American Temperance Society
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The American Temperance Society was established in Boston in 1826. Within five years there were 2,220 local chapters in the U.S. with 170,000 members who had taken a pledge to abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages. Within ten years, there were over 8,000 local groups and more than 1,500,000 members who had taken the pledge. The society benefited from, and contributed to, a reform sentiment in much of the country promoting the abolition of slavery, expanding women’s rights, temperance, and the improvement of society. Possibly because of its association with the abolitionist movement, the society was most successful in northern states.
After a while, temperance groups increasingly pressed for the mandatory prohibition of alcohol rather than for voluntary abstinence.
The American Temperance Society (ATS) was the first U.S. social movement organization to mobilize massive and national support for a specific reform cause. Within three years of its organization, ATS had spread across the country.
[edit] Sources
- History of Anti-Alcohol Movements in the U.S.
- National Prohibition of Alcohol in the U.S.
- University of Virginia
- Temperance (Wesleyan University)
- Young, Michael P. (2007). Bearing Witness against Sin: The Evangelical Birth of the American Social Movement. University of Chicago Press