Understanding the Temperance Cause
The intertwining of Temperance with all the other reform causes of the Benevolent Empire in the 19th century is, from our perspective, puzzling. We know how this reform turned out - or we think we do. The forces of Temperance finally won their victory with a constitutional Prohibition Amendment to the Constitution (the Eighteenth Amendment), passed in 1919 and becoming law in 1920. The result was a chaotic flouting of the law during the Roaring Twenties, an increase in crime - and in heavy-handed moral policing - and finally an urgent movement to repeal the hated 18th. Prohibition's repeal with the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.
The Temperance cause is now widely perceived as a failure, and yet there are reasons to review its rationale and effects. We still regulate alcohol, and discourage excessive consumption (Mothers Against Drunk Driving, criminal penalties for drunk driving, the documented impact of alcoholism in domestic violence, etc.). So the Temperance advocates may have had a reasonable cause — attempting to limit the damage to families and lives caused by alcohol — but an unreasonable solution — total prohibition. There is also ample evidence that alcohol consumption in the United States in the 19th century was excessive, because alcoholic beverages were generally safer to drink than most beverages made from water.
The five most public of the Burleigh siblings were all ardent Temperance advocates. William, Lucien, and Cyrus all worked as agents and/or editors for Temperance organizations. George Shepard Burleigh wrote many Temperance poems. Charles was less directly engaged with Temperance, but certainly included it among the causes he supported.
Black Abolitionists and Temperance
Class Dimensions and Anti-Catholicism in Temperance movement
Women's Perspectives on Temperance
Temperance House - Advertisement
There was a network of temperance hotels and restaurants. Many of these places also welcomed Abolitionists, and meetings were sometimes held in them, another example of the high degree of overlap between these causes.
Both William Henry Burleigh and George Shepard Burleigh composed Temperance poems and songs. Some of these were intended for children; all were aimed at the "Cold Water Army!"
The Temperance and Anti-Slavery movements both engaged in consumer-driven activism. For the Anti-slavery cause, this was the importance of Free Produce - materials produced without any contact with enslaved labor. For the Temperance activists, Temperance Hotels were a feature in most major cities. Both of these strategies encountered difficulties in wide-spread acceptance, because the products/hotels were often perceived, even by friends, of being of inferior quality, or too expensive, to justify.
Add reference to Holcumb here.
The Temperance movement also provided a fertile ground for woman suffrage activism. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Mary Ann McCurdy were some of the African-American women activists who used the organizing energy of temperance to further support for suffrage in Black communities.
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998. p. 84-86.