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John Roberts
HIS 337
Dr. Luse
13 May 2011
Prohibition
“The ethics and self-discipline that came out of evangelical
individualism ironically fed into one of the largest efforts in American
history to deploy state power to control individual behavior, [which was]
the Prohibition movement.”1 The Prohibition movement had its
beginnings in the North around the time of the Second Great Awakening.
During this time there were initial societies that were formed to help rid
America of its sinfulness and to make it into a truly Christian nation.
One of the more prominent societies formed was the American
Temperance Society, which was formed in 1826. This society, along with
others at the time, focused on temperance and moderation rather than
complete prohibition. But as the consumption of hard liquor increased,
societies moved towards total prohibition. During this time, most
historians would agree that the movement was weak in the South, with
only a handful of societies and only around eight percent of all recorded
pledges during the time. The main reason contributed to the lack of
Southern support dealt with the fact that most supporters of the
1
Paul Harvey, Freedom’s Coming, (The University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 55.
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Prohibition movement were also supporters of the Abolitionist movement
and the Southern societies tried to distance themselves from the
abolitionist. They went as far as to denounce abolitionism and many of
the Southern societies ignored or completely separated from the
American Temperance Society by the 1830s. Instead of Southern
societies advocating legal prohibition, they focused on moral suasion or
the act of converting drunkards to sobriety. Many of the southern
churches claimed that the societies were not mentioned or sanctioned in
the bible and claimed that they were unscriptural. Another of the
barriers to prohibition in the south was the doctrine of the “Spirituality of
the Church” which was the belief that the church and state were
separate spheres and they should not overlap, but this was just a way to
continue to denounce abolitionist so they naturally stuck to their guns
and were careful not to contradict their use of the scripture. But in
reality this was hypocritical at the least because of the moral dilemma
that the Southern people were faced with. It was not until after the war
that the Southern views on Prohibition began to change and the reasons
for their change were not completely spiritually based, but they made it
seem that way. Throughout this paper I intend to address the role that
religion played in the implementation of prohibition in the Southern
United States. I also will look at how race played a role in its enactment
and what effect it had on the south and the entire nation.
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The First State to adopt Prohibition statewide was Maine in 1851.
According to Edward Jewitt Wheeler, “[Maine] was the pioneer State in
the movement and gave to State Prohibition the first trial it had ever
had.”2 The Law became known as “The Maine Law” and instantly was a
political issue of a very large magnitude.3 Even while other States in the
North drafted up similar laws and enacted them, the south still didn’t
show much support for the movement. The South continued to distance
themselves from the abolitionist at the times, which in the North were
also the same societies that supported prohibition. The Southerners
would not join in the support for Prohibition mainly because they
denounced the Abolitionist. They would use scripture to defend slavery
as a Christian Institution and they would also say that Prohibition was
not sanctioned in the Bible and say that it was unscriptural. The
Southern attitude at the time can be summed up as, “The slaveholders of
the South believed in liberty more strongly than any other men on this
continent.”4 This is a very good image of the Antebellum South, they
were focused primarily on defending their rights as slaveholders and
Prohibition was not a major priority especially when it was also an
Edward Jewitt Wheeler, Prohibition: The Principle. The Policy and The Party., (New York:
John Anderson, Co., 1889), 109.
3 Wheeler, 109.
4 James C. McGinnis and Charles Robinson, Prohibition; It is in Violation of the Reserved
Rights of the Citizen; is not Sanctioned by the Teachings of the Bible; and is Impracticable
and Delusive as a Temperance Expedient, (St. Louis: Woodward and Tiernan, Printers,
1884), 44.
2
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objective of the abolitionist and if they were to defend one and accept the
other they would be chastised as hypocrites and they were not willing to
do that. One of the doctrines use in the South to defend slavery against
the abolitionist was to denounce them as corrupting the church by
introducing political tests of faith that were not sanctioned by the Bible.
The abolitionist continually insisted that slavery was a sin and tried
admirably to get the church to condemn slaveholding. This issue by far
was the leading reason that prohibition had virtually no support in the
South. If not for the dual support of abolition and prohibition in the
North, I feel that prohibition would have had more support in the
Southern States. But as they defended slavery with the Bible they also
denounced Prohibition as not being biblical as a way to stay in line with
what they were preaching. Charles Stelzle says it best, “Prohibition is
based upon the idea that you can take away one man’s liberty because of
another man’s act.”5 This was defiantly the attitude of many, not just in
the South, but the entire nation at the time. By the time the Civil War
had begun most of the Northern State Prohibition laws had been
repealed. The issue would not pick up again until after the Civil War had
ended and the regional influence would shift but for different reasons.
Immediately following the Civil War, the issue of Prohibition was
not a very hot topic. Most of the political fights were focused on
5
Charles Stelzle, Why Prohibition!, (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1918), 76.
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Reconstruction and redeeming the south. What talk of Prohibition there
was merely dealt with the issues before the war and accusations that the
Southern defenders were hypocritical in their defense of slavery and
denouncement of prohibition. It was not until around the 1880s that the
Prohibition Movement began to heat up again. By this time there was an
emergence of a newly formed Prohibition Party that was beginning to
gain popularity. The opponents during this time would use the concept
of the “Spirituality of the Church” to condemn prohibition, claiming that
alcohol abuse was a moral issue and not a political issue. And this once
again brought up the subject of hypocrisy referring back to the fact that
Southern ministers preached sermons defending slavery taking a
political issue and turning it into a spiritual issue. Nevertheless the
leading prohibitionist claimed that since it was a moral issue then they
had a right to involve a political question to solve it. The ministers were
saying that when a moral question is acted on by the state then the truth
surrounding the question becomes an urgent task for the church. This
led the Prohibition Party to challenge the Democratic Party beginning in
1890. The main goal of the Prohibition Party was to gain union at the
ballot box. According to Wheeler they had three plans to successfully
achieve this union in addition to their new party plan. The first one
being, “By Massing in one of the old parties and moulding its policy,”
secondly they would attempt to “[form] a balance-of-power party, which,
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while making no nominations of its own, shall vote for those candidates
on old-party tickets who are best disposed to this reform” and lastly
attempt “By union in non-partisan organization for the adoption of
Prohibition in a non-partisan election.”6 Their number one objective was
to try and join an existing party to try and get their legislation passed.
Second they would attempt to create a party that would challenge the
balance of power in hopes of getting their legislation passed. And last if
those failed then they would attempt to create an organization that would
help them get what they wanted to accomplish. David Kelley, who was a
leading Tennessee Methodist minister, who also ran for governor of the
Prohibition Party, was one of the leading ministers claiming that you
cannot separate your religion from your politics and that is was the duty
of Christians to preserve the society from corruption. And that is exactly
what the Prohibition Party was attempting to do.
With national Prohibition looking as if it was an almost impossible
feat, Southern States initiated laws that allowed for local option. Under
this law municipalities and counties had the right to vote for prohibition.
In most Southern states there were an overwhelming number of counties
voting “dry” as opposed to voting “wet”. To help spread the word and
attempt to get people to join the cause of Prohibition, the white
evangelicals of the South began to speak of the treat of the “New Negro,”
6
Wheeler, 162.
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which referred to the black males who had been born after slavery. They
claimed that these men had not been civilized under the institution of
slavery because they were born into freedom. By being born into
freedom these men also demanded equal rights as the whites and the
whites claimed that they did not know their place. They also claimed
that the “New Negroes” were regressing back to savagery and back to
their pagan ways that they once knew in Africa. These blacks were
blamed for the raping of white women. The Evangelicals claimed that
these savage acts, which were blamed on the blacks, were committed
while they were under the influence of cheap, easily accessible, alcohol.
These campaigns by the white ministers led to a greater support for
prohibition. Under the institution of slavery, blacks were prohibited by
state laws from obtaining alcohol, which also included free blacks.
During the antebellum period black drunkenness had not been a major
issue, but not suddenly with the blacks holding the same rights as the
whites, it became a major problem for the whites. During this time the
white evangelicals who were using the “New Negro” as their main cause
for Prohibition, they also hoped that many of the black Christians would
join the cause a help to fight against the drunkenness and denounce the
use of “demon rum” as it was known at the time. And in most cases the
black ministers cooperated and also supported the prohibition movement
and denounced the use of alcohol amongst their congregations. The
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white evangelicals believed that the blacks were to be placed under white
guidance, in a paternalistic way that they could be educated and even be
taught to live good moral lives. The National Temperance Society was
one of the leading societies spreading the word of prohibition to the black
community. According to H.A. Scomp, “One of the grandest works in
which the society has been engaged, is in the dissemination of
temperance literature among the freedmen of the South.”7
Eventually the South emerged as the region with the strongest
support of Prohibition by the turn of the 20th century. In 1907, Georgia
passed a state wide law that banned the manufacture and sale of
alcohol, followed in 1908 by Mississippi, North Carolina, Alabama, and
Tennessee in 1909. Eventually the whole nation would be under the
blanket of Prohibition when congress passed the 18th amendment in
1919. Mississippi became the first state in the union to ratify the
amendment. The law lasted for 13 years until it was repealed in 1933
with the 21st amendment. During the time that Prohibition was in effect
there were was an increase in organized crime which was a result of
illegal alcohol manufacture. Ironically Mississippi was the last state to
officially repeal the 18th amendment, only proving that Mississippi
cannot seem to let go of its past. Prohibition was a very controversial
H.A. Scomp, King Alcohol in the Realm of King Cotton, (The Blakely Printing Co., 1888),
778.
7
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topic within the United States throughout the entire 19th and the early
20th century. And the use of alcohol in the South is still debated today
among evangelical Christians and will be for some time to come.