A century of drink reform in the United States

Front matter

United States

August f. Fehlandt ffi

HI

Foreword

The finest and most difficult of human achievements, whether for man individually as a personal unit, or collectively as a political unit, is the art of self-government. Ignorance — Indifference — Self-interest, this is the Cerberus that ever lies at the gateway of humanity's under-world, that the imprisoned Man may not escape.

Among a people where a monarch holds absolute sway, the problem of government is simple. His word is law, and the people obey him. But where the people themselves are allowed to speak and choose, complications at once enter into the problem. Opinions and desires will come into conflict, and the self-interests of men will trespass upon the welfare of the whole. Besides, social laws and forces are many and complex, and the ways of evil devious. Democracy can yield her best fruits only where intelligence and sound morals generally prevail.

8 Foreword.

Where there is but one voice in the soul of man — the voice of God — the problem of self-government or self-control, too, is simple. Man obeys that voice, and his rich heritage is peace and soul growth. But with many conflicting unchained desires, like so many voices calling to him, and with personal freedom of choice, man does not always listen to wisdom or goodness, and he fails of his best success, and may fail utterly.

In no one thing is this illustrated more forcibly than in man's struggle with his appetite for strong drink. For generations and centuries he has been brought under its seductive influence. Every age and every condition of society, from half-savagery to highest civilization, bears witness to the enslaving and destructive power of this drug. So manifest has become man's weakness, so multiplied the sorrow and shame and outrage growing out of it, that after the occasional voice of admonition by some prophet of God, the conscience and humane sentiment of Christendom has in this latter time applied itself in mighty earnestness to the situation.

Of this struggle, than which there is no more

Foreword. 9

stirring page in all the annals of human liberty, it is the purpose of this book to give a brief outline. Of the main epochs in this struggle, its men and its measures, no man should* be ignorant. Compelled of necessity to some limitation of our theme, the narrative will confine itself to this land where the reform first took definite shape, a land where the experiment of self-government was to be tested first on a large scale, and whose people are determined, we believe, that as touching those things which vitally affect the interests of civilization, this experiment shall not prove a failure.

And yet, after a full hundred years, the end is not. If these pages shall contribute aught to hasten it, it will not be because of any effort to arouse the indifferent or to preach to the wicked, but rather, if it please God, by pointing out directions to those who are already inquiring the way out. The Author.

1904, Independence Day.

Table Of Contents

A. AGITATION.

Chapter I. The Awakening. — Moderation. 1785-1826

Page The Drinking Customs of Society. — Eeceive First Effective Blow from Dr. Benjamin Rush. — His Work. — The First " Temperance " Societies. — Voices from the Pulpit. — Dr. Rush at the Presbyterian General Assembly, 1811. — The Churches Take Up the Question. — Lyman Beecher's Six Sermons, 19

Chapter II. Progression. — Abstinence. 1826-1851. First Period, 1826-1836 — Abstinence from Spirits

The American Temperance Society, Boston, 1826. — Dr. Justin Edwards. — Effective Laborers and Literature at Opening of this Period, 1826-1831. — Temperance Reform Introduced Abroad. — Golden 11

12 Table of Contexts.

Page Age of Temperance Literature, 1831-1836. — Progress and Growth. — First National Temperance Convention, Philadelphia, 1833, 52

Second Period, 1836-1851 — Teetotalism.

Second National Temperance Convention, Saratoga, 1836. — The Washingtonian Movement, 1840.— Hawkins. — Not Prevention Merely, but Reclamation now the Program of the Reform. — Abraham Lincoln. — Fraternal Temperance Orders: Rechabites, 1841; Sons of Temperance, 1842; Cadets of Temperance ; Templars of Honor and Temperance, 1845 ; Good Templars, 1851 ; First World's Temperance Convention, London, 1846. — Gough. — Father Mathew in America, - 76

Chapter III. Culmination. — Prohibition. 1851-1856

The Man Undoing the Work of the Reform Discovered. — Neal Dow's Interview with the Rumseller. — The Father of Prohibition. — Successive Steps Toward Complete Prohibition. — First United States Supreme Court Decision on Temperance Question, 1847. — Prohibition Enacted: 1851, Maine ; 1852, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont ; 1853, Michigan; 1854, Connecticut; 1855, New York, New Hampshire, Nebraska Territory, Delaware, Indiana. — Progress in Other States. — Reform Suddenly Arrested.— Slavery.— Secession, -------- 104

Table of Coxtents. 13

B. COMPLICATION.

INTEENAL EE VENUE ACT, JULY 1, 1862. TAXATION.