In 1842, a young Abe Lincoln gave a speech to the Springfield, IL, Temperance Union. The speech was delivered a little less than eighty years before Prohibition was passed, and Lincoln himself would be dead in a little over twenty. Lincoln was sympathetic to the Temperance Movement, or else he decided it was politically expedient to support them. The interesting part of this speech is that he doesn't support the Temperance Movement whole hog.

Much of the speech, which Lincoln fans can read here, discusses the important and mostly happy role of alcohol in human history. Drinking's not a bad thing, says Lincoln—it's a very good thing that just gets abused sometimes. He then goes on to praise those unfortunate souls who've fallen victim to drink. If anything, they're more intelligent, generous, and sensitive than any other group of people you could compare them with. Who are we to condemn or judge them?

Lincoln's not going for Prohibition here at all. He thinks that if you'd just reason with people, they'd see how bad drunkenness can be and they'd cut it out or moderate their drinking. No need to carry on and get all up in their face. Or risk eliminating all the fun stuff from parties just because some people can't control themselves.

You'll probably notice that Lincoln's rhetoric is used a lot by people worried about the change brought on by revolutionary social movements: calm down, be patient. Women's suffrage, civil rights—the message was to back off and wait for people to come around to your way of thinking.

Should temperance advocates have calmed down? Or is the first hint of success the time to step up efforts? It's the essential question all activists face. In the case of the Temperance Movement crusaders, they didn't wait or show much temperance themselves, and it got them what they wanted.