"Prohibition Is Here to Stay": The Reverend Edward S. Shumaker and the Dry Crusade in America

2. South Bend and Beyond

31| 2 South Bend and Beyond The Reverend Edward Shumaker arrived in South Bend to take part in an evangelical Protestant, Progressive group whose goal was to solve the problem of drinking in America.1 Reform was now his career, not just a part of his ministry. Though the Anti Saloon League was not the first organization that sought to focus dry sentiment on the creation of an orderly society, it was the eventual means by which drys managed to penetrate the realms of law and politics to fashion their version of God’s kingdom on Earth. Indeed, the partisan battles that occupied Shumaker for the rest of his life were fueled by the religious convictions that he and his supporters held. They demanded not only reform but also a crusade. The League was part of a widespread Protestant belief that the church had to be proactive in the world to halt moral decay. As one historian described the times, “Protestantism knew in its heart that God meant America to be Protestant, Christian, morally upright and just.” These Christians believed in a war “to destroy the work of the devil” and expected their pastors to lead the charge. And as one of Shumaker’s League colleagues in Tennessee put it, “it is my business as a minister of the gospel to fight the devil. The devil is in the saloon.”2 32 | “Prohibition Is Here to Stay” Even though drinking was increasingly viewed as disreputable, not everyone thought that the solution was prohibition or that the Anti Saloon League was the best way to achieve a dry America.3 Since the Civil War, the drys had created a myriad of organizations. Individuals had flocked to the faddish Murphy temperance pledge and its call for personal responsibility in the late 1870s. By the 1880s, Indiana was home to the State Christian Temperance Union (SCTU), the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and the Prohibition Party.4 However, each of these groups had serious handicaps. In its various incarnations, the SCTU, founded in 1870, attempted to unify drys but found it difficult to build grassroots support.5 The WCTU, on the other hand, was strong locally among Hoosier women, but it saw reform as multifaceted and attempted to right all wrongs at once, ultimately diminishing its focus as a result. Its chapters also had a tendency to compromise when offenders promised to reform on their own. Moreover, since its members lacked the vote, the women had only a peripheral effect on politics.6 The Prohibition Party, which took a harder line than the other two groups, was crucial in creating grassroots dry sentiment. It made a strong argument about the need for morality in American politics and the duty of Christians to vote for dry candidates. However, the party could not overcome the majority of voters’ attachments to the two mainstream political parties, in part, because of the importance that both Democrats and Republicans placed on Hoosier voters.7 Thus, the dry movement was divided and still in search of a winning approach. But all drys believed that since “there will be drunkards as long as there is liquor,” the best solution was to take away alcohol. As the pastor of Trinity Methodist Church in Evansville observed , prohibition was “an evolution of the times, and was keeping pace with the advance of thought in every direction.”8 Part of this evolution was that the Anti Saloon League surpassed the other dry organizations by harnessing evangelical Protestantism from within. Founded in Ohio by ministers who were steeped in the Republican-oriented business ethos of the time, the League sought to weave the various dry strands together by promoting a radical agenda of gradual prohibition. Its founders believed that Christians South Bend and Beyond | 33 had to be involved in the wider culture and that the saloon and the continental Sabbath posed the gravest threats imaginable to Christian America.9 The League put a great deal of faith in the rule of law and worked to pass and enforce dry legislation. As political agitators its members also supported centralized, state-level, law-enforcement agencies to overcome local prejudices.10 As one leader described it, There is no regular membership of the Anti Saloon League. In other words a man does not have to sign a pledge of membership, nor pay any regular dues, or anything of that sort. We extend the right...