Temperance

=Temperance Movement: a group movement against use of alcohal.= = =



In 1789, A group of about 200 farmers began a temperance community. All across America communities were starting to become temperance communities, teaching people levelness instead of total abstinence from liquor. By the 1830's many temperance associations across America were being led by the church and were begining to preach total abstinance. Most of the people who joined the societies were women who had first--hand experiance of what constantly drunken husbands could do. One such woman was Carry A. Nation, she had a husband when she was young who was a very heavy drinker and their only child became very ill which she blamed on her husband. She left him and he died six months later, she later married David Nation who was a preacher at a Christian church. Carry taught sunday school and helped set up a chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. When her town passed a prohibition law the local saloons did not close, Carry became very angry and began to work to close them herself. It began with her going and praying in front of a saloon she later used rocks and bricks and other hard objects to hurl at the building but eventually she moved on and stuck with a hatchet wielding it with deadly fierceness. She divorced her husband and went around the nearby towns and states continuing her work and was arrested for several weeks and when she was released she continued closing saloons herself till she died on a stage in January of 1911. (info from [|Temperance and Carry Nation] ) The outcome of the temperance movement was: government regulation, instruction on alcohalism in school, engergized study on alcoholism. A major triumph for the movement was the 18th Amendment, which made achohal ileagal. The downfall for the movement was the 21st Amendment that made alchohal legal again and it sealed the movements fate.