Eighteenth Amendment

Section 1:

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

Section 2:

The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3:

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

After the Civil War, the temperance movement again surged in popularity as the nation grappled with rapid industrialization and urbanization.1 This renewed social reform movement attracted a diverse group of supporters.2 For instance, a large number of women led and participated in temperance and prohibition efforts, believing that lower rates of alcohol abuse and the closure of saloons would strengthen families and decrease the prevalence of domestic violence.3 Employers, including prominent industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, sought to stem alcoholism’s pernicious effects on productivity and safety in the workplace.4

Temperance and prohibition ideals also found expression in the works of some African American writers, such as Frederick Douglass, F.E.W. Harper, and Booker T. Washington, who argued that the liquor traffic negatively impacted African Americans’ economic standing, morals, and welfare.5 Some Christian clergy preached about the evils of saloon culture,6 and physicians warned of alcoholism’s health effects.7 The temperance movement also attained support among nativists who opposed European immigrants’ drinking customs.8

Several social reform groups played a pivotal role in the Eighteenth Amendment’s inception, proposal, and ratification. In 1869, temperance supporters organized one of the earliest of these post-Civil War groups, the National Prohibition Party.9 This political party called for Congress to propose an amendment to the Constitution banning the liquor traffic.10 In 1874, a group of women founded a national temperance organization, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), in Cleveland, Ohio.11 The WCTU staged “pray-ins” outside of establishments that sold alcoholic beverages, forcing some illegal saloons to shut their doors.12 Frances Willard, the WCTU’s second leader, created programs to educate American students about the dangers of alcoholism13 and pushed for Congress and the state legislatures to mandate temperance education in schools.14 The WCTU’s lobbying efforts helped to secure restrictions on the liquor traffic in some states and U.S. territories by the late 1800s.15 However, the National Prohibition Party and WCTU failed to persuade Congress to propose a federal prohibition amendment.

The organization most responsible for the Eighteenth Amendment’s proposal and ratification was the Anti-Saloon League.16 Founded in 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio by clergyman Howard Hyde Russell, the League engaged strategically with Protestant churches and both of the major political parties, publishing political pamphlets and giving speeches in support of temperance and Prohibition.17 League Counsel Wayne B. Wheeler led the organization’s lobbying and fundraising efforts, which targeted politicians at all levels of government throughout the United States.18 Some of the League’s efforts exploited World War I-era xenophobia toward German-Americans, who were active in the brewing industry, as well as racism toward African Americans and other minority groups.19

Footnotes

1

Mark Edward Lender & James Kirby Martin, Drinking in America: A History 92–93 (1982).

2

Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition 1, 41–42 (2010).

3

History of the WCTU, Women’s Christian Temperance Union, https://www.wctu.org/history (last visited June 13, 2023). See also Eric Burns, The Spirits of America: A Social History of Alcohol 98–99, 122 (2004). Many female temperance advocates were also seeking the right to vote, own property, and participate in society on an equal basis with men. Id. After a men’s temperance organization refused to allow them to speak at its annual convention, women’s’ rights activists Susan B. Anthony and Mary C. Vaughn formed the Woman’s New York State Temperance Society with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as its president. Id. at 98–99. See also Susan B. Anthony, Address to the State Temperance Convention (June 17, 1852), in The Lily (July 1852), https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/viewer/545 (last visited June 13, 2023).

4

Lender & Martin, supra 1, at 108.

5

See, e.g., Booker T. Washington, Prohibition and the Negro, 88 Outlook 519, 587 (1908) ( “The prohibition movement is based upon a deep-seated desire to get rid of whisky in the interest of both races because of its hurtful economic and moral results.” ); Frances E.W. Harper, Nothing and Something, in Atlanta Offering: Poems 42–44 (1900) (describing alcoholism’s destructive impact on a family); Federick Douglass, Editorial, Prohibition, San Marco Free Press, May 19, 1887, at 1 ( “Few things could do more for the elevation and happiness, or for the welfare of [African Americans] than the banishment of intoxicating liquors from the state of Mississippi.” ). See also Mark Lawrence Schrad, The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism, Politico Mag. (Feb. 6, 2021), https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/06/forgotten-black-history-prohibition-temperance-movement-461215.

6

Lender & Martin, supra 1, at 114. Saloons became “prominent” by 1850. As one commentator noted: “On the urban East coast, these generally took the form of politically-oriented saloons, while on the American frontier saloons were commonly characterized as having swinging doors, a long bar, spittoons, and tables for playing cards, but the variety of saloons was in fact immense.” Indomitable Spirits: Prohibition in the United States: Distilleries, Digital Pub. Libr. of Am., https://dp.la/exhibitions/spirits/early-alcohol-consumption/distilleries (last visited June 13, 2023). In some neighborhoods, saloons “cashed paychecks, extended credit, supplied a mailing address,” and offered cheap lodging. Okrent, supra 5, at 28. Saloon culture became a target for social reformers who viewed the establishments as a source of family strife, capitalist exploitation, and political corruption. Id. at 29, 33, 47, 75–76.

7

Lender & Martin, supra 1, at 120–21.

8

Id. at 98.

9

Prohibition Party, Ohio Hist. Cent., https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Prohibition_Party (last visited June 13, 2023).

10

Lender & Martin, supra 1, at 93–95. In the decades after the Civil War, Members of Congress introduced various proposed prohibition amendments to the Constitution. E.g., S.J. Res. 12, 50th Cong. (1887) ( “The manufacture, importation, exportation, transportation, and sale of all alcoholic liquors as a beverage shall be, and hereby is, forever prohibited in the United States and in every place subject to their jurisdiction.” ).

11

VCU Libr. Soc. Welfare Hist. Project, Women’s Christian Temperance Union—(1874-Present) https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/religious/womens-christian-temperance-union (last visited June 13, 2023).

12

Id.; Lender & Martin, supra 1, at 90–91. Carrie Amelia Moore Nation, known as “Carry A. Nation,” a temperance advocate, employed more radical methods of advocacy, including destroying saloon property with hatchets. See Carrie Nation: Topics in Chronicling America, Libr. of Cong., https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-carrie-nation/introduction (last visited, June 13, 2023).

13

Katharine Lent Stevenson, A Brief History of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union 33–34 (1907); Lender & Martin, supra 1, at 110.

14

Burns, supra 2, at 115.

15

Id. at 121.

16

Okrent, supra 2, at 2–3, 35–38.

17

Anti-Saloon League Year Book 1915, 5–30 (Ernest H. Cherrington ed.); Lender & Martin, supra 1, at 126–27. The League formed in Ohio in 1893 and became a nationwide organization in 1895. Id. at 127.

18

Lender & Martin, supra 1 at 127–28; Burns, supra 2, at 159.

19

Lender & Martin, supra 1, at 129–30; Burns, supra 2, at 177–78.