July 14th, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2011
Autograph Letter Signed, “L.B. Parsons” 2pp. quarto, Homer, New York, July 5, 1853, with integral leaf addressed to his son by the same name in St. Louis, Missouri. It reads in part: “..." They have today had a Temperance celebration which went off well...Manly was again elected supervisor on a strictly temperance vote but the anti-temperance men were very violent & anonymous letters were left in his yard saying his barn would be burned. The barn of the poor master was burned because he did his duty in enforcing the law against those who sold ardent spirits...” Fine. The goal of the temperance movement was to encourage people to moderate or eliminate the consumption of alcohol. In the early 1800s, alcohol was a widely accepted part of daily life for many people. However, as religion became more accessible to more people in this period, an increasingly pious public turned their attention to the effects of alcohol on their society, both in moral and practical terms. Alcohol was widely seen as the root cause of all vices and as a threat to the stability of the American family. Drunkenness in the workplace was affecting productivity, and was increasingly dangerous considering the heavy machinery now common in factories. In addition, some immigrant groups, such as the Germans and Irish, brought their tradition of drinking with them to the United States, and so the temperance reform movement appealed to some protestant native-born Americans who looked down on immigrants. There were two different viewpoints within the temperance movement. There were those who supported moderation in the consumption of alcohol, and those who supported total abstinence. This more radical wing was able to convince the government of Massachusetts in 1851 to pass the first statewide law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol, an example that was followed by other Northern states. The temperance movement was less successful in seeing that these laws were enforced, however, and many were eventually repealed or simply ignored. Despite this, the population did in fact consume substantially less alcohol by the 1840s than it did in the 1820s.
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