Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections
About the Book
How, Samuel Blanchard.
An Address on Intemperance Delivered Before the
Temperance Society of Cumberland County,
Pennsylvania.
Carlisle, PA: Printed by George Fleming, 1830.
Protestant denominations in the United States, and in
the colonies before that, were well known for their
stand on sober and pious living. Benjamin Rush, the
Philadelphia doctor and devout Presbyterian, had, for
example, designed his own "Moral Thermometer"
which measured the extent to which one's level of
righteous living fell below or exceeded standards. His
1784 pamphlet An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous
Liquors on the Human Body and Mind laid out medical
questions on distilled alcohol use but praised beer,
wine, and cider as beneficial to health. In the following
years, the distillation of alcohol and its consumption
exploded with per capita consumption in the first decades of the nineteenth century triple that
of late twentieth century America. Despite sporadic efforts like the pioneering 1808
Temperance Society of Moreau and Northumberland Counties in New York, organized moral
efforts against drink were largely unsuccessful. This began to change on February 13, 1826,
when well known clergymen Justin Edwards (1787-1853) and Lyman Beecher (1775-1863)
helped found in Boston the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, known
popularly as the American Temperance Society. Taking advantage of the infrastructure of the
various existing churches and their pastors, the Society within five years claimed 6,000 local
organizations and 1.5 million members. Further unification of effort was achieved when a
conference in 1833 produced a more tightly organized United States Temperance Union, called
the American Temperance Union after 1836. Moral standards were tightening as well, as more
and more organizations moved from a gospel of temperance and moderation to one of total
abstinence from all alcohol, including beer and wine. In this atmosphere Samuel Blanchard
How, the newly appointed president of Dickinson College, a Presbyterian institution in Carlisle,
Pennsylvania, spoke at length to the Cumberland County Temperance Society on July 5, 1830.
The fact that the lecture was held in such a venue confirms the status of the local temperance
movement.
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How begins his lecture with a call for morality to be at the center of life. He then outlines with
statistical evidence the quantity of spirits being consumed in the United States at the time,
noting, for example, that New York alone has 1129 distilleries. He then outlines what he sees as
the causes of the attraction of liquor and the evils that flow from that it, such as poverty,
infamy, crime, and ill health. At one point he quotes Benjamin Rush saying that few hard
drinkers are able to survive yellow fever. "Everlasting perdition" is, however, the most certain
and heinous result; the only road to salvation is total abstinence. He refuses to accept the
argument of freedom of action in this case, even comparing the desire to drink and sell drink to
murder, as evils that require self-restraint and even protective laws. He concludes his talk with
the assertion that the current drive against alcohol compares with the Reformation or the
abolition of the slave trade, as a "great and glorious effort."
Andrew Carothers, a prominent Carlisle lawyer and chair of the Board of Trustees of Dickinson
College, moved that the speech be printed and distributed as part of the battle against the
moral evils of alcohol. One may argue from statistics that the temperance movement of the
1830s and 1840s succeeded since the consumption level of alcohol did drop off sharply to levels
that have never been remotely approached again in United States history. Several states passed
laws to limit their liquor trade during these decades. Interest in temperance also fell off,
however, as other issues such as abolition took center stage; a full-throated temperance
movement would not gather strength again till the latter part of the century. This later effort
would culminate with the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution - a complete prohibition
on the sale or consumption of all and any alcohol.
Researched and authored by John Osborne, Ph. D.
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