elaine.  rather than reply to you individually, i wanted to encourage
others to chime in.

i suspect that by "temperance vigilantes" you refer to groups organized to
barricade saloons and otherwise engage in direct action to affect the
alcohol trade.  however, there's another use of the term that you might
find interesting.

in san francisco at the end of the 1850s, a neo-washingtonian organization
called the dashaway association formed a "vigilance committee" whose
members were to locate drunkards and exhort them to join the brotherhood
and/or be treated at the san francisco home for the care of the inebriate
(1859-1898).  all members of the association were pledged to keep a
vigilant eye on each other and to report backsliding.

the generic method of outreach was adopted from washingtonian practices in
the east and seems similar to urban missionary work with which these
transplants were familiar.  it also has some kinship with the friendly
visiting committees established in 1819 by thomas chalmers in scotland and
first applied in the u.s. during the 1840s by the new york association for
improving the condition of the poor.  this proto-casework method became the
hallmark of the charity organization societies that were borrowed from
england and proliferated in the northern and western u.s. after 1877.

more specifically, however, the term had reference to the method of social
control practiced by the masons, odd fellows, ymca, and other voluntary
associations of the era.  it was thus a temperance adaptation of a
well-known practice for policing the association of strangers.

finally, and most parochially, the term referred to san francisco's 2
vigilance committees (of 1851 and 1856), which hung a few people and
banished others in the name of civic decency.  the so-called great
vigilance committee of 1856 laid the foundation for the city's governance
by the people's party until 1867.  the early dashaway association, and a
subsequent, more militant splinter group, the prohibitionist temperance
legion (est. 1865), were closely associated with the people's party, the
police department, and the fire department.

jim baumohl, bryn mawr college


At 12:25 PM 5/31/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Actually, I have two entirely different questions.
>
>1) In his _Woman's World, Woman's Empire_, Ian Tyrrell cites Frances
>Willard, _A New Calling for Women_ (London: WWCTU 1893). I have been
>trying to track this source down, but it's neither in WorldCat nor in the
>National Union Catalog. Does anyone have any idea where I could find a
>copy?
>
>2) I have just found some really interesting primary sources on antebellum
>southern temperance vigilantes. I'm planning to pursue this in more
>detail, but was wondering if anyone else has found descriptions of these
>groups or is working along the same lines.
>
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Elaine Frantz Parsons
>Department of History
>Johns Hopkins University
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