Prohibition party in U.S. history, minor political party formed (1869) for the legislative prohibition of the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The temperance movement was in existence as early as 1800, but it was not until 1867 that its leaders marshaled their forces to establish a separate political party to campaign for prohibition. The result was the organization (Sept., 1869) of the Prohibition party at a convention in Chicago attended by delegates from 20 states. The failure of the temperance cause to gain active support from the major political parties, the failure of public officials to enforce existing local prohibition laws in several states, and the nationwide founding of the United States Brewers' Association were factors contributing to the creation of the Prohibition party. Before entering a presidential race, the Prohibition party entered elections in nine states during the period from 1869 to 1871. The first three presidential candidates—James Black (1872), Green C. Smith (1876), and Neal Dow (1880)—each polled a very small number of votes. Although the central issue of the party was prohibition, typical party platforms included woman suffrage , free public education, prohibition of gambling, and prison reform. In 1882 the party made sizable gains in state elections, and in 1884 a vigorous presidential campaign by John P. St. John resulted in the party's first large popular vote (150,626). Of these votes, 25,000 came from New York state, which the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland carried by fewer than 1,200 votes. As most of St. John's support came from Republicans angered at the comtemptuous treatment accorded a temperance petition at their national convention, the Prohibitionists helped swing a key state to Cleveland. Four years later the temperance leader Clinton B. Fisk received almost 250,000 votes. But the peak of popular support was reached in 1892, when John Bidwell won almost 265,000 votes. The popularity of the temperance cause had been greatly furthered by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1874), and later by the Anti-Saloon League (1893), despite the latter's nonpartisan political position. Although the Prohibition party never received a large percentage of the national vote, its influence on public policy far outweighed its electoral strength. This can be seen in state platform declarations of the major parties at this time and in the institution of prohibition by the Eighteenth Amendment. Although the Prohibition party continues to run presidential candidates, the repeal of prohibition by the Twenty-first Amendment had a decidedly weakening effect on the party.

Bibliography: See W. B. Hesseltine, The Rise and Fall of Third Parties (1948); H. P. Nash, Third Parties in American Politics (1959); J. Kobler, Ardent Spirits (1973).

Prohibition Party. See Temperance and Prohibition.

Temperance and Prohibition, two closely related reforms that have figured prominently in U.S. history and influenced American society and politics in significant ways.Temperance reformers sought to reduce Americans' alcoholic intake or, by means of persuasion, to convince drinkers to give up alcohol entirely. Prohibition advocates attempted to eliminate alcoholic beverages from American life by force of law.

Early Temperance and Local Prohibition Movements.

The first temperance reformers were Native Americans seeking to free their people from the deadly effects of the liquor trade introduced by European colonists. Among the latter, temperance reform appeared late in the Colonial Era, when the level of alcohol consumption was high, most people drank, and distilled spirits provided much of the alcohol consumed. The first prominent nonnative voice raised for temperance, in a tract of 1784, was that of the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush. Medical concerns were reinforced by the spirit of evangelicalism aroused by the Second Great Awakening (1800–1830). The demands of an accelerating capitalist economy also made many Americans receptive to temperance injunctions to self‐discipline. The first mass temperance organization, the American Temperance Society (1826), pledged hundreds of thousands of citizens from all social classes and both sexes, primarily in the northeastern states, to total abstinence from distilled spirits. Their efforts helped to bring about a sharp decline in alcohol consumption by the late 1830s.

While consumption declined, the temperance forces were dividing over the new goal of “teetotalism”—total abstinence from all alcoholic beverages—and the value of local political campaigns against licensing the liquor trade. Fresh impetus for the movement appeared in 1840 from working‐class drinkers, who mobilized in “Washingtonian” clubs, which focused on the reclamation of drunkards through public meetings featuring personal narratives by the reformed. When the Washingtonian wave receded in the mid‐1840s, it left behind new fraternal temperance organizations. These groups supported a shift toward coercive tactics embodied in campaigns for the Maine Law (1846), a state prohibition statute that spread to a dozen other states and territories. The Maine Law provoked opposition from liquor dealers and from ethnic groups whose customs were threatened. Although state and local prohibition laws did reduce drinking when they were enforced, their effect was often negated by the political conflicts they spawned.

Temperance reform was rejuvenated by a grassroots movement, the Women's Crusade of 1873–1874. Spurning the use of law, women in midwestern and northeastern communities marched peacefully on local liquor dealers with prayers and hymns. This transfer of temperance leadership to women led to the formation of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874. Under Frances Willard, the WCTU's agenda broadened to include woman suffrage and a host of other reforms. Willard also allied the WCTU with the Prohibition party (founded 1869). Competing with the Populists for reformers' support, the Prohibition party in 1892 adopted a radical platform that split the party and provoked conservative prohibitionists to form a new, nonpartisan organization, the Anti‐Saloon League (ASL), in 1893. Through the ASL, which drew heavily on Protestant clergymen, men regained leadership of the prohibition movement, narrowed its focus to the liquor issue, adopted a corporate model of organization, and employed an incremental strategy of working toward prohibition using pressure‐group tactics.

The Era of National Prohibition.

The ASL strategy paid off by the early twentieth century, as gradually widening areas adopted local or state prohibition. The ensuing campaign for a constitutional amendment to mandate prohibition had complex sources, among which were Progressive hopes for social betterment; fears of the social effects of rising alcohol consumption; and deepening class and ethnic conflict. The campaign met little effective resistance from a weak and divided liquor industry. Success came with ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in January 1919. National prohibition officially began one year later.

Prohibition succeeded in cutting alcohol consumption and the incidence of alcohol‐related diseases, although its effects varied by region and among social classes. Working‐class drinking was most affected. Middle‐class and elite drinkers paid more for inferior or even dangerous liquor manufactured domestically or for bootleg liquor smuggled in from abroad. Taxpayers saw rates increase to make up for lost federal liquor revenues. In Chicago and other metropolitan areas, gangs waged bloody turf battles for control of the illegal liquor traffic.

Organized opposition soon emerged. Male upper‐class leadership launched the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment in 1918 in protest against prohibition's expansion of national authority. Beginning in 1930, upper‐class women organized more effectively through the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform. Despite these efforts, prohibition enjoyed considerable popular support. After the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, however, prohibition came to be viewed as a hindrance to economic recovery. The Twenty‐first Amendment, repealing the Eighteenth, was passed by Congress early in 1933. By December, the required three‐fourths of the states having ratified, national prohibition was over.

Recent Trends.

After repeal, temperance reform assumed new configurations. In 1935, two habitual drunkards, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, formed Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a self‐help organization based on viewing habitual drinking as an addiction and employing a twelve‐step program of recovery. Their view of “alcoholism” as a disease was endorsed by academic researchers, led by E.M. Jellinek, and spread by the National Council on Alcoholism (founded 1944). Treatment and research institutions for alcoholism proliferated, especially after a new federal agency, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, was established in 1970. Corporations and government agencies created programs to treat their workers. The disease concept of alcoholism held sway until the 1960s, when sharply rising consumption stimulated consideration of more restrictive alcohol‐control measures. These changes tended to place decisions about alcohol control in the hands of elites, in contrast to earlier periods, when temperance conflicts were typically grassroots struggles.

High levels of alcohol‐related automobile accidents and fatalities led to a campaign to dissuade drinkers from taking the wheel, and for tougher sentencing of offenders. One organization focused on this issue, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, founded in 1980, claimed 3.2 million members by 2000.

Temperance reform affected American society in numerous ways, not only sensitizing citizens to the dangers of drinking, but also providing a powerful vehicle for women's political mobilization. Numerous imitators adopted the model of pressure‐group politics pioneered by the ASL. Through AA and its allies, both the concept of addiction and AA's twelve‐step method became widely accepted modes of defining and treating personal problems.
See also Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse; Brewing and Distilling; Capone, Al; Great Awakening, First and Second; Twenties, The; Woman Suffrage Movement; Working‐Class Life and Culture.

Bibliography

Ernest Kurtz , Not‐God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, 1979.
Ian R. Tyrrell , Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1979.
Ruth Bordin , Woman and Temperance, 1981.
K. Austin Kerr , Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti‐Saloon League, 1985.
Jack S. Blocker Jr. , American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform, 1989.
Thomas R. Pegram , Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America, 1800–1933, 1998.

Jack S. Blocker Jr.