One of my grandmothers truly believed that alcohol was totally the “root of all evil.” I alway felt bad for my grandad — he never got to enjoy a cold beer or a glass of wine. My grandad really did like Root Beer — he was a farmer and he worked very hard and a nice cold root beer tasted pretty refreshing after a long day in the fields. But if my grandmother caught him sitting on the porch drinking a root beer she went into the riot mode. We often tried to explain to her that root beer was just a soft drink, like Pepsi, or an orange soda…. but her reply was always, “then why did they choose to call it beer?” Might as well talk to a rock — her mind was made up and nothing ever changed it.
Anyhow, that brings me to today’s subject —Carry Nation. I heard a lot about Carry Nation from discussions between my grandmother and granddad. My grandmother thought she was sent from God, my granddad thought she was a lunatic.
In case you’re interested, here’s the story….
After the Civil War wound down, the temperance movement became more popular. (I looked up temperance — it means what I’d call “moderation.” But the temperance movement considered it to mean “zero tolerance.” I’ve often wondered why their movement used that name…) But back to the story — the believers of “zero tolerance” became organized and adopted the name Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1874. Their motto was something like “Lips that touch liquor, shall never touch mine.” They hung out in schools lecturing children on the joys of water and making them sign the “Pledge.”
The most famous of the WCTU group wasCarry Nation.
Carry Amelia Moore was born in Kentucky in 1846. As a young woman, she married Charles Gloyd, whose hard-drinking soon killed him and left Nation alone to support their young child. The experience instilled in Nation a lifelong distaste for alcohol. She later married David Nation, who worked as a preacher and lawyer, and they eventually settled in Kansas. After their relocation, she stormed around Kansas, busted into bars swinging her hatchet at the bottles — and the customers.
I’m not sure there’s any medical proof, but I suspect she didn’t have all her marbles. Carry’s mother was convinced that she was the real Queen of England and that Queen Victoria had usurped her right to the throne. She paraded around in flowing purple robes, conferring knighthoods on the local farmers.
Carry’s only child was psychotic and confined to a lunatic asylum. Carry herself died in a Kansas hospital of what was described as “nervous trouble.”
But before she died, she swore that God Himself had appeared to her and told her that her mission in life was to stamp out everything alcoholic in the whole country, so she abandoned her husband and daughter and marched forth to do His bidding. When she started, she was armed only with a wagonload of bricks, rocks and chunks of wood. She marched into saloons and threw rocks at the bottles and smashed the furniture with logs. She always got people’s attention — she was almost six feet tall and had a face like a bulldog — when they saw her coming, everyone bolted to safety. Somewhere along the way, she found her trusty companion that became about as famous as she was — the far more efficient hatchet. After she got the hatchet, there was no stopping her. Once you’ve thrown a rock, it stays thrown and you need more rocks, but her hatchet never left her hand.
Carry didn’t just smash the bottles — when she was finished with a saloon, it was rubble. The tables and chairs were in splinters and the floor was covered with whiskey.
She wrecked havoc in Kansas, but God wasn’t going to be satisfied with Kansas alone, so she moved on to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit and Montana — scattering holy destruction all over.
It appears that as long as Carry stuck to midwestern states, she didn’t meet with much opposition. A lot of people thought of her like some kind of a natural disaster, like tornadoes. Some probably even thought she had a point. But when she went east to places like Philadelphia, New York, Atlantic City, etc. people weren’t so forgiving and suggested that what she was doing wasn’t so much a righteous crusade, but more of a destruction of private property. She was tossed into jail over and over — something she was proud of — but she never stayed locked up for long… probably because the authorities didn’t want her hanging around annoying them. Her press coverage fell off, with the exception of the cartoonists, and that ridicule was something she wasn’t prepared for.
Carry Nation died in 1911, never living to see nationwide prohibition in America, which was established with the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution and went into effect on January 16, 1920. (Prohibition, considered a failure, was repealed on December 5, 1933 by the 21st Amendment.)
You can’t deny that Carry Nation was a colorful character in our Nation’s history, but I guess I’d have to side with my grandad’s opinion of her — not my grandmother’s.
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