Outlawing Satan’s Drink: The Prohibition Experiment

In United States, “Getting drunk, plastered, loaded, tanked, sloshed, smashed, stewed and stoned is an old American tradition.” But “dry” and “wet” Americans have differ on whether prohibition. There are something deeper than “dry” and “wet”, but rather the “pursuit of happiness” versus religious pursuit of righteousness.(Carlson 143-149)

In 1620, the first booze came to America was on the Mayflower. Then on the ship, people carried more beer than water.(143) The Puritans on the ship didn’t oppose drinking, they just opposed drinking too much. The famed Puritan preacher Increase Mather wrote that “Drink is in itself a good Creature of God, and to be received with thankfulness, but the abuse of drink is from satan.”(144) Not only Puritans, America’s native-born also like drinking.(145) “In the early 1800s, Americans drank more booze than at any time before or since-more than five gallons of pure alcohol per person per year,” and W.J. Rorabaugh even described the Americans’ daily drinking in his classic 1979 book, The Alcoholic Republic.(145) With Americans moved west, “the first sign of civilization in many new towns was a saloon or several saloons.” People drinking in the saloon also enjoy cultural offerings by the saloons.(145) Booze also have a big effect to American pharmacy, because wine in many pharmaceutical formulations, and people “was siad to have steadied the nerves of Union soldiers at the Battle of Gettysburg.”(145) Without these, booze also have a big effect to American culture, because much of America’s greatest literature, best art, Jazz, classical music, they are hard drinkers.(148)

However in United States,”dry” Americans, the prohibitionists believed that “saloon were the world’s prime sources of evil”.(145) There are two famous groups of prohibition in American history, the Prohibition Party and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In the WCTU, the most famous member was Carry Nation, because her smashing the liquor bottles with rocks.(146) In 1895, the Anti-Saloon League has “successfully lobbied for laws banning liquor in many towns and counties.” In 1913, this league try to drive for a constitutional amendment prohibiting liquor with march, but it failed. However in World War I this league’s idea was adopt by government. In 1918, Congress passed the amendment about prohibition, and the new law went into effect on January 17, 1920. Untile to Dec.5, 1933, the 18th Amendment about banned the production and sale of alcoholic beverages across the land was past 13years,10 months, 18 days, 7 hours and 27 minutes. All “wet” Americans were go drinking to celebrate about abolish 18th Amendment, but in many places of United States, “booze was still banned by state or local laws.”(143)

In this article, Carlson used a lot of evidence to support his thesis. At begin of this article, author shown his thesis to reader and in the next article he use a lot of historical events and data to support his thesis. Because author used many real historical events and detail historical data, these made his article more persuasive.