ABSTRACT
In August of 1865, temperance reformers met in Saratoga Springs, New York to regroup after the tumult of war had left the movement in confusion. Three hundred and twenty-six delegates (including six women) from twenty states voted to dissolve the American Temperance Union and start fresh with the new National Temperance Society and Publication House, its primary objective to print and disseminate temperance literature in order to revive interest in the cause. Many prominent antebellum reformers of various persuasions were in attendance. Samuel Fenton Cary and John Marsh attended alongside Gerrit Smith and other more radical reformers. There would be no upheavals at this convention, however, only a discussion of how the movement might recover from the blows dealt it by the war and whether or not prohibition should continue to be its primary focus. The latter discussion arose from the fact that most of the legislation passed before the war now lay dead or defunct. The NTS challenged the nation to refuse to regard the war as the conclusion of the work of moral reform: “The war has ended; but another begins. . . . Let patriots join hands to overthrow the monster that to-day threatens the nation’s life. A land of tipplers can never be a land of selfgoverning freemen.”2
