The temperance movement was the largest reform movement of the antebellum period, in part because there was an increasing recognition that Americans had a real drinking problem: the national per capita consumption of distilled spirits jumped from under two gallons in 1800 to just over five gallons in 1830 and was continuing on the rise. In addition to being a discourse that addressed what many regarded as a significant social problem, temperance addressed larger issues of class, race, gender, and the body. Because of the link between temperance and prohibition in the early 1920s, temperance has come to be thought of as a conservative, even reactionary, social position. Thus it is important to emphasize that during the antebellum period, most temperance reformers were progressives. Temperance reformers of the 1840s and 1850s in particular tended to be at the vanguard of antislavery and feminist reform. They regarded slavery and patriarchy as forms of "intemperate" power. In the tradition of Ben Franklin, temperance reformers also sought to empower wage laborers and thus, particularly with the rise of the Washingtonian movement during the 1840s, had a communitarian and fiercely democratic bent as well. Temperance reformers imagined a more humane and equitable nation in which all citizens had control over their bodies. That control, rather than necessarily leading to a rigid rationality conducive to the Protestant work ethic, offered the promise of a "temperate" abandonment to the natural intoxications of body and spirit as described in Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Poet" (1844). A discourse of body and nation, temperance had a major influence on the writings of Emerson, Whitman, and numerous other American authors of the period.

The institutional sources of temperance activity in the United States were set in place by Federalist- and Protestant-directed societies--such as the Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, founded in 1813, and the American Temperance Society, founded in 1846--which concerned themselves with reforming the drinking habits of the working classes. Proclaiming the virtues of self-denial and thrift, temperance tracts from these organizations attempted to promulgate a capitalist ethic conducive to the demands of the newly expanding factories. This early national version of temperance was hierarchical and elitist, and thus proved to be of only limited interest to the working and middling classes. All that changed with the rise of Washingtonian societies during the 1840s. Founded in 1840 in a Baltimore barroom, the Washingtonian Temperance Society placed a special emphasis on temperance meetings and testimonials--gatherings of working-class men at local taverns where individuals would tell their tales of falls into alcoholism to one another and subsequently take a public pledge of abstinence. These group meetings, which were organized and run by former alcoholics, not by the clergy or elites, helped to develop fraternity among working-class men and have been credited by some historians with developing a sense of class consciousness and collectivity in the United States. The Washingtonians claimed to have secured over a half million temperance pledges by the mid- 1840s, and they became well known for their gatherings, parades, and increasing political clout.

An issue that spoke to a wide range of constituencies, temperance became a central motif in writings of the period. Between 1829 and 1834 the New York State Temperance Society circulated over four million copies of its publications, while the American Tract Society distributed over five million of its temperance pamphlets by 1851. Significantly, various temperance organizations saw imaginative literature--fiction, poetry, and drama--as crucial to the cause. In 1836 the American Temperance Union endorsed temperance fiction as an efficacious method of gaining adherents. For temperance crusaders, the novel was of special importance, as book-length fiction, in the narrative tradition of William Hogarth's print cycle The Rake's Progress (1734), could trace the degeneration over time of the individual tempted to drink, and could trace as well the impact of drinking on the individual's family. An important forerunner of antebellum temperance fiction was Mason Weems's The Drunkard's Looking Glass (1813). During the 1830s, Mary Fox's The Ruined Deacon (1834) and George B. Cheever's Deacon Giles' Distillery (1835) achieved a considerable readership. But by far the most influential temperance novelist of the period was Timothy Shay Arthur, who produced nearly 200 books, edited several popular journals, and published numerous sketches and tales. His best-selling collection of temperance sketches, Six Nights with the Washingtonians (1842), sold 175,000 copies by 1850 and was an important influence on Whitman's temperance novel of the same year, Franklin Evans. Even more popular was Arthur's novel Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, and What I Saw There (1854), which attempted to demonstrate the need for legislation prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages. Arthur's emphasis on the downward path of intemperate individual and nation could be contrasted to Whitman's emphasis on the upward flight of temperate individual and nation in Leaves of Grass, the first edition of which was published one year after Ten Nights.

Whitman works with and against temperance discourse. Whether or not he shared the views of temperance reformers, he clearly knew the rhetoric and shared an interest in thinking about the intoxicated and temperate bodies. He wrote temperance tracts during the 1840s, and when he turned to poetry in the 1850s, temperance (and intemperance) emerged as important motifs of his poetry. This site provides contextual materials that will enable users to think in more complex ways about Whitman and temperance. The site provides a broad sampling of major temperance writings and images of the period, provides examples of Whitman's own writings on temperance, and points to moments in Whitman's mature poetry that can be illuminated with respect to the cultural debate on temperance. The site also provides key critical statements on Whitman and temperance, a bibliography, and suggested teaching approaches. Users of the larger Whitman/Dickinson teaching site, The Classroom Electric: Dickinson, Whitman, and American Culture, will find that this section complements other sites on Whitman and the body. This Whitman and Temperance site also offers a useful framework for thinking about temperance in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and provides some examples of her poems on drinking, "taverns," and intoxication.