The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation by Carry A. Nation

“I am destroying.” After she left jail, her husband jokingly suggested that she use a hatchet next time. “I am defacing nothing,” she told the police officers who arrested her. Six months later, Nation pulled a similar stunt in Wichita. When she awoke the morning of June 5, 1900, she heard a voice say, “Go to Kiowa, and I will stand by you.” Believing this to be a sign from God, Nation dressed in black and wrapped rocks and bottles in brown paper to look like packages in preparation for her first “ smashing.”

Frustrated by her limited success, she prayed for guidance. Nation and other women in the WCTU loudly sang hymns outside Medicine Lodge saloons for hours, hashing the buzz of all inside and making the illegal activity too obvious for law enforcement to ignore.įor Nation, this was not enough. Kansas had banned alcohol statewide in 1880, but the law was barely enforced. Wystan, Wikipedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Nation addressing a crowd of college students on May 3, 1902. The organization lobbied for the prohibition of alcohol (a moral issue and therefore appropriate for women) but it also fought for public health, labor laws, and women’s suffrage. In 1889, they moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where she started a local chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). In 1874, Carrie married lawyer and preacher David A.

Goyd died soon after of “pneumonia compounded by excessive drinking,” as recorded on his death certificate. Less than a year later, Carrie fled her husband’s alcoholism and returned to her parents' house to give birth to a daughter, Charlien. “I did not fear anything, for I was in love.”Īgainst her family’s wishes, they married in 1867. “My father and mother warned me that the doctor was addicted to drink, but I had no idea of the curse of rum,” she wrote later. It wasn’t long before he and 19-year-old Carrie were sneaking love letters to each other with Gloyd’s large book of Shakespeare plays. At the end of the Civil War, 25-year-old Union Army veteran Charles Gloyd arrived at the Moore family farm in Missouri to rent a room. Wikipedia Commons // Public DomainĬaroline “Carry” or “Carrie” Amelia Moore was born in 1846 to George Moore, a plantation owner, and his wife Mary, who occasionally believed she was Queen Victoria.

The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation by Carry A. Nation