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====The Long Crusade Against Booze====The Second Great Awakening also advocated the belief that humans could be individually reformed with effort and proper instruction in order to bring about a perfect society on earth. This foundational belief in the perfectability of human society sparked wide-ranging reform movements, including attempts to reform prisons and education systems, expand suffrage rights, and abolish slavery. As part of these wider efforts, Temperance first encouraged moderation in the consumption of alcohol. From this start, a wider acceptance of controlling the amount people drink and the increasingly common view of inebriation as sinful began to change the American relationship with alcohol. Throughout the antebellum period, there was palpable tension between teetotalers (those who wanted complete abstinence from alcohol) and the more traditional view that drinking was a normal social activity. As the nation tore itself apart over the issue of slavery, little meaningful progress came on the temperance front, although the movement slowly increased its membership throughout the 1800s.
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[[File:18th_Amendment_Pg1of1_AC.jpg|left|thumbnail|250px|The 18th Amendment]]
Americans have a complicated relationship with alcohol. Even before they established Plymouth, William Bradford lamented that the puritanical Pilgrims were ready to go to the mainland as their “victuals [were] much spent, especially our Beere (sic).” Both Virginia and Plymouth had vibrant alcohol industries, and during the colonial period many backcountry farmers found distilling spirits or fermenting cider to be effective ways of preserving their agricultural production. The heavy reliance on molasses, rum, and sugar in the colonies also created an interwoven trade network crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean, providing a source of income and building dependencies across the European colonial holdings.
Through the revolution, major political and social leaders drank alcohol and extolled its virtues as part of the natural social process. This began to change with the advent of industrial production, however, and the rise in religiosity fueled by the Second Great Awakening. Throughout most of the 19th century, Temperance, (the desire to moderate and restrain from all sorts of excesses, but mostly alcohol) was one of the most important social issues of the day. With the Second Great Awakening and the social movements of the 1820s and 1830s, alcohol became a scapegoat for a wide range of social problems that included joblessness, domestic abuse, immorality, and declining adherence to religious beliefs.
====Temperance Fountains and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)====
[[File:Wctu_logo.png|left|250px|thumbnail|Women's Christian Temperance Union emblen]]
Perhaps the clearest examples of how views regarding alcohol shifted after the Civil War were physically present on the landscape and visible in American politics. The introduction of water drinking fountains in urban areas and the influence of organizations like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union represent the rise of ideas that would continue into the 20th century as part of the Progressive Movement. For much of human history, access to clean drinking water presented a significant engineering challenge. The Romans brought water to the heart of major urban areas through aqueducts, and the same public health problems that inspired these engineering marvels continued to plague cities. As a result, drinking the water in many cities was unsafe throughout the 19th century.
====The Progressive Era and Prohibition====
[[File: Prohibition_agents_destroying_barrels_of_alcohol_(United_States,_prohibition_era)_(1).jpg|thumbnail|left| Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol]]
The Progressive Era, which overlapped with the growth of the WCTU and the construction of temperance fountains, was a period of upheaval in the United States that in some ways mirrors the reform movements of the 1830s. Once again, there was a great surge in the belief in the perfectibility of human society. One difference, however, was the equally firm belief in the role of the government in implementing this perfect society. While the WCTU and the temperance fountains relied on appeals to the morality of individuals, the Progressive Era attempted to bring about societal change through the enforcement powers of government.
Natural landscapes, political processes, economic and industrial power, and individual morality all came under scrutiny for regulation by newly powerful state organizations interested in the creation of an orderly society ruled by certified experts. The Progressive Era also encouraged participation in government and benefitted the Prohibition Movement with the passage of two other constitutional amendments, the 16th, and 19th amendments. The 16th amendment allowed the federal government to levy personal income taxes, which provided a new revenue stream that could replace excise taxes placed on alcohol. The 19th amendment granted the right to vote to women, who were proportionally more likely to support prohibition.
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In addition to these national political trends, there were societal changes that also spurred the United States towards a national prohibition of alcohol. As the nation continued to industrialize, some of the same concerns about discouraging drinking resurfaced, but the nation was also divided over prohibition along ethnic lines. Roman Catholics, who were largely part of the “new immigrant” waves that dominated the latter 19th and early 20th century, rejected any proposed ban on alcohol. Many major Protestant churches, including Methodists and Baptists, favored prohibition as a moral issue.
====Prohibitions Problems====
[[File:Al_Capone_in_1930.jpg|left|200px|thumbnail|Al Capone awaiting trial]]
In the early days of prohibition, enforcement was straightforward. Many of the iconic images from this period show federal officials breaking bottles of alcohol or dumping barrels of beer into open drains. Despite these dramatic scenes, large swathes of the nation were not ready to give up the intoxicating liquid. Wherever there is demand for a product, market forces will provide a supply. When the demand is for an illegal substance, that supply will also be illegal. As a result, Prohibition coincided with a spectacular rise in organized crime in the United States. Speakeasies, or illegally hidden saloons, sprang up in major cities across America. To provide the alcohol these establishments served, a whole network of illegal businesses dedicated to the production and delivery of alcohol appeared.
====Further Reading====
#Richard Hofstadter, ''The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. '' (1955)#Robert H. Wiebe, ''The Search for Order, 1877-1920 '' (1967)#Daniel Rodgers, ''Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age '' (1998)#Michael E. McGerr, ''A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement inAmerica, 1870-1920 '' (2003).#Alan Dawley, ''Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution '' (2003)#Jackson Lears, ''No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture,1880-1920''. New York, (1981.)#Paul Johnson, ''A Shopkeeper’s Millenium: Society and Revivals in Rochester'', NewYork 1815-1837 (1978)#Wilentz, Sean. ''The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln''. (2005) [[Category:Wikis]][[Category:United States History]][[Category:20th Century History]][[Category:Religious History]][[Category:Legal History]]
