Antebellum Temperance Reform Summary

Not only a history professor at the University of Washington, W.J. Rorabaugh was also has notable published research based on the 1960s, including; Berkeley at War: The 1960s (Oxford University Press, 1989), Kennedy and the Promise of the 1960s (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and The Real Making of the President: Kennedy, Nixon, and the 1960 Election (University Press of Kansas, 2009). (Pg. 138). In the article, Was Antebellum Temperance Reform Motivated Primarily by Religious Moralism?, the focus of the article was to determine what the prime motivation behind the temperance reform was, whether it was a religious reason or because it was for social and business benefits. While both sides agreed that the ultimate goal was to “perfect the …show more content…
Rumbarger, a American political history professor from Rutgers University (Pg. 143), Rumbarger disagreed with Rorabaugh and instead was convinced that the Temperance movement was a produced by people who valued a pro-capitalist market economy and wanted to change the workforce to become more productive. “The roots of the temperance movement can be found in these social forces working to develop the expansionist tendencies of the American economy.” (Pg. 139.) For clarification, Rumbarger claims that the temperance movement did not originate because of religious morals, but for the fact that refraining from using alcohol benefited social and economic efficiency and productivity. “The earliest temperance societies, like that organized in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1787, resulted from the efforts of wealthy farmers to curtail drinking among their laborers during the harvest time. . . .” (Pg. 139.) With this statement, the Rutger’s professor was claiming that the temperance movement started prior to religious leaders preaching about abstinence from alcohol, and therefore the movement was originally to improve work efficiency rather that to remain religiously pure. Throughout his entire article, Rumbarger continued to restate the fact that he believed the movement was motivated for business advantages, for example, business owners began to recognize that their laborers’ and employees’ work would slack when they were under the influence of alcohol, so in attempt to solve the problem they believed the use of alcohol needed to be banned. Rumbarger doesn’t deny the influence religion had on the temperance, but he differs from Rorabaugh, by he believes that the business aspect that resulted from the movement came before the religious aspect of the