who liked their liquor called the advocates of the law, naturally, Maine-iacs.
The first formal gathering of citizens who advocated temperance took place in Saratoga, New York, in 1808. In 1813 a temperance society was formed in Massachusetts, and in 1826 the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was founded in Boston. These were among the first temperance organizations. The movement grew rapidly; by 1833 there were approximately six thousand temperance societies in the country, with more than a million members.
On November 2, 1832, President Andrew Jackson’s secretary of war, Lewis Cass, signed an order abolishing the Army’s spirits ration. Cass was a dry. After he was elected to the United States Senate in 1845, he organized and became the first president of the American Congressional Temperance Society, which included members from both houses of Congress. Soon afterward most of the state legislatures formed similar organizations.
In some temperance societies, as the activists began to gain the upper hand over the moral suasionists, new members had to sign the full pledge, forswearing wine as well as ardent spirits. The suasionist members were permitted to remain, but the secretary would jot initials after each member’s name to differentiate, thus—“O.P.” (old pledge) or “T” (total). Some believe that this is how the word “teetotaler” got into the language.
The fundamentalist-liberal debate of a later time was foreshadowed in these squabblings. The moral suasionists protested that they did not personally like wine, but they could not find it in their consciences to condemn it as wicked per se. These differences never were to be settled one way or the other. Neither side would give an inch. The spirit of accommodation and compromise never brushed the temperance movement in America.
After all, the moral suasionists said, wine was mentioned many times in the Good Book.
The activists retorted with quotations from persons they introduced as scholars, to the effect that when the Bible spoke of wine it meant, simply, unfermented grape juice.
The suasionists, ordinarily staid men, at this point were forced to snicker. Would you, then, they asked, read in Genesis, chapter 9, that Noah drank of the unfermented grape juice? Was that why he took off all his clothes? There were more than two hundred references to wine in the Good Book, they reminded the activists. Were all of them mistranslations? Did Paul instruct Timothy to stop drinking water only, but use a little unfermented grape juice for his stomach’s sake? Would one cry with Joel: “Howl, all ye drinkers of unfermented grape juice”?
This made the activists angry, but they put their heads down and fought on, for the spirit of the Lord was in them. They saw no reason to wail over a sot, who was already lost. One drink, they declared, and a man was doomed. But what of the young people? What of the innocent?
When the activists started the no-license movement—it should have been called the no-new-license movement—they were trying, for the first time, not to win men away from whiskey but to keep whiskey away from men. Thus, they reasoned, there would soon be no more of those filthy saloons. They could have been right. They surged well ahead of the moral suasionists, and it began to look as though they might get their way.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Jubilant Horrible Examples
Washingtonians—
German and Irish immigration—
Father Mathew—Civil War
On the night of April 2, 1840, six of the regulars were gathered, as was their custom, at Chase’s Tavern in Baltimore to gulp and to talk. William K. Mitchell, David Anderson, Archibald Campbell, John F. Hoss, James McCurley, and George Steers were serious drinkers, not men to pound the table or break into song. They made each meeting an important occasion.
Although they seemed to be hiding away at Chase’s, the men believed in keeping up as best they could with cultural doings. When anything interesting was going on in town they covered it, not by attending in a body, for that would have broken the pace of intake, but by sending representatives. That night, for example, they told two of their number to go to a lecture on, of all things, temperance, to be given by Rev. Matthew Hale Smith. The other four went about their usual business at Chase’s.
The delegates were soon back, seething with enthusiasm and vowing that Mr. Smith was a wonder. Host Chase hovered nearby, but his services were not called for. The spirit of the two was imparted to the four, and soon—it seems unbelievable, but it is an attested fact—the six men had agreed to form a total abstinence movement of their own, right there in the tavern.
They called themselves the Washingtonians, though nobody really knew why. It was not Washington’s birthday, and the Father of his Country, God knew, had been no abstainer. They thought of making it the Jeffersonians, but changed their minds. Everyone liked the name Washingtonians, so they stuck to that.
They drew up a pledge to refrain forever from drinking any “spirituous or malt liquors, wine or cider,” and everyone signed. They agreed to call a meeting a few nights hence in a larger place, a meeting to which each man invited four or five other drinking friends and at which they all swapped their experiences on inebriation. It was the first of many such gatherings, for the Washingtonians’ plan spread like wildfire. The meetings, called “experience” meetings, were attended by old and young alike, the old in most cases eager to give in detail the narrative of their tussles with demon rum, the young fascinated by the presence of depravity.
Soon there were Washingtonians in Washington, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, almost everywhere. It was an urban activity rather than a rural one, and thousands at a time signed the pledge. No machinery was built to follow up these commitments.
The Washingtonians were distinctly moral suasionists. They demanded no legislation and pleaded for no votes. Rather, they used—and it was new with them—the so-called “horrible example” technique. They loved to talk about themselves and how they had wrestled with the devil. If a speaker did not think that he himself looked sufficiently gruesome, he would hire the town souse for a few dollars or the promise of a bottle, seat him in a chair on the stage, and point to him again and again in the course of his harangue. This was undoubtedly the origin of the story about the street corner speaker that was published in anthologies of wit and humor for half a century. It went something like this:
Temperance Orator: Two years ago I was a broken-down, washed-out, walleyed, drooling, gibbering wreck. What do you suppose has wrought this wonderful change in me?
Voice from Crowd: What change?
The Washingtonians liked to have spirited music accompanying their meetings, and they concocted their own songs. A favorite was “Dash the Bowl to the Ground” by Rev. John Pierpont, whose grandson, J. Pierpont Morgan, was to go far in the financial world.
One of the first to join the Washingtonians was English-born John W. H. Hawkins, who with his wonderful platform manner and resonant voice proved to be one of the most effective speakers for the cause. There was not a dry eye in the house when Hawkins told about his little daughter breaking into tears and begging him not to send her out for another bottle of whiskey. It was this that had caused him to see the light, Hawkins said. Another Washingtonian, Rev. John Marsh, turned Hawkins’ anecdote into a written narrative. Published in pamphlet form, Hannah Hawkins, or, The Reformed Drunkard’s Daughter was enormously popular.
Virtually every new branch of Washingtonians that opened—and they were numbered by the score—printed a weekly paper. These journals were notable for their exuberance rather than accuracy. In fact, there is no record or estimate of how many pledge signers backslid. At any rate, within three years the whole movement collapsed like a punctured balloon. Nothing
