THE WASHINGTONIANS

The following, rather long, extract describes the Washingtonians and one of their star speakers as they were seen from the perspective of the latter part of the 19th century--years after their decline to little more than a fond memory in the minds of temperance advocates. The extract is from The Temperance Reform and its Great Reformers by Rev. W. H. Daniels, A.M., published 1878.

Thanks to Rick K who came across the book, converted this segment into digital format, and made it available for reproduction here.

Excerpted from The Temperance Reform and its Great Reformers © by Rev. W. H. Daniels, A.M., published 1878.

The Washingtonian movement had its origin in a tippling house, in the city of Baltimore, in the year 1840, with a company of half a dozen hard drinkers who had formed themselves into a club, and who used to meet for drinking bouts at Chase's tavern.

One night the Rev. Matthew Hale Smith, a noted lecturer on temperance, was announced to speak in one of the churches, and they appointed two of their number a committee to go and hear him. The committee brought back a favorable report of the man and his doctrines, upon which a warm discussion arose. This being overheard by the landlord, he at once broke into a tirade against all temperance lecturers, and denounced them as hypocrites and fools.

To this storm of abuse one of the old topers replied, "Of course it is for your interest to cry them down;" whereupon the discussion waxed hotter and hotter, and resulted in the six men forming themselves into a temperance club which they styled the "Washingtonian Total Abstinence Society," and adopted a pledge requiring total abstinence from the use of all intoxicating liquors.

The names of those six individuals were William Mitchell, David Hoss, Charles Anderson, George Steer, Bill M'Curdy, and Tom Campbell. John Hawkins early became a member, but was not one of the original six.

They then voted to meet the next night in a carpenter shop, and each agreed to bring a new member. These meetings were held almost nightly, at which each man related his own experience at the court of death. As might be expected, the meetings soon began to attract public attention.

These reformed men were soon invited to visit other cities and towns; and who of our older citizens has not listened to the thrilling and simple experience of John Hawkins as he portrayed the misery of the drunkard, and told the touching story of his little daughter, Hannah, persuading him to reform? This new movement spread from city to city, and from town to town, until there was scarcely a place in the United States that did not have its Washingtonian Total Abstinence Society. Men who had been drunkards for years burst the bonds that had so long bound them, and became temperance reformers. The name being quite long, it soon became shortened by daily use, and these organizations became known throughout the country as "Washingtonians."

This was a rebellion of the subjects of King Alcohol against his tyranny, and as such it immediately became famous. It was a reform, commencing with the people who most needed reformation, and carried with it so much of sound sense, and so little of mere rhetoric, that every-where the reformed men who went about telling their own experience and salvation from the power of liquor found large and attentive audiences, and the Washingtonian movement became the chief topic both in religious and social circles.

It was quite a wonderful thing to hear a man in plain clothes, and without any of the graces of speech, declare what had been done for him, and exhorting with all simplicity and boldness that others should give up liquor as he had done.

The common people heard these men gladly, and drunkards by thousands and tens of thousands signed the total abstinence pledge.

In this movement there was no exception made in favor of the man who could buy fifteen gallons over the man who could buy a single glass.

Ale, wine, beer, cider, every thing else that had alcohol in it, was rejected, and for motives of domestic peace and plenty, self-respect and personal honor, men were persuaded to sign this pledge.

It was assumed that every man who wished to do so was able to break off his habits of drink. The religious feature of the movement, which is its latest and crowning glory, had not then appeared. Personal experiences, droll stories, and sharp jokes at the expense of drunkards and drunkard makers; imitations of the antics and fooleries of men under the influence of liquor; sharp thrusts at the avariciousness and meanness of the liquor sellers, and at the tricks of liquor makers, formed the staple of the lecturing under the Washingtonian movement.

When this movement began, Dr. Jewitt, who was himself one of the chief agents of the reformation in Massachusetts, says, "Nineteen twentieths of the clergy were total abstainers;" and what was true of Massachusetts was substantially true throughout New England.

The progress of the temperance reform for the nine years from 1831 to 1840 may be indicated by the following figures: In the first-mentioned year twelve millions of people drank seventy millions of gallons of liquor -- an average of six gallons a year to every man, woman, and child -- besides wine, beer and cider. In 1840 seventeen millions of people drank forty-three millions of gallons -- a reduction of more than one half per capita.

Still more manifest were the signs of progress after the Washingtonian movement fairly got under way, and the reformed men had commenced their tour of the principal cities, relating their experience to assembled multitudes, and gathering in the people by thousands to the new society. It is estimated that under the impetus of this movement one hundred and fifty thousand drunkards signed the pledge, besides uncounted thousands of other classes of society.

Some of the leaders in this movement, so far from feeling the need of religion, declared that religious exercises of every kind were out of place in temperance meetings. They were not even opened with prayer.

It seemed to be a part of the policy to avoid every possible question that might arise concerning religion, in order that men might be the more deeply impressed with the duty of temperance. But this effort to divorce temperance from religion was the chief weakness of the Washingtonian movement. Nevertheless, in spite of this coldness toward Christ and his Church, the actual reform wrought by this means was oftentimes the forerunner of revivals of religion in local churches, and many a man was saved from his other sins through his effort to save himself from drunkenness.

Few names were more familiar to the people of the United States during the early years of the great Washingtonian movement than that of John Hawkins, of Baltimore. He was not one of the original club by which the reform was inaugurated, but joined them soon after, and presently developed such talent for temperance oratory that his services were in demand from Maine to Louisiana. During the eighteen years of his life after his reformation he spoke and organized Washingtonian societies in all the principal cities and towns of New England; and in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Harrisburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, Ky., Charleston, S.C., New Orleans, etc.

In his journal, which was published after his death, the record of the number of signers of the total abstinence pledge at a large number of his meetings are given, usually reaching into the hundreds, a considerable portion of them being men whose bloated countenances and trembling nerves showed how much they were in need of this salvation.

At Springfield, Mass., Newport, R.I., Saratoga, N.Y., and Portland, Maine, his efforts were notably blessed; but perhaps his most remarkable triumph was in Boston, then a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, in which it was declared at one of the Washingtonian Conventions that "four fifths of all the Boston drunkards had signed the temperance pledge."

The enthusiasm of these Washingtonian meetings was something wonderful. The experiences of men actually reformed from the lowest depths of drunkenness were arguments that nothing could resist, and the presence of such a man before an audience was as if one had risen from the dead. Poor wretches would rise to their feet in the midst of great assemblies, and, with a look of desperation on their bloated faces, would ask,

"Do you think I could reform? Do you think there is any hope for me?"

"Yes, brother. Sign the pledge, and it will make a sober man of you," would be the reply.

Then, amid the sobs, and "God bless you's!" of his family and friends, the poor drunkard would crowd up to the platform, take the pen in his trembling hand, and sign, the vast congregation holding their breath as they watched him through their tears. Then, with a heavy sigh, the man, with a new hope in him, would, perhaps, try to speak a few words, confessing his own sins, and the sorrows he had brought upon his wife and children -- always the same sad story, but always new and touching -- and then the older Washingtonians would gather round him, talk encouragingly to him, find out his most pressing necessities and relieve them, and the poor, lost wretch would feel as if he had suddenly been lifted to a mountain top where on the one hand he could look down into the abyss from which he had just been taken, and on the other he could catch a glimpse of the distant glories of the city of God, whose snowy, shining towers he dimly remembered in childhood's visions, but which he had wholly lost sight of in his long years of degradation, and which he had never again expected to see.

The following, from one of Mr. Hawkins's addresses at Faneuil Hall, Boston, shows the tone and spirit of that brotherly work:

The following, gathered mostly from his published memoirs, is the story of [Hawkins'] life:

When the British made a landing at Baltimore during the war of 1812, young Hawkins borrowed a musket and joined the ranks of the volunteers, exposing himself with all the rashness and abandon of southern youth in the very front of the battle, from which, however, he escaped unhurt. In 1815 he was brought under the influence of divine grace in a revival of religion, united on probation with the Methodist Episcopal Church, and for some years was a zealous and useful Sunday-school teacher and Christian worker. But hard times came, employment failed, and in 1818 he went to seek his fortune at the West.

Mr. Hawkins having temporarily reformed, was married on Christmas day, 1822, to Miss Rachel Thompson, of Baltimore, of which marriage two children were born, Elizabeth and Hannah. The latter name will recall to many of the readers of this history a little temperance book of Washingtonian days entitled "Hannah Hawkins; or, the Reformed Drunkard's Daughter," a book over which many tears have been shed and many good resolutions made.

The Washingtonian meetings might have been called temperance class-meetings, with a missionary outlook. One of the first records of the work is a letter to the original Baltimore Washingtonians, asking them to send a delegation of reformed men to New York, "to tell their experience." Five men were sent, men wholly without oratorical powers, but who had been slaves to drink, and had felt how good it was to be free; and the testimony of these five men was all that was required to kindle the enthusiasm in that great city.

A number of new temperance newspapers sprang into existence. Nineteen such publications are named in Mr. Hawkins' memoirs, while the regular newspaper press was largely occupied with the strange work of reform among the drunkards and the individual histories that the meetings developed. Some of the ablest speakers and writers of the day, in prose and poetry, devoted their genius to this great moral reform; among them Rev. Mr. Pierpont, of Boston, Wm. B. Tappen, Rev. Edward N. Kirk, D.D., and a large number of other leading clergymen. Dr. Lyman Beecher, in his mature age, saw and rejoiced over this temperance tidal wave, which was a fulfillment of his own prophecy, and a result for which he had well prepared the way.

Mr. Hawkins, toward the close of his brilliant career as a temperance worker, was licensed as a preacher of the Gospel by the Methodist Protestant Church, though he seems to have made little use of his commission.

His death occurred suddenly at Piqua, Pa., August 26, 1858, in the sixty-first year of his age, in the full possession of his mental power, and in the glorious hope of everlasting life