Reformers lobbied for laws limiting or prohibiting alcohol, and states began to pass the first temperance laws. Still, by that time, temperance had risen to a major political issue. Many who had done so soon relapsed into alcoholism. The group’s popularity quickly waned in the late 1840s and early 1850s, when questions arose about the effectiveness of merely taking a pledge. The Washingtonians also sponsored picnics and parades that drew whole families into the movement. Perhaps the most famous fictional drama put forward by the temperance movement was Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1853), a novel that became the basis for popular theatrical productions.

The Washingtonians turned temperance into theater by dramatizing the plight of those who fell into the habit of drunkenness. The huge surge in membership had much to do with the style of this reform effort. Americans flocked to the Washingtonians as many as 600,000 had taken the pledge by 1844. 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.

They aimed their efforts at confirmed alcoholics, unlike the early temperance advocates who mostly targeted the middle class. The leaders of the Washingtonians came not from the ranks of Protestant ministers but from the working class. The engine driving the new burst of enthusiastic temperance reform was the Washington Temperance Society (named in deference to George Washington), which organized in 1840. However, temperance enjoyed a revival in the 1840s, as a new type of reformer took up the cause against alcohol. Teetotalism led to disagreement within the movement and a loss of momentum for reform after 1836. Such total abstinence from alcohol is known as teetotalism. Thereafter, most temperance societies advocated total abstinence no longer would beer and wine be tolerated. By 1836, however, leaders of the temperance movement, including Beecher, called for a more comprehensive approach. Members originally pledged to shun only hard liquor. In 1826, the American Temperance Society was formed, and by the early 1830s, thousands of similar societies had sprouted across the country. 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. 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). In 1825, Beecher delivered six sermons on temperance that were published the follow year as Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasions, Signs, Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance. In the 1820s, temperance gained ground largely through the work of Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher. Who do you think was the intended audience for this engraving? How do you think different audiences (children, drinkers, nondrinkers) would react to the story it tells? Do you think it is an effective piece of propaganda? Why or why not?

From the First Glass to the Grave, by Nathaniel Currier, shows the destruction that prohibitionists thought could result from drinking alcoholic beverages. They called not for the eradication of drinking but for a more restrained and genteel style of imbibing. These early temperance societies called on individuals to lead pious lives and avoid sin, including the sin of overindulging in alcohol. Protestant ministers led both organizations, which enjoyed support from New Englanders who clung to the ideals of the Federalist Party and later the Whigs. The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance and the Connecticut Society for the Reformation of Morals were both formed in 1813. The earliest ones were formed in the 1810s in New England.

Each of these organizations had its own distinct orientation and target audience. 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.Ī variety of reformers created organizations devoted to temperance, that is, moderation or self-restraint. Americans consumed huge quantities of liquor in the early 1800s, including gin, whiskey, rum, and brandy. 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 corrupting American democracy.

Empire of sin change alcohol production