The “Washingtonian revival”: Narrative and the moral transformation of temperance reform in Antebellum America

Abstract

This essay examines the role of movement narratives during a brief but decisive phase in the nineteenth‐century temperance movement known as the “Washingtonian Revival.” It argues that efforts to combat intemperance in the Early Republic were hampered initially by the failure of temperance activists to articulate a moral rationale that could inspire reformers, win converts to their cause, and capture the sympathies of a public swept up in the democratic and humanitarian optimism of the age. However, in the spring of 1840, a small group of reformed drunkards, calling themselves the “Washington Temperance Society,” offered to share their personal stories of redemption from drink, and so introduced into the movement a narrative that contained a compelling moral rationale for temperance reform. A burgeoning class of Washingtonian orators soon generated a “moving tide of discourse” that helped to transform the fortunes and legacy of the temperance movement. This study of the Washingtonian Revival illumines the historical and rhetorical conditions under which movement narratives may transform the moral rationale of social movements and, in so doing, alter both their form and fate.