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We exhaust the following from a circular sent us by John J.E. Linton, of Stratford. The facts are striking, and conclusive against the liquor traffic, as productive of a very large proportion of the offences that are tried before police and criminal courts.

I hope you will approve of my thus publicly stating the following facts. (more…)

From Mr. Charles Sprague’s Address, delivered before the Massachusetts Society for Suppressing Intemperance.

Charles Sprague

The common calamities of life may be endured. Poverty, sickness, and even death may be met – but there is that which, while it rings all these with it, is worse than all these together. When the husband and father forgets the duties he once delighted to fulfill, and by slow degrees becomes the creature of intemperance, there enters into his house the sorrow that rends the spirit – that cannot be alleviated, that will not be comforted.

It is here, above all, where she, who has ventured every thing, feels that every thing is lost. Woman, silent-suffering, devoted woman, here bends to her direst affliction. The measure of her woe is, in truth, full, whose husband is a drunkard. Who shall protect her when he is her insult, her oppressor? What shall delight her, when she shrinks from the sight of his face, and trembles at the sound of his voice? The heart is indeed dark, that he has made desolate. There, through the dull midnight hour, her griefs are whispered to herself, her bruised heart bleeds in secret. There, while the cruel author of her distress is drowned in distant revelry, she holds her solitary vigil, waiting, yet dreading his return, that will only wring from her, by his unkindness, tears even more scalding than those she shed over his transgression.

To fling a deeper gloom across the present, memory turns back, and broods upon the past. Like the recollection of the sun-stricken pilgrim, of the cool spring that the drank at in the morning, the joys of other days come over her, as if only to mock her parched and weary spirit. She recalls the ardent lover, whose graces own her from the home of her infancy – the enraptured father, who bent with such delight over his new-born child – and she asks if this can really be him – this sunken being, who has now nothing for her but the sot’s disgusting brutality – nothing for those abashed and trembling children, but the sot’s disgusting example! Can we wonder, that amid these agonizing moments, the tender cords of violated affection should snap asunder? That the scorned and deserted wife should confess, “there is no killing like that which kills the heart?” That though it would have been hard for her to kiss, for the last time, the cold lips of her dead husband, and lay his body for ever in the dust, it is harder to behold him so debasing life, that even his death would be greeted in mercy?

Ladies' Temperance Banner

Had he died in the light of his goodness, bequeathing to his family the inheritance of an untarnished name, the example of virtues that should blossom for his sons and daughters from the tomb – though she would have wept bitterly indeed, the tears of grief would not have been the tears of shame. But to behold him, fallen away from the station he adorned, degraded from the station he adorned, degraded from eminence to ignominy – at home, turning his dwelling to darkness, and his holy endearments to mockery – abroad thrust from the companionship of the worthy, a self-branded outlaw. This is the woe that the wife feels is more dreadful than death, – that she mourns over, as worse than widowhood.

Source: THE COLORED AMERICAN – June 10, 1837
Collection: African American Newspapers
Title: The Intemperate Husband

The Temperance movement was particularly popular in New England. The Beman family, descendants of Ceasar Beman, a Connecticut slave who one his freedom fighting in the revolutionary war, was very active in the cause. In 1833, Jehiel Beman founded the black Home Temperance Society of Middletown.

In 1836, he founded the Connecticut State Temperance Society of Colored People, and he later served as that organization’s president and general agent. In part because of the efforts of the Beman family, the temperance movement was especially strong among black people in Connecticut.

Reverend James W.C. Pennington

Of special note in this meeting documented below, the prayer was delivered by Reverend James W.C. Pennington. Pennington was born a slave in Washington County, Maryland. After escaping to Pennsylvania he moved on to New York in 1828. A blacksmith by trade, he settled in New Haven, Connecticut, and audited classes at Yale Divinity School from 1834 to 1839 – becoming the first black man to attend classes at Yale. He was subsequently ordained and became a teacher, abolitionist, and author.

He wrote The Origin and History of the Colored People in 1841, which has been called the first history of African Americans, and a slave narrative in 1850, The Fugitive Blacksmith. In 1849 the University of Heidelberg awarded him an honorary doctorate of divinity.

TEMPERANCE MEETING

The State Temperance Society of Colored People, met in the city of New Haven, Nov. 9th, 1836, in pursuance to notice which had been published in several journals. The Society was called to order at 4 o’clock, P.M. The President, Rev. Jehiel C. Berman, in the chair. Prayer by the president; after which, a committee of three was appointed to prepare and report the order of exercises for the evening meeting. Adjourned till 7 o’clock.

At 7 o’clock, the Society was called to order: the vice president, Mr. Henry Foster, took the chair. – The Committee then reported the resolutions, which were supported and adopted as follows:

• Resolved, That we view the formation of a State Total Abstinence Society among us, as the precursor of better days in our moral and religious elevation.
• Resolved, That we owe it to our friends, who plead our cause, and to our brethren ‘in bonds as feeling bound with them,’ to use our influence to do away the use intoxicating liquors from among us, as a common beverage.
• Resolved, That it is the duty of all Christians to use their influence to promote the cause of temperance.
• Resolved, That it is the duty of all parents to instruct their children, by precept and example, in the principles of total abstinence, and discountenance those shops kept by colored men where intoxicating liquors are sold.
• Resolved, That in view of the degradation and misery to which the female sex have been subjected, in consequence of the use of intoxicating liquors, they are imperiously called upon the exert their influence to banish them from their social circles.

The above resolutions were supported by nine different gentlemen, from Hartford, Middletown, and New Haven, and unanimously adopted.

The sense of the meeting was then taken upon the principal of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors, and decided by a large majority, that it is the only safe and consistent ground, which can be occupied by the friends of temperance.
The meeting then adjourned to meet at 9 o’clock, Nov. 10th.

The Society met as per adjournment, the vice president in the chair. Prayer by Rev. Mr. Pennington. The delegates then reported the progress of the total abstinence principles among the colored people of this State, which showed that much had been done to cheer the hearts, and encourage the friends of temperance to persevere, humbly relying upon the great Giver of all good, for aid to accomplish the work of reformation.

• Voted, That a committee of three be appointed to prepare a constitution, and obtain subscribers to a Society, in the city of New Haven, to be auxiliary to the State Temperance Society of colored people.
• Voted, That the annual meeting of this Society be held in the city of Norwich, Connecticut., on the 11th day of May, 1837.
• Voted, That our thanks are due to our friends in this city, for the kind reception which we have received, and for the use of their church.
• Voted, That the doings of this Society be published.

The Society then adjourned.

HENRY FOSTER, V. President
A.G. BEMAN, Secretary
New Haven, Nov. 10th, 1837.