To us he appears singularly Christ-like in the bold outline of his character; but the waywardness of his mind alarms us. Why did he have to take up so many causes? Why be so anxious to redeem mankind in so many ways? The answers lie deep in the motives of radicalism. For the moment, we need only note that all these causes were common in Garrison’s time and that, like many lesser men, he succumbed to them. We can easily rectify any error we are inclined to make about the incidence of radical cults. In the 1840’s, at least, they were not limited to the intellectual underworld for their recruits. The good and the great fell under their influence as easily as the unbalanced and the weak-minded.
[1] On page 173.
† The United States Gazetteer considered “revolting” a lecture establishing the connection between beauty in the proportions of the figure and health; the word leg was not mentioned before women, and Mrs. Gove’s lectures on physiology were scandalously misrepresented in the Morning Herald. † Fire departments began to be “a convenient apology for . . . indulging in irregular habits.”
† The word obey was occasionally omitted from the marriage vow as being unconstitutional. † There was no anti-semitic feeling in Philadelphia and intermarriage was frequent; omnibusses ran on Sunday, and Negro chimney sweeps “yoddled” in quest of employment. † Religious instruction was being gradually barred from public schools and the University of Pennsylvania had over nine hundred students. † Messrs. Harper omitted three paragraphs of Franklin’s autobiography, those dealing with his amours. † “The Americans take a great interest in Queen Victoria and forgive her royalty in consideration of her youth and sex.” † The fiftieth anniversary of Washington’s inauguration was celebrated by William Cullen Bryant’s Ode which ended:
“That noble race is gone; the suns
Of fifty years have risen and set;
The holy links these mighty ones
Had forged and knit, are brighter yet.
Wide—as our own free race increase—
Wide shall it stretch an elastic chain;
And bind in everlasting peace,
State after State, a mighty train.”
† In New York the following societies all held meetings in one week: “the New York Marine Bible Society; the New York Female Moral Reform Society; the American Seamen’s Friend Society; the New York and American Sunday-School Union; the Foreign Evangelical Association; American Tract Society; Second American Health Convention; American Home Missionary Society; New York Colonization Society; Central American Education Society; American Moral Reform Society; New York City Temperance Society; American Board of Foreign Missions; New York Academy of Sacred Music.”
XV. The Winsome Heart.
THREE great reform movements of the 19th century were fulfilled, sooner or later, in amendments to the Constitution: abolition, prohibition, and equal suffrage. This seal on their propriety almost takes them out of the catalogue of cults and fanaticisms with which this book has been dealing; but not entirely. Two of these reforms were libertarian, the abolition of inequalities. The third also looked forward to an equality, but entirely in the negative sense. It was, as its name indicated, prohibitory. Theoretically, under prohibition, all men are equal—in not having the privileges of liquor.
The early years of the Prohibition movement and its outstanding personalities show how Temperance rose out of the same soil that fostered vegetarianism and communism, Perfectionism and New Thought. They show also, in the most obvious and striking way, how a reform as personal as that which Alcott or Noyes intended became a powerful force of negation; how the reformer of 1840, who was nearly an anarchist, became the embittered bureaucrat of to-day.
Even in the 1690’s, Cotton Mather recorded in his diary a fear lest the flood of excessive drinking should drown out Christianity. In the year of the Declaration of Independence, the Reverend Ebenezer Sparhawk told his congregation that intemperance was a sin against the Lord and wasted money. After the Revolution and Doctor Rush’s famous Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits, the first temperance society was founded (in 1808) by the pastor of a Congregational Church. Four years later, Lyman Beecher was protesting against the use of ardent spirits by the clergy. The Methodist and Baptist churches joined to lead the cause of temperance. And the religious revivals, both of 1800 and 1830, directly inspired temperance work.
“The reform,” says John Allen Krout, a recent historian of prohibition, “took on the attributes of a great revival. . . . Temperance workers were evangelists preaching a new gospel, and they stated its dogmas in the pulpit phraseology of the day. Persons who responded to the powerful appeal and signed the pledge were known as ‘converts.’ For the programs of the societies into which the ‘converts’ were gathered the evangelical prayer meeting served as a model. Appropriate verses, set to familiar gospel tunes, were sung with all the fervor of religious exaltation. The emotional appeals of the speakers and the ‘testimony’ of the pledge-signers strongly suggested the revivals of the evangelical sects. Indeed, the most effective propagandist for temperance was usually the Protestant clergyman who devoted a large proportion of his sermons to denunciation of the liquor traffic, indicating intemperance as the great barrier in the way of the church militant as it marched on to become the church triumphant. . . . Methodist and Baptist conferences, Presbyterian and Reformed synods passed resolutions commending the temperance reformation, encouraging ministers to support the movement and exhorting church members to abstain from all connections with the liquor traffic. Camp-meetings in the South and West were turned into seasons of pledge-signing, and converted drunkards were admitted into Christian fellowship as evidence of the power of temperance principles to save souls.”
The names of the leaders of the early Temperance Movement are also the names of the founders of Bible and Tract societies and of anti-slavery organizers. In temperance, as in Fourierism, association was considered the only successful method and, behind temperance, there was the religious call to salvation and the moral call to a more perfect life. Since drink visibly insured the damnation of its victim, signing the pledge was a step toward salvation. Intemperance had to be destroyed as the great enemy which retarded the coming of Christ. The Temperance Manual of 1836 said: “The Holy Spirit will not visit, much less will he dwell with him who is under the polluting, debasing effects of intoxicating drink. The state of mind and heart, which this occasions, is to Him loathsome, and an utter abomination. Not only does it darken the understanding, sear the conscience, pollute the affections, and debase all the powers of the soul; but it counteracts the merciful designs of Jehovah, and all the overflowing kindness of an infinitely compassionate Saviour, for its deliverance; binds the soul in hopeless bondage to its destroyer; awakens the ‘worm that dieth not, and the fire which is not quenched,’ and drives the soul away in despair, weeping and wailing, to be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power.”
And “to Lebbeus Armstrong, who had labored diligently since the formation of the first society at Moreau, temperance seemed to have been sent by Providence for the salvation of men. It had been foretold by the prophets of old and was a part of God’s plan for blessing the world. From the beginning the movement had been attended by signal manifestations that some supernatural agency was controlling it. Every sign pointed to the hand of God working through men to exterminate the use of ardent spirits and drive the curse of intemperance from its strongholds.”
This was the religious background. Morally, the temperance worker shared that enthusiasm for progress and perfection which inspired reformers from Owen to Noyes. In doctrine, the religious reformers were like the Rappites or the Perfectionists, restorers of primitive Christianity learnedly arguing the question of alcoholic content in the wine used at Cana. In method, the great majority of them were libertarian, appealing to the individual to abstain and not to the law to forbid.
In 1838, the failure of most temperance societies—that is the failure of the me
thods of enlightenment and persuasion then in use—was confessed in hundreds of petitions and memorials to the legislatures of many states asking that legal approval be withdrawn from the liquor traffic. In 1839, in Georgia, prohibition candidates were nominated and their defeat was the signal for a tremendous protest against all forms of appeal to the law. In the next year, faith in legislation was swept away by an hysterical outburst which paralleled in every respect the religious revivals then coming to an end.
On the second of April, in 1840, the Reverend Matthew Hale Smith delivered a lecture in a church close to Chase’s Tavern in Baltimore. The lecture by every account was in no way remarkable. At the Tavern, that evening, was a group of average individuals who met there frequently in a loosely organized “mechanics’ drinking club.” For some reason, unexplained, these two commonplaces came into contact and their meeting struck an electric spark.
In the drab church, a group of enthusiasts had gathered to be fortified in their faith; in the bright lights of the tavern, the mechanics sat around a rough table, shuffled cards, drank hot rum or wine, and let their bodies relax and their tongues run. They speculated idly on the peculiar people who preferred a temperance sermon in a dreary church to a comfortable tavern; their humor was high and they determined to see for themselves. At least, they appointed a number to invade the meeting, in a friendly way, and to bring back a true report. This was done, without any overwhelming enthusiasm for temperance. The deputies returned to the pothouse and a long discussion of temperance followed, accompanied by their usual temperate drinking. There was never a more strictly logical beginning for a fanatical movement. Persuaded by their own arguments, six men decided to sign the following pledge which one of them wrote out:
“We, whose names are annexed, desirous of forming a society for our mutual benefit, and to safeguard against a pernicious practice which is injurious to our health, standing, and families, do pledge ourselves as gentlemen, that we will not drink any spiritous or malt liquors, wine or cider.”
The names signed were William K. Mitchell, David Anderson, Archibald Campbell, John F. Hoss, James McCurley, and George Steers.
Thus was formed the Washingtonian Society, the founders of which took the name of the “six reformed drunkards of Baltimore.” They were presently joined by John H. W. Hawkins, another reformed drunkard, who became “the St. Paul of the Washingtonians.” Within nine months, the Society had made 1,000 converts in Baltimore, all of whom were drunkards reformed by reformed drunkards. The meetings consisted of the recital of personal experiences on the model of the testimony at revivals. From Baltimore the movement spread and, in the spring of the next year, Mitchell and Hawkins started a revival in New York.
The crowds overflowed the churches in which the first meetings were held. They overflowed the largest halls. Whenever Hawkins spoke, he was interrupted by the cries and groans of those who pressed forward to sign the pledge at once. Finally, the crowds grew so great, and so excited, that a meeting was held at City Hall Park. Hawkins and Mitchell stood on rum-kegs to tower over the four thousand men and women pressing around them and, while they spoke, agents passed through the multitude and enrolled nearly half of the audience in the first Washingtonian Society of New York. The same year Hawkins advanced on Boston and the Daily Mail of that city thus reported his success:
“The Odeon was filled to its utmost capacity, last evening, by a promiscuous audience of temperance men, distillers, wholesalers, and retail dealers in ardent spirits, confirmed inebriates, moderate drinkers, lovers of the social glass, teetotalers, etc., to listen to the speeches of the famous ‘Reformed Drunkards,’ delegates from the Washington Temperance Society of Baltimore, who have excited such a deep interest in the cause of temperance in other places. . . . Mr. Hawkins, of Baltimore, was the second of the ‘Reformed Drunkards’ introduced to the meeting. He was a man forty-four years of age—of fine manly form—and said he had been more than twenty years a confirmed inebriate. He spoke with rather more fluency, force, and effect, than his predecessor, but in the same vein of free and easy, off-hand, direct, bang-up style; at times in a simple conversational manner, then earnest and vehement, then pathetic, then humorous—but always manly and reasonable. Mr. Hawkins succeeded in ‘working up’ his audience finely. Now the house was as quiet and still as a deserted church, and anon the high dome rang with violent bursts of laughter and applause. Now he assumed the melting mood, and pictured the scenes of a drunkard’s home, and that home his own, and fountains of generous feeling, in many hearts, gushed forth in tears—and again, in a moment, as he related some ludicrous story, these tearful eyes glistened with delight, sighs changed to hearty shouts, and long faces were convulsed with broad grins and glorious smiles.”
Reformed drunkards went out in teams on evangelizing circuits and, to the eloquence of Hawkins, was added the dramatic vehemence of John Bartholomew Gough whose conversion, like that of the original six, was accomplished without the intervention of religion.[1] Gough’s life had been strange and wild and his description of his delirium tremens became a set piece of American oratory, although the printed page totally lacks the vehemence and fire which his delivery gave it. Gough even fell from grace without losing his influence. He had gained over 15,000 signatures to the pledge in four years when, on a visit to New York, he went on a long debauch ending in a bawdy house where he was found by his friends. As soon as he recovered, he explained that he had met an acquaintance, whose name he did not know, and this man had suggested a drink of soda water in a drug store. The implication was that an agent-provocateur of the liquor interests had drugged Gough and caused his downfall. Gough’s youth and humility carried him through, but other backsliders soon gave the Washingtonians an unsatisfactory reputation. In spite of their revivalist enthusiasm, Washingtonians were accused of infidelity; they were, in fact, non-sectarian. The older temperance societies were annoyed by this outburst of emotion, which addressed itself exclusively to the dregs of society and which brushed aside entirely all questions of restraint on the manufacturer and vendor of liquor. At the end of ten years, the moral fervor of the Washingtonians had died entirely away but, before that time, it had had one significant effect. It had caught the emotions of women. The temperance agitators of a later date issued a romantic booklet reporting a supposed speech made by the young Abraham Lincoln when he was a Washingtonian. The historian of temperance pays more attention to the fact that one Josiah Willard transmitted to his daughter the Washingtonian enthusiasm and thus connects the outburst of 1840 with the calm, shrewd, highly organized, and eventually successful work of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League.
By the middle of the century, the Temperance Movement had made its first successful step toward prohibition. On the second of June, 1851, John Hubbard, governor of Maine, put his signature to a bill forbidding the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors in that state. That law was the work of Neal Dow.[2] But the Maine law was far ahead of the times. It was prohibition, while the majority of the foes of liquor were still advocating temperance. They were fundamentally opposed to the exercise of civil power. They wanted the morality of the church and not the menace of the law to persuade people to temperate habits. The Washingtonians not only opposed statutory prohibition, but even defended liquor dealers. A restrictive, but not prohibitory law had been repealed in Massachusetts, after a trial lasting but two years and similar measures ran only for short terms in other states. At the most, in 1850, the country and the temperance workers were ready for local option. Essentially, they were still making a single appeal: to the drunkard, not to drink; to the moderate drinker, to abstain entirely. Temperance in America was still individualistic. On the whole, it still protected human rights. It was in nature a counterpart to the entire libertarian movement for the freedom of women and the freedom of slaves. The twenty years which followed the passage of the Maine law continued the struggle between local option and no license, between the legalist and the moralist. In 1873
, an event occurred in a little Ohio town which in many ways parallels the reformation of the drunkards in Baltimore. A year later the W.C.T.U. was founded.
It was at this time that Frances E. Willard first became a worker in the cause of Temperance. From 1874 to the end of her life, this cause was her mastering impulse; at its service she placed the mind of a statesman, the spirit of a sentimental saint, and a demonic energy. She is the typical prohibitionist of a time when for a woman to be a prohibitionist, lecturer, traveler, and politician, virtually meant ostracism from good society. So far as she put herself under this social ban, Frances Willard was a radical. If we examine merely the logic of her activity we find her as radical as Alcott, crying out with him “Abstain, abstain.” In Alcott’s case, abstention was from meat and manure and money, from intoxicants, sedatives, and clothes. In Miss Willard’s program, one abstained from wine, and loose women, and finery of clothes, and ornaments, and the theater, and nicotine; and one went in for a little phrenology, and perhaps Graham bread, and the water cure (because water was sacred to Temperance), and perhaps a touch of Perfectionist sanctification. The objects are different, but the attitude is very much the same. This is the more surprising because, essentially, Frances Willard had the habits of mind of a bourgeoise reactionary. She should never have been a radical, and the reason that she became one is a pretty problem in psychology. To the psychoanalyst she offers, deliberately, a mystery, saying in her autobiography that the real romance of her life must remain hidden but, apart from private reasons, there were enough things in the temper of the time to account for the turn of her activities.
The Stammering Century Page 32