Temperance may be defined as: moderation in all things healthful; total abstinence from all things harmful. On November 10, 1891, the first meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was held in Boston, Massachusetts. The meeting signaled a new era of social responsibility and the beginning of public charities. The move signaled the real dawn and consequence of an industrialized nation.

As the number of factories increased so did the single worker going out of the family security net into the world. Cities replaced villages and the social landscape altered forever. Away from home or not making enough money to go home, many people turned to drink. Extra money also meant extra money for entertainment and leisure time. Leisure time in the extreme provoked a social response.

A number of people equated (and rightly so in most cases) a correlation between drinking and domestic violence, homelessness, poverty and crime. It was thought that if alcoholic drink was eliminated or extremely curtailed, the morals of the village may return to the uprooted families of the inner cities. And with enough people on the same page, a movement was born.

The movement of the 1890s was far from the first of its kind. Several temperance groups had made headway in Europe and America. In the United States temperance found a strong ally in the women’s rights movement and was consequently dominant by women with strong opinions and a desire for social change. Not always welcome in the America of the late Victorian era.

The organization was established in the 1870s with a primary goal being the abolition of alcohol in all the states of the union. It was not the first American group but one that received the most notoriety for its strict moral character and ardent desire to clean up America so that God would find favor with the nation’s inhabitants.

The main activities of the WCTU were “crusades.” These crusades involve mass prayer in local churches to petition God for assistance with making alcohol illegal and marching to local bars and saloons to demand the owner shut his or her doors. The women exacted a moral authority and used Christian beliefs as well as good old fashioned guilt and shame to pull people away from drink and into the movement.

All the members of the WCTU were tee totallers and hoped that many would learn from their example.Some did, others found them amusing and an object of scorn. Their beliefs for many were out of sync with the fast paced change of America’s industrialization.

Regardless of personal or public opinion, President Woodrow Wilson passed the 18^th amendment to prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol in 1919. In this the WCTU saw their success and reward. The WCTU still exists today and continues the historic work of their foremothers.

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On October 27, 1871, the infamous Boss Tweed was arrested in New York on corruption charges. For many, the arrest was long overdue as he had a disturbing stronghold on the New York political system for many years. When we think of corrupt public servants and political scandals, the first name that comes to mind for any historian is William Marcy Tweed.

Born in 1823, Tweed came from a humble background on New York’s lowest east side. His community was founded by immigrants and represented a lower class in society. Tweed kept this to himself so as not to ruin his chance at political achievement. He was a carpenter, accountant, fireman and then in 1851 his vocational experience and membership in the democratic party got him elected as an alderman.

After alderman, Tweed held a number of offices and began to grease the palms of those who could help him further his career and fiscal hopes. Work contracts, land purchases, wages and materials were all susceptible to bribery, kickbacks and favors. Tweed’s world was wealth and influence and Tammany Hall was his head quarters.

Tweed found favor among newly arrived immigrant populations who were coming into New York at the rate of hundreds per week. Uneducated in the ways of American politics, immigrants were easy targets for Boss tweed. They often swapped board and employment for votes. A semi transient community was perfect for Tweed and his fellow thieves.

The growing population of New York created a need for large construction projects, municipal improvements and contract workers. It was a fertile ground for manipulative individuals to make a few extra bucks on the side. Boss Tweed was a member of The Society of Saint Tammany a charitable organization that became a filter for money jobs and votes from the immigrant community.

All was going well until an accountant felt slighted by Tweed’s small kickback and decided to tell his story to the papers. He placed incriminating papers in the hands of the New York Times and it was all downhill from there. It didn’t take journalists and legal prosecutors very long to trace the paper trail back to Tweed.

In all, Tweed and his crew used their political offices and professional connections to skim almost 200 million dollars off the top of the New York City municipal budget. After his arrest and initial sentence of 12 years, Boss Tweed served one year, released, sued by the city of New York, sent back to jail, escaped, fled to Cuba, was found and rearrested. He spent the rest of his life in a New York jail cell where he died in 1878. Tweed was nothing if not a character and a great example of how not to run a city.

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The Americans at the outset of the Revolutionary War were outnumbered by the British in military capacity by 3 to 1, were poorly trained and had less arms power as well as financial resources at their disposition. The American advantage resided in that they were fighting on land they knew better than the British, familiar as they were with the wilderness of the terrain they themselves had populated and fought for against the Native Americans. The Americans also had excellent leadership for a young coalition of colonies: George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry were among the great political, military, and ideological minds behind the American push for independence.

The revolution began in Lexington, Massachusetts on April 18, 1775, when British General Thomas Gage sent 700 soldiers to destroy guns and ammunition stored by the colonists in the town of Concord near Boston, provoking response from the colonists. The British also attempted to arrest two key leaders of the patriot movement, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. The colonists elected George Washington as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army and under his guidance entered the subsequent battle with the British on Breed’s Hill on June 17, 1775, today remembered as the Battle of Bunker Hill.

By the summer of 1776, the colonies were organized and decisive enough to declare their independence from Britain in a formal resolution. After forming a committee to draft the declaration of independence, the document was endorsed by the Congress on July 4, 1776.

On December 25, 1776, after a stalemate on the battlefront of New York, George Washington and 2,500 of his soldiers crossed the Delaware River at night and attacked British and Hessian forces. Washington and his troops overpowered the opposition suffering only six wounded soldiers and cemented the path towards victory for the Revolutionary forces. By March 1777, Washington’s army had routed the British out of most of New York and New Jersey back towards New Brunswick.

In the months prior to and including July of 1777, the British attempted to take the Hudson River Valley in order to cut New England off from the other colonies and leverage control in this manner. They were able to defeat American forces at Fort Ticonderoga under General Burgoyne and his 7,700 troops on July 6, 1777. British Lieutenant Colonel St. Leger and his troops were set to join General Burgoyne from Canada as was the army of General Howe from New York. This reinforcement failed to materialize as St. Leger’s troops were defeated by Benedict Arnold and his American militia, forcing their retreat to Canada, while General Howe’s forces were held back by Washington’s forces at the Battle of Brandywine and then at the Battle of Germantown. General Burgoyne’s forces attacked General Gates’ American forces twice, but he was driven back each time. Meanwhile, on September 26, 1777 Britain’s General Howe was able to occupy Philadelphia, forcing the American Congress to relocate to York, Pennsylvania.

A decisive battle was fought and won by the Americans in Saratoga on October 7, 1777 when the American forces under General Horatio Gates and General Benedict Arnold defeated General Burgoyne’s army. On October 17, 1777, about 5,700 of General Burgoyne’s men surrendered to the Americans and were sent back to England. This was the point at which the French government recognized the independence of the United States of America. By July 1778, the French would also declare war on Britain and ally themselves with the American effort. The British would be further threatened and put at a disadvantage in their counter efforts against the Americans when the Spanish also declared war on the British, though establishing no alliance with the United States, and other European countries such as Holland and Poland gave their support to American initiatives. The British, in turn, fought back allying themselves with various Native American tribes.

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By 1783, Britain had signed a peace treaty with Spain and France while Spain, followed by Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, formally acknowledged the United States of America. On February 4, 1783, England officially ended hostilities with the United States of America and on April 11, 1783, the American Congress officially declared an end to the Revolutionary War and it was formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783.

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On November 24th, 1974 the Anthropologist Donald Johansen discovered a female hominid (whom he later named “Lucy”) near the Awash River in Hadar, Ethiopia. Anthropologists classified Lucy as Australopithecus afarensis and believed this hominid to be the earliest common ancestor shared between primates and early humans. Their research suggested that Australopithecus afarensis lived approximately 3.9 to 3 million years ago, walked upright on two legs and utilized simple tools made from pebbles. Australopithecus afarensis also shared many general physical features that made it more similar to modern humans than to the great ape, including a relatively small skull, bipedal knee structure and molars and front teeth.

Then, approximately 2.5 to 1.8 million years ago, a more advanced hominid, Homo habilis appeared on earth whom anthropologists generally believe to be the earliest species of the homo genus to evolve from Australopithecus afarensis. As the name Homo habilis ( “handy man” or “skillful person” in Latin) suggests, archeaological and anthropological studies showed that this species of hominid had more dexterity to utilize primitive stone tools. However, Homo habilis’ short body with disproportionately long arms when compared to modern humans indicated that it still shared more similar characteristics with Australopithecus afarensis.

Early Human Evolution Australopithecus afarensis skull Australopithecus afarensis cranium Australopithecus africanus cranium

One evolutionary feature of Homo habilis that began to differentiate him from Australopithecus afarensis is a lesser protrusion of the skull and a larger brain (Homo habilis had a brain approximately half the size of the modern Homo sapien). Of these “protohumans”, the most advanced was probably Homo erectus (“upright human” in Latin), who learned to use fire to cook and keep warm. This essential skill permitted Homo erectus to move from place to place and thus migrate over a greater geographical footprint.

Probably the most significant split in the evolution of the early humans occurred about 200,000 years ago when the Homo sapiens (“wise humans”) developed from the Homo erectus. Around this time, another protohuman, the Neanderthal also adapted to the colder climates brought on by the last Ice Age and the two peoples migrated through the continent of Europe and the Middle East. Eventually, in approximately 45,000 - 38,000 BC, the Cro-Magnon (direct ancestors to modern humans, the Homo sapiens) and Neanderthal peoples vied for supremacy over the natural domain upon which they roamed. Over time, the Cro-Magnon’s, displaced the Neanderthal tribes either by natural selection, direct confrontation or disease.

As the Cro-magnon’s migrated from the Middle East to Europe, several civilizations sprang up within the Mesopotamian region. With the Cro-magnon’s continued migration from the African plains to the Fertile Crescent along the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys (an area covered by present day Iraq, Syria and Azerbaijan), a dramatic change in ancient society occurred. Civilizations began to experiment in basic food production and with time the favorable topography and climate yielded a bounty of crops. The descendants of these ancient peoples refined the agricultural model of their ancestors by incorporating new crop cycles and domesticating animals. Those tribes that successfully transformed their societies into agrarian based models soon out-produced traditional hunter gatherer societies, resulting in their ability to sustain greater populations. Over time, these larger agriculture based populations grew immune to germs and disease through their exposure to beasts of burden and indigenous plants that they incorporated into their flourishing societies.

SOURCES:
Image of Lucy: American Museum of Natural History http://www.amnh.org

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