The temperance movement was the longest-lasting and most broad-based social reform movement in the United States. It was also, in many ways, successful: by the late 19th century, in the decades before Prohibition, the drinking habits of Americans were radically changed. Activism in the movement crossed gender, race, class, religion, and age barriers, and was connected to both the antislavery and woman suffrage reforms. This exhibition traces the temperance movement’s development from moral persuasion to legal coercion, from Dr. Benjamin Rush’s moral thermometer in the late 18th century to the formation of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in the late 19th century.

Curated by Jessy Randall, 1999.

Resources

Ardent Spirits: The Origins of the American Temperance Movement Online Exhibition