Prohibition: The Temperance Movement

The reasons for Prohibition date back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when some Christian denominations began a national crusade against alcohol abuse. Drinking alcohol was a common practice for American men, who often congregated in local taverns. Quakers and Methodists were the first groups to speak out against this practice, though they differentiated between distilled spirits, which they cast as evil, and the moderate use of fermented beverages. This temperance sentiment soon spread through other denominations, increasing in intensity with the onset of the Second Great Awakening, a resurgence of religious fervor in the 1830s. Concurrent with this resurgence of religious fervor was the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Germany and Ireland. Many of these newcomers in the 1820s and 1830s were Catholic, and most habitually drank much more than their native-born Anglo-American Protestant neighbors. Threatened by the overwhelming numbers of immigrants coming to their cities and offended by immigrant drinking, the native-born Americans, or “nativists,” took steps to preserve the status quo. Protestant leaders formed the American Temperance Society in 1826, urging local and state governments to limit or ban drinking. Women’s rights groups and abolitionists added their voices to this demand, viewing alcohol abuse as a major social problem. Several northern states responded by passing legislation to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol, laws that remained in force until the 1850s.