Reply #27: Interesting take on Prohibition, they were NOT alone. [View All]

Introduced in the House as H.R. 6810 by Andrew Volstead (R–MN) on June 27, 1919. Passed by Congress, it was vetoed by President Wilson. Congress then overrode his veto. The purpose of the Act was to enforce the PREVIOUSLY adopted Eighteenth Amendment.

The effects of Prohibition were largely unanticipated. Production, importation, and distribution of alcoholic beverages — once the province of legitimate business — were taken over by criminal gangs, which fought each other for market control in violent confrontations, including mass murder. (Sound familiar?)

Women were strongly behind the temperance movement, for alcohol was seen as the destroyer of families and marriages. Men would often spend their money on alcohol, leaving women with no money to provide for their children. They did not stop there, however. The temperance societies began to push to change American society and elevate morality through national legislation.

Prohibition was demanded by the "dries" — primarily pietistic Protestant denominations, especially the Methodists, Northern Baptists, Southern Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, Quakers and Scandinavian Lutherans. They identified saloons as politically corrupt and drinking as a personal sin.

In 1917, the House of Representatives wanted to make Prohibition the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Congress sent the amendment to the states for ratification, where it needed three-fourths approval. The amendment stipulated a time limit of seven years for the states to pass this amendment. In just 13 months enough states said yes to the amendment that would prohibit the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic liquors.

One of the major supporters of National Prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. (1920-1933) was the anti-alcohol Ku Klux Klan.

In the case of the Democratic Party, the key battleground was the 1924 Convention. The Klan endorsed William Gibbs McAdoo, the front-runner for the nomination. It battle came down to the the Klan and the "drys" versus Tammany Hall and the "wets". That the 1924 convention came to known as the "Klanbake" and ended with a massive cross burning should be a clue.

Prohibition had WIDE support in the Democratic Party. Homer Cummings, the head of the DNC in the Wilson Administration, Attorney General under Roosevelt supported the Klan, Prohibition, and gun control.