Carry Amelia Moore Gloyd Nation (1846-1911)
Topic: Women's History Month

Ax-wielding Temperance Leader
It is important to remember several factors in any discussion involving the temperance movement and the Eighteenth Amendment (aka Prohibition). The temperance movement was motivated by the lack of married women's property rights, the lack of accountability in the emerging west, and the abandonment and violence against many frontier wives as a result of alcoholism. Also important to remember is that, while women are often blamed for the 18th Amendment, it was passed and ratified a full year before women got the right to vote with the 19th Amendment. Therefore, women cannot be held accountable for the votes that resulted in the "Great Experiment," though they were the driving force behind the movement. That said, THE most fascinating participant in the temperance movement would have to be Carry Nation.

Nation was profoundly effected by her unstable early life with an alcoholic father and an insane mother. Her first husband, Dr. Charles Gloyd was also an alcoholic, though Nation was unaware of Gloyd's condition prior to their marriage. Little more than a year after the marriage, with a new baby to care for, Nation was widowed at twenty-one. After a four-year stint as a teacher, Nation was left without employment and felt obliged to marry David Nation. Very much like her father, Nation moved his family continually to avoid political feuds he had a hand in creating. David Nation eventually divorced Carrie Nation years after she left him for temperance crusading.

Exasperated by the instability that characterized her previously dependant life, Nation turned to the temperance movement and founded her first chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1892 at the age of 46. In May of 1900 she began the crusade that would give her national notoriety. At a saloon in Kiowa, KS, Nation, who had armed herself with rocks she'd hidden in secret pockets sewn into her dress, and bricks and proceeded to destroy the illegal establishment (Kansas was ostensibly a "dry" state). When she ran out of ammunition, she grabbed a hatchet, and her reputation was thus secured.

A six-feet tall, 175 lb woman engaged in the willful destruction of property was such a spectacle that witnesses were paralyzed. In disbelief, patrons and employees stood by as Nation wrecked taverns and saloons. Bolstered by her success in Kiowa, Nation soon moved to Wichita where she expected to find much greater resistance in a town with a reputation for fast and accurate gunmen. She chose the Hotel Carey because if its national fame, arriving at 9:30 in the morning, and proceeded to destroy the fifty-foot cherry bar, antique mirrors and what she considered an offensive nude that hung above the bar. Finally, Nation was arrested and jailed, but nothing could persuade her from her mission and the disarming method she had stumbled upon. During that two week stint in jail, large groups of women sang and prayed outside her cell while word spread quickly about Nation and her deeds.

Jailed time and again, Nation continued her crusade for the next ten years. Not known for her politeness, Nation often referred to judges as "Your Dishonor" and appealed to the governor of Kansas to enforce its laws, which prohibited the sale of alcohol, so the women would not have to. Ironically, her temperance career came to an end when a female "joint" owner in Montana beat her so severely that she never recovered fully. She died a year and a half later. Eminent psychiatrist Karl Menninger commented, "What I have always admired about Carry Nation was the fact that she could not stomach hypocrisy... .I wish there were more people today who felt the same way."