In 19th Century America, the problem of widespread drinking and its attendant social ills became an important focus of reform. The worst thing that could be said about any man was, "He took to drink…" for this surely signaled a tragic, wasted life inclined toward folly, vice, degradation and crime. Or so the mid-century Temperance literature would have us believe!

The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was organized in Boston in 1826 in the fight against "Demon Run". The Temperance Platform became a sounding board for women and their issues of home and family values.. By 1833 there were 6,000 local societies in several U.S. states. By 1835, Temperance organizations across the country counted about one million members.

In many towns in Ohio and New York in the fall of 1873, women concerned about the destructive power of alcohol met in churches to pray and then marched to the saloons to ask the owners to close their establishments. They met with some temporary success, so by the next summer the women concluded that they must become organized nationally. This led to the founding of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WTCU), which employed educational, social and political means to promote abstinence.

Known collectively as the "Cold Water Army," Temperance crusaders used every conceivable method for recruiting. They made effective use of pamphlets, pictures and lurid lectures in an attempt to reform those under the spell of the liquid devil. They presented passionate testimonials by people whose lives had been ruined by "King Alcohol." They staged rallies with songs and skits to lure converts through entertainment. And they signed "The Pledge" which was most often a vow of complete abstinence from intoxicating beverages.

It is these Temperance rallies, and the struggles of dedicated reformers like Carry Nation, that provide the historical setting for Temperance Tantrums.

The most popular thing to come out of the Temperance Movement was an anti-alcohol publication by T. S. Authur whose lady's monthly periodical, Authur's Home Magazine, was attempting to give Godey's Ladys Book a run for the money. Highly moral, religious and an ardent Temperance Advocate, Authur wrote in 1854, a highly melodramatic and sentimental novel, Ten Nights In a Barroom and What I Saw There. An earlier composition of Temperance Tales, published in 1848 failed to garner the public enthusiasm that embraced his later work. Ten Nights portrays in lurid detail the destruction of several families by the liquid effects of Sam Slade's Tavern. Second only to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Authur's maudlin masterpiece was a run-away best seller throughout the 1850's and also enjoyed a highly successful run on the stage up through the early 1900's. Likewise, the lachrymose sheetmusic, "Father Come Home - A Song of Little Mary", with words and music by Henry Clay Work was also a popular best seller and went hand-in-hand with the stage play. Ladies (as well as some gentlemen) throughout the Victorian era continued to shed floods of tears over the tragic fate of T. S. Authur's "Little Mary" and her family and as a result, were avid supporters of the Temperance Movement.

Temperance Songs