Notes to Chapter 1
“Our Enterprise Flows from the Gospel of Christ”
1. Wilbur Stone Deming, The Church on the Green: The First Two Centuries of the First Congregational Church at Washington, Connecticut, 1741–1941 (Hartford: Brentano’s, 1941), 3–76; Lyman Matthews, Memoir of the Life and Character of Ebenezer Porter, D.D. (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1837), 318–28; William A. Hallock, Light and Love: A Sketch of the Life and Labors of the Rev. Justin Edwards, D.D. (New York: American Tract Society, 1855), 43–44; Murphy, 29–30. I am borrowing the term “Andover Circle” from Stephen Wills Murphy.
2. Thomas S. Grimke, Address on the Patriot Character of the Temperance Reformation (Charleston, SC: Observer Office Press, 1833), 5; “Address of the Executive Committee,” Journal of the American Temperance Union 1 (January 1837): 5; Lebbeus Armstrong, The Temperance Reformation of this XIXth Century, the Fulfillment of Divine Prophecy (New York: Pudney, Hooker & Russell, 1845), 3–15.
3. Benjamin Rush, An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors upon the Human Body, and their Influence upon the Happiness of Society, 3rd edition (Philadelphia: John McCulloch, 1791), Early American Imprints, Series I, Evans, 1639–1800, 2–4, 6–8; Lebbeus Armstrong, The Temperance Reformation. Its History from the Organization of the First Temperance Society (New York: Fowlers and Wells, Publishers, 1853), 18–27, 134–44; William Hay, A History of Temperance in Saratoga County, N.Y. (Saratoga Springs: G. M. Davison, 1855), 13–22. The first Southern temperance society was organized in 1822 in North Carolina.
4. Ebenezer Porter, The Fatal Effects of Ardent Spirits: A Sermon (Morris-Town: Henry P. Russell, 1812), 2; Charles Beecher, ed., Autobiography, Correspondence, etc. of Lyman Beecher, D.D. (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1864), 1:245–52, 2:35–36; Allan M. Winkler, “Lyman Beecher and the Temperance Crusade,” Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 33 (1972): 943–45, 954.
5. Fourth Report of the American Temperance Society in Permanent Temperance Documents of the American Temperance Society, vol. 1 (Boston: S. Bliss, 1835), 11, 69–70; Hallock, 43–44, 194–96; Murphy, 64–67; James R. Rohrer, “Battling the Master Vice: The Evangelical War against Intemperance in Ohio, 1800–1832” (Master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1985), 65–73.
For examples of contemporary criticism of temperance reformers’ attitudes see “Let the Drunkard Alone,” Christian Watchman, September 8, 1827, and Abraham Lincoln, “Address Before the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance Society, February 22, 1842,” in Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 1, new and enlarged edition, ed. John G. Nicolay and John Hay (New York: F. D. Tandy, 1905), 201.
6. Seventh Annual Report of the American Temperance Union, in Permanent Temperance Documents of the American Temperance Society, vol. 2 (New York: American Temperance Union, 1852), 1, 21.
7. Jack S. Blocker Jr., American Temperance Movements: Cycles of Reform (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989), 48–51.
8. J. James Ridge, Band of Hope Catechism (London: United Kingdom Band of Hope Union, n.d.); Constitution and Minute Book, March 4, 1876–October 20, 1879, of Band of Hope Miamisburg, Ohio, Ohio Historical Society; Temperance Lesson Manual for the Band of Hope and Loyal Temperance Legion 2 (January 1886): 1–4; Lillian Lewis Shiman, “The Band of Hope Movement: Respectable Recreation for Working Class Children,” Victorian Studies 17 (September 1973): 49–74.
9. Tyler, 316; Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837, 25th anniversary edition (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004), xviii; Othniel A. Pendleton, “Temperance and the Evangelical Churches,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 25 (March 1947): 45.
10. David M. Ludlum, Social Ferment in Vermont, 1791–1850 (Montpelier: Vermont Historical Society, 1948), 69.
11. E. N. Kirk, The Temperance Reformation Connected with the Revival of Religion and the Introduction of the Millennium (London: J. Pasco, 1838), 17.
12. My discussion of revival theology is based on the following works: Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Marie Caskey, Chariot of Fire: Religion and the Beecher Family (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977); William R. Sutton, “Benevolent Calvinism and the Moral Government of God: The Influence of Nathaniel W. Taylor on Revivalism in the Second Great Awakening,” Religion and American Culture 2 (Winter 1992): 23–47; John L. Hammond, The Politics of Benevolence: Revival Religion and American Voting Behavior (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1979); James H. Moorhead, “Social Reform and the Divided Conscience of Antebellum Protestantism,” Church History 48 (December 1979): 416–30; John Opie Jr., “Conversion and Revivalism: An Internal History from Jonathan Edwards through Charles Grandison Finney” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1963); Douglas M. Strong, Perfectionist Politics: Abolitionism and the Religious Tensions of American Democracy (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999); Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (1957; repr., New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1965); Smith, “Righteousness and Hope: Christian Holiness and the Millennial Vision in America, 1800–1900,” American Quarterly 31 (1979): 21–45.
13. “The Principles and Means of the Temperance Reformation,” The Oberlin Evangelist, October 27, 1841; Whittier as quoted in Anne C. Loveland, “Evangelicalism and ‘Immediate Emancipation’ in American Antislavery Thought,” Journal of Southern History 32 (May 1966): 172–88.
This connection between perfectionist theology, teetotalism, and abolitionism raises the question of why all teetotalers were not also abolitionists? The evangelical abolitionists (who were consistently teetotalers) were the more intellectually honest of the two groups. Any attempt to explicate the thinking of evangelical teetotalers who were not abolitionists must unpack: the nuances of nineteenth-century American racism; the individualism of evangelical theology; prevailing conceptions of federalism, constitutional law, and property law; and the realities of contemporary politics. Such a study is beyond the scope of this work. What is clear is this: temperance could be embraced without upending the body politic, but abolitionism required a radical reconceptualizing of fundamental American social, political, religious, and economic structures. Only the most radical and intrepid evangelicals dared to join the cause.
14. Theodore L. Cuyler, Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Its History and Commemorative Services, 1860–1885 (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1885), 207; Scrapbook 3:18, 112, 125, box 1, Theodore L. Cuyler Manuscript Collection, Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries, Department of Archives and Special Collections; John Marsh, The Cause of Temperance as Connected with Home Evangelization (New York: American Temperance Union, 1863), 19; E. H. Pratt, The Church and Temperance (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, n.d.), 3; Kirk, 4, 15–16; General Convention of Vermont as quoted in Ludlum, 69.
15. Justin Edwards, On the Traffic in Ardent Spirits (New York: American Tract Society, 187-), 17; Temperance Manual of the American Temperance Society for the Young Men of the United States (Boston: Seth Bliss et al., 1836), 9; Seventh Annual Report of the American Temperance Union (1843) in Permanent Temperance Documents, vol. 2 (New York: American Temperance Union, 1852), 21–22; Kirk, 12, 17–18; Proceedings of the Pennsylvania State Temperance Convention, Harrisburg, PA (1843) as quoted in Asa E. Martin, “The Temperance Movement in Pennsylvania prior to the Civil War,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 49 (1925): 206; “The Use of Ardent Spirits,” American Baptist Magazine 10 (February 1830): 43–44.
This concern about negating one’s free moral agency was shared by evangelical abolitionists. The absolute control a master had over his slave was the functional equivalent of the drunkard’s insatiable appetite for alcohol. In both cases, an outside power effectively nullified the person’s God-given ability to use reason and respond to God. This logic accounts for why Southerners feared that Northern temperance speakers would slip over into abolitionist analogies and appeals. This was a Southern concern as early as 1833. Southern temperance speakers were not given to this type of “slippage” between reforms because they generally opposed pro-revival Calvinist theology, embracing instead more traditional doctrines. See “Slavery and Intemperance,” The Liberator, June 15, 1833; Daniel A. Payne, “Slavery Brutalizes Man,” Lutheran Herald and Journal of the Fort Plain, N.Y. Franckean Synod, August 1, 1839, http://www.blackpast.org/?q=1839-daniel-payne-slavery-brutalizes-man (accessed December 16, 2010).
16. Lyman Beecher, A Reformation of Morals Practicable and Indispensable (Utica: Merrell and Camp, 1813), 9; Charles Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1868), 386–87; Garth M. Rosell, “Charles Grandison Finney and the Rise of the Benevolence Empire” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 1971), 130–43; Gerrit Smith to Edward C. Delavan, November 6, 1837, digital edition, Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Library, http://library.syr.edu/digital/collections/g/GerritSmith/406.htm (accessed September 4, 2010).
17. Proceedings of the First Ten Years of the American Tract Society, Instituted at Boston, 1814 (Andover: Flagg and Gould, 1824), 11–15; First Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, 1828 (Andover: Flagg and Gould, 1828), 4.
18. This dramatic act was arguably more theatrical than effective for organized temperance in Rochester. See Steve C. Bullock, “The Temperance Movement in Rochester, 1827–1835” (unpublished manuscript on file at the American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, Georgia).
19. Jarrett Burch, Adiel Sherwood: Baptist Antebellum Pioneer in Georgia (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), 33–35; Charles G. Finney to Theodore Weld, 21 July 1836, in Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822–1844, ed. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965), 319; Asahel Nettleton, Temperance and Revivals (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, n.d.), 1–7; Kirk, 13; Pratt, 3.
20. Christian republicanism was also a grassroots political movement that was annoyingly influential to the Whigs and Democrats. See Paul Goodman, “Moral Purpose and Republican Politics in Antebellum America, 1830–1860,” The Maryland Historian 20 (Fall/Winter 1989): 5–39.
21. William Gribbin, “Republicanism, Reform, and the Sense of Sin in Ante Bellum America,” Cithara 14 (1974): 25–41; “Moral Reform—Remarks to Young Men,” The Oberlin Evangelist, September 25, 1839; Christopher Grasso, “Deist Monster: On Religious Common Sense in the Wake of the American Revolution,” Journal of American History 95 (June 2008): 43–48; W. C. Brownlee, An Appeal to the Patriot and Christian on the Importance of the Gospel: its Ministry, its Sabbath, and its Ordinances, to the Well-Being and Perpetuity of our Free Institutions (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.); James Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1998), 99–114.
22. Noll, 90–91; John G. West Jr., The Politics of Revelation and Reason: Religion and Civic Life in the New Nation (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 11–78.
23. Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance (Andover: Flagg and Gould, 1828), 4; Journal of Humanity and Herald of the American Temperance Society, May 27, 1829, 1; Heman Humphrey, Parallel Between Intemperance and the Slave Trade (Amherst: J. S. and C. Adams, Printers, 1828), 26; Heman Humphrey, The Way to Bless and Save Our Country: A Sermon (Philadelphia: American Sunday School Union, 1831), 16; Albert Barnes, The Connexion of Temperance with Republican Freedom (Philadelphia: Boyle and Benedict, 1835); Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin, Drinking in America: A History, revised and expanded edition (New York: The Free Press, 1987), 35–40, 79–85.
These sentiments were not just Northern. In 1829, an Alabama newspaper warned that the habit of “treating” voters would eventually result in the “loss of political virtue and rise of total corruption, thus making Americans incapable of self-government and leading to the country’s downfall.” Alabama State Intelligencer, May 17, 1829, as quoted in John Quist, Restless Visionaries: The Social Roots of Antebellum Reform in Alabama and Michigan (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998), 164.
24. Hammond, 63.
25. Horace Bushnell, Barbarism, The First Danger (New York: American Home Missionary Society, 1847), 4–5. See also Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (Cincinnati: Truman and Smith, 1835).
26. American Tract Society, A Brief History of the American Tract Society, Instituted at Boston, 1814, and its Relations to the American Tract Society at New York, Instituted 1825 (Boston: T. R. Marvin, 1857), 22–39.
27. Proceedings of the First Ten Years of the American Tract Society, Instituted at Boston, 1814 (Andover: Flagg and Gould, 1824), 11, 13, 35–36; First Annual Report of the American Tract Society, Instituted at New York, 1825 (New York: American Tract Society, 1826), 30; Elizabeth Twaddell, “The American Tract Society, 1814–1860,” Church History 15 (June 1946): 126–28.
28. Reprint of the First Edition of the Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Atlanta: n.p., 1917), 58–59; Clarence E. Walker, A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), 10, 25–26; Monroe Fordham, Major Themes in Northern Black Religious Thought, 1800–1860 (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1975), 12–17.
29. The Christian Recorder did not have a continuous run during these years, so these 14 issues represent a greater frequency than this range of years suggests. There were 19 issues between 1852 and 1854, then a new editor published 24 issues between 1854 and 1856, and it did not appear again regularly until after the Civil War. Through 1856, almost one-third of the issues addressed temperance.
30. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Temperance Status of the A.M.E. Church: Historically,” AME Church Review 2 (January 1886): 220–21; “African Methodist Episcopal Church Conference, 1840,” in A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, vol. 1, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York: Citadel Press, 1951), 205–6; June 21, 1860, Diary, reel 4, Benjamin Tucker Tanner Papers, 1827–1872, in the Carter G. Woodson Collection of Negro Papers and Related Documents, 1803–1936, microfilm, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Catalogue of Wilberforce University, 1872–73, 26.
31. Proceedings of the Convention held in the City of New-York for the Formation of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (New York: American Baptist Home Mission Society, 1832), 15; The First Report of the Executive Committee of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (New York: American Baptist Home Mission Society, 1833), 18–19; Baptist Home Missions in North America, Jubilee Report 1832–1882 (New York: Baptist Home Mission Rooms, 1883), 291–322.
32. Third Report of the Executive Committee of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (New York: American Baptist Home Mission Society, 1835), 21, 27; Ninth Report of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (New York: American Baptist Home Mission Society, 1841), 51–52; Fourth Report of the Executive Committee of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (New York: American Baptist Home Mission Society, 1836), 14.
33. Fifteenth Report of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (New York: American Baptist Home Mission Rooms, 1847), 15; Twenty-Fifth Report of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (New York: American Baptist Home Mission Society, 1857), 32.
34. The American Missionary Association (AMA) created a doctrinal definition of “evangelical” that eliminated the Unitarians and Universalists: “By evangelical sentiments we understand, among others, a belief in the guilty and lost condition of all men without a Saviour; the Supreme Deity, incarnation and atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the only Saviour of the world; the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit; repentance, faith, and holy obedience, in order for salvation; the immortality of the soul; and the retributions of the judgment in the eternal punishment of the wicked, and salvation of the righteous.” See Constitution of the American Missionary Association, Third Annual Report of the AMA (1849), 34–35.
What the AMA meant by “caste” discrimination was discrimination against all people of a particular group just because they were a member of that group, regardless of what made them different. All AMA churches and schools welcomed all people regardless of their race or ethnicity.
35. Clara Merritt DeBoer, “Congregationalism and Racism: The 19th-Century Challenge,” Bulletin of the Congregational Library 48 (1997): 4–14; Lewis Tappan, History of the American Missionary Association: Its Constitution and Principles (New York: n.p., 1855), 3, 44–45.
36. Robert Samuel Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College from Its Foundation through the Civil War, vol. 1 (Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College, 1943), 88–110; Michael E. Strieby, Oberlin and the American Missionary Association (Oberlin, OH: Oberlin College, 1891), 1–6; E. H. Fairchild, Historical Sketch of Oberlin College (Springfield, OH: Republic Printing Co., 1868), 3–4.
C. W. Francis claimed that every year through the mid-1880s, Atlanta University experienced a “season of special religious interest,” which was his way of saying “revival.” See “Religious Work at Atlanta University,” American Missionary (April 1886).
37. Thirteenth Annual Report of the AMA (1859), 6.
38. Tenth Annual Report of the AMA (1856), 73.
39. Sixth Annual Report of the AMA (1852), 11.
40. Third Annual Report of the AMA (1849), 7; Seventh Annual Report of the AMA (1853), 16; “Concert Exercise,” American Missionary 37 (May 1883): 136–41.
41. Proceedings of the Fifth National Temperance Convention held at Saratoga Springs, NY, August 1–3, 1865 (New York: J. N. Stearns Publisher, 1865).
42. My portrayal contrasts sharply with that of John Rumbarger who characterizes the National Temperance Society (NTS) as beholden to the will of conservative, elite, industrial capitalists whose support for two-party politics inspired less than collegial relations with the Prohibition Party. While in principle the NTS was non-partisan and Presidents Dodge and Theodore Cuyler spoke against the Prohibition Party, Rumbarger fails to address the fact that several NTS-affiliated people were simultaneously active in both organizations. James Black, who was instrumental in founding both organizations, was not a descendent of New England’s mercantile elite, was raised on a Pennsylvania farm, and became a lawyer and railroad agent. After founding the Prohibition Party he remained connected with the NTS till his death in 1893. One of the NTS’s original vice presidents, Clinton B. Fisk, ran on the Prohibition Party ticket for New Jersey governor in 1884 and for president in 1888 and in 1886 joined the NTS Board of Managers. The following NTS vice presidents were also involved with the Prohibition Party: Alonzo A. Miner (a founding member), Gerrit Smith (keynote speaker at the first convention), and Neal Dow (1880 presidential candidate). Rumbarger speaks of lawyer-turned-full-time temperance activist Samuel F. Cary as disliking the NTS’s “aristocracy of wealth and fashion,” suggesting that the “middle class concerns” of the Prohibition Party were more his style. Cary, however, did not mind having his name listed as vice president while Dodge was president. In the 1880s Theodore Cuyler and John N. Stearns reversed themselves and in an open letter endorsed the Prohibition Party. Whatever disagreements existed between temperance reformers, the NTS successfully positioned its policies to be acceptable to reformers of all “stripes.” See John J. Rumbarger, Profits, Power, and Prohibition: Alcohol Reform and the Industrializing of America, 1800–1930 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).
43. Theodore L. Cuyler, Recollections of a Long Life (New York: American Tract Society, 1902), 55–56; National Temperance Advocate 1 (June 1866): 96; Second Annual Report of the National Temperance Society and Publication House (1867), 7.