Mary C Vaughanand the Temperance Movement

Brett Daley and Hugh Walker

April 8, 2011

BackgroundAlcohol Problems

Believed it caused people to act disruptivelySome families wasted their entire wages on

alcoholBelieved to increase domestic violenceRise in alcohol consumption in early 1800s

Feminist MovementCult of Domesticity Idea that housework and child care were the only

proper activities for married women

Second Great Awakening

Temperance Banner Lithograph, by Kellog and Cornstock

Temperance MovementAmerican Temperance Society formed in 1826Thousands more local groups also formedBy 1838 one million people had pledged to give

up alcohol

Maine banned the sale of liquor in 1851In 1852 Mary C Vaughan spoke at a Temperance Meeting

By 1855 13 other states had adopted similar laws

GoalsSought to illegalize drinking of alcoholShare insight into the destructive capabilities of alcohol

Improve social conduct and hygiene in society and reduce crime

Temperance Meeting, 1852“There is no reform in which women can act better or more appropriately than temperance… Its effects fall so crushingly upon her…she has often seen its slow, insidious, but not the less surely fatal advances, gaining upon its victim. …Oh! The misery, the utter, hopeless misery of the drunkard’s wife!”

-Mary C Vaughan

SupportersFeminists

Hoped it would reduce domestic violenceBusinesses

Wanted their workers to be more responsible

ChurchesFelt it would reduce disruptive and unholy behavior

CollapseUnpopular with the publicNot as effective as it was hoped to beStates eventually removed laws due to widespread unpopularity

ProhibitionThe anti-alcohol sentiment was still strong with many reformists into the early 20th century

18th amendment banned sale, manufacture, put in effect on January 16, 1920

Also extremely unpopular and ineffective due to bootlegging and “speakeasies”

Repealed in 1933 by the 21st amendment