts towns then took the initiative to keep up the law by passing local ordinances banning alcohol. In 1845, close to one hundred towns in the state went “dry.”

An 1839 Mississippi law, similar to Massachusetts’ original law, outlawed the sale of less than a gallon of liquor. Mississippi’s law illustrates the national popularity of temperance; regional differences notwithstanding, citizens in northern and southern states agreed on the issue of alcohol. Nonetheless, northern states pushed hardest for outlawing alcohol. Maine enacted the first statewide prohibition law in 1851. New England, New York, and states in the Midwest passed local laws in the 1850s, prohibiting the sale and manufacture of intoxicating beverages.

21st-Century Temperance and Prohibition

In between 1845 and 1933, when federal prohibition was repealed, many counties in the U.S. made the choice to stay dry permanently. These local statutes either completely ban the sale of alcohol or severely restrict it (these are called “moist” counties). Today, there are still many dry counties and towns in the U.S., mostly in the south. Some of these counties prohibit sales of liquor only on Sundays, some are completely dry (meaning no alcohol sales at all, even beer and wine), and some allow sales of beer and wine while prohibiting hard liquor. 

Figure 3. A map of the US showing wet (blue), dry (red), and moist (yellow) counties. The original map was created in 2012 but has been updated as recently as January 2021 to reflect the recent passage or repeal of ordinances.