Temperance and Ethnicity

(Cincinnati's population swelled during the mid-nineteenth century as European immigrants poured into the city. Ethnic Germans in particular began to arrive in record numbers, transforming the character of the city as they settled in the Over the Rhine area. While the immigrants in many ways managed to assimilate with the greater American population of the city, occasional conflict between native and immigrant was inevitable, and sometimes heated. This excerpt from Over the Barrel, Volume One demonstrates how beer and its prominence in everyday German culture served as the source of - or at least an excuse for - confrontation between traditional Cincinnati residents and the newcomers.)

In Cincinnati as elsewhere, German immigrants of the 1850s lived relatively well in their new homeland, though by no means was their experience an easy one. For the typical German immigrant, life was a mixture of industry and relaxation, of work and play, where in the aftermath of lengthy and hard work an evening or weekend day of family and social activities was guarded rigorously as a virtual right of existence. While many Cincinnatians respected the ability of the German element to combine rigorous work with recreation, the failure of the German immigrant to adapt to existing customs occasionally caused friction between newcomer and native. The German inclination to celebrate the Sabbath as a day off work, the one day each week on which family and cultural outings were possible for most members of the community, was irritating enough to many native-born Americans. But the tendency to do so with substantial quantities of fresh lager beer brought the immigrant element into direct conflict with hard-line natives, especially in the religious community-and among the temperance advocates who often populated it-as well as with blue laws which specifically forbade the sale or consumption of beer on Sundays. Such friction represented a significant part of a complex problem that pitted native against immigrant, particularly during the early- to mid-1850s and in rapidly growing urban centers across the nation. The nativist movement of the period gave rise to an intense anti-immigrant mood, one which created tremendous tension in ethnically diverse cities such as Cincinnati. Alcohol quickly became a flashpoint in the debate about the foreign-born, with beer consumption a primary factor in the evaluation of the foreign element by temperance and prohibition advocates in the city.

Temperance agitation in early Cincinnati grew out of the dominance and easy availability of whiskey and other distilled liquors, but also was part of a greater movement which took place throughout America at the same time. Instigated largely by men of religion, initial temperance activity generally opposed the excessive use of ardent spirits, a goal not dissimilar to that of several states to promote common beer and ale as beverages of moderation. In 1808 the first temperance organization in America, the Temperance Society of Moreau and Northumberland (Saratoga County, New York), was founded with an intention to eliminate the consumption of distilled spirits, unless in the case of medical necessity; common beer and ale were not mentioned among products to be avoided. The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, founded in 1813, likewise sought to discourage-but not prohibit-"the too free use of ardent spirits." Not until the next decade did the temperance viewpoint begin to change, from a goal of temperate, or moderate, use of alcoholic beverages to an abstinence from all intoxicants.

The movement which eventually culminated in the enactment of national prohibition legislation traced its roots back to the 1820s and the highly conservative northeastern United States, where devout believers in the Puritan ethic felt that the consumption of alcohol was responsible for a variety of social evils. Representative among events designed to counteract the growing American brewing industry was the formation of the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance, better known as the American Temperance Society, in Boston on February 13, 1826. The initial focus of the group and its supporters was placed on moderation and abstinence. Through the use of moral suasion and religious analogies, temperance crusaders attempted to convince drinkers to abandon the consumption of alcoholic beverages, for the betterment of the self as well as of society. The reformers used argument, persuasion, example, and education in efforts to end the traffic in alcohol, which adherents believed made drinkers into helpless victims of manufacturers, distributors, vendors, and people in government and high society with excessive power. The focus of early temperance advocates remained on individual responsibility, such that sympathizers were expected to effect change on a personal level. Little serious consideration was given to prohibition laws into the 1840s, as groups such as the Washingtonian Movement, launched in Baltimore in 1840, advocated the avoidance of alcoholic beverages but strongly opposed the idea of legislative interference in the freedom of people's ability to drink as they chose.

The noteworthy rise in drunkenness and increased level of criminal activity in Cincinnati during the early nineteenth century was blamed on hard liquor in many circles, and soon gave rise to a rudimentary temperance movement. Local temperance advocates expressed outrage at the substantial increase in the number of city taverns by 1816, and denounced alcohol vendors as being "notorious villains" and "super-annuated drunkards," even charging that tavernkeepers with an avowed preference for temperance had poisoned younger members of the community and subverted the moral development of the city. In subsequent years the character of the Cincinnati riverfront drinkery remained basically the same, and in the late 1820s Dr. Daniel Drake conducted the first known area meeting of temperance supporters who sought to reform the local whiskey trade. Their activities remained relatively isolated in Cincinnati-and focused primarily on the consumption of hard liquor-for the next two decades. Sporadic meetings and demonstrations kept the issue in the public eye, but the best efforts of Drake and other advocates of moderation frequently garnered little success, as demonstrated by an account of a local temperance lecture given in September 1827:

The meeting was held at three o'clock in the afternoon. Many old citizens were present, who were quite familiar with old whisky, and upon whose cheeks it blossomed forth in purple dyes. To these, and indeed to the great body of people in the West, a temperance speech was a new idea. Dr. Drake was the speaker. They listened to him with respectful attention, and were by no means opposed to the object. The speech, however, was long. The doctor had arrayed a formidable column of facts. The day was hot, and after he had spoken about an hour without apparently approaching the end, someone, out of regard for the doctor's strength or by the force of habit, cried out: "Let us adjourn awhile and take a drink." The meeting did adjourn, and McFarland's tavern being near by, the old soakers refreshed themselves with "old rye." The meeting again assembled, the doctor finished his speech, and all went off well.

Undeterred by the setback, Drake continued to lecture on behalf of temperance, and on December 23, 1841 he managed to intertwine his work in the field of medicine and passion for moderation by creating the Physiological Temperance Society of the Louisville Medical Institute. The goals of the organization were clear in their desire to combine medical understanding and moral leadership, noting that its reason for existence was to "study and make known the causes of the excessive use by the people of intoxicating drinks and other narcotic stimulants; to inquire into the diseases of the body and mind produced by them; devise remedies for the same, both curative and preventive; and to discourage intemperance by the example and influence of its members individually not less then their labors as a corporation."

By 1829 concern over the intemperate nature of Cincinnati alcohol consumption led to the establishment of three organizations designed to combat the alcohol menace, the Cincinnati Temperance Society, Number One, Auxiliary to the American Temperance Society; a similarly-titled but separate organization, the Cincinnati Temperance Society; and the Young Men's Temperance Society, which by 1834 numbered 370 members. But by most accounts the early temperance movement in Cincinnati was ineffective: as late as 1838 Cincinnati taverns-euphemistically known as "coffeehouses" in some circles-were described by lawyer Timothy Walker as being greater in number relative to its population than in any other city in the nation. At the same time a traveler remarked that during a trip through the city he had noticed "abundant evidence of great wickedness. The temperance cause I fear has made but little advance in this place." By 1834 the Young Men's Temperance Society and another group remained, the Hamilton County Temperance Society, Auxiliary to the Ohio State Temperance Society; and by 1841, when the Cincinnati Washingtonian Temperance Society was formed, only one organization was left, the Cincinnati Total Abstinence Temperance Society, likely an outgrowth of the Young Men's group which had become moribund by early 1835, despite the support of numerous important merchants and distinguished members such as C.J. Wright and Salmon P. Chase.

The population explosion in Cincinnati, due in significant part to the arrival of a large number of German and Irish immigrants during the middle of the nineteenth century, played a large role in the growth of the area as a focus point of temperance agitation. One such event, a temperance parade, was witnessed by Charles Dickens during a January 1842 visit to Cincinnati and described in his travel work American Notes:

It comprised several thousand men; the members of various "Washington Auxiliary Temperance Societies;" and was marshalled by officers on horseback, who cantered briskly up and down the line, with scarfs and ribbons of bright colors fluttering out behind them gayly. There were bands of music, too, and banners out of number: and it was a fresh, holiday-looking concourse altogether. ...

The banners were very well painted, and flaunted down the street famously. There was the smiting of the rock, and the gushing forth of the waters; and there was a temperate man with "considerable of a hatchet" ... aiming a deadly blow at a serpent which was apparently about to spring upon him from the top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of this part of the show was a huge allegorical device, borne among the ship carpenters, on one side whereof the steamship Alcohol was represented bursting her boiler and exploding with a great crash, while upon the other, the good ship Temperance sailed away with a fair wind, to the heart's content of the captain, crew, and passengers.

During the 1840s alone the population of Cincinnati increased by nearly 150 percent, an average of some seven thousand people each year. Many of these were German and Irish immigrants who came to America for a variety of economic, social, political, and religious reasons, and brought with them a prodigious capacity for malt beverages. From the late 1840s onward, the continuous arrival of Germans in particular helped deflect the focus of local temperance activism away from hard liquor and toward the consumption of lager beer. Among the criticisms of Cincinnati German immigrants made by temperance reformers was that they consumed excessive quantities of beer; agitators were quick to seize upon noteworthy cases-particularly boastful claims of drinking prowess-that illustrated the degree to which members of the German-American community consumed malt beverages. Several such quotes circulated with frequency in Cincinnati by the late 1850s, and were used by temperance reformers to fortify their arguments, although the original purpose of the comments had been to show that beer did not intoxicate:

"Valentine Eckfeldt swore that he had, on one occasion, drank fifteen glasses [of beer] before breakfast, to give him an appetite."

"Bernhardt Miller had seen a man drink forty glasses in a short time, without being intoxicated. He himself had drunk that number of glasses in the space of about one hour."

"Joseph Siser-who weighs two hundred and twenty-five pounds-drank an average of about forty glasses a day. It never hurt him any."

"James White testified to drinking fifty-two glasses of lager in two hours, and a companion drank double the quantity in the same time. It had no intoxicating effect upon either of them."

"Philip Koch testified to drinking a keg of lager on a bet, within the space of two hours. The keg contained seven and a half gallons, or thirty quarts. He felt comfortable afterward, and was not intoxicated. He would frequently drink from sixty to ninety glasses in a day."

Such drinking stories were associated almost exclusively with the German element, and were told not just in Cincinnati, but around the country. One account which circulated frequently in the late 1850s was that of Frank Laumann, who in St. Louis drank 150 glasses of lager beer to win a wager of $25.00. The beer was consumed from eight in the morning to midnight on March 2, 1858, including fifty glasses before 10 a.m., seventy more by 4 p.m., and the remaining thirty over the final eight hours. In fairness, other observers noted that lager beer was a significant part of the Cincinnati German-American culture, and that its consumption had certain beneficial aspects for society:

There is no German who does not use this beverage, and it forms refreshment to one-half of our native population ... the high Germans, and Americans who use beer, drink lager beer exclusively, at all seasons. Lager beer is driving out the consumption of whisky, and the miserable imitations of foreign liquors.

The observer further expressed the view that lager beer was a healthful, refreshing beverage, one which also supplemented the daily diet:

I can say freely, that I am knowing to the fact that Dr. Walcker ... drank every day, for a series of years, five gallons of lager, which, with a few pretzels, constituted his entire sustenance. I learn also, on respectable authority, that Professor Kern, of College Hill, drank ... six gallons at a sitting. ... Some of these, doubtless, are extreme cases, but a gallon to an individual, at convivial parties, is a common allowance. ... Dr. James R. Chilton ... says that lager beer will not intoxicate unless drank in extraordinary quantities.

Such statements, often intended to reflect favorably upon German immigrants and their ability to consume beer without negative consequences, had the opposite effect on many members of the general public. Particularly rural Americans-who made up the backbone of the temperance and prohibition movements-and nativists found such claims objectionable, and twisted them to depict the Germans as drunkards who failed to live a decent, pious life.

More extreme native-born Cincinnatians, resentful of the "invasion" of immigrants, held foreigners and their drinking habits responsible for a number of social as well as physical problems. A cholera outbreak in 1849 was blamed largely on immigrants; of the over 4,000 people who died in the outbreak, some three-fourths were foreigners. Reports came from residents who traveled through immigrant sections of the city, and claimed that the newcomers lived in "unimaginable degradation, filth and squalor," where children breathed foul air, drank contaminated water, and lived surrounded by a pestilent moral atmosphere. Many middle-class, native Cincinnatians also opined that German and Irish immigrants collected a disproportionate share of the city's poor relief funds, boosted the crime rate-particularly in terms of felony and violent crimes-and property tax levels, and promoted immoral activities such as brawling, drunkenness, prostitution, and gambling. But others, especially those who traveled through the city, emerged with a far different image of the foreign element: the Dickens account of the January 1842 temperance parade in Cincinnati was also noteworthy for its description of Irish participants and the apparent contrast it presented with nativist viewpoints:

I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed a distinct society among themselves. and mustered very strong with their green scarfs; carrying their national Harp, and their Portrait of Father Matthew, high above the people's heads. They looked as jolly and good-humored as ever; and working (here) the hardest for their living, and doing any kind of sturdy labor that came in their way, were the most independent fellows there, I thought.

Such positive descriptions of the foreign element became more of an exception than a rule by the mid- to late 1850s, with ethnocultural hostility largely the result of nativism and a corresponding desire to maintain the status quo in a city which continued to grow at a rapid rate.

On at least one occasion in Cincinnati the prevailing nativist sentiment turned violent. Although the American Reform Party and its anti-foreigner platform won a hard-fought battle in Cincinnati's autumn elections of 1854, it suffered a major setback on April 2, 1855 when its mayoral candidate, Pap Taylor, fell to a resounding defeat. In the belief that the foreign element was responsible for the loss, a nativist mob quickly gathered downtown and sought retribution where it could be had. A number of bloody fights broke out during the rampage, particularly in Over-the-Rhine and other immigrant sections of the city. In at least one case a Cincinnati brewery worker was the direct target of mob violence. Dr. William Brown, a nativist from the third ward, chose to take out his wrath upon Georg Röder, a foreman at the F. & A. J. Linck Brewery on Hamilton Road. In the ensuing melee Röder was stabbed in the abdomen with a knife and fell mortally wounded. Although Brown immediately was pummeled by German partisans of Röder, the beating also served as the signal for all-out hostilities between native and immigrant. Brown subsequently was arrested and taken to the Bremen Street police station, but soon was freed by his companions in a raid on the jail. By the end of the confrontation some thirty injuries were reported, in addition to the death of Röder, not to mention other deaths and injuries elsewhere during the day.

Some nativists expressed an immediate and unconditional disdain for the foreign-born of Cincinnati, but others blamed the vices associated with immigrants on an external factor, specifically the presence-in abundant quantities-of beer and other alcoholic beverages. Since many native-born Protestants, who otherwise admired the immigrants, were repulsed by the wetness of their frequent celebrations and festivals, they became a sympathetic audience for temperance reformers who looked to expand their own influence. Alcohol not only was a factor in the temperance movement, but also a deep-rooted social and economic concern felt by many rural Americans at the dawn of the 1850s. For these people, who made up the heart of the temperance movement, the foreign majorities in the cities represented "different" people who posed a threat to the previously established order. As a new social, political, and economic order was created in the cities, the rural ideal of the independent, self-sufficient farmer lost ground. A movement against a symbol of the European immigrant-in this case alcohol-was perceived by many rural Americans as a stand against political, social, and religious independence, even a perceived lack of culture and civilization:

Temperance campaigns struck at more than personal and political corruption and at more than individuals' claim to their own private choice of refreshment and recreation. They served as a substitute focus for a social controversy that most Americans preferred not to face head on. There was almost an instinctive fear that to do so would jeopardize the fragile consensus on which peace and order depended in a nation of such ethnic diversity. Alcohol, rather than color, religion, or national origin, became the ostensible test of a person's character, his morality, his Americanism-even though it was indeed color, religion, and national background that troubled the testers.

By 1852 at least three temperance magazines were published regularly in Cincinnati and enjoyed the support of national temperance organizations. The Western Fountain reached its fifth volume of publication by 1851, and continued to increase in circulation each year. In part to extend the trend, advocates proposed the sale of shares of the magazine for ten dollars each to interested supporters, an idea endorsed by the Sons of Temperance of North America. Another Cincinnati temperance publication, the Templars' Magazine, also received an endorsement from the Sons of Temperance: "If all the literature of the country, like that and this Magazine, was baptized in the pure and lovely element of temperance, how happy would its influence be?" A third such Cincinnati periodical, the Ohio Organ of the Temperance Reform, was organized by Samuel Cary-who had given up a lucrative law practice in Cincinnati to become the acknowledged leader of the temperance movement in Ohio-and was an established presence by 1852, although apparently not quite as successful as advocates originally had hoped; local supporters were obliged to take several unanticipated steps, such as the sale of short-term "campaign subscriptions," to help increase its circulation from 5,000 to 20,000 by the end of the year. The activities of Ohio temperance agitators were not limited to Cincinnati, nor were they restricted to publications. From April 1 through December 31, 1851 a total of 223 divisions of the Ohio chapter of the Sons of Temperance of North America were registered as member organizations, with a total membership of 8,233. Members generated $15,512.36 in revenue for the Ohio Grand Division of the Sons of Temperance, and maintained a war chest of $16,528.15 for operations. In Ohio alone fifty-five meetings were held under the Sons of Temperance banner during the nine-month period, and 775 pro-temperance tracts were distributed throughout the state.

By the mid-1850s temperance reform stood as one of the most powerful social movements in Cincinnati and in the state of Ohio. While hostility seldom existed between temperance advocates and immigrants as long as morality-based appeals were voiced, when the focus turned instead to bringing about prohibition legislation, conflict became inevitable and heated. The economic livelihood of many immigrants, primarily in the sizeable German community, was threatened and-no less important to many-cultural identities also were in danger of irreparable alteration. Temperance workers in Cincinnati and elsewhere soon came to realize that moral suasion would not work on a large number of immigrants who had been brought up under far different circumstances. Three other prominent reasons were presented by those in favor of a change in focus from temperance to prohibition: 1) a growing understanding of alcoholism as a medical condition made it imperative to protect public welfare, preferably through legislation; 2) a gradual decline in the influence of temperance organizations, such as the Sons of Temperance, meant that another avenue had to be explored; and 3) a rapid increase in social disorder mandated an immediate reevaluation of strategy, to adjust to changing needs.

The increasingly intertwined issues of temperance and prohibition received their biggest test in Ohio during the early 1850s, when the merits of dry legislation were put to the test before the electorate. Encouraged by stringent statewide prohibition legislation enacted in Maine in 1851, Ohio temperance and prohibition campaigners quickly moved to place a similar measure on the ballot in 1852; rebuffed by the Ohio state legislature, dry agitators redoubled their efforts to support candidates sympathetic to anti-alcohol propositions during the election of 1853. On January 5, 1853, Samuel Cary implored supporters to "vote for no man, for any legislative office, who is not fully committed" to the enactment of a Maine Law in Ohio. Cary received significant rural support, but soon found that in urban centers such as Cincinnati there was little stomach for the proposal. On various occasions in February the Cincinnati Gazette voiced opposition to the Maine Law, despite ongoing predictions by Cary that "if all the liquor of [Cincinnati] could be annihilated at once ... we should have but little business for our police court, or use for the rookery or jail." The Cincinnati Enquirer echoed the sentiments of the Gazette in taking a dim view of the Maine Law, as a measure "at war with all just notions of liberty" and one which, if enacted, would render the government "the most tyrannical one that ever existed."

Hardly surprisingly, the Maine Law proposition met its sternest opposition in Cincinnati from the immigrant community, where the foreign-born population ratio was considerably higher than the Ohio average of eleven percent. In fairness to the Cincinnati German community, Cary invited particular ire when he offered a blanket assessment of its members as being "disorganizers of society" involved in "infidel clubs" such as local gymnastics organizations (Turnvereine). On one notable occasion Cary reflected prevalent nativist sentiment with the comment that a local Turner Hall represented nothing less than a den of iniquity:

[The Turner Hall maintains] two or three large bars connected with it which require seven or eight active men on the Sabbath, to wait upon the worshippers at the shrine of free inquiry. The thousands who assemble here on the Lord's day, to listen to the profane babblings of infidels, and engage in gymnastic exercises, find liquor indispensable to wash down the truth.

Such attacks upon the Cincinnati German element soon backfired on Cary, and in the October election played a role in the statewide defeat of candidates friendly to the Maine Law. From the beginning, less militant Maine Law supporters acknowledged that the German vote was critical to the prospects of success, given the status of Cincinnati German-Americans as the most important bloc of swing voters and their rapid development into the largest ethnic group in the city. Moreover, the anti-German bias expressed by Cary soon resounded in the many other areas of the state with strong German settlement, and helped sway undecided and anti-nativist voters away from Maine Law candidates. By election day even the most hardened of temperance reformers admitted the unlikelihood of victory, and few were surprised when final results revealed that only about one-third of the new legislature could be considered friendly to dry legislation, most of whom came from the northeastern part of the state which traditionally had supported temperance reform.

After the immigrants of Cincinnati led the way in efforts to vote down Maine Law tickets, temperance agitators further turned on the immigrants in what culminated in the growth of the "Know Nothing" movement. The American Reform, or Know-Nothing, Party-so named because members of the organization repeatedly claimed that they "knew nothing" of a movement against the foreign element-in fact was founded on an antiforeign platform as early as 1835, but during the mid-1850s it attained significantly higher levels of support. According to the German community, Know Nothing efforts to ban beer and wine represented an attack against "a sober and industrial people," which struck "at the most sacred privileges of free men." Initially the wealthy and the entrepreneur, as strong and influential elements in the struggle for reform, were targeted by anti-alcohol and anti-immigrant forces such as the Know-Nothings. The Sons of Temperance acknowledged the difficulty of their work in the face of entrenched pro-alcohol interests, particularly in Kentucky cities like Louisville and Covington:

The fashionable customs of the [Kentucky] river towns are greatly against us. How hard it is to make head-way against the current of fashion that receives the sanction of the rich and powerful! But the Sons in Kentucky are not easily discouraged. God speed them!

OHIO is cursed by Coffee Houses. No state in the Union is so much as she in this respect. She has many choice Sons and Daughters, however, and they are doing well for the work of Reform.

Cincinnati temperance agitators and prohibitionists, bitter at their losses in elections during the early- to mid-1850s, were quick to blame traditional targets such as distillers and brewers, wholesalers, political parties, and the like. But a new scapegoat was added as well, specifically the foreign-born element. The admiration many felt for recent immigrants to Cincinnati, particularly in terms of identifiable moral components and a pronounced work ethic, were forgotten quickly when the topic of discussion turned to alcohol; in the face of increased opposition from anti-alcohol campaigners, the immigrant community was placed on the defensive, and was obliged to protect itself and its interests. The immigrant-native crisis began in earnest in the 1850s, but with regard to intoxicating beverages, it would not culminate for more than half a century.

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