Rise Of The Temperance Movement In The 1800's

John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government is echoed in the Declaration of Independence, particularizing the importance and necessity of the “consent of the governed”. Seventeen years before James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights enumerating “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” John Dickinson, author of the Articles of Confederation, wrote his Petition to the King, a formal list of injustices committed by King George III. The inherent right to peacefully express discontent with the actions of the government is the cornerstone of American democracy. In a letter to James Madison in 1789, Thomas Jefferson suggested the Constitution be rewritten every nineteen years. Instead, amendments have been added, allowing the Constitution to remain a living document. Some of the most notable amendments were passed only after decades of protests, petitions, and propaganda. The thirteenth amendment, which outlawed slavery, passed 177 years after The Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery pamphlet, one of the first formal calls for abolition in the colonies. The nineteenth amendment, which granted women suffrage, was passed seventy-two years after the Seneca Falls Convention, the first major American women’s rights movement.

The rise of the Temperance Movement in 1826 led to a ninety-three year fight for the eighteenth amendment. Women were at the forefront of the movement, championing prohibition by singing anti-alcohol hymns and protesting drug stores that sold alcohol. This nonviolent movement ultimately led to the ratification of the eighteenth amendment in 1919. Fourteen years later, the rise of speakeasies pushed Congress to pass the twenty-first amendment, repealing the eighteenth. The ratification of both the eighteenth and twenty-first amendments were sparked by one common thread: passive