Temperance

Temperance was a movement combining social, religious, and political efforts to ban the consumption of alcohol in the United States. Convinced that alcohol abuse was the cause of most social problems, anti-alcohol crusaders lobbied and protested throughout much of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, their efforts culminating in 1920 with the federal government’s prohibition against the manufacture, importation, and sale of beer, wine, and liquor. Although temperance advocates succeeded in winning Prohibition, overwhelming popular sentiment restored America’s right to drink in 1933.