VT: Then Again: The progression of Vermont’s temperance movement
By Mark Bushnell
March 31, 2019
Alcohol flowed like the rivers, threatening to wash away anything decent in its path. That’s how Daniel Morton viewed Vermont society as it entered the 19th century. As pastor of the Congregational Church of Shoreham, Morton warned ominously that “no course of conduct leads more directly to wretchedness in this life, and perdition in the future, than intemperance in the use of ardent spirits.”
Fortunately for Morton, he was not alone—he was far from it. He was one of thousands of Vermonters who had dedicated themselves to purging the state of alcohol abuse. However, despite widespread support for the cause, Morton believed his side had lots of work to do. Delivering a sermon at the first convention of the Vermont Temperance Society in 1828, he declared, “We have assailed a few of the out-posts, while the enemy has been left in possession of his camp, his fortresses, his strongholds.”
As Morton’s comments suggest, 19th century Vermonters were deeply divided on the issue of alcohol. The anti-alcohol groups called their movement “temperance” in that they wanted to temper drinkers’ habits, not ban them outright. It was drunkenness they opposed, not drinking, per se. However, over time, a growing core within the movement would begin to push for complete prohibition.
The temperance movement’s increasing stridency was, perhaps, understandable. Heavy drinking had been common in Vermont from its earliest days. In 1785, one observer said the town of Clarendon was rife with “profanity, debauchery and drunkenness.” Rev. Asa Burton, one of the first settlers of Thetford, found the townspeople “intemperate, immoral and vulgar.” Seemingly any gathering was an excuse to drink–weddings, funerals, house-raisings, even militia training days. One Vermonter commented the militia’s cavalry members understood only three commands: “Mount! Drink! Fall off!”
Evidence of alcohol’s prevalence in daily life is more than anecdotal. A legislative committee in 1817 estimated Vermonters spent $1 million a year on hard liquor. In some towns, people spent more on liquor than on schools and all other public expenses combined.
Vermonters’ drinking habits, however, did nothing to set them apart from other Americans who, at the time of the Revolution, annually drank the estimated equivalent of four gallons of 200-proof alcohol per capita.
Drinking was so ingrained in Vermonters that efforts to curb it sometimes met violent opposition. Horace Greeley, who would grow up to found the New York Tribune, was apprenticed as a young teenager to a printer in East Poultney in the 1820s. While there, he made the mistake of telling someone in town that he had resolved not to drink. Word of this odd pronouncement spread quickly. Soon afterward, while he was participating in the town’s annual sheep washing, people scolded Greeley for his decision and gave him a glass of liquor to drink. When he refused, two or three other boys grabbed Greeley and forced some of the liquor down his throat.
“That was understood to be the end of my foolish attempt at singularity,” he later wrote. But people underestimated Greeley. Demonstrating the tenacity and persuasiveness that would make him one of America’s most influential journalists, Greeley rallied people against drinking. Soon, it was safe to declare oneself a temperance supporter in East Poultney.
The fight for temperance in Vermont as a whole didn’t prove as easy. Temperance supporters were divided over what their ultimate goal was and how to achieve it. Were they against alcohol or just the abuse of it? Was it enough to make a moral argument? Or should government get involved in an effort to legislate morality?
Temperance was just one of a dizzying array of reforms Americans were undertaking in the early 19th century. Reformers sought to change how we treated prisoners and the mentally ill, as well as the poor, slaves and women.
Driving the urgency of the reforms was the belief among many Christians that the Millennium was at hand. They disagreed, however, over what that meant. Some believed Christ would return and establish a 1,000-year reign over a perfect society before the souls of the saved would ascend to heaven. Others believed humans had to create that perfect society and maintain it for 1,000 years before Christ would return. Either way, the time seemed ripe for reform.
William Miller, a minister who preached regularly in Vermont and founded the Adventist Church, tied temperance directly to the Millennium. “For your soul’s sake,” he warned people, “drink not another draught, lest (Christ) come and find you drunken!”
Temperance leaders didn’t just rely on pulpits to get their message out. During the mid-1800s, at least six pro-temperance newspapers sprang up in Vermont. Papers with names like Journal of Temperance, Vermont Temperance Star and Vermont Temperance Advocate harangued readers about the evils of drink.
The most important audience for these attacks on alcohol was perhaps the state’s legislators. By the 1840s, temperance leaders, who had hoped moral suasion would be enough, were pushing for legislative action. They didn’t want merely to limit alcohol consumption; they wanted to prohibit it. In arguing their case to the Legislature, the temperance society wrote that “it is a principle of law well established, and everywhere recognized, that no man is at liberty to use even his own property in such a manner as to essentially injure others, or to become a public nuisance.”
The Legislature responded in 1844 by passing a “local option” system. Selling alcohol was banned in all communities except those that voted to approve the granting of liquor licenses. In 1852, the Legislature went further, narrowly passing an outright prohibition on alcohol. But before the law would go into effect, legislators wanted to gauge public opinion. The resulting non-binding referendum shows just how split the state was. The prohibition won 22,215 to 21,045, largely because anti-prohibition factions chose to boycott the vote.
For the next 50 years, Vermont was officially a dry state. In reality, however, Vermont’s efforts to ban alcohol proved as ineffectual as the nation’s experiment with prohibition in the early 20th century.
That is not to say that the temperance movement failed. All the badgering of heavy drinkers paid off. By one estimate, between the Revolution and the 1840s, Americans cut their alcohol consumption by two-thirds. As a result, many were saved from lives as drunks. Poor families suddenly weren’t quite so poor, as alcoholics started saving money they previously would have spent on booze.
The temperance movement also brought new voices into American politics – those of women. Formerly excluded from public life, women were now being sought to take a leading role in the fight against alcohol. They were uniquely capable of the task, society believed. Women were increasingly seen in the 19th century as the moral compasses of their households and as the true victims of men’s alcoholism. As such, it was only natural they would take a leading role in the temperance fight.
The debate opened the door for women to enter politics. With this right granted, they naturally looked to others that were being denied. So it was that the women who fought for temperance, and generations of women that followed led the struggle for the right to vote.