This 1846 print warns of the evils of alcohol by showing the stages of a man going from social drinker to death, while his family cries under the archway.
By the mid-1800s, Americans were consuming alcohol and hard liquor at alarming rates—at least according to some people. Also around that time, a religious revival swept across the nation. Its supporters, who hoped to define correct moral behavior, saw intoxicating liquor as the major root of the country’s many social problems. In response, many communities started temperance societies. At first, members signed pledges agreeing to limit the amount of alcohol they drank. As the reform movement grew in the 1840s, society members promised not to drink any alcohol at all.
At the time, husbands and fathers were often a family’s sole wage earner. When men began to spend more time and money consuming alcohol, it created hardships for their families. A wife had no legal protection for herself or her children if her husband came home drunk and abusive and without any money to buy food or to pay the bills. In the fall of 1874, a group of Protestant housewives in Cleveland, Ohio, took action. They started the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The organization adopted the motto “moderation in all things healthful; total abstinence from all things harmful.” In its view, alcohol had to go.
This story is from the April 2017 edition of Cobblestone American History Magazine for Kids.
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This story is from the April 2017 edition of Cobblestone American History Magazine for Kids.
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Putting the Pieces Together
Americans needed to begin to put the past behind them, come together, and plan for the future in the spring of 1865. But Abraham Lincoln, the man best equipped to lead them and who had hoped to restore the country as smoothly and peacefully as possible, had been assassinated.
LAST SHOTS
The last Confederate forces in the Civil War didn’t surrender in the spring of 1865 or on a battlefield.
AND IN OTHER 1865 NEWS
A group of African Americans stop at the White House’s annual public reception on January 1, where they shake hands with President Abraham Lincoln.
A Plot to Kill President the
For several months, actor John Wilkes Booth’s band of conspirators had plotted to capture President Abraham Lincoln and hold him hostage in exchange for Confederate prisoners.
Let the Thing Be Pressed
In June 1864, Union Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant began a nearly 10-month campaign in Virginia.
HEALING THE NATION
President Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office for the second time on March 4, 1865.
A Helping Hand
The spring season is hard in any agricultural society. Plants and animals are too small to eat.
WAR SHERMAN-STYLE
As far as Union Major General William T. Sherman was concerned, the Civil War had gone on long enough.
PEACE TALKS
The fall of Fort Fisher made clear that the Confederacy’s days were numbered. Southerners were tired and hungry.
FORT FISHER'S FALL
Outnumbered Confederate soldiers inside Fort Fisher were unable to withstand the approach of Union troops by land and the constant Union naval bombardment from the sea.
