November 22, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: Prohibition

[150 years ago this week, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded at a national convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874 convention!]

On three great scholarly books that can help us analyze an incredibly multi-faceted historical period and its many legacies.

1)      Lisa McGirr’s The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State (2015): Yesterday I argued that the Anti-Saloon League’s successful pressure politics were instrumental in finally achieving the movement’s longstanding goal of nationwide Prohibition. That was absolutely a factor, but it’s also far from a coincidence that the 18^th Amendment passed Congress in 1917 (the same year as the Espionage Act) and was ratified in 1919 (the same year that the post-WWI Palmer Raids began). As McGirr argues convincingly, World War I specifically and many wartime contexts more broadly were crucial to turning Prohibition from a movement priority into a nationwide policy—and while that particular policy ended with the amendment’s repeal in 1933, many of those wartime contexts have endured in the 90 years since.

2)      Stephen Moore’s Bootleggers and Borders: The Paradox of Prohibition on a Canada-U.S. Borderland (2014): Another crucial legacy of the Prohibition era was the creation of—and yes, I mean that precisely; not just newfound attention to, but in many ways the creation of—the U.S.-Canadian border as a space for law enforcement concerns and activity. My paternal grandfather and his parents moved across that border and into New Hampshire in the mid-1910s with no hassle or legal attention of any kind; but just a few years later, that would have been impossible, and as Moore argues Prohibition enforcement was the reason why. While the U.S.-Mexico border was not as much of a Prohibition focal point, it’s no coincidence that it was likewise during the 1920s that that border became genuinely patrolled. The end of Prohibition was only the start of U.S. border patrols, of course.

3)      Marni Davis’ Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition (2012): I wrote a bit in yesterday’s post about the interconnections between white supremacy, race, and Prohibition, especially in the alliance between the Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan. The 1920s Klan focused equally on anti-Black and anti-immigrant domestic terrorisms, of course; and as Davis’ book traces powerfully, so too was Prohibition driven by anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic narratives. I’ve argued for many years in many different settings that the 1920s represented a nadir of American racism, xenophobia, and exclusion—and yes, I’m well aware that this is a very competitive contest; but the more I learn, the more convinced I am that this was indeed a stunning low point—and it’s crucially important that we include Prohibition in our understanding of those elements of 1920s America.

WCTU post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

November 21, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: The Anti-Saloon League

[150 years ago this week, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded at a national convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874 convention!]

On one important innovation and one troubling interconnection for America’s most influential temperance organization.

Each of the posts in this series has moved between more individual and more collective and organizational temperance activisms, and I don’t think that’s just due to my own choices and focal points: it seems to me that any social movement that endures and achieves significant successes likely needs both groundbreaking leaders and widespread communal support. Similarly, the final push toward Prohibition (on which more in tomorrow’s concluding post) in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries relied on both the individual presence and prominence of yesterday’s subject Carrie Nation and the social and political connections of the Anti-Saloon League. Founded in 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio, the League certainly featured its share of impressive individual leaders, from founder Howard Hyde Russell to the hugely influential lawyer Wayne Bidwell Wheeler among others. But it was precisely the League’s organizational presence that made it so effective in shifting national conversations.

The League utilized a number of strategies to achieve those aims, including creating its own American Issue Publishing Company in 1909; that publisher produced and mailed so many pamphlets that its hometown of Westerville, Ohio became the smallest town to feature a first-class post office in the period. But by far the most influential element of the Anti-Saloon League’s activist efforts was a strategy that the organization seems to have created (and which was certainly related to those ubiquitous publications): pressure politics, the concept of using a variety of interconnected means, from mass media and communication to intimidation and threats, to pressure political leaders to support and pass particular legislation and policies. There’s no doubt that it was the successful application of such political pressure by the League and its allies (but most especially by the League) that convinced enough national and state politicians to support Prohibition (after well more than a half-century of unsuccessful temperance movement efforts toward that specific end), leading to the Congressional passage and state-level ratification of the 18^th Amendment in 1919.

I’ll have a lot more to say about that specific League legacy tomorrow. But it’s important to add a troubling layer and contemporary context, particularly to the application of pressure politics: the other organization which used that strategy with particular effectiveness in the 1920s was the resurgent Ku Klux Klan. Moreover, this wasn’t a coincidence or even just a parallel—as historian Howard Ball has discovered, in a setting like late 1910s and 1920s Birmingham the two organizations were closely connected, to the point that a local journalist wrote, “In Alabama, it is hard to tell where the Anti-Saloon League ends and the Klan begins.” And it wasn’t just Alabama—throughout the 1920s the two organizations became allies not only in enforcing Prohibition (although I’m sure the League would say that was their only goal) but in achieving their political and social goals on multiple levels. The ties between white supremacy and American social movements are far from unique to temperance, of course—but that doesn’t excuse in any way this most influential temperance organization’s symbiotic relationship with white supremacist domestic terrorists.

Last temperance histories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

November 20, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: Three Reformers

[150 years ago this week, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded at a national convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874 convention!]

On takeaways from a trio of temperance reformers across the 19^th century.

1)      Sylvester Graham (1794-1851): As that hyperlinked article argues, Graham’s temperance activism was just one small part of his truly multi-layered efforts for health and wellness reform. But my older son dressed up as and interpreted Graham for an APUSH project earlier this year, and in his honor (and in tribute to Graham’s most enduring legacy, the undeniably tasty Graham Cracker) I wanted to include the quirky and influential Graham in this post. Moreover, Graham did hold a position for years with one of the organizations I highlighted yesterday, the Philadelphia Temperance Society, so he did see alcohol abstinence as an important part of his overall health reforms. While analyzing the longitudinal history of the temperance movement over these 400 years is one important way to think about this issue, it’s equally worthwhile to connect each specific moment latitudinally to other elements of its era and society, as Graham’s multi-faceted efforts remind us.

2)      Neal Dow: But some reformers did laser-focus on temperance throughout their lives and careers, and while Portland, Maine’s Neal Dow (1804-1897) did other important work as well—including with the Underground Railroad and as a Civil War Brigadier General—temperance was the through-line, leading to his nickname as the “Father of Prohibition.” Active in the movement since his early 20s, it was with a pair of closely linked mid-century elections that he really took his efforts to the next level: he was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union in 1850 and then mayor of Portland in 1851. Dow saw his political role as an extension of his movement activism, to the point where in 1855 he ordered state militia members to open fire on rioters who opposed his “Maine Law,” the first in the nation to prohibit all alcohol. Dow even tried to take those political goals truly nationwide, running for President in 1880 as the nominee of the Prohibition Party. In those and other ways, the political history of prohibition is inseparable from the career of Neal Dow.

3)      Carrie (sometimes Carry) Nation (1846-1911): While Dow did order that moment of militia violence, his own activisms remained more on the organizational and legal levels, as was the case with the 19^th and early 20^th century temperance movement as a whole. But all social movements feature a variety of perspectives and tactics, and not long after Dow’s presidential run the temperance movement came to be dominated by a figure who preferred much more direct and violent action. Believing herself called from God to oppose all things alcohol—“a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn’t like,” as she strikingly put it—Nation’s activist weapon of choice was neither words nor laws, but a literal weapon, the hatchet with which she attacked both liquor bottles and the businesses that served them (leading to the nickname “Hatchet Granny”). While Nation was part of the broader community of the Anti-Saloon League about which I’ll write tomorrow, she was also profoundly and powerfully individual, as were each of these influential temperance reformers.

Next temperance histories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

November 19, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: The Early Republic

[150 years ago this week, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded at a national convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874 convention!]

On three milestone moments in the movement’s early 19^th century evolutions.

1)      1813: While the issue and debate continued to simmer (to steep? Not sure of the best alcohol-based pun here) for the two centuries following the 1623 Virginia law, it was with the 1813 founding of the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance that a truly organized Temperance Movement began to develop in the Early Republic United States. To reiterate my last point in yesterday’s post, the Society did not initially advocate for total abstinence from alcohol, but rather opposed “the frequent use of ardent spirits and its kindred vices, profaneness and gaming.” But the more than 40 chapters founded in the Society’s first five years certainly reflects how broadly and passionately shared this perspective was in the first decades of the 19^th century.

2)      1826: As its name suggests, the Massachusetts Society was still somewhat local in its efforts; but a few years later, another Boston-based organization, the American Temperance Society (ATS) or American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, explicitly took the movement national. The ATS was also far more overtly committed to abstinence as a principal collective goal, with members signing a pledge to abstain from drinking distilled beverages. Moreover, while that pledge was of course voluntary, the ATS soon shifted its efforts to arguments for mandatory legal prohibition, reflecting a significant and lasting shift in the movement’s goals. The more than 1.25 million members who joined the ATS in its first decade of existence (about 10% of the total US population in the 1830s) makes clear that this was a truly communal such shift.

3)      Philadelphia: This developing national temperance movement also led to countless new local organizations—in Philadelphia alone there were 26 distinct Societies operating in 1841, and an entire building (Temperance Hall) dedicated for the movement’s meetings and rallies. Two of those Societies reflect the breadth of the movement’s inspirations and motivations: the Pennsylvania Catholic Total Abstinence Society was founded in 1840 by an Augustinian priest and focused on issues of religious and morality; while the Philadelphia Temperance Society was led by doctors and focused much more on reform narratives of health and wellness. While the movement was certainly coalescing around abstinence and prohibition in this prominent Early Republic period, it remained a broad and varied representation of the landscape of American reform, activism, and society.

Next temperance histories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

November 18, 2024: AmericanTemperanceStudying: A 1623 Origin Point

[150 years ago this week, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was founded at a national convention in Cleveland. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of key temperance histories, leading up to a weekend post on that 1874 convention!]

On a couple historical and movement lessons from the 400^th anniversary of a foundational law.

As with many things early 1600s, it’s difficult to find too much specific information about the groundbreaking temperance law enacted in Virginia on March 5^th, 1623. The colony’s first royal governor Francis Wyatt and the recently-established colonial legislature deemed that date Temperance Day in an attempt to prohibit, as the law put it, “public intoxication.” That was just the first public and political step in a century-long debate in the colony over alcohol and its effects, as traced at length in Kendra Bonnett’s 1976 PhD dissertation Attitudes toward Drinking and Drunkenness in Seventeenth-Century Virginia (I’ll admit to having only briefly skimmed the beginning of that thesis for this post, but it’s linked there for anyone who wants to read more!). While those specific Virginia and 17^th century contexts are of course important to understanding this law, I want to use that 1623 moment to introduce a couple key lessons about temperance in America for this entire weeklong blog series.

For one thing, it’s crucial to understand how longstanding, widespread, and indeed foundational American temperance debates have been. Much of the narrative around this issue links it to early 19^th century reform movements, which were certainly influential and about which I’ll have a lot more to say in tomorrow’s post. But it’s pretty striking and telling that one of the very first laws passed in collaboration by two of the first European American political entities—both Virginia’s royal governor and its colonial legislature were only four years old at the time—addressed the issues of alcohol, drunkenness, and temperance. Moreover, while we might expect that the other principal English colony at the time, Puritan Massachusetts, would enact such a law—and while the Puritans most definitely had strong opinions on strong drink, but similarly more in opposition to public drunkenness than alcohol itself—this took place in the far less overtly religious (or at least religiously governed) Virginia colony. Clearly the issue was consuming across the new colonies from their outset.

But it’s just as important to note what this groundbreaking law specifically did and didn’t do. The temperance movement is often closely associated in our collective memories with—if not directly defined by—the goal of prohibition, an understandable connection given that particular, prominent early 20^th century Constitutional amendment and 13-year period (with which I’ll end the week’s series). Indeed, the association is so strong that one definition of “temperance” has come to be “abstinence from strong drink.” But I would argue that that definition emerged because of the association of the movement with prohibition, and that another definition—“the quality of moderation or self-restraint”—is more foundational to the word and movement alike. Virginia’ Temperance Day didn’t ban or even legally restrict alcohol, just “public intoxication”—a demonstrable lack of moderation or restraint in the consumption of such drinks. There’s at least a spectrum in play here, and one that would continue to shape the movement’s goals and laws throughout the subsequent 400 years.

Next temperance histories tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?

November 16-17, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Thankful Tributes

[14 years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversary series, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept me blogging for nearly a decade and a half now, leading up to these special weekend tributes!]

Along with the obvious, AKA my favorite people in the world—my sons, my wife, and my folks—here are a handful of people who have helped make this blog a favorite of mine as well.

1)      Irene Martyniuk: One of my very first Guest Posters, my colleague and friend Irene has also become my most consistent reader, and one who frequently takes the time to share thoughtful responses as well (some of which I’ve gotten to feature in Crowd-Sourced Posts). We all want to know we’re being read and read well, and nobody has helped me feel that better than Irene!

2)      Rob Velella: I wrote in that hyperlinked post about what Rob’s blog and work have meant to me. But I’m not sure I said clearly enough how much it helped to have an existing public scholarly blogger, one whose blog was a model for what I was hoping to create, be so supportive and collaborative from the jump. I hope I’ve paid that forward!

3)      Heather Cox Richardson: I likewise wrote in that hyperlinked post about how much it meant to have Heather and her excellent Historical Society website support and share my blog at any early point (and I could say the same about her even more excellent We’re History website, for which I was able to write many times). Now that Heather has become one of the most prominent and successful public scholars in American history, I can add, “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person!”

4)      Robin Field: That Guest Post of Robin’s was impressive and inspiring, as was the 2023 NeMLA paper of hers I highlighted in this post (and as is all of her work). But Robin has also connected me with a number of her students over the last few years, all of whom have contributed phenomenal Guest Posts in their own right (and who collectively have largely kept the Guest Post layer to the blog going). Am I suggesting that you all should connect me to awesome students who also might want to Guest Post on this blog? Yes, yes I am.

5)      You: Whether you connect me to students or not, I’m so damn thankful for y’all. And not just in the colloquial Southern 2^nd-person sense—for each and every one of you all. I try not to dwell on blog stats, as they’re outside my control and can and do fluctuate and in any case are just numbers. But I get somewhere in the range of 30,000 discrete views each month, and I really am profoundly grateful for each and every one of those folks who finds their way to this blog. So thanks, and here’s to the next 14 years!

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Give me a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!

November 15, 2024: AmericanStudies’ 14th Anniversary!: Communal Crowd-Sourcing

[14 years ago this week, this blog was born. For this year’s anniversary series, I wanted to highlight a handful of the types of posts that have kept me blogging for nearly a decade and a half now. Leading up to some special weekend tributes!]

If you click on the tab for Crowd-Sourced Posts in the list of “Labels” to the right on the blog’s homepage, you’ll notice that there haven’t been any in 2024 and were only four each in 2023 and 2022, compared to the average of about ten each year prior to that. There are all kinds of reasons for that shift, including the growth of my #ScholarSunday threads (first on Twitter, now on their own newsletter) which have become a powerful form of crowd-sourcing in their own right (both in terms of sharing others’ voices and because many of the things I feature there have been shared with me). But even if I never feature another crowd-sourced post—and I hope and believe I will, at the very least for next year’s non-favorites series!—I don’t think I can overstate how much those posts have meant to me over the course of my blogging career. Scholarly blogging, like most every other part of scholarly work, can feel individual and isolated at times; some degree of that is likely inevitable, but I’ve still spent my whole career seeking ways and places to challenge that feeling and offer a communal alternative. I love that my blog has featured precisely such an alternative, and hope it always feels like it can.

Tribute post this weekend,

Ben

PS. Give me a great anniversary present and say hi in comments, please!