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In American history, there was usually some drinking involved. Our president, Andrew Jackson once had a party where he had to lure people out of the White House using a tub of liquor. Soon, however, people started to go against alcohol. Starting with the 2nd Great awakening, people started to reform the way of life.
Alcohol consumption was linked to abuse and crime. Soon, propaganda started going out against alcohol. This was the temperance movement, where people spoke out against the negative effects of alcohol. Later in the 1900s, there would be an amendment passed that banned the consumption and selling of alcohol.

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u.s. history 1877-present 5.3 the temperance movement

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U.S. History 1877-Present 5.3 The Temperance Movement Video - Shmoop

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Besides suffrage, one of the biggest goals of the women's movement was to get rid of alcohol. Yeah...back then, people knew how to have fun without ending the evening face-down in a ditch.

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A Website Relating to Temperance and Prohibition

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A Website Relating to Temperance and Prohibition

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The Puritans arrived in Boston in 1630 on a ship that carried plenty of beer-and 10,000 gallons of wine.

Hard drinking is a tradition that came over on the Mayflower. 400 years later we're still struggling to find a balance between revelry and righteousness

When the news arrived from Utah, cannons boomed in New Orleans, sirens howled in San Francisco, boats in New York harbor blasted their foghorns and the finance committee of the Chicago City Council adjourned to a tavern so the pols could quaff a snort of legal booze for the first time in 13 years, 10 months, 18 days, 7 hours and 27 minutes.

It was Dec. 5, 1933-75 years ago this fall-and the news that sparked the momentous national celebration was the long-awaited passage of an amendment to the United States Constitution: Utah voted to become the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment, which had banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages across the land since 1920.

"Prohibition is dead!" an electric sign in Times Square announced, and a mob of 10,000 roared its approval. "A thousand bartenders reached in unison for the Scotch, rye or gin," wrote reporter John Lardner, "and 50,000 customers bumped elbows for the honor of absorbing the first legal drink."

In Manhattan, a joyous crowd celebrated by lynching an effigy of "Old Man Prohibition" from a flagpole on Broadway. In Chicago's Drake Hotel, a scantily clad woman popped out of a 10-foot-tall champagne glass as drinkers cheered. In Boston, revelers wandered from saloon to saloon, singing off-key renditions of old drinking songs or engaging in what the Boston Globe described as "sidewalk displays of wrestling ability and hog-calling."

But revelry did not rule everywhere. In many places, including Georgia, Kentucky and Washington, D.C., booze was still banned by state or local laws, which tended to throw a wet blanket on the festivities. In Atlanta, the celebration of Prohibition's demise was not nearly as spirited as the celebration of its birth nearly 14 years earlier, when, the Atlanta Constitution reported, "The Anti-Saloon League, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and other dry organizations paraded on Peachtree to Five Points, where old John Barleycorn was burned in effigy."

Today, the long, bitter conflict between "dry" and "wet" Americans seems quaint and absurd, a strange tale from ancient history. But that colorful clash illustrates an enduring aspect of American life, a conflict between two sides of our national personality-the secular "pursuit of happiness" versus the religious pursuit of righteousness. America's epic battle over alcohol is one of the divisive cultural issues that have periodically roiled American politics, like slavery and segregation or the more recent controversies over gay rights and abortion.

Getting drunk, plastered, loaded, tanked, sloshed, smashed, stewed and stoned is an old American tradition. But so is preaching fiery sermons against "demon rum," attacking saloons with hatchets and enacting laws to prevent your neighbors from getting drunk, plastered, sloshed, smashed, stewed and stoned.

The story of alcohol in America is an inspiring tale of courageous men and women who ventured across stormy seas, conquered a teeming wilderness, created a great nation and built an awesome industrial colossus-and did it all while knocking back heroic quantities of strong liquids.

Booze came to America aboard Mayflower. Like most British ships in 1620, Mayflower carried more beer than water. One reason was that beer was safer than water, which was often contaminated with noxious wastes. Another reason was that passengers preferred to pass the tedious nine-week voyage in a pleasant beer buzz.

The Pilgrims drank so much beer on Mayflower that they'd almost run out by the time they reached America, and they may have landed at Plymouth simply because they didn't have enough beer to fuel the search for a better place. "We could not now take time for further search and consideration," one passenger wrote, "our victuals being much spent, especially our beere." Not long after landing, the Pilgrims began making wine out of wild grapes. They served it to the Indians at the first Thanksgiving, although you probably didn't hear about that back in kindergarten.

The Puritans are not known as party animals, but they arrived in Boston in 1630 on a ship that carried plenty of beer-and 10,000 gallons of wine. Despite their well-deserved reputation as killjoys, the Puritans didn't oppose drinking, they merely opposed drinking too much. "Drink is in itself a good Creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness," wrote Increase Mather, the famed Puritan preacher, "but the abuse of drink is from Satan."

All over the colonies, settlers quaffed vast quantities of this "good Creature of God." When they could get it, they drank imported wine, brandy and port, but such luxuries were expensive and tended to mysteriously disappear en route from England in accidents attributed to "leakage." Consequently, thirsty colonists began making booze out of just about everything, as recounted in this little ditty from the 1630s:

If barley be wanting to make into malt,
We must be content and think it no fault,
For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips,
Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.

Among the most popular concoctions in colonial-era taverns was a drink called "Flip." The bartender filled about two-thirds of a mug or pitcher with beer, added a dollop of rum, sweetened the cocktail with sugar, molasses or dried pumpkin and then stirred it with a red-hot poker, which made the drink bubble, gurgle and steam. Good for what ails you, especially on a cold winter's night.

Tea is the beverage most commonly associated with the American Revolution, but beer and rum are far more deserving of that honor. Even though Samuel Adams was a devout Congregationalist (see "The Revolutionary Gospel According to Samuel Adams," p. 42), he recruited his Sons of Liberty in Boston taverns, causing Tories to mock him as "Sam the Publican." And the patriots who dumped British tea in Boston harbor had fortified themselves for their mission by downing several bowls of rum punch. Later, General George Washington boosted his troops' morale with a daily ration of rum. "The benefits arising from the moderate use of strong Liquor," he explained, "have been experienced in all Armies and are not to be disputed."

Unlike today's milquetoast pols, America's Founding Fathers were eager tipplers. James Madison liked to start his day with a tumbler of whiskey. John Adams breakfasted on what his son described as "a large tankard of hard cider." Washington owned one of Virginia's most productive whiskey distilleries. Thomas Jefferson was an avid wine connoisseur and so was Benjamin Franklin, who wrote an ode to drinking that concluded with this lovely couplet:

That virtue and safety's in wine-bibbing found
While all that drink water deserve to be drowned.

One of the first crises of the newborn United States of America was caused by whiskey-or, more accurately, by a whiskey tax. In 1791 Congress voted to tax whiskey, which proved to be extremely unpopular, particularly in the Appalachian Mountains, where whiskey-making was not only a passion but a major source of cash income for subsistence farmers. In 1794, near Pittsburgh, a motley army of tax protesters rebelled, attacking courts and tarring and feathering a tax collector. President Washington responded by personally leading a militia army to put down what came to be called the "Whiskey Rebellion."

By then, nearly every American farm contained a sizable apple orchard-not to make apple pie but to make hard cider, which was the country's most popular beverage, guzzled daily by young and old alike. "In rural areas, cider took the place not only of wine and beer but of coffee and tea, juice and even water," wrote culinary historian Michael Pollan. "Indeed, in many places cider was consumed more freely than water, even by children."

The cute little tykes would knock back a tumbler of hard cider with breakfast and then proceed off to school with a pleasant buzz, and nobody worried that it would ruin their chances to get into Harvard, perhaps because Harvard served hard cider in its dining halls.

In the early 1800s, Americans drank more booze than at any time before or since-more than five gallons of pure alcohol per person per year. (Today's figure is about two gallons per adult.) "Americans drank at home and abroad, alone and together, at work and at play," wrote historian W.J. Rorabaugh in his classic 1979 book, The Alcoholic Republic. "Americans drank before meals, with meals and after meals. They drank while working in the fields and while traveling across half a continent."

Meanwhile, America's native-born hard drinkers were joined by hordes of hard-drinking European immigrants who brought the alcoholic crafts of their native lands-Scots-Irish distillers, German brewers and Italian winemakers, each contributing another ingredient to America's melting pot or, in this case, to America's cocktail shaker.

As Americans moved west, the first sign of civilization in many new towns was a saloon-or several saloons. In 1876, for example, Dodge City, Kan., contained 1,200 people and 19 saloons. Western saloons sold liquor, of course, but they also served as restaurants, dance halls, casinos, brothels, courtrooms, post offices, funeral parlors and, on Sunday mornings, churches.

Saloons also provided their customers with cultural offerings, some better than others. "At the upper end of Main Street is a one-horse beer hall, called by courtesy a concert garden, where a pianist and violinist have performed so far without getting shot," reported the Anaconda, Mont., Standard in 1897. "Occasionally a woman, whose face would stop a freight train and voice would rasp a sawmill, comes out and assists the pianist and violinist in increasing the agony."

But America's firewater was not always sold in saloons and frequently wasn't even marketed as liquor. Much of it was bottled in patent medicines bearing such wonderful names as "Kickapoo Cough Syrup" and "Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound" and promoted as healthful elixirs.

Sold in drugstores and advertised in traveling "medicine shows," patent medicines were touted as cures for everything from colds to cancer. Actually, they cured nothing but they did provide relief from physical, mental and spiritual pains with the same secret ingredient found in whiskey-ethyl alcohol. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, advertised as a cure for "female complaints," contained 18 percent alcohol. Peruna, America's most popular patent medicine, was 28 percent alcohol. Hostetter's Celebrated Stomach Bitters contained 47 percent alcohol-more than your average whiskey-and was said to have steadied the nerves of Union soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg. Paine's Celery Compound, advertised as a "Nerve Tonic and Alternative Medicine," contained a mere 21 percent alcohol, but the booze was fortified by a dose of cocaine, which no doubt contributed to its popularity.

"More alcohol is consumed in this country in patent medicines than is dispensed in a legal way by licensed liquor vendors," Samuel Hopkins Adams wrote in his famous 1905 Collier's magazine exposé of the hidden ingredients in patent medicines, which influenced the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

Part of the popularity of patent medicines was their appeal to a growing segment of the American population-prohibitionists. In fact, a patent medicine called "Old Dr. Kaufmann's Great Sulphur Bitters," which contained 22 percent alcohol, targeted prohibitionists with ads featuring an endorsement by Mrs. S. Louise Barton, "An Indefatigable and Life-Long Worker in the Temperance Cause." For prohibitionists, such patent medicines were a godsend, enabling them to stay pleasantly (but respectably) tipsy while toiling in the great national crusade to rid America of the demon rum.

Prohibition is incontrovertible proof that you don't have to be drunk to come up with a really, really bad idea. Stone cold sober but intoxicated on the powerful elixir of righteous idealism, American prohibitionists believed that the demon rum and its church, the saloon, were the world's prime sources of evil. "When the saloon goes," said Ernest Cherrington, a leader of the Anti-Saloon League, "the devil will be ready to quit."

The American temperance movement is as old as America itself, but it became a political force in the mid-1800s, fueled in part by a bias against immigrants, including Irish and Italian Catholics, who were stereotyped as shiftless alcoholics. After the Civil War, it spawned two powerful groups-the Prohibition Party and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, whose slogan was "For God, Home and Native Land."

The WCTU's most famous member was Carry Nation, a Kansas minister's wife, who led bands of women into saloons, where they sang hymns to the patrons and greeted bartenders with a cheery "Good morning, destroyer of men's souls!" When those efforts failed to dry out Kansas, Nation prayed to God for direction and was awakened by a heavenly voice saying, "Go to Kiowa." She went to the town of Kiowa, where she invaded three saloons, smashing the liquor bottles with rocks. Soon, she replaced the rocks with a hatchet and became famous, traveling across America, smashing up saloons with her trademark wrecking tool. Arrested dozens of times, she paid her fines with money raised by selling little souvenir hatchets.

But it wasn't the antics of Carry Nation who won the fight for prohibition; it was the political savvy of the Anti-Saloon League, which added clout to the crusade for salvation of individual drunkards by strong-arming government officials. Founded in 1895, the league pioneered many of the techniques now used by modern advocacy groups. Working through local churches-generally rural Methodist or Baptist churches-it raised money, endorsed candidates and successfully lobbied for laws banning liquor in many towns and counties. In 1905 the league demonstrated its growing power by defeating Ohio Governor Myron Herrick, who had thwarted the league's legislative agenda-an upset that terrified wet politicians.

In 1913 the league kicked off its drive for a constitutional amendment prohibiting liquor with a march on Washington and a massive letter-writing campaign that flooded Congress with mail. The amendment failed in 1914, but gained strength during World War I, when the league exploited America's anti-German hysteria by deliberately associating beer with German-American brewers. "Kaiserism abroad and booze at home must go," declared the league's general counsel and wily Washington lobbyist, Wayne Wheeler.

It worked. Congress passed the amendment in 1918, and the states ratified it so quickly that America's wets barely had time to finish their drinks and start fighting back. When the new law went into effect on January 17, 1920, evangelist Billy Sunday held a funeral for John Barleycorn in Norfolk, Va. "The slums will soon be a memory," he predicted. "We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs....Hell will be forever for rent."

Alas, it didn't work out that way. Prohibition not only failed to eradicate slums and prisons, it even failed to curtail drinking, a pastime that now took on the allure of a forbidden thrill. Booze was smuggled into the country on "rumrunner" ships, cooked up in countless illegal distilleries, breweries and bathtubs and sold to eager customers in illicit saloons known as speakeasies.

New York City, which had 15,000 legal saloons before Prohibition, soon had 32,000 speakeasies. They came in infinite varieties, and two newspapermen described a few dozen in their 1932 guidebook, Manhattan Oases. The oases ranged from the prosaic Log Cabin ("designed for the visiting Shriner") to the seedy Julius's ("as weird as a witch's Sabbath and as noisome as the psychopathic ward at Bellevue Hospital") to the elegant 19th Hole ("a nice hideaway for bond salesmen and their customers' wives").

Prohibition made selling booze a crime, which naturally attracted criminals to the business. Gangsters battled for control of the liquor trade, and the winners became big businessmen, millionaires with bribe-bought political power. The most famous was Al Capone, who survived a gang war that created 500 corpses to become one of the most powerful men in Chicago. "Somehow I just naturally drifted into the racket," he told an interviewer from Liberty magazine in 1931. "And I guess I'm here to stay until the law is repealed."

Dry forces were confident that the law would never be repealed. "There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment," said Senator Morris Sheppard, "as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail."

Propelled by overwhelming public opinion against Prohibition, a hummingbird reached Mars on Dec. 5, 1933, and celebrations broke out across America.

"Downtown bars were lined five and six deep," the Chicago Tribune reported the next day. "'Sweet Adeline' and other old favorites rang in many of the bars as morning neared. Wags made frequent requests of musicians for the WCTU song, 'It's in the Constitution and It's There to Stay,' but nobody could remember the tune."

Repeal did not set off a wild national bender, as some dries had predicted, but it did result in one permanent change in American drinking habits: Respectable women began patronizing bars. "Women Flock To Bars As The New Wet Era Opens," the Chicago Tribune reported. "Many women are crowding up to be served, something considered not quite right in the days preceding prohibition."

Before World War I, the saloon was largely a male outpost-one reason many women supported Prohibition. But after repeal, women, who'd recently gained the right to vote, seized the right to drink in public.

In 1935, two years after repeal, two middle-class alcoholics with wonderfully American names-Bill Wilson and Bob Smith-founded an organization that proved far more effective than Prohibition in combating drunkenness. Wilson, a former Wall Street whiz kid, and Smith, a doctor, named their group "Alcoholics Anonymous" and it has spread around the world, helping millions of alcoholics kick the habit.

These days, American liquor stores are packed with a dazzling variety of beverages, ranging from gourmet single-malt Scotches and domestic and imported wines, to neon-colored concoctions like MD 20/20 Blue Raspberry, and new alcoholic "energy drinks" like Joose, which mixes booze with caffeine, ginseng and tropical fruit juices. But the United States is, statistically speaking, a nation of moderate drinkers, ranking somewhere around 20th in surveys of worldwide per capita alcohol consumption, depending on how the data is calculated.

Although our intake is far behind most European countries, American life is suffused with booze. We drink at weddings and wakes-and sometimes at baby showers, baptisms, graduation parties, anniversaries and funerals. We drink to celebrate our triumphs and drown our sorrows-but also just to unwind after another dull day at work.

The influence of alcohol on American culture is so widespread as to be incalculable. Much of America's greatest literature was produced by alcoholics and hard drinkers-Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Edgar Allen Poe, Eugene O'Neill, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack London, Jack Kerouac and Sinclair Lewis, whose classic 1927 novel about a corrupt evangelist begins: "Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk."

Much of America's best art has also been produced by hard drinkers, including Jackson Pollock, who enjoyed spilling paint but not his beloved whiskey, and Robert Rauschenberg, who claimed that he drank a quart of Jack Daniels a day, which might explain why he once made a sculpture by sticking a stuffed goat inside an old tire.

Jazz, America's classical music, was born in the bars and brothels of New Orleans and came of age in Prohibition speakeasies, including the most famous speakeasy of all, New York's Cotton Club, whose house band was Duke Ellington's orchestra. And American popular songs contain nearly as many references to booze as they do to love or lust:

Roll out the barrel...
It's another tequila sunrise...
Whiskey river, don't run dry...
Wasted away again in Margaritaville...

Alcohol has spawned many of the iconic characters in American pop culture-the cowboy knocking back a shot of Red Eye, the hard-drinking private eye, the cynical reporter with a bottle in his bottom file drawer and, of course, the anonymous protagonist of a million jokes that begin, "A guy walks into a bar."

The United States is a sports-mad nation, and our sports are intimately connected with alcohol. We drink a beer while eating a hot dog at baseball games and sip a Bloody Mary while tailgating at football games. World Series winners celebrate by pouring champagne over their teammates' heads. And stock car racing-which came into its own as a sport after World War II-was created by moonshiners.

In the southern Appalachians, the culture of moonshine never died out, nor did the desire to avoid paying tax on it. Moonshiners souped up their cars so they could outrun
federal "revenuers" on twisty mountain roads and, in the 1940s, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing began organizing races on dirt tracks. "About all your good dirt track drivers were involved in moonshine," Junior Johnson, the famous NASCAR driver, told me in an interview in 1999. "That's kind of the way it started."

At NASCAR's first official race in 1949, most of the drivers had learned their craft hauling whiskey. Six years later, Johnson, then one of NASCAR's biggest stars, was arrested while tending his father's illegal still in North Carolina and sent to federal prison. When he got out, he started racing again, won the 1960 Daytona 500 and became a folk hero. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan pardoned Johnson for his moonshine conviction. By then, NASCAR's outlaw image had helped to make it a major spectator sport.

"I think it did appeal to people," Johnson told me. "I think the exposure of you being a good moonshiner and having the fastest car of anybody-it was sort of a glorified thing, like Babe Ruth hitting his 714th home run."

Last year, Johnson, now age 77 and retired from racing, returned to his first love-making whiskey. He began marketing a legal, 80-proof concoction called Midnight Moon, which he proudly describes as the "best 'shine ever."

It just might be the perfect beverage for drinking a toast to the grand and goofy history of booze in America.

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Uneasy About Alcohol - America and the Booze Question

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The Puritans arrived in Boston in 1630 on a ship that carried plenty of beer-and 10,000 gallons of wine. Hard drinking is a tradition that came over on the Mayflower.

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The Abolitionist movement, based on the 2nd great awakening where people looked to religion to reform their ways, the movement wanted to end slavery. Abolitionists believed that all people are made equal. Therefore they believed that equality also related to the slaves. Once people were aware of the evils of slavery, more people wanted to end it. People from the southern areas opposed the abolitionists because they benefited from the cheap labor with their agriculture.
There were many abolitionists. Many were escaped slaves who became free people such as Frederick Douglass, who started a newspaper called the North star. Abolitionists like Harriet Tubman used the Underground Railroad to get slaves to the north. The Underground Railroad was not an actually railroad, but a network of routes to get slaves away. It was called underground because it was secret from the slave owners.

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Facts, information and articles about Abolitionist Movement, one of the causes of the civil war

Abolitionist Movement summary: The Abolitionist movement in the United States of America was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed "all men are created equal." Over time, abolitionists grew more strident in their demands, and slave owners entrenched in response, fueling regional divisiveness that ultimately led to the American Civil War.

Slavery Comes To The New World

African slavery began in North America in 1619 at Jamestown, Virginia. The first American-built slave ship, Desire, launched from Massachusetts in 1636, beginning the slave trade between Britain's American colonies and Africa. From the beginning, some white colonists were uncomfortable with the notion of slavery. At the time of the American Revolution against the English Crown, Delaware (1776) and Virginia (1778) prohibited importation of African slaves; Vermont became the first of the 13 colonies to abolish slavery (1777); Rhode Island prohibited taking slaves from the colony (1778); and Pennsylvania began gradual emancipation in 1780.

The Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage was founded in 1789, the same year the former colonies replaced their Articles of Confederation with the new Constitution, "in order to form a more perfect union."

When the U.S. Constitution was written, it made no specific mention of slavery, but it provided for the return of fugitives (which encompassed criminals, indentured servants and slaves). It allowed each slave within a state to be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining population and representation in the House of Representatives (Article I, Section 3, says representation and direct taxation will be determined based on the number of "free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.")

The Constitution prohibited importation of slaves, to begin in 1808, but again managed to do so without using the words "slave" or "slavery." Slave trading became a capital offense in 1819. There existed a general feeling that slavery would gradually pass away. Improvements in technology-the cotton gin and sewing machine-increased the demand for slave labor, however, in order to produce more cotton in Southern states. By the 1830s, many Southerners had shifted from, "Slavery is a necessary evil," to "Slavery is a positive good." The institution existed because it was "God's will," a Christian duty to lift the African out of barbarism while still exerting control over his "animal passions."

Learn More About Slavery In America

The Missouri Compromise And Dred Scott

Missouri's appeal for statehood brought a confrontation between free and slave states in Congress in 1820; each feared the other would gain the upper hand. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 set a policy of admitting states in pairs, one slave, one free. (Maine came in at the same time as Missouri.) The compromise prohibited slavery above parallel 36 degrees, 30 minutes in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, and it included a national Fugitive Slave Law requiring all Americans to return runaway slaves to their owners. The Fugitive Slave Law was upheld in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 1842, but the Missouri Compromise's prohibitions on the spread of slavery would be found unconstitutional in the 1857 Dred Scott decision.

Learn more about Dred Scott

The Abolitionism Movement Spreads

Although many New Englanders had grown wealthy in the slave trade before the importation of slaves was outlawed, that area of the country became the hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. Abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets sprang into existence. These were numerous enough by 1820 that South Carolina instituted penalties for anyone bringing written anti-slavery material into the state.

These publications argued against slavery as a social and moral evil and often used examples of African American writings and other achievements to demonstrate that Africans and their descendents were as capable of learning as were Europeans and their descendents in America, given the freedom to do so. To prove their case that one person owning another one was morally wrong, they first had to convince many, in all sections of the country, that Negroes, the term used for the race at the time, were human. Yet, even many people among the abolitionists did not believe the two races were equal.

In 1829, David Walker, a freeman of color originally from the South, published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in Boston, Massachusetts. It was a new benchmark, pushing abolitionists toward extreme militancy. He called for slaves to rise up against their masters and to defend themselves: "It is no more harm for you to kill a man who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty." As early as 1800, a Virginia slave known as Gabriel Prosser had attempted an uprising there, but it failed when two slaves betrayed the plan to their masters.

Walker's publication was too extreme even for most abolition leaders, including one of the most renowned, William Lloyd Garrison. In 1831, Garrison founded The Liberator, which would become the most famous and influential of abolitionist newspapers. That same year, Virginia debated emancipation, marking the last movement for abolition in the South prior to the Civil War. Instead, that year the Southampton Slave Riot, also called Nat Turner's Rebellion, resulted in Virginia passing new regulations against slaves. Fears of slave revolts like the bloody Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803 were never far from Southerners' minds. Publications like An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World led white Southerners to conclude Northern abolitionists intended to commit genocide against them.

In 1833 in Philadelphia, the first American Anti-Slavery Society Convention convened. In a backlash, anti-abolition riots broke out in many northeastern cities, including New York and Philadelphia, during 1834-35. Several Southern states, beginning with the Carolinas, made formal requests to other states to suppress abolition groups and their literature. In Illinois, the legislature voted to condemn abolition societies and their agitation; Delegate Abraham Lincoln voted with the majority, then immediately co-sponsored a bill to mitigate some of the language of the earlier one. The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a gag rule, automatically tabling abolitionist proposals.

The first national Anti-Slavery Convention was held in New York City in 1837, and the following year the second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women met in Philadelphia; the latter resulted in pro-slavery riots. The Liberty Party, a political action group, held its first national convention, at Albany, N.Y., in 1839. That same year, Africans mutinied aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad and asked New York courts to grant them freedom. Their plea was answered affirmatively by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841.

Frederick Douglass: A Black Abolitionist

Frederick Douglass-a former slave who had been known as Frederick Bailey while in slavery and who was the most famous black man among the abolitionists-broke with William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator, after returning from a visit to Great Britain, and founded a black abolitionist paper, The North Star. The title was a reference to the directions given to runaway slaves trying to reach the Northern states and Canada: Follow the North Star. Garrison had earlier convinced the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to hire Douglass as an agent, touring with Garrison and telling audiences about his experiences in slavery. In England, however, Douglass had experienced a level of independence he'd never known in America and likely wanted greater independece for his actions here.

Working with Douglass on The North Star was another black man, Martin R. Delaney, who gave up publishing his own paper, The Mystery, to join with Douglass. Born to a free mother in Virginia (in what is now the eastern panhandle of West Virginia), Delaney had never been a slave, but he had traveled extensively in the South. After Uncle Tom's Cabin became a bestseller, he attempted to achieve similar success for himself by penning a semi-fictional account of his travels, Blake: The Huts of America. In 1850, he was one of three black men accepted into Harvard Medical School, but white students successfully petitioned to have them removed. No longer believing that merit and reason could allow members of his race to have an equal opportunity in white society, he became an ardent black nationalist. In 1859, he traveled to Africa and negotiated with eight tribal chiefs in Abbeokuta for land, on which he planned to establish a colony for skilled and educated African Americans. The agreement fell apart, and he returned to America where, near the end of the Civil War, he became the first black officer on a general's staff in the history of the U.S. Army.

The Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, the first Women's Rights convention was held, in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Outside of the Society of Friends ("Quakers"), women were often denied the opportunity to speak at abolitionist meetings. The women's rights movement produced many outspoken opponents of slavery, including Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In fact, women's equality and abolition became inextricably linked in the minds of many Southerners. In the 20th century, that lingering animosity nearly defeated the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.

Although Delaney's planned African colony failed, in 1849 Great Britain recognized the African colony of Liberia as a sovereign state. It had been founded in 1822 as a colony for free-born blacks, freed slaves and mulattoes (mixed race) from the United States. A number of Americans who opposed slavery (including Abraham Lincoln for a time and the aforementioned Delany) felt that the two races could never live successfully together, and the best hope for Negroes was to return them to freedom in Africa. However, the slave trade between Africa and the Western Hemisphere (the Caribbean and South America) had never ended, and many American ship owners and captains were enjoying something of a golden era of slave-trading while the U.S. and Europe looked the other way. Even if freed slaves had been sent to Africa, many would have wound up back in slavery south of the United States. Only in the late 1850s did Britain step up its anti-slavery enforcement on the high seas, leading America to increase its efforts somewhat.

When the federal government passed a second, even more stringent fugitive slave act in 1850, several states responded by passing personal liberty laws. The following year, Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree) gave a now-famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman," at the Women's Rights convention in Akron, Ohio. Born a slave in New York, she walked away from her owner after she felt she had contributed enough to him. In the late 1840s, she dictated a memoir, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, published by Garrison in 1850. She began to tour, speaking against slavery and in favor of women's rights.

Learn more about the Seneca Falls Convention

Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad

While Sojourner Truth, Douglass, Delaney and others wrote and spoke to end slavery, a former slave named Harriet Tubman, nee Harriet Ross, was actively leading slaves to freedom. After escaping from bondage herself, she made repeated trips into Dixie to help others. Believed to have helped some 300 slaves to escape, she was noted for warning those she was assisting that she would shoot any of them who turned back, because they would endanger herself and others she was assisting.

Tubman was an agent of the Underground Railroad, a system of "safe houses" and way stations that secretly helped runaways. The trip might begin by hiding in the home, barn or other location owned by a Southerner opposed to slavery, and continuing from place to place until reaching safe haven in a free state or Canada. Those who reached Canada did not have to fear being returned under the Fugitive Slave Act. Several communities and individuals claim to have created the term "Underground Railroad." In the southern section of states on the north bank of the Ohio River, a "reverse underground railroad" operated; blacks in those states were kidnapped, whether they had ever been slaves or not, and taken South to sell through a series of clandestine locations.

Learn more about Harriet Tubman
Learn more about the Underground Railroad

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Abolitionist and Author

In 1852, what may have been the seminal event of the abolition movement occurred. Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist who had come to know a number of escaped slaves while she was living in Cincinnati, authored the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. It presented a scathing view of Southern slavery, filled with melodramatic scenes such as that of the slave Eliza escaping with her baby across the icy Ohio River:

The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it but she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;-stumbling,-leaping,-slipping-springing upwards again! Her shoes are-gone her stockings cut from her feet-while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side and a man helping her up the bank.

Critics pointed out that Stowe had never been to the South, but her novel became a bestseller in the North (banned in the South) and the most effective bit of propaganda to come out of the abolitionist movement. It galvanized many who had been sitting on the sidelines. Reportedly, when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe during the Civil War he said to her, "So you're the little woman who started this big war."
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Abolitionists Invoke A Higher Law

Abolitionists became increasingly strident in their condemnations of slave owners and "the peculiar institution of slavery." Often, at Fourth of July gatherings of abolition societies, they reportedly used the occasion to denounce the U.S. Constitution as a "covenant with death, and an agreement with hell." Many of them came to believe in "higher law," that a moral commitment to ending slavery took precedent over observing those parts of the Constitution that protected slavery and, in particular, they refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Act. Slave owners or their representatives traveling north to reclaim captured runaways were sometimes set upon on abolitionists mobs; even local lawmen were sometimes attacked. In the South, this fueled the belief that the North expected the South to obey all federal laws but the North could pick and choose, further driving the two regions apart.

Abolitionism, Politics and the Election Of Abraham Lincoln

The abolition movement became an important element of political parties. Although the Native American Party (derisively called the Know-Nothing Party because when member were asked about the secretive group they claimed to "know nothing") opposed immigrants, they also opposed slavery. So did many Whigs and the Free Soil Party. In 1856, these coalesced into the Republican Party. Four years later, its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, captured the presidency of the United States.

John Brown: Abolitionism's Fiery Crusader

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed the citizens of those territories to determine for themselves whether the state would be slave or free. Proponents of both factions poured into the Kansas Territory, with each side trying to gain supremacy, often through violence. After pro-slavery groups attacked the town of Lawrence in 1856, a radical abolitionist named John Brown led his followers in retaliation, killing five pro-slavery settlers. The territory became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

Learn more about John Brown

Dred Scott V. Sanford

The 1857 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford denied citizenship to anyone of African blood and held the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional. While Southern states had been passing laws prohibiting "Negro citizenship" and further restricting the rights even of freemen of color (Virginia in 1857 prohibited slaves from smoking and from standing on sidewalks, among other restrictions), one Northern state after another had been passing laws granting citizenship to their black residents. The Court's findings upended that, and the ruling outraged many Northerners. Abraham Lincoln revived his personal political career, coming out of a self-imposed semi-retirement to speak out against the Dred Scott decision.

The year 1859 saw two events that were milestones in the history of slavery and abolition in America. The ship Clotilde landed in Mobile, Alabama. Though the importation of slaves had been illegal in America since 1808, Clotilde carried 110 to 160 African slaves. The last slave ship ever to land in the United States, it clearly demonstrated how lax the enforcement of the anti-importation laws was.

Learn more about the Dred Scott Decision

John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry

Nearly 1,000 miles northeast of Mobile, on the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown-the radical abolitionist who had killed proslavery settlers in Kansas-led 21 men in a raid to capture the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Though Brown denied it, his plan was to use the arsenal's weapons to arm a slave uprising. He and his followers, 16 white men and five black ones, holed up in the arsenal after they were discovered, and were captured there by a group of U.S. Marines commanded by an Army lieutenant colonel, Robert E. Lee. Convicted of treason against Virginia, Brown was hanged December 2.

Initial reaction in the South was that this was the work of a small group of fanatics, but when Northern newspapers, authors and legislators began praising him as a martyr-a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier eulogizing Brown was published in the New York Herald Tribune less than a month after the execution-their actions were taken as further proof that Northern abolitionists wished to carry out genocide of white Southerners. The flames were fanned higher as information came out that Brown had talked other abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, about his plans and received financial assistance from some of them.
Learn more about John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry

Abraham Lincoln: Abolitionist President

Following Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, Southern states began seceding from the Union. Though personally opposed to slavery and convinced the United States was going to have to be all free or all slave states-"a house divided against itself cannot stand"-he repeatedly said he would not interfere with slavery where it existed. But he adamantly opposed its expansion into territories where it did not exist, and slave owners were determined that they had to be free to take their human property with them if they chose to move into those territories.

Less than two years into the civil war that began over Southern secession, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It freed all slaves residing in areas of the nation currently in rebellion. Often ridiculed, both then and now, because it only freed slaves in areas that did not recognize Lincoln's authority, it meant that Union Army officers no longer had to return runaway slaves to their owners because, as the armies advanced, slaves in the newly captured areas were considered free. It also effectively prohibited European nations that had long since renounced slavery from entering the war on the side of the South.

Learn more about Abraham Lincoln
Learn more about the Emancipation Proclamation

The 13th Amendment: The Abolitionism Movement Triumphs

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, declared ratified on December 18, 1865, ended slavery in the United States-at least in name. During the Reconstruction Era, Southern states found ways to "hire" black workers under terms that were slavery in all but name, even pursuing any who ran off, just as they had in the days of the Underground Railroad.

Abolition had been achieved, but the lessons learned by those in the abolition movement would be applied to other social concerns in the decades to come, notably the temperance and woman's suffrage movements.

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Abolitionist Movement summary: The Abolitionist movement in the United States of America was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed "all men are created equal." Over time, abolitionists grew more strident in their demands, and slave owners entrenched in response, fueling regional divisiveness that ultimately led to the American Civil War.

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What Is an Abolitionist?

An abolitionist, as the name implies, is a person who sought to abolish slavery during the 19th century. More specifically, these individuals sought the immediate and full emancipation of all enslaved people.

Most early abolitionists were white, religious Americans, but some of the most prominent leaders of the movement were also Black men and women who had escaped from bondage.

The abolitionists saw slavery as an abomination and an affliction on the United States, making it their goal to eradicate slave ownership. They sent petitions to Congress, ran for political office and inundated people of the South with anti-slavery literature.

These staunch activists wanted to abolish slavery completely, which differed from the ideas of other groups like the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories and newly formed states such as Kansas.

Did you know? Female abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott went on to become prominent figures in the women's rights movement.

How Did Abolitionism Start?

Opposition to slavery wasn't a new concept when abolitionism started. Since the inception of the Atlantic slave trade, which began in the 16th century, critics voiced their disapproval of the system.

In an early effort to stop slavery, the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816, proposed the idea of freeing slaves and sending them back to Africa. This solution was thought to be a compromise between antislavery activists and slavery supporters.

By 1860, nearly 12,000 African Americans had returned to Africa.

Missouri Compromise

The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed Missouri to become a slave state, further provoked anti-slave sentiment in the North.

The abolitionist movement began as a more organized, radical and immediate effort to end slavery than earlier campaigns. It officially emerged around 1830.

Historians believe ideas set forth during the religious movement known as the Second Great Awakening inspired abolitionists to rise up against slavery. This Protestant revival encouraged the concept of adopting renewed morals, which centered around the idea that all men are created equal in the eyes of God.

Abolitionism started in states like New York and Massachusetts and quickly spread to other Northern states.

Laws Inflame Tensions

In 1850, Congress passed the controversial Fugitive Slave Act, which required all escaped enslaved people to be returned to their owners and American citizens to cooperate with the captures.

Seven years later, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that Black people-free or enslaved-didn't have legal citizenship rights. Owners of enslaved people were also granted the right to take their enslaved workers to Western territories. These legal actions and court decisions sparked outrage among abolitionists.

Famous Abolitionists

Many Americans, including free and formerly enslaved people, worked tirelessly to support the abolitionist movement. Some of the most famous abolitionists included:

William Lloyd Garrison: A very influential early abolitionist, Garrison started a publication called The Liberator, which supported the immediate freeing of all enslaved men and women.

Frederick Douglass: Douglass escaped slavery himself and published a memoir titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. An instrumental figure in the abolitionist movement, he also supported women's suffrage.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Stowe was an author and abolitionist who was best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Susan B. Anthony: Anthony was an author, speaker and women's rights activist who also supported the abolitionist movement. She is revered for her diligent efforts in fighting for women's rights to vote.

: Brown was a radical abolitionist who organized various raids and uprisings, including an infamous raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

Harriet Tubman: Tubman was a fugitive enslaved person and abolitionist who was known for helping escaped enslaved people reach the North via the Underground Railroad network.

Sojourner Truth: Best known for her speech, "Ain't I a Woman?," Truth was both an abolitionist and a women's rights advocate.

Rift Widens Between North and South

As it gained momentum, the abolitionist movement caused increasing friction between states in the North and the slave-owning South. Critics of abolition argued that it contradicted the U.S. Constitution, which left the option of slavery up to individual states.

Abolitionism was illegal in the South, and President Andrew Jackson banned the U.S. Postal Service from delivering any publications that supported the movement.

In 1833, a white student at Lane Theological Seminary named Amos Dresser was publicly whipped in Nashville, Tennessee, for possessing abolitionist literature while traveling through the city.

Elijah Lovejoy

In 1837, a pro-slavery mob attacked a warehouse in Alton, Illinois, in an attempt to destroy abolitionist press materials. During the raid, they shot and killed newspaper editor and abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy.

After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was passed, both pro- and anti-slavery groups inhabited the Kansas Territory. In 1856, a pro-slavery group attacked the town of Lawrence, which was founded by abolitionists from Massachusetts. In retaliation, abolitionist John Brown organized a raid that killed five pro-slavery settlers.

Then, in 1859, Brown led 21 men to capture the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He and his followers were seized by a group of Marines and convicted of treason. Brown was hanged for the crime.

The Civil War and Its Aftermath

President Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but was cautious about fully supporting the more radical ideas of the abolitionists. As the power struggle between the North and the South reached its peak, the Civil War broke out in 1861.

As the bloody war waged on, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, calling for the freeing of enslaved people in areas of the rebellion. And in 1865, the Constitution was ratified to include the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished all forms of slavery in the United States.

Abolitionist Movement Ends

Though the abolitionist movement seemed to dissolve after the addition of the Thirteenth Amendment, many historians argue that the effort didn't completely cease until the 1870 passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended voting rights to Black men. Meanwhile, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including former enslaved people.

When slavery officially ended, many prominent abolitionists turned their focus to women's rights issues. Historians believe that the experiences and lessons learned during the abolitionist movement paved the way for leaders who were eventually successful in the women's suffrage movements.

Abolitionist ideals and traditions also served as a model for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), which was formed in 1909.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Sources

Abolition and the Abolitionists. National Geographic.
Early abolition. Khan Academy.
Abolitionist Sentiment Grows. UShistory.org.

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Abolitionist Movement - Definition & Famous Abolitionists | HISTORY

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The abolitionist movement was the effort to end slavery, led by famous abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and John Brown.

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Alcohol was linked to Crime, Family Breakup,  Illness, etc.

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Alcohol was linked to Crime, Family Breakup,  Illness, etc.

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People Protesting the Sales and Consumption of Alcohol

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People Protesting the Sales and Consumption of Alcohol

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An Example of the Propaganda Used during the Temperance Movement

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An Example of the Propaganda Used during the Temperance Movement

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Sojourner Truth, A Well Known Abolitionist

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Sojourner Truth, A Well Known Abolitionist

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A Map of the Underground Railroad, the routes Abolitionists Used to Bring Slaves to the North

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A Map of the Underground Railroad, the routes Abolitionists Used to Bring Slaves to the North

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Frederick Douglass, leader in the Abolitionist Movement

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Frederick Douglass, leader in the Abolitionist Movement

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