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CHAPTER FIVE

The Jubilant Horrible Examples

Washingtonians—

German and Irish immigration—

Father Mathew—Civil War

On the night of April 2, 1840, six of the regulars were gathered, as was their custom, at Chase’s Tavern in Baltimore to gulp and to talk. William K. Mitchell, David Anderson, Archibald Campbell, John F. Hoss, James McCurley, and George Steers were serious drinkers, not men to pound the table or break into song. They made each meeting an important occasion.

Although they seemed to be hiding away at Chase’s, the men believed in keeping up as best they could with cultural doings. When anything interesting was going on in town they covered it, not by attending in a body, for that would have broken the pace of intake, but by sending representatives. That night, for example, they told two of their number to go to a lecture on, of all things, temperance, to be given by Rev. Matthew Hale Smith. The other four went about their usual business at Chase’s.

The delegates were soon back, seething with enthusiasm and vowing that Mr. Smith was a wonder. Host Chase hovered nearby, but his services were not called for. The spirit of the two was imparted to the four, and soon—it seems unbelievable, but it is an attested fact—the six men had agreed to form a total abstinence movement of their own, right there in the tavern.

They called themselves the Washingtonians, though nobody really knew why. It was not Washington’s birthday, and the Father of his Country, God knew, had been no abstainer. They thought of making it the Jeffersonians, but changed their minds. Everyone liked the name Washingtonians, so they stuck to that.

They drew up a pledge to refrain forever from drinking any “spirituous or malt liquors, wine or cider,” and everyone signed. They agreed to call a meeting a few nights hence in a larger place, a meeting to which each man invited four or five other drinking friends and at which they all swapped their experiences on inebriation. It was the first of many such gatherings, for the Washingtonians’ plan spread like wildfire. The meetings, called “experience” meetings, were attended by old and young alike, the old in most cases eager to give in detail the narrative of their tussles with demon rum, the young fascinated by the presence of depravity.

Soon there were Washingtonians in Washington, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, almost everywhere. It was an urban activity rather than a rural one, and thousands at a time signed the pledge. No machinery was built to follow up these commitments.

The Washingtonians were distinctly moral suasionists. They demanded no legislation and pleaded for no votes. Rather, they used—and it was new with them—the so-called “horrible example” technique. They loved to talk about themselves and how they had wrestled with the devil. If a speaker did not think that he himself looked sufficiently gruesome, he would hire the town souse for a few dollars or the promise of a bottle, seat him in a chair on the stage, and point to him again and again in the course of his harangue. This was undoubtedly the origin of the story about the street corner speaker that was published in anthologies of wit and humor for half a century. It went something like this:

Temperance Orator: Two years ago I was a broken-down, washed-out, walleyed, drooling, gibbering wreck. What do you suppose has wrought this wonderful change in me?

Voice from Crowd: What change?

The Washingtonians liked to have spirited music accompanying their meetings, and they concocted their own songs. A favorite was “Dash the Bowl to the Ground” by Rev. John Pierpont, whose grandson, J. Pierpont Morgan, was to go far in the financial world.

One of the first to join the Washingtonians was English-born John W. H. Hawkins, who with his wonderful platform manner and resonant voice proved to be one of the most effective speakers for the cause. There was not a dry eye in the house when Hawkins told about his little daughter breaking into tears and begging him not to send her out for another bottle of whiskey. It was this that had caused him to see the light, Hawkins said. Another Washingtonian, Rev. John Marsh, turned Hawkins’ anecdote into a written narrative. Published in pamphlet form, Hannah Hawkins, or, The Reformed Drunkard’s Daughter was enormously popular.

Virtually every new branch of Washingtonians that opened—and they were numbered by the score—printed a weekly paper. These journals were notable for their exuberance rather than accuracy. In fact, there is no record or estimate of how many pledge signers backslid. At any rate, within three years the whole movement collapsed like a punctured balloon. Nothing killed it. It simply died.

Gone with it were two affiliated societies, the Martha Washingtonians and the Cold Water Army.

The Martha Washingtonians, as the name indicates, were a sort of women’s auxiliary. The members had plenty of spirit, plenty of courage, and the best will in the world, but they were handicapped by the public attitude, held by male and female alike, that parades and mass meetings were no places for ladies. More than once when they were parading—and the Martha Washingtonians were fond of parades—they were hooted and booed and told to go home to their husbands.

The Cold Water Army was different. It consisted of the small sons and daughters of reformed drunks, children snatched in the nick of time from a life of degradation and shame. They were always a hit. They marched in blue and red uniforms, carrying tiny American flags, while they sang hymns or their own favorite political song:

We’ll purify the ballot box,

We’ll consecrate the ballot box

We’ll elevate the ballot box When we are twenty-one.

Quieter but possibly more powerful and more enduring organizations took the place of the Washingtonians, organizations that, imitating the Masons and Odd Fellows, went in for the secret handshakes, passwords, signs, and countersigns that have always been beloved by the American joiner. Just as the Salvation Army appealed to the love of military show, these new groups appealed to the love of secrecy and mystery and rites.

The Sons of Temperance, strictly secret, was chartered in 1842, and by 1851 the organization claimed almost a quarter of a million members. The Independent Order of Good Templars, also a temperance outfit, was started in 1851. At the outbreak of the Civil War the membership was fifty thousand, and it soon grew to half a million. There were the Cadets of Temperance and the Daughters of Temperance, somewhat less arcane societies, and the Independent Order of Rechabites. The children of Recab, according to the Bible, turned down Jeremiah’s offer of wine and preferred for reasons of their own to live under canvas instead of in houses. Their American namesakes, all of whom took the full abstinence pledge, were formed not into chapters and lodges but into tents.

The entire temperance movement appeared to be on its way to success. Nothing, it seemed, could stand before it. By the middle 1850’s, thirteen states had some manner of statewide prohibition, and local option, a form of armed truce, was being tried in many widely scattered places.

During the forties and fifties waves of immigrants streamed into the United States, some of them from Scandinavia but most from Ireland and Germany. The Irish liked their whiskey, the Germans their beer. The Germans, who were skilled brewers, set up plant after plant. As early as 1850 there were 431 breweries in the United States; ten years later, 1,269 breweries were producing more than a million barrels a year. New York and Pennsylvania had 85 percent of them, for the Germans, like the Irish, stayed largely in the cities.

The Irish for their part banded together to call from the old country the amazing Father Theobald Mathew, a priest who had done wonders in getting those at home to ride the water wagon by the thousands. He came over in 1850, and for about a year and a half he preached indefatigably. Traveling some 37,000 miles under the most rugged conditions, Father Mathew signed up almost 500,000 pledgees. His biggest bag was in St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, where he accepted 12,000 promises at one time. These pledges were probably Catholics, and that was all right. But most of Father Mathew’s converts were Protestants, and when he demanded that they kneel, and when he made the sign of the cross over each one, there was a great deal of muttering and dark rumors of a Roman takeover, a Vatican encroachment upon Washington. On the whole, however, Father Mathew was a success, and was even invited to the White House by President Zachary Taylor.

It was at about this time that the fancy saloon, with the mahogany bar, the brass, and the cut glass decanters, began to replace the grubbier taproom. The saloon purveyed beer, though not exclusively. It was a clubhouse, a place to meet, a place in which to talk and sing, a favorite place of the Germans in particular. At first even the drys thought the saloon an improvement over the tavern. It was not long, however, before the saloon became the drys’ number one object of hatred, their bete noire.

The drys were working as hard as ever, their speeches and prayers just as impassioned, when slavery became the greater issue of the decade, splitting the country in half.

Most abolitionists were as a matter of course prohibitionists, but as the conflict approached they had less and less time to give to the temperance movement. Susan B. Anthony, for instance, started her career as a teacher and temperance worker. She moved to the antislavery cause when it became more imperative, and after the War Between the States she and her friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were largely occupied with the equal rights movement. Temperance was supported by Miss Anthony through her long and active life, but it was a side issue.

Many dry workers feared that southerners would link the two crusades, temperance and abolition, to the detriment of both. The southerners did exactly that. The local option campaign, which had gotten off to a good start below the Mason- Dixon Line, ground to a halt. By the time the guns started booming at Fort Sumter, the dry cause had been all but forgotten the country over—except by a dedicated few. But those few would fight on.