At the time, Kansas was a dry state, but the law was generally not enforced. Nation believed something must be done, and in June she awoke from a dream in which God suggested that she go to Kiowa, Kansas, and break down a saloon. Nation did just that, and for the next 10 years she used axes, hammers and rocks to attack bars and pharmacies — smashing bottles and breaking up wooden furniture. She was arrested 30 times.
She believed alcohol was evil regardless of use and thought the practice of prescribing alcohol for a host of ailments was as disturbing as the use of alcohol as a social lubricant. Carrie Nation was a polarizing figure, but many people appreciated her actions and sent her gifts of hammers and hatchets. Companies also commemorated her efforts, and she sold souvenirs alongside her autobiography at lectures and other public appearances as she toured the country with her temperance message.
As the 20th century progressed, a final shift occurred in the Temperance Movement when groups such as the Anti-Saloon League began applying more political pressure and urging for state and federal legislation that would prohibit alcohol.
As a shift toward legal action became the dominant approach to temperance, women, who still did not have the right to vote in most states, became less central to the movement.
The early efforts of female temperance advocates no doubt shaped the movement, and the road to Prohibition was paved by their desire for a safer and healthier community. Women Led the Temperance Charge Scroll to read more. The roots of what became Prohibition in started in the 19th century with the Temperance Movement, principally among women who protested against the abuse of alcohol and how it caused men to commit domestic violence against women. This illustration, published in a newspaper in , shows women gathered in protest outside a local saloon.
Courtesy of Library of Congress. By , the average American over 15 years old consumed nearly seven gallons of pure alcohol a year — three times as much as we drink today — and alcohol abuse primarily by men was wreaking havoc on the lives of many, particularly in an age when women had few legal rights and were utterly dependent on their husbands for sustenance and support.
The country's first serious anti-alcohol movement grew out of a fervor for reform that swept the nation in the s and s. Many abolitionists fighting to rid the country of slavery came to see drink as an equally great evil to be eradicated — if America were ever to be fully cleansed of sin.
The temperance movement, rooted in America's Protestant churches, first urged moderation, then encouraged drinkers to help each other to resist temptation, and ultimately demanded that local, state, and national governments prohibit alcohol outright. A frenzy of cars, trucks, wagons, and every other imaginable form of conveyance crisscrossed the town and battled its steepest hills.
Porches, staircase landings, and sidewalks were piled high with boxes and crates delivered on the last possible day before transporting their contents would become illegal. The next morning, the Chronicle reported that people whose beer, liquor, and wine had not arrived by midnight were left to stand in their doorways "with haggard faces and glittering eyes. It was a spasm of desperate joy fueled, said the Chronicle, by great quantities of "bottled sunshine" liberated from "cellars, club lockers, bank vaults, safety deposit boxes and other hiding places.
View longer excerpt pdf. After the Civil War, as millions of immigrants — mostly from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and other European countries — crowded into the nation's burgeoning cities, they worked hard to assimilate while simultaneously retaining cherished habits and customs from their homelands. The brewing business boomed as German-American entrepreneurs scaled up production to provide the new immigrants with millions of gallons of beer.
In the s, inspired by the rising indignation of Methodist and Baptist clergymen, and by distraught wives and mothers whose lives had been ruined by the excesses of the saloon, thousands of women began to protest and organize politically for the cause of temperance.
Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other women battling for the vote. By the late 19th century the WCTU, led by the indomitable Frances Willard, could claim some significant successes — it had lobbied for local laws restricting alcohol and created an anti-alcohol educational campaign that reached into nearly every schoolroom in the nation.
Their victory was short-lived, however, as many Americans made and drank alcohol in violation of the law. Bootlegging and organized crime stepped in to profit from the market for spirits, while law enforcement lagged behind the rise in criminal behavior. Prohibition was unsustainable. In the Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth, and manufacture, sale and consumption of alcohol again became legal in the United States.
Gordon, E. Mattingly, C. Well-tempered women : Nineteenth-century temperance rhetoric. Andersen, L. Give the ladies a chance: Gender and partisanship in the Prohibition Party, — Burns, K. Roots of prohibition. Dumenil, L. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Hamilton, N. Rebels and renegades : a chronology of social and political dissent in the United States. New York: Routledge. Ohio History Central.
Anti-Saloon League of America.
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