Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800-1860 (review)

174CIVIL WAR HISTORY Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800-1860. By Ian R. Tyrrell. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. Pp. xii, 350. $23.95.) This is an ambitious work. Ian Tyrrell crammed sixty years of tactics, ideology, organization, personnel, and politics in a book that may replace John Krout's classic The Origins of Prohibition as the standard introduction to a major reform. Tyrrell read widely in temperance society reports and pamphlets, and he used all the right secondary studies. In addition, Tyrrell scrutinized sixty prohibitionists and seventy-eight antiprohibitionists from the mid-1830s in Worcester, Massachusetts , and he examined short lists of abstainers from other cities as well. This is nevertheless a selective work. Sobering Up emphasizes the social origins and contexts of temperance. Tyrrell knocks down an old straw man: abstainers were cranky rural conservatives who feared economic change and clung to colonial customs. In Worcester, innovative , mobile, evangelical entrepreneurs championed the prohibition opposed by traditionalists wed to the fading mercantile economy. This interpretation closely parallels Leonard Richards's early study of abolitionists . Tyrrell's social portrait is not without problems. There are no control groups here. Church records were apparently used butnever footnoted. His small samples of leaders leave unanswered questions about the rank and file support, but there is no mention or analysis of the January 29, 1835, prohibition petition to the state legislature signed by431 Worcester men (Petition #12.946, Massachusetts Archives). Comparisons with the 1840s rely on thirty-six Worcester Washingtonian officers, but there is no mention or analysis of the eighty-nine delegates to the 1842 Washingtonian convention, the speakers at the weekly meetings, or the newspaper subscribers (all listed in the Worcester County Cataract). Furthermore, when Tyrrell puts Worcester aside, he is willing to make major assertions without statistical support. For example: the orthodox church members were the most active members of local auxiliaries (p. 37); the least dedicated members lost interest (p. 45); changing manufacturing practices pushed artisans into the Washingtonian societies (p. 167); and the most competitive Washingtonians liked prohibition (p. 216). Tyrrell too readily infers motivation, equating thepublic character of temperance work with private reasons for abstaining. Although most of Tyrrell's social history is sensible and logical, he does not have quite enough hard evidence to make his case compelling. Tyrrell does better with tactics, which is the book's secondary theme. He effectively refutes some common misunderstandings. The crusade was not rooted in nativism. The wine issue was not as divisive as Washingtonianism. Prohibition took shape long before partisan intrigue jostled the Maine Law. And he buries the "symbolic crusade" thesis by BOOK REVIEWS175 showing how vigorously and efficiently the abstainers agitated. These insights, coupled with the wide sweep of each chapter, serve to outdate Krout's durable old study. But we still need many more case studies in order to develop the detail necessary for a definitive book on this complicated and polyvalent reform. In light of the very recent surge of monographic work on liquor and antiliquor, Tyrrell's useful survey may prove just a bit premature. Robert L. Hampel Boston, Massachusetts Fountain of Discontent: The 'Trent' Affair and Freedom of the Seas. By Gordon H. Warren. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981. Pp. xiv, 301. $18.95.) There is no mystery surrounding the enduring attraction of the Trent episode for historians. Here was an international drama (if not melodrama ), complete with naval and troop movements, at the moment of supreme domestic crisis for the American Union. The principal actors were the political giants of the period—Palmerston and Russell performed for the British and Lincoln and Seward for the Americans. Even the secondary players—Charles Wilkes, James M. Mason, John Slidell, Lord Lyons—were figures of some stature. There was, in addition, the Prince Consort's act of selfless statesmanship in rewording one of the British notes even as he was heading feverishly towardhis grave. Yet, on balance, the Trent affair contains more bathos than pathos. Moreover, the outline, indeed the details, of the incident and theensuingevents are too well known to require further elaboration here. Thatvery familiarity poses an obvious question—is another accountofthe affair eithernecessary or useful? Professor Warren...