Consequences

“The friends of Temperance in this State have for years been striving to drive the evil effects of intoxicating drinks from our Commonwealth. They saw that this was by far the most appalling evil in our land, more than three-fourths of the crime and vagrancy, and more than seven-eighths of the cases of bloodshed and murder in our State and country being traceable directly to this source…They saw, too, that this evil caused if possible, more suffering to thousands on thousands of poor, heart-broken wives, and innocent but forsaken children, than to the deluded drinker himself.”

Barnum, P.T..Appeal to the Democratic Voters of Connecticut. The Maine Law Advocate---- Extra, New Haven, Conn. March 26, 1852. Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/lm/44/. January 19, 2015.

P.T. Barnum clearly supports the temperance movement. This is clear because of his use of logic and evidence to prove his point. He gives evidence as to why intoxicating drinks are a problem in Connecticut. He says that intoxicating drinks have led to, “more than three- fourths of the crime and vagrancy, and more than seven- eighths of the cases of bloodshed and murder in our State.” He is saying that crime, homelessness, bloodshed and murder are all bad things, and that intoxicating drinks lead to bad things. It is also clear that he supports the temperance movement by calling the effects of intoxicating drinks “evil” and by saying that intoxicating drinks cause the wives and children of the men who drink to suffer more than the man who drinks. In this article, P.T. Barnum is trying to persuade people that intoxicating drinks are bad and unhelpful. He is trying to persuade them to believe that temperance is the answer. When this article was printed in The New Haven Advocate in 1852, there was a problem in America with drinking. Many men drank a lot of alcohol and oftentimes, this would lead to them hurting their wives and children. The Temperance Movement was becoming more and more popular at this time. Temperance is a movement in which people were encouraged to drink alcoholic beverages in moderation, or maintain total abstinence from them. This document proves that alcohol consumption was a big problem during the mid- 19th century. If it wasn't a big problem, then the proposal of temperance would have never have been published in a public newspaper. The statistics in the document, such as the ones about crime and the examples of family life, make a good case for temperance but only give a one-sided view of the drinking problem in America during the 19th century.