Temperance Movement Research Paper

“The same spirits which make a white man drunk make a black man drunk too.” Fredrick Douglass stood in Paisley, Scotland, giving an address on the evils of slavery and intemperance. He and many others, some like him and some not, believed that alcohol was one of society's biggest threats, for many reasons. The movement of temperance was one of the largest movements during the Antebellum period, a time preceding the Civil War when Americans began to become more conscious of moral issues due to the country’s rapid westward expansion, the influx of immigrants on the east coast, and the many other ways the country changed during this time. This led to the founding of many reform movements, such as the temperance movement, the prison reform, mental …show more content…
This image depicts a man beating his wife. Temperance, as a movement, was well known for its wide support. The movement united all kinds of people. “In the decades before the Civil War the campaign against liquor was the unifying reform, drawing support from countless middle-class protestants, from skilled artisans, clerks, shopkeepers, laborers, free blacks and Mormons, as well as from many conservative clergy and southerners who were otherwise hostile to reform.” The overwhelming support of the temperance movement was something rarely ever seen before, and did nothing but help propel it towards success. In fact, during the movement’s best years, from 1840-60 “per person alcohol consumption per year fell dramatically, down to about 3.5 gallons.” The general public’s “agitation against ardent spirits and the public disorder they spawned gradually increased.” Reformers such as Fredrick Douglass and many other men and women sought societal temperance not as a way to control those they thought were under them, but as a way to make society better. Some people have argued that temperance was used as a way to control the lower classes, specifically immigrants who were often poorer Catholics. To people who argue this way, temperance was a way for people to control and change the culture of those they saw as “lower.” The well known leaders of the temperance movement were almost always white and a part of the upper or middle class, and although members of communities that were lower on the social ladder, such as Fredrick Douglass, did agree with the idea presented in temperance, they were often not able to speak on it in the United States, due to the prejudices of the people there. Douglass himself said “I am proud to stand on this platform; I regard it a pleasure and a privilege—one which I am not very frequently permitted to enjoy in the United States, such is the prejudice against the coloured man, such the hatred, such the

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The Temperance Movement Research Paper