Charles Carter

Dr. Gagnon

March 14, 2003

Temperance in Antebellum Athens

Like every other state in antebellum America, Georgia had its share of temperance societies. The aim of teetotalers, driven by industrialists and religious people, even spilled over onto the minds of men and women living in Athens. By 1830, this college town saw the birth of the Clarke County Temperance Society. And in the 1840s, Athens came to feel the sway of such national teetotaler organizations as the Washingtonian Temperance Society and the Sons of Temperance. But temperance did not have much might in a largely pre-industrial antebellum Athens. Since most Athenians saw nothing wrong with moderate drinking, the extremist thinking of many teetotalers did not take firm root in the town. That local industrialists did not agree on temperance also kept teetotaler drives from being fruitful.

           

The antebellum period saw industrialization sweep across America. This change led households to flood into towns and fostered social ills therein. Over time these towns began to look unsightly as they became crowed. Drunkenness led to fights, encouraged low worker output, and bred strife among kin. Out of this backdrop came temperance movements. In wanting to check the snowballing growth of social ills, profit-hungry businessmen and religious people started temperance societies in towns far and wide across America.

           

The first cluster of teetotalers in Athens came together to form the Clarke County Temperance Society in 1830. This religious-driven organization held meetings at a local Baptist Church. By letting any person join, the town’s first temperance society stood in stark contrast to the male teetotaler brotherhoods that took root later on in Athens.  And yet, like many of these same clusters of teetotalers, the Clarke County Temperance Society was set up to put youth on the right moral track. After all, Athens was a college town to which young men from all over the state came for schooling. By shaping the moral outlook of these youth, Athens’ first temperance organization thought its deeds could better the coming generation of leaders.[1]

           

But the Clarke County Temperance Society did not fare well. The organization met only twice each year.  Since any social web calls for regular interaction to be fruitful, it is not surprising that this temperance group’s message did not take hold among Athenians. And since a northern spirit of temperance in the 1830s gave birth to many new Georgian teetotaler groups that met more often, it is also not surprising that these societies would come to overshadow Athens’ first cluster of teetotalers. And that is just what they did.[2]

           

One of these national organizations, a secret society called the Sons of Temperance, arose among exclusivist elites. This brotherhood set up divisions in Georgia throughout the 1840s.  Chapters in such towns as Athens and Macon came into being. Being an elitist secret society, the Sons of Temperance was set up in such a way as to make a man go through many hurdles to become a member.  A member, known as a brother, had to nominate a man to join the brotherhood. Three other brothers would then look into that man’s lifestyle to see if he was worthy of joining. If the three brothers agreed the club seeker was an upstanding man, he could then come into the brotherhood.[3]

           

But becoming a member was not easy for poor folk. The Sons of Temperance required a two-dollar entry fee. Since this costly fee was equal to a week’s worth of worker’s wages, and since drunkenness ran rampant largely among poor laborers, the Sons of Temperance may have deterred the people who needed to hear the temperance message the most. After all, the men who toiled in the fields and did other backbreaking work found it hard to make ends meet. Putting food on the table stood over temperance in their minds. And so these men would not likely have made their loved ones go hungry by putting a whole week’s worth of wages into a society whose aim was to fight alcohol. [4]

           

Evidence also hints that spreading the message of temperance may not have been the main goal of the Sons of Temperance. Surprisingly, matters related to the baleful nature of alcohol get little attention in the society’s constitution. But pages of rules about the society’s role in paying for brothers’ funeral expenses abound. The constitution of the Sons of Temperance calls for the brotherhood to pay the sum of thirty dollars to cover the burial costs of any brother who died. It also requires fifteen dollars to be allotted for the funeral costs of a member’s dead wife.[5]

           

But covering last expenses was not the only role the Sons of Temperance carried out that had no bearing on alcohol. As the fellowship’s bylaws hint, caring for sick members was another job of the brotherhood. An 1845 bylaw says fellow brothers had to visit any sick brother at least once a day. And even one of the orders of business for each meeting was to see if any other brothers were ill. Since antebellum medical practices were so crude that folks often died early in life, death did not simply flicker through the minds of Georgians as it does today. Death was instead an everyday event that weighed on the minds of men. By looking out for sick brothers, the Sons of Temperance may have stopped some deaths and thus saved money that would have been used for burial costs. And yet this organization, like all social webs in antebellum Georgia, helped comfort its members so that they could come to terms with sickness and death in a time before the blessings of social security and life-saving medical breakthroughs.[6]

           

It also seems that the Sons of Temperance had much in common with contemporary life insurance agencies. The first fee a man paid to join the organization was not the only cost. Just like one has to pay regular dues to keep life insurance today, members of the Sons of Temperance paid weekly fees to keep membership in the brotherhood. The amount was six cents. If a brother was thirteen weeks behind on dues, the organization drove him away. Like a man who does not reap insurance benefits for not paying, the expelled member did not get goods either.[7]

           

But not every temperance organization in Athens was a secret society that frowned on alcohol, and, at the same time, raised money for things that had no bearing on temperance. The Washingtonians, an organization first formed among reformed working-class drunkards in Baltimore, spread to Georgia in the early 1840s.  Newspapers hint that this group had set up a chapter in Athens in the late 1840s.  The Washingtonians even spread to Franklin College in 1848. That chapter took one Saturday out of each month to meet and talk about the social ills that alcohol bred. Preachers, community leaders, and students did most of the talking. This society did not need to meet weekly like the Sons of Temperance. There was only so much to say about alcohol. And though men and women died young in antebellum Georgia, funeral costs were not on the minds of college students. After all, these youth were readying themselves to become men, not preparing for death. [8]

           

The students who joined the Washingtonian Temperance Society of Franklin College not only thought alcohol was the bane of man’s temporal and spiritual life, but also believed college-aged men should especially take a stand against hard drink. Becoming an alcoholic in one’s college years, many thought, meant one would not fare well in life. The diary of James D. Frederick, a member of the Washingtonians and student at the University of Georgia, bespeaks this outlook:

Alcohol has such a fatal tendency in hindering the success and future prospects of young men during their college careers. We therefore do all in our powers to promote the welfare and happiness of our fellow students and resolve to form a society and bind ourselves to the following pledge: I do solemnly pledge myself upon the honor of a gentleman to entirely abstain from the use of all alcohol and spirits, so long as I am connected with Franklin College unless advised by a temperate physician.

It is surprising that over one-hundred students signed this pledge in—of all places—Frederick’s daily journal on February 28, 1848. As that journal states, the Washingtonians of Franklin College wanted to promote the welfare and happiness of fellow students. But the log does not talk about bettering the lot of others. And so one can reckon that the Washingtonian Temperance Society of Franklin College was an organization strictly for students. Just like the Sons of Temperance, then, Franklin College’s chapter of the Washingtonians may have excluded the workers who also needed to hear the temperance message. [9] 

           

Since all students at Franklin College were male, no women signed the Washingtonian pledge. And though research has not shed light on any outstanding women of temperance in Athens, one should not think the voices of women went unheard. Many north Georgian teetotalers dwelt on how alcohol abuse among husbands and sons marred women’s lives. Wives of drunkards bore broken-hearted grief, and mothers of alcoholics cried. Heavy drink, claimed Lewis Reneau of Atlanta, made men’s hearts become hard to these things.[10]

           

As for Athenian teetotalers, none stood out more than Joseph Henry Lumpkin. A religious-minded lawyer who moved to Athens in 1842 and lived there until his death in 1867, Lumpkin had been a vice president of the State Temperance Society of Georgia in 1833. By 1839, he had joined a wealthy Methodist planter named Josiah Flourney in leading a campaign to revoke Georgia’s liquor licensing laws.  The aim of this so-called Flourney Movement was to end the sale of hard drink. In May 1839, Flourney urged Lumpkin to offer a petition against liquor licensing laws. And that is just what Lumpkin did. But the enthusiasm for the campaign never was strong in Athens. Many claimed that prohibiting the sale of alcohol was unconstitutional and could not be enforced.[11]

           

Yet Lumpkin’s outlook would change over time.  Having later become the president of the Georgia Temperance Society, Lumpkin no longer favored political action. His words at an 1854 convention bespeak this outlook:

One thing is certain, whatever may be the relative advantages of moral suasion and legal coercion, no law to abolish the traffic [of alcohol] can ever be passed, or passed, permanently sustained, unless the public conscience and judgment are properly instructed. Eschew all connection with politics and parties. Next to the union of Church and State, I know of no alliance more unholy.”

Since Lumpkin thought temperance backers would waste time by striving to make the sale of alcohol a political matter, he must have understood that drunkenness was not something that could be easily curtailed by the state. Seeing that prohibition failed seventy years later, Lumpkin’s insight was wise.[12]

           

But most Georgians who belonged to temperance organizations in the 1850s did not share Lumpkin’s outlook. They instead thought the state could put an end to alcohol trafficking and thus lighten the baleful social ills thereof.  Most people in Lumpkin’s own Georgia Temperance Society felt this way too. This cluster of teetotalers even chose to name a candidate for governor in 1855. The man, a well-to-do preacher from Atlanta, was Basil Hallam Overby. Since most Georgians frowned on temperance, Overby’s bid for governor was not fruitful.[13]

           

Though teetotalers strove to spread their outlook, temperance did not fare well as a movement in Athens either. That the signatures of the Washingtonian students were found in a journal and not on some formal document may be a token of the dwindling strength of that organization in Athens during the 1840s. Michael Gagnon claims the sway of the Washingtonians had already begun to decline by the mid-1840s. In fact, he says that cluster of teetotalers was not even mentioned in newspapers after 1844. [14]

 

What, then, hindered the charm of temperance societies in Athens? That the pledge to which the Washingtonians bound themselves says doctors could prescribe alcohol as medicine suggests that hard drink was not thoroughly seen as a bad thing. And since clean water was hard to come by in antebellum America, it is not surprising that so many men and women drank alcohol. At least people knew that, so long as they did not go overboard, drinking beer or liquor would not kill them. The same could not be said about tainted water.

           

With that backdrop in mind, it is not startling that temperance was a divisive matter. From the dawn of temperance reform in Athens, clusters of people had opposed dictates against alcohol. An anti-semi-temperance society had taken root early on to counter the Clarke County Temperance Society, which was thought to blacken the reputation of any man who drank alcohol, the amount of his consumption notwithstanding. This anti-semi-temperance group, unlike the elitist Sons of Temperance and educated Washingtonians of Franklin College, let drunkards join its society in hopes of changing these men’s bad habits. And so it is conceivable that this inclusive society had a more positive bearing on the lives of the poor people who knew the burdens of alcoholism first hand. In perhaps dissolving the bonds of class snobbery, the anti-semi-temperance organization gave farm workers and wage laborers a message that frowned on heavy drinking, even though it brooked moderate alcohol use.[15]

           

But perhaps the strongest reason why temperance did not take root in Athens lies in the deeds and thinking of the town’s mightiest men. Gagnon claims the few powerful industrialists in Athens did not see eye to eye on temperance. During the antebellum period, drives against hard drink fared well in big northern towns. Northern industrialists, seeing that alcohol abuse bred ills that hurt worker output and fostered social disorder, pushed for temperance as a way to safeguard their businesses’ well-being. But since antebellum Athens was a small town where industrialization had not taken firm root, the industrial concerns of Athenian elites did not mirror those of big-city industrialists. And so there was not as much pressure for temperance reform in Athens as there was in the urban north. [16]

           

In short, antebellum Athens had its share of teetotalers. Among this town’s anti-alcohol groups were the Clarke County Temperance Society, the Sons of Temperance, and the Washingtonians. But these clusters did not fare well in Athens. Unlike the north, Athenian industrialists did not take a strong stand for or against temperance. Many men living in Athens did not like the prospects of having a sweeping law that ended the sale of hard drink. These people thought temperance went against their rights as citizens. And thus this mindset fostered the birth of an anti-semi-temperance league that appealed to those who were excluded by the elitist Sons of Temperance and educated Washingtonians of Franklin College. This anti-semi-temperance group whittled down the anti-alcohol message that teetotalers espoused in such a way as to suggest heavy drinking was bad, but moderate drinking was acceptable. In a world where water could be fouled and where alcohol was often a medicine, the message of the anti-semi-temperance organizations overpowered that of temperance organizations.