The decade of the 1880s was both the high-water mark of America’s nineteenth-century temperance and prohibition movement and a uniquely fluid political space between Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. As such, it produced many dramatic prohibition elections, especially in the South. Among the most prominent were those held in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1885 and 1887. Atlanta is the largest U.S. city to establish prohibition by plebiscite, and African American sentiment played a pivotal role in both elections. National prohibition’s long shadow has unfortunately caused historians and the general public to largely ignore these exciting years of the temperance movement. While this book seeks to close this gap in the scholarship, it is much more than that, for it explores both the processes by which temperance values entered Black Atlanta as well as the community’s response to the politicization of those values. As such, it ambitiously seeks to be a study in the social history of ideas, the limitations of grassroots reform, and the ability of the political process to expose otherwise obscured social and cultural boundaries. But this is also a religious story, for it was evangelical Christian organizations that conveyed the temperance message across chronological, geographic, and cultural boundaries to the freed people. This work lies at the intersection of the study of race, religion, and reform and seeks to engage students of alcohol studies as well as students of American religious history, African American history, Southern history, social history, intellectual history, and urban history.
Like all historical research, this book is crafted from the answers to an interconnected set of questions. I initially wanted to know why Atlanta’s freed people developed an interest in temperance, given the plethora of other issues with which they had to contend. I learned that schools and churches overseen or operated by Northern evangelicals were constantly promoting temperance, but then I wanted to know if they did so in response to a genuine problem with alcohol abuse or if they were acting out of some preconceived notions about intemperance and/or black people. When some of the freed people adopted this new value orientation, how did their approach to reform compare with that of antebellum whites and blacks? Finally, my questioning climaxed with Atlanta’s 1885 and 1887 prohibition votes. The best extant evidence suggests that the majority of blacks voted dry in 1885 and the majority voted wet in 1887, but why did black voters switch sides? My answers offer a structural-functional analysis of the processes by which temperance values entered the lives of black Atlantans and of the rhetoric used during the local option campaigns. Focusing largely on the social contexts of temperance discourse, this book only hints at the impact this new value orientation had on Black Atlanta’s internal social relations and institutions and on its relations with white Atlantans.
Temperance was the longest-lasting reform movement of the nineteenth century. Political scientist Thomas R. Rochon argues that the first element of any reform movement is a “critical community” of people who are “united by an overriding concern about a particular issue” but maybe little else. They “think intensively about a particular problem and . . . develop over time a shared understanding of how to view that problem.” One movement may have several critical communities. While the “critical community is interested primarily in the development of new values; the movement is interested in winning social and political acceptance for those values” through collective action. Leaders of collective action choose among the ideas generated by the critical communities, reshape and repackage them, and work for cultural change through both social and political venues.
The culture is considered changed when the movement’s values are no longer deemed “highly controversial.” This is what nineteenth-century temperance reformers hoped to accomplish. The temperance movement began among antebellum whites and spread to African Americans. It experienced its greatest degree of both social and political success in the North. Following the war, Northerners introduced this movement and its values to the freed people. In the antebellum period, evangelical clergy and physicians comprised the first critical community on temperance, and over time theologians, educators, and others formed critical communities. Throughout the antebellum period evangelical thought infused much of the thinking of the critical communities. The social and political manifestations of the movement were seen in the thousands of local temperance societies, the development of a popular temperance culture of public speakers, fiction writers, and popular theater, and the many campaigns for local and state prohibition.1
In post-emancipation Black Atlanta, since the clergy were the closest thing to an intelligentsia before 1890, they alone comprised the critical community that defined the problem of intemperance among African Americans. Because 1880s Black Atlanta was so resource-poor, the clergy also had to direct collective social and political action in their community, with some help from non-clerical alumni of the various schools founded by Northerners. At its core, this book is a study of the three components of Black Atlanta’s temperance movement: its religio-cultural heritage, the discourse of its critical community, and its collective social and political actions.
During my research I discovered a paucity of historical scholarship on African Americans, alcohol, and temperance prior to the rise of Jim Crow. Most scholars mention these topics as sub-points within studies examining other issues, and only a few have published works focused exclusively on African Americans and alcohol in this period. Donald Yacovone, Denise Herd, Kenneth Christmon, and Shelley Block are among the exceptions. They have identified historical patterns of how African Americans used alcohol and interacted with the temperance movement, and John Hammond Moore, Gregg Cantrell, and James Ivy have published important case studies of 1880s prohibition campaigns.2
We do know some important things about blacks, alcohol, and temperance in the nineteenth century. Cantrell has produced the most sophisticated analysis to date of nineteenth-century black prohibition politics, arguing that well-meaning leaders seeking the greatest good for their race could reasonably assume one of three different positions: prohibitionist, anti-prohibitionist, or aloof. One of Herd’s most important contributions has been to demonstrate from a study of cirrhosis of the liver that blacks consumed less alcohol than whites in the 1800s. Other writers have identified African Americans’ attitudes toward and use of alcohol, but we still lack the scholarly confidence and nuanced understanding that only a large body of monographic literature grounded in specific times and places provides. Hopefully this book will be the first of many such works on blacks, alcohol, and temperance. My goal is to build on the current scholarship by producing a work that places the intimacy of a community study in conversation with the century-long arc of the temperance movement, North and South, black and white.
This work is in conversation with the major schools of temperance scholarship produced by historians and social scientists. It was common through the 1940s for scholars to emphasize the religious roots of temperance. The first professional historians of temperance and prohibition—John Allen Krout, Gilbert Barnes, and Alice Felt Tyler—comprised this school. From the fifties through the seventies, religious explanations for temperance bowed first to sociological explanations rooted in theories about class and status and then to empirical research demonstrating the extensive use of alcohol in the early republic. In the seventies, scholars often explored temperance through the lens of class, and since the eighties gender has become a popular vehicle for teasing out its cultural meaning.3
Since the early 1990s scholars have once again reexamined the religious claims of nineteenth-century temperance reformers. This neo-religious school includes, among others, James Rohrer, Robert Abzug, Douglas Carlson, and Michael P. Young.4 They argue that temperance reformers’ biblical and religious discourse, worldview, and organizations must be understood on their own terms and not as a cover for sublimated class, status, or political anxieties or as ruses for cynical attempts at cultural dominance. My work contributes to this neo-religious school in several important ways. First, it argues that temperance’s connection to revivalism was more than rhetorical, it was functional. Because many believed abstinence increased the likelihood of an individual’s conversion, it became a pragmatic concern among evangelicals to gain converts to temperance as a prelude to gaining converts to Christianity. Second, it demonstrates how the language of temperance flowed directly from Northern pro-revival theology, and the reform became an inalienable tenet of the antebellum evangelical worldview that infused Northerners’ work among the freed people. Third, this work shows why it is likely that the religious roots of temperance facilitated its acceptance among the freed people. It argues that intersections between antebellum pro-revival theology and the African elements of the African American worldview facilitated the diffusion of temperance values across racial and cultural boundaries.
Perhaps most importantly, however, I depict the evangelical missionary organizations founded early in the century as influential temperance organizations by showing that even though they were not temperance organizations per se, they effectively promoted the reform as an integral component of their larger spiritual and cultural mission in the antebellum West and the postbellum South. Compared to temperance-specific organizations like the American Temperance Society, American Temperance Union, or even the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, these societies brought far more resources to the movement for a longer period of time and often did so in a winsome manner. I will focus on the American Tract Society, the American Missionary Association, the American Baptist Home Mission Society, and the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Until now, temperance scholars have given scant attention to these groups, yet they distributed free literature, sponsored revivals where abstinence was preached, taught and mandated temperance in their schools and churches, supported efforts to get out the vote during local prohibition plebiscites, and sponsored an untold number of local temperance societies. When their activities are considered alongside the little-known yet important postbellum work of the National Temperance Society and Publication House, which is highlighted in these pages, one sees how the coordinated efforts of these previously invisible “temperance societies” created powerful synergies for the movement.
Another contribution this work seeks to make is to argue that nineteenth-century temperance was not understood by contemporaries as strictly a matter of personal morality but, rather, as an individual moral reform inseparable from its communal implications. Temperance leaders genuinely believed that individual decisions to abstain from alcohol would fundamentally alter local and national community dynamics in ways that could only benefit the entire body politic. Individual pledges to abstain were seen as a means to greater corporate good. Such thinking seemed natural to nineteenth-century Northern white evangelicals and African Americans, to an extent that is difficult for twenty-first century Americans to fully grasp. This merger of the individual and the communal was a direct outgrowth of pro-revival theology shared by both whites and blacks as well as of the African American worldview.
Early twentieth-century American Protestants jettisoned much of this theology and its practical applications in what Martin Marty has called the “public-private split.” Because private (“conservative”) Protestants prioritize little more than individual conversion and public (“liberal”) ones little more than communal efforts to make the world a better place, it is sometimes difficult for contemporary scholars to appreciate the integrated thinking of nineteenth-century evangelical reformers. I go to great lengths to explicate the theology and ideology of temperance reformers (both white and black) to help the reader discern the foundations, and appreciate the implications, of temperance thought as a cross-cultural value system.5
This book has two parts divided into seven chapters. Part I, “Messengers from the North,” includes three chapters. I begin by describing what I dub the antebellum “evangelical reform nexus,” which was the unique historical convergence of the practices and theology of revivalism and certain elements of republican ideology. In chapter one I describe how temperance and the organizations that brought it to Black Atlanta emerged from this nexus. The reader is introduced to the American Tract Society, American Missionary Association, African Methodist Episcopal Church, American Baptist Home Mission Society, and National Temperance Society and Publication House. In chapters two and three I examine the processes by which these organizations brought the temperance message to Atlanta’s freed people. Some attention is also paid to two postbellum organizations: the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Woman’s American Baptist Home Mission Society.
In part II, “Reformers in the South,” I examine Black Atlanta’s temperance movement itself, beginning with the critical community of clergy in chapter four and their collective social action. In the last three chapters I explore the efforts of reformers to bring prohibition to Fulton County, including the nature of their overwhelming obstacles.
A Word about Words
Although my narrative begins in New England, the geographic and demographic starting point for my questioning was post-emancipation Black Atlanta. “Black Atlanta” is a term used by academics at least as far back as Jerry J. Thornbery’s 1977 dissertation “The Development of Black Atlanta, 1865–1885.” It refers to Atlanta’s black community: its individuals, institutions, and physical neighborhoods. Allison Dorsey has published the most thorough study of institutional development in nineteenth-century Black Atlanta, and my work builds on her story by showing how those institutions supported the temperance movement and were impacted by it.
Three similar words occur throughout the text: postbellum, post-emancipation, and Reconstruction. Each suggests a slightly different emphasis. I use “postbellum” to refer broadly to the city of Atlanta or the state of Georgia following the Civil War. The term encompasses the experiences of both whites and blacks. “Post-emancipation” specifies the black experience following slavery, and “Reconstruction” refers to the regional or national political period traditionally agreed to have existed from 1865 to 1877. In terms of experiencing a “reconstruction government,” Georgia’s was one of the shortest in duration, effectively ending in 1871.
Language is one of the most powerful tools historians have to transport readers back in time. I believe the historical actors and my readers are best served if I use the actual language of the period being studied as much as possible, because it preserves the authentic sound of the era. Following emancipation, “freedmen” was generally used to apply to all former slaves, regardless of their gender or age, although the term “freed people” also appeared in print. I will use “freedmen” in the following situations: (1) when it appears in direct quotes, (2) when I am referring only to adult males, and (3) when “freedmen” appears in the proper names of organizations or publications. I also use the generic “freedmen’s aid societies,” referencing groups that provided relief and assistance to the newly freed slaves, which was also a common phrase from the period.
Another period term that falls uneasily on modern ears is the term “better class” or “better classes.” While modern readers might prefer “black elite,” or “black middle class,” these terms are historically problematic. I concur with Janette Thomas Greenwood that “better classes” is preferable for describing black leaders during the years of this study for several reasons.6 In the 1870s and 1880s there was a mass of working-class blacks but only a tiny group of black teachers, ministers, and small business owners. During these years, status markers such as being slave or free before the Civil War, level of education, skin color, occupation, acceptance of white-middle-class values, and family connections were more important in black social life than income. Since “middle class” implies a lower and upper class, it is inaccurate to use this term for Black Atlanta during these years; unlike New Orleans or Charleston, Atlanta had no elite “class” of blacks who had been freed before the war. Higher-status blacks were not a “middle class” of workers existing between the proletariat and owners of capital, for in Atlanta industrial employers rarely hired blacks for anything other than custodial duties. Finally, and most importantly, higher-status blacks during these years referred to themselves as the “better class” or “better classes.”
“Colored” is one more term from this era currently out of fashion, but like “freedmen,” I will use “colored” when it appears within the proper name of an organization or publication or in a direct quote. In the nineteenth century, “colored” was also used as an adjective before the name of black chapters of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Black men issued calls for “colored” temperance conventions, and during the 1885 and 1887 campaigns “colored” ward clubs were designed to get out the vote. This is the language of the period, and to call them “black WCTUs” or “African American temperance conventions” would inappropriately sanitize the past for contemporary sensibilities. Because such terminology did not exist in the nineteenth century, it will not exist in this book.
The distinction between temperance and prohibition may be lost on those drawn to this book for its African American or religious emphases. “Temperance” is frequently used to refer to the entire movement to restrict the use of intoxicating beverages, which began in the late eighteenth century and lasted into the twentieth century. Used this way, the term incorporates attitudes, ranging from belief in the moderate use of intoxicating beverages to total abstinence from all that intoxicates (known as “teetotalism”). “Temperance” also includes all tactics ranging from persuasive efforts to get individuals to stop drinking (known as “moral suasion”) to support for national constitutional prohibition of the liquor traffic. My references to the “temperance movement,” “temperance reform,” or “temperance reformers” are occasionally meant in this general sense, but usually I am referring only to the moral suasion approach. “Legal suasion” refers to any use of local, state, or federal laws to restrict the sale or use of liquor. Amending the federal constitution was the most extreme form of legal suasion.
This book climaxes with a study of two local option elections in Fulton County, Georgia, in 1885 and 1887. Local option votes were county or municipality plebiscites in which the only issue before the public was whether to allow the retail sale of liquor by the drink. These were usually framed as votes for or against saloons and were common throughout the South in the 1870s and 1880s. Atlanta was the largest municipality within Fulton County, comprising by far its largest voter block, and its voters would determine the outcome of the plebiscite, so media attention focused there. During the contests the press referred to prohibition supporters as “prohis” or “drys,” and those who opposed prohibition (anti-prohibitionists) as “antis” or “wets.” To capture the flavor of the local press during these elections, I will use these terms also.
Another important word that appears frequently in this book is “evangelical.” Its nineteenth-century usage differs somewhat from that of the twenty-first century. For my purposes, “evangelical” refers to those who believed one needed to undergo an individual conversion experience in order to become a Christian and therefore embraced some form of revivalism to facilitate conversions. In the twentieth century, the National Association of Evangelicals issued a doctrinal statement delineating a list of beliefs where conversion was just one of many items addressed. While many nineteenth-century evangelicals would have agreed with this whole list, others would not have, so belief in the necessity of a conversion experience is a more meaningful indicator for the period of this study. Although nineteenth-century evangelicals could not agree on what revivals were supposed to look like or the theology behind them, they never doubted that they were a fundamentally desirable phenomenon.
Finally, readers may want to know the reasons I studied freed people in Atlanta to understand how temperance reached former slaves. Atlanta was one of the most exciting cities in the postbellum South. Its many boosters made great claims about the city’s success in rising phoenix-like from the ashes of war. Because it was a city almost completely devoid of antebellum free blacks, Atlanta is a convenient place to study the diffusion of a reform movement that arose simultaneously with the formation of an African American community. In addition, Atlanta was a veritable hotbed of temperance activism; no other Southern city could match its temperance credentials.
Several white temperance lodges sprang into existence soon after the war and were active for many years: the Knights of Jericho, Cold Water Templars, and Knights of Temperance. White Atlantans organized the first Georgia chapters of the Independent Order of Good Templars (1867), the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (1880), and the Anti-Saloon League (1905). Frances E. Willard, John B. Gough, and evangelist Sam Jones, the most popular temperance speakers of the day, visited Atlanta in the 1880s and 1890s. The Georgia Prohibition Association (1884) was organized in Atlanta, as well as the state WCTU (1883). Atlanta hosted the national WCTU convention in 1890. White Atlantans also hosted a convention of Southern Good Templars, state temperance conventions in 1881 and 1885, and an unsuccessful meeting in 1904 to launch a state Anti-Saloon League. The city’s Protestant clergy distinguished themselves as outspoken advocates not only of personal temperance but also of prohibition. Self-proclaimed “New South” businessmen seeking to remake Atlanta along the lines of Northern economic principles provided a complementary secular rationale for prohibition and brought their own resources to the cause. White Atlantans also published three temperance serials between 1880 and 1900: The Temperance Advocate, The Conflict, and The Southern Temperance Magazine.
Atlanta’s black temperance reformers were hardly one whit behind the activism of the city’s white citizens. They built their own separate, parallel movement. Several black temperance societies existed before 1870, and Atlanta’s blacks organized the state’s first True Reformer lodge (1873) and first Good Samaritan lodge (1875), and the South’s first Colored WCTU (1879). Its missionary schools pioneered Scientific Temperance Instruction. In 1891 Black Atlanta hosted the national convention of the Independent Order of Good Samaritans. Black Atlantans edited two temperance newspapers in the 1880s: The Southern Recorder and the Herald of United Churches. One is hard-pressed to find an urban population more at the forefront of this reform movement than Atlanta, but Northerners ignited much of this excitement, so our story begins in the North.