David Fahey's post on the prohibitionist killed in Key West and
Anderson Thayne's book with a chapter on drinking violence in Alaska (which
I did not know of when I wrote this piece) raises the issue of
prohibitionists and violence.  Today I want to post part of a paper I
delivered at a Meeting of the Alcohol and Temperance History Group as an
Affiliated Society of the American Association for the History of Medicine,
at its 68th Annual Meeting at Pittsburgh last month.  At that time I said I
wasn't planning to publish it, for various reasons, but I have been urged
to disseminate it, so today I would like to raise the general point about
the limitations of the literature on the temperance movement by discussing
the absence of the treatment of violence against temperance agitators.  And
the members of this list serve seem the best possible audience for this
topic.
        The prohibitionists, from the end of the Civil War to the passage
of the 18th Amendment, were social reform agitators who sought a major
change in their society's customs.  Social reformers have been, of course,
a nearly constant presence in American society since the early 19th
century.  Accounts of many social reformers' campaigns, often deal with the
violence inflicted upon reformers seeking change in society.  But, save for
some work on the women's crusades and on Carry Nation, the vast -- and ever
-- growing literature on the temperance movement pays little attention to
the issue of violence.  This gap is a serious deficiency.(1)      There are
two limits to my work on this topic.  First, I am most interested in
violence in its most dramatic and drastic forms, killing or attempting to
kill people.  So I will be speaking mostly of killings, attempted killings,
and mobbings -- because they can easily lead to killings.  Second, I am
talking about violence in response to or as a part of agitation and not
violence attendant to law enforcement.  Thus I am going to pass over the
many studies of moonshing, bootlegging, and violence.(2)
        Violence in resistance to law or violence undertaken by law
officers is somewhat separate from violence associated with a social reform
movement's agitation for change.  Such violence grows out the state's
presumption to have a monopoly of force and its willingness to resort to
force to gain the ends of its policy.  To break the law of the state is to
risk its use of violence against you, hence the likelihood that the law
breaker will engage in violence.  Law enforcement and violence go together
hand and glove.
        Scholars of other reforms recognize violence as part of the context
to be explored.  For example, studies of the abolitionist crusade and civil
rights movement deal with the topic.  The literature on civil rights is
filled with works that explore the violence directed against civil rights
advocates in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s.  The assassination
of Medgar Evers, the bombing of the Birmingham churches, the mobbing of sit
in protestors and freedom riders, and the killing of Goodman, Schwerner and
Chaney are found through out the literature and sometimes in book-length
treatment.  Historians of abolitionists have explored the many
anti-abolitionist mobs of the Jacksonian era, including that which mobbed
and killed the abolitionist editor Eliajah Lovejoy in 1837.  But virtually
no where in the vast scholarly studies of the prohibition movement are
there similar studies of the prohibitionists and violence.(3)
        Its not because violence is not there.  The drys themselves
recorded that it happened.  The temperance movement at its peak, sought to
encourage the faithful and to preserve the records of its achievements and
struggles by publishing, among other things, prohibition encyclopedias.
Two standard reference books produced by the drys, The Pocket Cyclopedia of
Temperance (1916) and Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem
(1925-1930) show that drys included information on violence against
prohibitionists.  Both works contain articles on so called "Temperance
Martyrs."  Indeed, scattered through the six volumes and 2940 page Standard
Encyclopedia are many accounts of mobbings, attempted killings, and
killings of drys.(4)
        I have combined the counts of the Standard Encyclopedia and the
Pocket Encyclopedia to come up with some ball park figures of the violence
directed against prohibitionists.  These numbers exclude from them
prohibitionists who suffered violence as a result of official or unofficial
law enforcement or (from the sources available) who suffered violence in
uncertain circumstances.  Including such figures would roughly double the
number of assaults and triple the number of the killings.  Combining the
two lists, I have found the names of six drys who between 1874 and 1908
were killed over their advocacy of their cause.  The list includes:  Dr. J.
W. Beal and Judge D. R. Cox both killed in Malden, Missouri on February 18
1907; Edward W. Carmack, United States Senator from Tennessee, shot
November 9, 1908 in Nashville; Sam D. Cox, editor and publisher of The
Sentinel killed in Minatare, Nebraska on December 20 1906: Roderick D.
Gambrell, editor of The Sword and Shield killed in Jackson, Mississippi on
May 5, 1887; Rev. John R. Moffett, editor of Anti-Liquor shot on November
11, 1892 in Danville Virginia; and Joseph B. Rucker editor of the Somerset
Reporter killed in Somerset, Kentucky on September 19, 1892.  At least
another nineteen drys were mobbed, beaten, shot at, or had their homes (or
businesses) dynamited for their support of temperance.(5)
        Why does the scholarly literature not contain much information on
the topic of violence against prohibitionist agitators?  One explanation
can be dismissed out of hand, that is that those who the opponents
perpetuated their deeds against were too obscure to make an impact.  Among
the six prohibitionist killed, are a doctor, a judge, a minister, four
editors of reform or other newspapers (including the minister), and a
United States Senator.  If you turn toward those who suffered assaults or
mobbing for agitation on the temperance question, the trend is similar with
editors and ministers predominating.  Those attacked included figures of
some renown in temperance history; for example Albert Banks -- clergyman,
dry editor, and propagandist -- was shot and wounded and Samuel W. ("Sam")
Small -- journalist, dry, and evangelist -- was mobbed and beaten.  The
violence occurred in all areas of the nation, though the South and West
seem disproportionately represented, and extended from the decade after the
Civil War through the second decade of the 20th century.  It should appear
much more prominently in the scholarly literature.
        I think two general causes seem to explain why the violence against
prohibitionists for their agitation has received so little attention.
First, contentions from the time of the killing or other violence that the
violence had nothing to do with prohibition may have led scholars not to
consider the topic.  Second, and more importantly, there was little place
for accounts of such violence in the evolving scholarly interpretations of
prohibition.
        I know of at least one example of a dry killed over his advocacy of
prohibition where non-prohibitionist sources asserted that he "was not
slain because of his convictions but" because of a "personal difficulty."
If other killings and attacks have similar conflicting accounts (and logic
would indicate that they should, as it was in the interests of the
opponents of prohibition to downplay violence against their enemies) it is
likely that scholars have been misdirected away from the topic of violence
against dry agitators.  But, there is little evidence that scholars have
paid any attention to the topic at all.
        While scholarly interpretations of prohibition have changed
dramatically over time, all of them share the trait that they either have
little room in their frameworks for discussions of violence or have a
tendency to turn scholars away from approaches and sources that would
explore issues violence.  Since World War II, scholarly interpretations of
prohibition have been marked by two large trends.  First, there is the
focus on the social status of the members of the movement.  After the
pioneering work of Joseph Gusfield on the social status of temperance
reformers, scholars rushed to test this theory, and for nearly a
generation, the study of prohibition focused, as the title of one article
put it, on "The Prohibitionists who Were They?"  Later the salience of
religious identity and the prohibition issue emerged as a topic in
political histories and worked back into the field of temperance
studies.(7)  Second, there is the question of how, if at all, prohibition
related to the reform movements of the day:  populism, progressivism, and
women's rights.(8)
        Scholars working in the field have thus tended to mine the sources
to answer questions about these concerns.  Thus by combing membership
rolls, church records, tax records, census data, and other sources they
have told us much about the social status of the prohibitionists.
Similarly in exploring the links between anti-monopolism, regulation, peace
reform, women's suffrage, divorce reform, and anti-prostitution (just to
name some) scholars have illuminated the connections of the movement to
other reforms.  But in doing these things they have mostly eschewed writing
narratives of movement history that would have confronted the sources that
raise the questions of violence against drys.(9)
        This post has merely touched the surface of the topic of violence
and prohibition.  It does not delve into the timing of the violence against
dry agitators -- most attacks seemed to coincide with local option or other
elections.  It passes over the topics of violence against prohibitionists
who were engaged in official, semi-official, or private law enforcement.
And while the original paper dealt with the topic of violence by drys, this
post leaves that to another day.  But even skimming the surface shows the
pattern that the scholarship has mostly ignored the violence used against
drys by their opponents.  This pattern suggests that we need to look more
deeply into prohibition as a reform movement.  In particular, I think we
need to use narrative or other techniques that will allow us to explore
more fully than we have already the context in which the temperance crusade
occurred.  Do others agree?  Disagree?  Is there anything they would like
to say on this or related issues?
 
Richard F. Hamm
SUNY Albany
[log in to unmask]
 
Notes
 
(1)  Typical treatment of the topic of violence and the prohibitionists can
be found in examining the three available surveys of the movement's
history.  Norman Clark, Deliver Us From Evil:  An Interpretation of
American Prohibition (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1976) and Paul Aaron
and David Musto, "Temperance and Prohibition In America: A Historical
Overview" in Mark H. Moore and Dean Gernstein, eds., Alcohol and Public
Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition (Washington, DC: National Academy
Press, 1981), 127-181 devote no space to the topic.  Jack S. Blocker, Jr.
American Temperance Movements:  Cycles of Reform (Boston:  Twayne
Publishers, 1989), 30-34, 59-64, 74-79 mentions violence in connection with
enforcement of the Maine Law and in the direct action of the women's
crusades of 1873 and their precursors.  Moreover, Mark Lender, editor,
Dictionary of American Temperance Biography (Westport CT:  Greenwood Press,
1984) does not contain a sketch of any prohibitionists killed, either as
response to agitation or because law enforcement activities.
        Three works discuss the role of violence associated with temperance
reform.  Jed Dannebaum, Drink and Disorder: Temperance Reform in Cincinnati
from the Washington Revival to the WCTU (Urbana and Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1984) and Jack S. Blocker Jr., "Give to the Winds Thy
Fears":  The Women's Temperance Crusade, 1873-1874 (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1985); Robert Bader, Prohibition in Kansas (Lawrence:  University
Press of Kansas, 1986).
 
(2)  On liquor law enforcement before national prohibition see:  Stephen
Cresswell, Mormons, Cowboys, Moonshiners, and Klansmen:  Federal Law
Enforcement in the South and West, 1870-1893 (Tuscaloosa:  University of
Alabama Press, 1991); William F. Holmes, "Moonshining and Collective
Violence:  Georgia, 1889-1895," Journal of American History 67 (1980):
589-611; William F. Holmes, "Whitecapping:  Agrarian Violence in
Mississippi, 1902-1906," Journal of Southern History 35 (1969): 165-185;
Wilbur R. Miller, Revenuers and Moonshiners:  Enforcing Federal Liquor Law
in the Mountain South, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill:  University of North
Carolina Press, 1991).
 
(3)  Indeed, certain killings connected to the civil rights crusade have
been used to illuminate the very nature of the movement and its opponents.
See for example, Seth Cagin and Philip Dray, We Are Not Afraid:  The Story
of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney and the Civil Rights Campaign for
Mississippi (New York:  Bantom Books, 1988); Herbert Shapiro, White
Violence and Black Response From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1988); Maryanne Vollers,Ghosts of
Mississippi:  The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La
Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South (New York:  Little, Brown and
Company, 1995).
        On violence directed against abolitionists see "Gentleman of
Property and Standing:"  Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New
York:  Oxford University Press, 1970).  Also, three surveys of the
abolitionist crusade show how integral the topics of violence are to the
reform's history as they devote attention to both the violence against and
by abolitionists:  Ronald G. Walters, The Antislavery Appeal:  American
Abolitionism After 1830 (New York:  Norton, 1978); Merton L. Dillon, The
Abolitionists:  the Growth of a Dissenting Minority (Dekalb:  Northern
Illinois University Press, 1974) and James B. Stewart, Holy Warriors:  The
Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York:  Hill and Wang, 1976).
 
(4)  Clarence T. Wilson, Deets Picket, and Harry G. McCain, editors, The
Pocket Cyclopedia of Temperance (Topeka:  Temperance Society of Methodist
Episcopal Church, revised edition, 1916), 155-162; Ernest Cherrington, ed.,
Standard Encyclopaedia of the Alcohol Problem 6 volumes (Westerville, OH:
American Issue Publishing Co., 1925-1930), 2618-2620, also for example see
85, and 1800-1801, & 2133; even midway through the crusade, drys were
recording the suffering of their martyrs, see:  Cyclopaedia of Temperance
and Prohibition (New York:  Funk and Wagnalls, 1891), 201-202.
 
(5)  Two of these killings have received scholarly treatment, Paul Isaac,
Prohibition and Politics:  Turbulent Decades in Tennessee, 1885-1920
(Knoxville:  University of Tennessee Press, 1965) and Richard F. Hamm, "The
Killing of John R. Moffett and the Trial of J. T. Clark:  Race,
Prohibition, and Politics in Danville, 1887-1893," Virginia Magazine of
History and Biography 101 (1993): 375-404.
 
(6)  This is the case of John R. Moffett, for details see:  Hamm,
"Killing."  The assertion that Moffett did not die for his convictions
generated a controversy between the slain man's brother and William
Copeland, editor of the Danville paper at Moffett's death and later editor
of the Times Dispatch.  See:  S. H. Thompson, The Life of John R. Moffett
(Salem:  McClung & White, 1895), 141-144.  Richmond Times Dispatch, April
17, 1903, 4; Correspondence between W. W. Moffett & Richmond Times Dispatch
Concerning Reverend John R. Moffett" bound typescript, Virginia Baptist
Historical Society, Botwright Library, University of Richmond, Richmond;
Richmond Times Dispatch May 26, 1903, 4.
 
(7)  Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade:  Status Politics and the
American Temperance Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963);
Jack Blocker, Jr. "Modernity of Prohibitionists" and Charles A. Isetts, "A
Social Profile of WCTU Crusade: Hillsboro, Ohio" in Jack Blocker Jr., ed.,
Alcohol Reform and Society:  the Liquor Issue in Social Context (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 99-110, 149-170; Robert A. Hohner, "The
Prohibitionists:  Who Were They?" South Atlantic Quarterly 68 (1969):
491-505; Jack S. Blocker Jr., "Give to the Winds Thy Fears":  The Women's
Temperance Crusade, 1873-1874 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985).  The
Richard Jenson, The Winning of the Midwest, Social and Political Conflict,
1888-1896  (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); Paul Kleppner, The
Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1885-1900 (New
York: MacMillian Free Press, 1970); Jed Dannebaum, "Immigrants and
Temperance: Ethnocultural Conflict in Cincinnati, 1845-1860" Ohio History
87 (1978): 125-139.
 
(8)  On the issue of whether prohibition should be considered a progressive
reform, Richard Hofstader in The American Political Tradition (New York:
Vintage Books, 1954) and in Age of Reform (New York:  Vintage Books, 1955)
and Andrew Sinclair, Era of Excess:  A Social History of the Prohibition
Movement (New York:  Harper and Row, 1962) argued no.  John Burnham in "New
Perspectives on the Prohibition 'Experiment' of the 1920s" Journal of
Social History 2 (1968): 51-68; and James Timberlake in Prohibition and the
Progressive Movement, 1900-1920 (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press,
1963) challenged that view.  Jack S. Blocker, Jr., Retreat from Reform:
The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890-1913  (Westport:
Greenwood Press, 1976) plotted the temperance movement's abandonment of
broader social reform to concentrate on prohibition alone.  Works by,
Norman Clark and Austin Kerr, utilizing the organizational interpretation
of Robert Wiebe, placed prohibition firmly within the panoply of
progressive reforms.  See Clark, Deliver Us From Evil; K. Austin Kerr,
Organized for Prohibition:  A New History of the Anti-Saloon League (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).  On the organizational
interpretation see:  Louis Galambos, "The Emerging Organizational Synthesis
of Modern American History," Business History Review 44 (Autumn 1980):
279-90; Samuel P. Hays, Response to Industrialism, 1885-1914 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1957), 48-70; Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The
Visible Hand:  The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge,
MA, Harvard University Press, 1977); Louis Galambos, "Technology, Political
Economy, and Professionalization:  Central Themes of the Organizational
Synthesis," Business History Review 57 (Winter 1983): 471-93.  Recently,
the work on temperance reform has focused on its relationship with larger
question of reform in the history of women.  Ruth Bordin, Woman and
Temperance  (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 15-33; Barbara
Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity:  Women, Evangelism and
Temperance in Nineteenth Century America (Middletown, CT:  Wesleyan
University Press, 1981, 1986); Ruth Bordin, Francis Willard:  A Biography
(Chapel Hill, NC:  University of North Carolina Press, 1986); Ian Tyrrell,
Woman's World Woman's Empire:  the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in
International Perspective, 1880-1930 (Chapel Hill, NC:  University of North
Carolina Press, 19.
 
(9)  I am as guilty as any other scholar in the field; my work, Richard F.
Hamm, Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment:  Temperance Reform, Legal Culture,
and the Polity, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill:  University of North Carolina
Press, 1995), in exploring how the structure of the polity interacted with
the dry movement ignores the issue of violence.  We do not have a good
modern history of the Prohibition Party, though Blocker, Retreat is a good
start; similarly WCTU histories have tended to trail off with Frances
Willard's death.  Where such narratives are to be found are in the local
studies of an area or region.  Local studies which have looked at the
mechanics of the movement like Robert L. Hampel, Temperance and Prohibition
in Massachusetts, 1813-1852 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982); have
often focused on areas that did not have significant outbreaks of violence
during temperance agitation.