TheBlackPirate
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Raise a glass! It's the 100th anniversary of Prohibition.
[From National Geographic]
In January 1920, the 18th Amendment went into effect, outlawing the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States and ushering in an age of rebellion.
By Enric Ucelay-Da Cal
PUBLISHED January 16, 2020
On January 17, 1920, brewing and selling alcoholic beverages became illegal in the United States as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution went into effect. This “noble experiment,” as described by its backers, was celebrated by temperance advocates across the country. Before a crowd of 10,000 people, popular evangelist Billy Sunday (a former baseball player) said: “Tonight, one minute after midnight, a new nation will be born … An era of clear ideas and good manners begins. The slums will soon be a thing of the past. Prisons and reformatories will be emptied; we will transform them into attics and factories. Again, all men will walk straight, all women will smile, all children will laugh. The gates of hell have closed forever.”
Prohibition would last for more than a decade, but the “new nation” promised by Sunday and others like him never arrived.
The 18th Amendment was ratified in January 1919, and it banned the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” as well as their importation and exportation through the then 48 states. Several months later, Congress passed the Volstead Act to cover other alcoholic beverages, including beer and wine. The Volstead Act also allowed for a few exceptions, such as medicinal usage and use in sacred rites. Possession and drinking were still legal since the law targeted those who supplied liquor, not those who consumed it.
Prohibition’s history stretches back into the 19th century when religious groups and social organizations, such as the American Temperance Society, fought against the “scourge of alcohol” and drunkenness. In the 1850s Maine and other states experimented with laws banning alcohol, but local opposition brought about their eventual reversal.
Women’s groups played a significant role. Activists argued that drink fueled violence in the home as drunken husbands would beat their wives and children. Temperance advocates argued that alcohol abuse caused poverty. In the 1870s the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) launched a major campaign to prohibit alcohol in support of the crusade mounted by the Prohibition Party, founded in 1869. Teetotalers, a 19th-century term for people who abstained from all alcohol, even made it to the White House. President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife Lucy did not drink alcohol nor would they serve it.
www.nationalgeographic.com
[From National Geographic]
In January 1920, the 18th Amendment went into effect, outlawing the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States and ushering in an age of rebellion.
By Enric Ucelay-Da Cal
PUBLISHED January 16, 2020
On January 17, 1920, brewing and selling alcoholic beverages became illegal in the United States as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution went into effect. This “noble experiment,” as described by its backers, was celebrated by temperance advocates across the country. Before a crowd of 10,000 people, popular evangelist Billy Sunday (a former baseball player) said: “Tonight, one minute after midnight, a new nation will be born … An era of clear ideas and good manners begins. The slums will soon be a thing of the past. Prisons and reformatories will be emptied; we will transform them into attics and factories. Again, all men will walk straight, all women will smile, all children will laugh. The gates of hell have closed forever.”
Prohibition would last for more than a decade, but the “new nation” promised by Sunday and others like him never arrived.
The 18th Amendment was ratified in January 1919, and it banned the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” as well as their importation and exportation through the then 48 states. Several months later, Congress passed the Volstead Act to cover other alcoholic beverages, including beer and wine. The Volstead Act also allowed for a few exceptions, such as medicinal usage and use in sacred rites. Possession and drinking were still legal since the law targeted those who supplied liquor, not those who consumed it.
Prohibition’s history stretches back into the 19th century when religious groups and social organizations, such as the American Temperance Society, fought against the “scourge of alcohol” and drunkenness. In the 1850s Maine and other states experimented with laws banning alcohol, but local opposition brought about their eventual reversal.
Women’s groups played a significant role. Activists argued that drink fueled violence in the home as drunken husbands would beat their wives and children. Temperance advocates argued that alcohol abuse caused poverty. In the 1870s the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) launched a major campaign to prohibit alcohol in support of the crusade mounted by the Prohibition Party, founded in 1869. Teetotalers, a 19th-century term for people who abstained from all alcohol, even made it to the White House. President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife Lucy did not drink alcohol nor would they serve it.
Raise a glass! It's the 100th anniversary of Prohibition.
In January 1920, the 18th Amendment went into effect, outlawing the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States and ushering in an age of rebellion.
www.nationalgeographic.com
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