Alcohol and Wife Abuse in Antebellum Male Temperance Literature

Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue canadtenne d'etudes amencames Volume 25, Number 1, Wmter 1995, pp. 15-43 Alcohol and Wife Abuse in Antebellum Male Temperance Literature Jerome Nadelhaft 15 In the first half of the nineteenth century, the male-dominated temperance movement, through its association of alcoholism and unrestrained violence, first focused the attention of Americans on wife beating and murder. Temperance societies, in printed speeches and tracts, stimulated government concern and generated official reports, which in turn created both a need and a market for temperance fiction. All drove home the same terrifying points. Although Samuel Cary, Cincinnati's major temperance figure, might have been perceptive in suggesting that "scenes of drunkenness, debauchery, crime, poverty and destitution become familiar and we come to regard them as a matter of course," at least the literature left few people able to plead ignorance of the dangers faced in the home (quoted in Dannenbaum 1984, 173). Alcohol destroyed man's self control, weakened moral influences, and unleashed antisocial passions. "Intemperance brings into operation the worst passions of human nature. Anger, malice, envy, revenge, jealousy, violence, madness and outrage" were only a partial list (A M,mual on Ten1penmce 1852, 13). 'The amusements of drinkers are remarkable for their cruelty," Robert Hartley (1851) wrote in an early, lengthy study of the impact of intemperance in cities and large towns. "Drink, while it deadens the moral sensibilities, lashes the destructive propensities into a morbid excitement ... " (113). Women 1 themselves mostly innocent of the vice, bore the brunt of the fury, though children too were endangered. "If anything on earth resembles 16 Canadian Review of American Studies/ Revue cnnadzemte d'etudes amencaines hell, it must be a drunkard's family" (Clergyman 1852, 13). In temperance literature, there was no dissenting voice. When a "once kind and affectionate husband is changed into an unfeeling, unreasonable and furious tyrant, 1t is upon woman's head, and into woman's heart he pours his terrors and his curse." 1 Though man was the drinker, woman, all agreed, was, "to a far greater extent, the hapless, enduring sufferer" (The Temperance Text-Book 1837, 128). Beatings and murder were the daily, highly publicized consequences. "How many wives are overpowered with brutality!" exclaimed a Massachusetts temperance society publication (Report ol a Committee 1831, 8). "How many kind and affectionate wives have weltered in their blood at the feet of a drunken husband?" asked A ML1Jzmzl on Tenzperance (Clergyman 1852, 15). There was no shortage of answers, both vague and specific, sometimes simultaneously. "For years, the watch and police reports have been prolific of cases of marital brutality" (When Will n.d. [after 1856), 43). "Bronning, the Boston wife-murderer, confessed that he beat his wife to death because she would not give him her hard earnings to spend for drink" (Hargreaves 1878, 165). To the extent to which alcohol contributed to the incidence of wife torture, temperance advocates had reason to fear for women's safety. Drink permeated the life of American males, and rates of consumption increased dramatically between the American Revolution and 1830 (Rorabaugh 1979). Although per capita consumption declined after 1830, perhaps because of the temperance movement, the drinking pattern seems to have shifted in a way which mitigated the effects of the decline. Rather than spread their drinking throughout the day, in small amounts drunk regularly, which produced some tolerance, men began to concentrate their drinking; more and more they drank in binges to the point of intoxication (Lender and Martin 1982, 52-53). The drinking and the drunkenness, many people thought, led to widespread poverty, disease, insanity, and crime. To prove their points, commentators gave numbers, percentages, and examples, often including in their information the accompanying state expenses, as suggested in the title of one 1836 pamphlet published by the Massachusetts Temperance Society: Jerome Nadelhaft 17 "Plain Facts, Addressed to the Inhabitants of Boston, on the City Expenses for the Support of Pauperism, Vice and Crime." The evidence of association, which spanned the entire century and came from throughout the country, was at least quantitatively impressive. Obviously, crimes of violence-murder and assaults, with wives often the victims in both categories-were part of...