Temperance Movement | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

In the United States in the 1800s, many organized groups spoke out against drinking. Together, these groups are known as the temperance movement. Temperance means moderation, but in fact many of the reformers in the movement pressed for abstinence, or drinking no alcohol at all. The influence of the temperance movement culminated in 1920 in Prohibition, a period during which the sale of alcohol was illegal.

Many temperance movements that emerged in the United States included men and women from varying ethnic, religious, social, economic, and political groups. They focused on temperance as the solution to problems in their own lives and in those of others. Over the course of the 1800s the strategies used by temperance proponentschanged. They began by trying to persuade people to drink only moderate amounts of alcoholic beverages. By the end of the century, their efforts became more coercive, with proponents pushing for laws to bring about the end of drinking.

In colonial America and during the early 1800s, alcoholic beverages (brewed, fermented, and distilled) were an important part of the American diet. Many of these beverages were homemade, and people viewed them as "the good creature of God." Among the colonists, all social groups and age groups drank alcoholic beverages, and the consumption rate was very high. Alcohol was also traded, sold, and given to Native Americans. These peoples did not have a history of daily drinking, and for them alcohol had almost immediate negative consequences.

By 1840 a revolution in American social attitudes had occurred. Alcohol came to be seen as "the root of all evil" and the cause of the major problems of the young nation, such as crime, poverty, immorality, and insanity. Important figures such as Thomas Jefferson; Anthony Benezet, a popular Quaker reformer; and Benjamin Rush, the surgeon general of the Continental Army and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, called for temperance as the solution. Temperance advocates formed organizations such as the American Temperance Society to eliminate these social problems.

The American Temperance Society, founded in Boston in 1826, was the first national (as opposed to local) temperance organization. The people who developed the movement wanted to bring about economic and social change. They believed in educating Americans to value sobriety and hard work, in order to create a society with flourishing industry and commerce. Entrepreneurs who were developing businesses supported the movement, because they needed a disciplined and sober workforce.

In a period called the Great Awakening, many religious leaders of the Evangelical and other Protestant churches supported temperance as a way to promote the morality needed for building a "Christian nation." These religious groups helped to make drinking a public and political issue. Also, in the 1820s and 1830s, small-scale farmers and rural groups actively supported the temperance movement. They saw temperance as a way to bring about social progress as the country changed from a rural economy based on small farms to an urban-industrial economy based on larger agricultural networks.

By 1836 the American Temperance Society had become an abstinence society, and ideas about problems associated with alcohol had begun to change. Members began to call constant drunkenness a disease. They believed that alcohol was an addictive substance, a finding supported by the research of Rush. The American Temperance Society tried to persuade people who already were temperate to become abstinent. They did not try to persuade people whom they called "drunkards"—the modern term "alcoholics" came into use later—to reform their drinking behavior. (Attempts to reform and save drunkards was the focus of another temperance movement, the Washingtonians.) In response to the temperance movement, the public began to view the industrious, steady American worker as someone who never took a drink.

Well-to-do groups and Protestant evangelical clergy dominated the early phase of temperance reform. In the middle phase, artisans(craftsmen) and women of the lower and lower-middle classes joined the effort. They formed self-help groups among largely working-class drunkards trying to give up drinking. These artisans organized into the Washingtonian societies (named for George Washington), dedicated to helping working-class drunkards who were trying to reform.

In 1840 the first Washingtonian Temperance Society was established in Baltimore. Members took a pledge against the use of all alcoholic beverages and attempted to convert drunkards to the pledge of teetotalism (a word first used in 1834, formed from the "t" in "total" and the word "total" to mean abstinence). By the end of 1841, Washingtonian societies were active in Baltimore, Boston, New York, and other areas in the Northeast.

Washingtonian members remained with the mainstream temperance movement. The wage earners and reformed drunkards stayed with their own societies, and they opposed early efforts at controlling drinking through the law. Beginning in 1851, many local laws were passed that attempted to limit the use of alcohol. However, throughout the rest of the century, some of these laws were repealed, some were made less strict, and many simply were not enforced.

During the last phase of the temperance movement, American society went through many changes as a result of the Civil War, World War I, and immigration. In expanding urban areas and in factory towns, there was more socializing at the end of the workday as well as at the end of the workweek. There was also more alcohol being produced and consumed. Several temperance societies that emerged during this period included the active participation of women and children, because wives and children were often neglected or abused by drunken husbands and fathers. Irish-American Catholics formed the Catholic Total Abstention Union in 1872; the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed in 1874; and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) emerged in 1896. These societies were able to build tremendous support for abstinence rather than mere moderation or decrease in drinking. The temperance movements emphasized the evil effects of all alcohol and named alcohol as the central problem in American life. They insisted that abstinence was the only solution for this problem.

The WCTU was the first mainstream temperance organization to involve women and children. Its creative and dynamic leaders were Annie Wittenmeyer, Frances Willard, and Carry Nation, who also supported the feminist movement, a radical move at the time. TheWCTU began a crusade to shut down saloons and promote morality. By the late 1800s, the major theme of the temperance movement was the push for legal controls on drinking. The ASL was at the fore-front of this effort, raising tremendous support for abstinence instead of just temperance. The ASL always stressed prohibition as its main goal and was very successful at working peacefully with the major political parties. By 1912 local prohibition laws had been passed making most of the South legally dry, or free from alcohol.

In 1917 the United States's entry into World War I boosted the cause of national prohibition. The ASL pushed for a halt to industrial distilling of alcohol (ethanol). Very shortly after the United States joined the war, the selling of liquor near military bases and to servicemen in uniform was prohibited. By 1918 the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been proposed, and the ASL had pushed prohibition through thirty-three state legislatures. Consequently, the Volstead Act—called Prohibition—was ratified on January 16, 1919. It went into effect one year later, on January 16, 1920, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages.

The temperance movement stressed the theme of self-control. This theme appealed mainly to the American middle class but also to some members of the working class. Middle-class people saw the rich as greedy, the working class as restless, and the poor as uneducated immigrants. They felt the need to restore a strong moral foundation, and abstinence was the policy they thought would best bring about morality. Other reform groups, such as the Progressive political party, joined the prohibitionists in their effort to rid cities of saloons so that the United States could move toward becoming a virtuous and moral nation. At the end of the nineteenth century, the American public was receptive to moral arguments for temperance reform and abstinence from alcohol.

Anti-Saloon League, statement, 1918.

I do not say a dollar a day is enough to support a working man, but it is enough to support a man. Not enough to support a man and five children if a man insists on smoking and drinking beer.

Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman and writer. Quoted in Harper s Weekly, May 8, 1886.

Alcohol Treatment: Behavioral Approaches; Alcohol Treatment: Medications; Law and Policy: Drug Legalization Debate.

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