Epilogue

When the Civil War ended, veterans – who had determined that some drinking was necessary to cope with the war’s carnage, even if they eschewed excessive drunkenness – found themselves outside of mainstream opinions about the relationship between drinking, masculinity, and patriotism. It took temperance reformers little time to regroup after the war, building on the momentum of the abolition of slavery and the wartime growth of the federal government. It was the role of government to ensure morality, including sobriety, as reformers saw (both North and South). It took another half century and another war before prohibitionists got their federal legislation. But Civil War era conversations that raised skepticism about whether a person could drink and be a good American laid the foundation for the subsequent decades of temperance advocacy.