December 5 is Repeal Day, We should celebrate it
Consider for a moment that there was a time in the United States when one couldn’t buy beer, or wine, or whiskey, or vermouth, or tequila, or rum. One could, but it was illegal to do so. All because of a temperance movement which sought to rid the land of the free of alcohol.
The drys tried three times to Amend the US Constitution. The last time it took.
So just as all of the doughboys from World War One came back from Europe and sought to find their place in society, they found they couldn’t draw a pint. That must have been a kick in the teeth.
The 18th Amendment
Section 1—After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2—The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3—This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Prohibition has deep roots in Puritanism and the first alcohol bans came out of the Northeast, Maine specifically. It was the mayor of Portland, Neal Dow, who drew up the first real prohibitionist legislation. At one point the citizens of Portland (at least some of them) engaged in what was called The Rum Riot during which Dow ordered the rioters to be fired upon, killing one. This would be one of the first casualties of American Prohibition, but there would be many more to come.
Consider what it took to make such a mistake. This country, born in a liberty based revolution, the only successful one in the history of the world, where people carved livings out of the Earth, banned alcohol with a constitutional amendment, the 18th. The Senate, The House, and 3/4 of the states all thought it was a good idea. Woodrow Wilson to his credit vetoed the Volstead Act but was overridden, so powerful was the temperance movement at the time.
It is argued that much of the anti-alcohol sentiment in the US reflected a general anti-immigrant sentiment. Catholics from Ireland and Germany and Italy drank. Baptists didn’t. (Or didn’t do it openly.) If one limited drink, one limited the influx of immigrants. Or that was the idea anyway.
Incidentally something similar happened with cannabis. Cannabis was associated with Mexican field workers and so the term “marijuana” was used by the feds when making the case against that drug. But that is for a different post.
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