- [Voiceover] Hey, it's Becca,
and this is Temperance, Part Two.
And in this video, I'll be talking more
about how exactly over the course
of the 1830s until mostly the 1860s
the temperance movement took root in America
and how it became this national phenomenon.
So, a lot of it had to do with temperance societies.
So, in the last video,
I mentioned that the American Temperance Society
was founded in 1826, so that's 1826.
But the American Temperance Society really was this group
of upper-class Northern white dudes saying,
"Oh, well, we should probably make sure
"that people don't drink as much."
But this idea didn't take off until the rise of teetotalism.
So, teetotalism is very different than temperance.
Teetotalism.
And so, teetotalism is the idea
that people should not temper their alcohol consumption,
that they should drink no alcohol.
So, the origin of this word is debated among historians
and there's kinda two funny stories.
One is the idea that when you would sign a pledge,
so let's say I was going to pledge
that I would drink no alcohol
and join the American Temperance Society, right here,
I would have to sign my name like that
and write my name, Becca.
Or the other idea is that there was this temperance activist
and he was trying to convince people
to stop drinking alcohol.
And he said, "You don't have to stop drinking hard alcohol,
"you have to-to-to-to totally abstain,"
and that's where teetotalism came from, his stutter.
Just kind of a fun little factoid about teetotalism.
But this idea of signing a pledge to drink no alcohol
was really popular among these different societies
that started popping up.
So, the American Temperance Society
was not quite as effective.
But the Washingtonian Temperance Society
started in the 1840s, in 1840, actually,
the Washington Temperance Society.
And the Washington Temperance Society
was different than the American Temperance Society
because it kind of looked a little bit more like
the 19th century version of Alcoholics Anonymous.
People would come together and talk about their problem.
There wasn't really a treatment aspect,
it wasn't super effective in stopping people
from drinking alcohol because a pledge, people realized,
wasn't actually going to stop alcoholics from drinking.
However, the Washingtonian Temperance Society
was more this group of middle class men
and they would all come together
and try and curb their consumption.
So, during this time, there were also lots
of prohibitory laws being passed by the states.
So, different states at different times
during the early-1800s started to try
and curb consumption by enacting laws.
They realized that the pledges,
you know, me signing my name like this,
didn't actually help that much,
and so they needed to do something legally.
The first temperance law was passed by Maine in 1838, Maine,
and this law just outlawed the sale of hard liquor.
But slowly, states across the country
started banning alcohol consumption altogether.
So, this was kinda happening all throughout here
and 12-15 states had some sort of regulatory law on alcohol.
So, over this time period, from the 1830s to the 1860s,
Americans were not just taking pledges
like they were up here with the American Temperance Society
and the Washingtonian Temperance Society,
but they were actually enacting laws.
Temperance went really mainstream.
It wasn't just this idea
that you were going to sign a pledge
to stop drinking hard alcohol, there were gonna be laws
that would bind you to drink no alcohol.
So, on top of this legal transition,
there was also a big social and media campaign
about the terrors and evils of alcohol.
So, right over here is The Drunkard's Progress.
So, this is really famous lithograph
created by Nathaniel Currier.
This was in 1846, so Drunkard's Progress, right over here.
And The Drunkard's Progress, as you can see,
shows the kind of cyclic nature of the alcoholic.
First, he's just drinking at home,
then he's drinking with friends.
And then, oh, what is going on there?
He is not going to be going to the factory today for work.
So, the drunk started not as a drunk
but as your average guy just having a drink here or there.
Then you would see them go through each of these steps,
you see Step 2, Step 3, Step 4.
Over here, Step 5 seems like he's just hanging out
with his buddies, having a good time,
but then it really slowly deteriorated
into something that Americans didn't want.
So then, in 1853, I guess that's kind of in here, 1853,
this media campaign just took off
with Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, so Ten Nights in a Bar-Room.
Here it is, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room.
This is one of the pictures in the book.
This really had just huge mainstream reach;
almost everyone read it.
And then they started putting on plays of it,
depicting just how drunk people got
and how terrible that was for everyone involved.
Ten Night in a Bar-Room had this really national reach
and it was similar to that of Harriet Beecher Stowe
and Uncle Tom's Cabin in the abolition movement.
So, this was this rhetoric
that made the temperance movement take off.
So, you're probably wondering, then what?
What happened to temperance?
Why did prohibition not happen until 1920?
And so, this has a lot to do with the abolition movement.
So, the abolition movement was taking off
right around here, abolition.
And the abolition movement was the idea
that slavery had to be ended right now, today.
Abolition was the focus of the American people
come the mid-1800s, and this really put temperance on hold.
And so, temperance would come back after the Civil War
and after slavery was abolished.
So, you can learn more about postbellum temperance,
postbellum, that means after the Civil War,
postbellum temperance and prohibition
in the Khan Academy article titled Prohibition.
You can check that out and learn a little bit more
about how this whole crazy story ended.