Written by guest blogger Dr. Carole Lynn Stewart.

One of the challenges in writing on American temperance (anti-alcohol) movements and literature or culture in the nineteenth century is that people often hold stereotypical ideas about white middle class, conservative Protestant, evangelical reformers—and they are not flattering. Narrow-minded, ascetic, moralistic reformers come to mind, and sometimes this is true. Of course, anyone studying or researching temperance realizes the situation is much more multifaceted and nuanced. Once we also learn that most African American abolitionists, and women’s right reformers, were also temperance reformers, the perspective changes.