A temporary triumph of reason
Not all temperance societies were formed and driven from the pulpit. In 1840 artisans and mechanics in Baltimore, Maryland, formed a society originally consisting of six men, who pledged to be mutually supportive of each other in practicing total abstinence from alcohol. They called themselves the Washington Temperance Society, proselytized to other alcoholics, which at the time were called drunkards, by telling them of their own experiences with alcohol, and taught them the route to sobriety. The society was formed more than a century before Alcoholics Anonymous, which copied many of their practices.
By 1840 the temperance movement in America was in full throat, and from pulpits and in temperance group meetings the call was for the complete prohibition of alcohol, not because of health or societal problems, but because the consumption of alcohol was a sin, and the failure to call for its abolition was equally a sin. The Washingtonians focused on the needs and support of individual drunkards, ignoring the religious overtones, and eventually came to oppose the condemnation implied by religious zealots regarding those addicted to alcohol. The group expanded to more than 600,000 by the time of the American Civil War.
In the 1840s the rising politician Abraham Lincoln spoke in the Illinois Legislature in praise of the non-judgmental approach of the Washingtonians in addressing the issue of drunkenness (the terms alcoholic and alcoholism had yet to be coined) and in the same speech criticized the self-righteous shrieking of the religion based temperance movement. The Washingtonians themselves were strictly non-religious and non-spiritual, but they were not necessarily against either religion or spirituality. This brought them under attack from the various religion based anti-alcohol movements, and even led to the creation of new groups.
The Washingtonians were condemned from the pulpits and public temperance meetings as being a humanist group. Their refusal to condemn the drunkard as first being sinful and being “cured” only through salvation was declared to be heretical, since they placed themselves before God. The attacks on the Washingtonians were strident, and the group, having little formal organizational structure, responded individually, when they responded at all. Christian temperance groups also publicized the failures of drunkards to reform using the Washingtonian’s methods, often displaying lapsed drinkers at their own meetings before offering them salvation.
In the 1850s the group splintered as its various branches became involved in other social issues of the time, including abolitionism, women’s suffrage, and prohibition. It also suffered from the attacks of the religious societies, and by the time of the Third Great Awakening in the 1850s the group was for all practical purposes extinct. Treating a personal alcohol problem in a humane and reasonable manner was unacceptable to the temperance societies, which would accept nothing less than the complete elimination of the sin of alcohol from American society, along with the abolition of slavery which would create a more perfect America in their eyes and in the eyes of the Lord.