Temperance

Although alcohol use and abuse had been a part of American society since the arrival of European colonists, it was not until the nineteenth century that campaigns against alcohol took on the character of a mass movement. With the foundation of the American Temperance Society in 1826, evangelical concern for the moral regeneration of individual alcohol abusers started to be transformed into a broader campaign to purify society of the corrupting influence of alcohol. In these campaigns, reformers moved back and forth between moral suasion (attempts to discourage alcohol use through argument and example) and more coercive measures (such as governmental regulation and prohibition).

Beyond their attempts to curtail the use of alcohol, reformers found themselves drawn into larger political and social issues. For instance, after the formation of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1874, many women took their crusade for the moral improvement of America to such issues as women's suffrage and the labor movement. Some conservative temperance advocates were uncomfortable with such broader reforms, and in 1896 the Anti-Saloon League was founded, with a narrower focus on governmental prohibition of alcohol and a closer alliance with the conservative evangelical churches. In 1919 these narrower efforts bore fruit: The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, and national prohibition went into effect shortly afterward. But while most Americans saw the danger of alcohol abuse, governmental prohibition brought on many problems. Corruption and crime went hand in hand with a burgeoning black-market liquor industry, and in 1933 the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed, ending the Prohibition era.

Since 1933 America has not come close to national prohibition of alcohol. Instead, efforts have moved back toward moral suasion as the primary method of combating alcohol abuse. The evangelical character of such efforts can be seen in Alcoholics Anonymous (founded in 1935), which asserted the notion that certain individuals, called "alcoholics," needed to appeal to a higher power to help them. This organization, with its "Twelve-Step" program, was the prototype for a variety of contemporary self-help groups that encourage a kind of temperance in relation to food, sex, anger, work, and many other aspects of life.

If there has been a contemporary resurgence of a more coercive national temperance movement, it has bypassed alcohol and has taken shape as the "war on drugs." Much of the earlier rhetoric decrying the corrupting influence of alcohol has been applied in the more recent crusades against marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and a variety of other substances. Once again, larger social and political issues have been brought into these debates, including questions about the role of government in regulating the lives of private citizens; questions about the links among drug prohibition, crime, corruption, and a black-market economy; and accusations of racism in the enforcement of antidrug laws. Perhaps in an effort to avoid such problematic issues, antidrug efforts to enforce and maintain certain ideals of purity have been framed in the language of public health. However, while both proponents and critics have appealed to notions of justice and freedom, to the degree that these notions differ, controversy is likely to continue.

See alsoDrugs; Health; Twelve-Step Programs.

Bibliography

Blocker, Jack S. American Temperance Movements: Cyclesof Reform. 1989.

Blocker, Jack S. "Temperance Movements." In Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, edited by Robert Wuthnow. 1998.

Clark, Norman H. Deliver Us from Evil: An Interpretationof American Prohibition. 1976.

Gusfield, Joseph R. Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics andthe American Temperance Movement. 1963.

Wagner, David. The New Temperance: The American Obsession with Sin and Vice. 1997.

Kerry Mitchell