Carrie A. Nation

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Temperance advocate Carrie Nation with her Bible and her hatchet.
Temperance advocate Carrie Nation with her Bible and her hatchet.

Carrie Nation (November 25, 1846 – June 9, 1911) was a member of the temperance movement—the battles against alcohol in pre-Prohibition America—particularly noted for promoting her viewpoint through vandalism. On many occasions, Nation would enter an alcohol-serving establishment and attack the bar with a hatchet. She has been the topic of numerous books, articles and even a 1966 opera at the University of Kansas.

Nation was a large woman nearly 6 feet (180 cm) tall and weighing 175 pounds (80 kg); she described herself as "a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn't like,"[1] and claimed a divine ordination to promote temperance by smashing up bars.

The spelling of her first name is ambiguous; both "Carrie" and "Carry" are considered correct. Official records list the former, and Nation used that spelling most of her life; the latter was used by her father in the family Bible. Upon beginning her campaign against liquor in the early 20th century, she adopted the name Carry A. Nation mainly for its value as a slogan, and had it registered as a trademark in the state of Kansas.

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[edit] Early life and first marriage

Carrie Moore was born in Garrard County, Kentucky.[2] She was in ill health much of the time; her family experienced several financial setbacks and moved several times, finally settling in Belton, Missouri, where she would later be buried.

Many of Nation's family members suffered from mental illness. Her mother went through periods where she had delusions of being Queen Victoria,[1] and young Carrie often tended to the slave quarters as a result.

In 1865, she met Dr. Charles Gloyd, and they were married on November 21, 1867. Gloyd was, by all accounts, a severe alcoholic. They separated shortly before the birth of their daughter, Charlien, and he died less than a year later, in 1869. Nation attributed her passion for fighting liquor to her failed first marriage to heavy-drinking Gloyd.

[edit] Second marriage and call from God

Carrie acquired a teaching certificate but was unable to make ends meet in this field. She then met Dr. David A. Nation, an attorney, minister and newspaper editor, nineteen years her senior. They were married on December 27, 1877. The family purchased a 1,700 acre (690 ha) cotton plantation on the San Bernard River in Brazoria County, Texas, but both knew little about farming and the venture was unsuccessful.[2] Dr. Nation became involved in the Jaybird-Woodpecker War and as a result was forced to move back north in 1889, this time to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where David found work preaching at a Christian church, and Carrie ran a successful hotel.

It was while in Medicine Lodge that she began her temperance work. Nation started a local branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and campaigned for the enforcement of Kansas' ban on the sales of liquor. Her methods escalated from simple protests to greeting bartenders with pointed remarks like "Good morning, destroyer of men's souls", to serenading saloon patrons with hymns on a hand organ.[1]

Dissatisfied with the results of her efforts, Nation began to pray to God for direction. On June 5, 1900, she felt she received her answer in the form of a heavenly vision. As she described it,

“ The next morning I was awakened by a voice which seemed to me speaking in my heart, these words, "GO TO KIOWA," and my hands were lifted and thrown down and the words, "I'LL STAND BY YOU." The words, "Go to Kiowa," were spoken in a murmuring, musical tone, low and soft, but "I'll stand by you," was very clear, positive and emphatic. I was impressed with a great inspiration, the interpretation was very plain, it was this: "Take something in your hands, and throw at these places in Kiowa and smash them".[3] ”

Obedient to the revelation, Nation gathered several rocks – "smashers", she called them – and proceeded to Dobson's Saloon. Announcing "Men, I have come to save you from a drunkard's fate", began to destroy the saloon's stock with her cache of rocks. After similarly destroying two other saloons in Kiowa, a tornado hit eastern Kansas. This she took as divine approval of her actions.[1]

[edit] "Hatchetations"

Nation continued her destructive ways in Kansas, her fame spreading through her growing arrest record. After a raid in Wichita, her husband joked that she should use a hatchet next time for maximum damage. Nation replied, "That's the most sensible thing you have said since I married you".[1]

Alone or accompanied by hymn-singing women, she would march into a bar and sing and pray, while smashing bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet. Between 1900 and 1910, she was arrested some 30 times for "hatchetations," as she came to call them. Nation paid her jail fines from lecture-tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets.[4] In April of 1901, Nation came to Kansas City, Missouri, a city known for its wide opposition to the temperance movement, and smashed liquor in various bars on 12th street in Downtown Kansas City.[5] She was promptly arrested, fined $500 ($11,500 in 2006 dollars), and ordered by a judge to leave Kansas City and never return.[6]

[edit] Later life, death, and memorial

Nation's anti-alcohol activities became well known, with the slogan "All Nations Welcome But Carrie" becoming a bar-room staple. [7] She published a biweekly newsletter called The Smasher's Mail, a newspaper titled The Hatchet, and later in life exploited her name by appearing in vaudeville,[1] selling photographs of herself, charging to lecture, and marketing miniature hatchets.[8]

Nation applauded the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 because she believed that he secretly drank alcohol and that drinkers always got what they deserved.[9]

Near the end of her life, she moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where she founded the home known as Hatchet Hall. A spring just across the street from the house is named after her.

She collapsed during a speech in a Eureka Springs park and was taken to a hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas. She died there on June 9, 1911, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Belton City Cemetery in Belton, Missouri. The Women's Christian Temperance Union later erected a stone inscribed "Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition, She Hath Done What She Could."

Her home in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, the Carrie Nation House, was bought by the Women's Christian Temperance Union in the 1950s and was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1976.

[edit] Works about Nation

  • The Use and Need of the Life of Carrie A. Nation (1905) by Carrie A. Nation
  • Carry Nation (1929) by Herbert Asbury
  • Cyclone Carry: The Story of Carry Nation (1962) by Carleton Beals
  • Vessel of Wrath: The Life and Times of Carry Nation (1966) by Robert Lewis Taylor
  • Carry A. Nation: Retelling The Life (2001) by Fran Grace

[edit] Cultural references

The girl-band in the 1970 exploitation movie Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is named The Carrie Nations.

The fictional Carry Nation High School is the main setting of the 2007 movie Bratz.

Holly, Michigan holds an annual Carry Nation festival on the weekend after Labor Day, "in honor of the great prohibitionist's visit to Holly, when it was a booming railroad town riddled with taverns and ladies of ill repute". The festival consists of a parade, pageants, and multiple sporting, craft, and talent events. Local citizen Jamie Grimaldi holds an annual block party as part of the celebration. At one time there was a Carrie Nations restaurant located in Augusta, Georgia

There is a bar named Carry Nations in Los Gatos, California, started by the inventor of the Pet Rock, Gary Dahl.

For several years, in the 1970s and 1980s the Silver Dollar City (an amusement park in Branson, MO) "saloon show" featured a fictional Carrie A. Nation. Halfway into the show, she would burst in wielding a hatchet and break up the saloon show.

In the 1966 poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra" by Allen Ginsberg, Carrie Nation is an emblem of American cultural violence:

"Carry Nation began the war in Vietnam here/with an angry smashing ax/attacking Wine --."

Carry Nation's (A Temperate Bar) was an establishment in Manchester, Connecticut at the corner of Main Street and Middle Turnpike. Souvenir glasses were available bearing the daguerreotype image accompanying this article. The establishment operated from 1969 through 1982, when the building was razed and the site became a Vietnam veterans' park and memorial.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f McQueen, Keven (2001). "Carrie Nation: Militant Prohibitionist", Offbeat Kentuckians: Legends to Lunatics, Ill. by Kyle McQueen, Kuttawa, Kentucky: McClanahan Publishing House. ISBN 0913383805. 
  2. ^ a b Nation, Carry. The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation (TXT). Retrieved on 2007-01-13. 
  3. ^ Carry's Inspiration for Smashing. Kansas State Historical Society. Retrieved on 2007-01-13.
  4. ^ Paying the Bills. Kansas State Historical Society. Retrieved on 2007-01-13.
  5. ^ "Mrs. Nation Fired in Police Court: Judge McAuley Assesses the Joint-Smasher $500 and Orders Her out of Town," The Kansas City World, April 15, 1901
  6. ^ "Mrs. Nation Barred from Kansas City," The New York Times, April 16, 1901
  7. ^ Carry A. Nation: A National and International Figure. Kansas State Historical Society. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.
  8. ^ http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Controversies/1124913901.html Temperance Movement Groups and Leaders in the U.S.
  9. ^ http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Controversies/1124913901.html Temperance Movement Groups and Leaders in the U.S.

[edit] External links