After that venture failed, the Nations moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where he was a minister and she became involved in religious and civic activities.
Armed with a brickbat, Nation attacked as many as six bars in Kiowa in June On December 27, , the women smashed the elaborate bar in the Hotel Carey in Wichita. It was here that Nation began using a hatchet. After a raid at Enterprise, Nation turned her focus to the capital city.
Nation arrived January 26, , in Topeka and found an appropriate stage for her activities. The Kansas Legislature was in session. Several saloons were illegally operating in the city, including the Senate Saloon, often patronized by legislators.
This assured a gathering that was somewhat sympathetic to Nation's cause, if not necessarily her actions. A crowd gathered when she arrived at the train station and she was quickly recognized. She wore a full-length black dress, white ribbon bow at her neck a temperance symbol , black cotton stockings, square-toed shoes, fringed gray shawl, and black poke bonnet.
People were curious to see the famous Carry Nation in action smashing a joint. She was led to several saloons where she warned the owners to close their "murder shops.
It was reported that as Nation bent over to pick up the bonnet, the jointist's wife "smote her upon that portion of the anatomy which chanced to be uppermost. Stanley gave her no assurances and referred her to the attorney general. She pointed to a black eye she had received at Enterprise and said, "Governor, you gave me that black eye. They can't come in here and raise this kind of disturbance. On January 31, , Nation, with a large group of supporters, marched to lower Kansas Avenue to visit the saloons and talk with the owners.
Her prohibition aims were motivated by her own failed marriage. Nation came from Kentucky, where she grew up in a slaveholding family who owned a large farm, according to the State Historical Society of Missouri.
When she was 21, after the Civil War, her family had moved to Missouri, where she married Charles Gloyd. After she became pregnant, Nation went back to her parents.
Her daughter Charlien, named after Gloyd, was born in September, and Gloyd died just a few months later. Although she rebuilt her life, becoming a teacher and eventually remarrying to a lawyer named David Nation, the memory of her first dysfunctional marriage influenced Nation. She believed in direct action. As she got older, Nation began having visions and became increasingly religious. Her husband also bnecame a preacher, the historical society writes.
The union, founded in , had the goal of banning alcohol because of the suffering it caused to families—specifically to women and children whose male relations drank to excess. Despite being unable to vote, women were becoming more involved politics at the time, and a powerful lobby for temperance —the prohibition of alcohol—had begun to gain the support of women activists.
Since it related to marriage, family and the home, it was seen as a safe way for women to participate politically. And Carry Nation had ambition and energy to spare. But where some of her fellow reformers used speeches, sermons and literature to convince people not to drink, she preferred a more dramatic approach. In , she began to walk into saloons—areas deemed off-limits for any respectable woman—and cause a commotion.
She would read Bible passages, sing hymns, and destroyed whatever she could. Soon, Nation had earned a reputation as a saloon smasher—someone who felt no qualms about wrecking private property in the interest of what she felt might save some souls. She began to carry a hatchet with her, then to sell hatchet pins as a way of financing her work. She also found ways to recruit the public into her work. In , she founded a newspaper that capitalized on her image.
She used the proceeds to fund her crusade. She was arrested more than 30 times. And her personal life was taken as fair game by those who mocked her mission. In , she was parodied in Kansas Saloon Smashers , a short film that shows a group of black-clad women like Nation destroying a saloon. In , after her husband divorced her, Why Mr. Nation Wants a Divorce portrayed Nation as a woman who had forgotten her proper gender role and abandoned her husband and humiliated her husband.
Carry Nation ignored her detractors, though, and kept pursuing the temperance cause.
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