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CHAPTER VI.

THE WASHINGTONIANS.-JOHN HAWKINS.

HE Washingtonian movement had its origin in a tippling house, in the city of Baltimore, in the year 1840, with a company of half a dozen hard drinkers who had formed themselves into a club, and who used to meet for drinking bouts at Chase's tavern.

One night the Rev. Matthew Hale Smith, a noted lecturer on temperance, was announced to speak in one of the churches, and they appointed two of their number a committee to go and hear him. The committee brought back a favorable report of the man and his doctrines, upon which a warm discussion arose. This being overheard by the landlord, he at once broke out into a tirade against all temperance lecturers, and denounced. them as hypocrites and fools.

To this storm of abuse one of the old topers replied, "Of course it is for your interest to cry them down;" whereupon the discussion waxed hotter and hotter, and resulted in the six men forming themselves into a temperance club, which they styled the "Washingtonian Total Abstinence Society," and adopted a pledge requiring total abstinence from the use of all intoxicating liquors.

The names of these six individuals were William Mitchell, David Hoss, Charles Anderson, George Steer, Bill M'Curdy, and Tom Campbell. John Hawkins early became a member, but was not one of the original six.

They then voted to meet the next night in a carpenter shop, and each agreed to bring a new member. These meetings were held almost nightly, at which each man related his own experience at the court of death. As might be expected, the meetings soon began to attract public attention.

These reformed men were soon invited to visit other cities and towns; and who of our older citizens has not listened to the thrilling and simple experience of John Hawkins as he portrayed the misery of the drunkard, and told the touching story of his little daughter, Hannah, persuading him to reform? This new movement spread from city to city, and from town to town, until there was scarcely a place in the United States that did not have its Washingtonian Total Abstinence Society. Men who had been drunkards for years burst the bands that had so long bound them, and became temperance reformers. The name being quite long, it soon became shortened by daily use, and these organizations became known throughout the country as Washingtonians."

This was a rebellion of the subjects of King Alcohol against his tyranny, and as such it immediately became famous. It was a reform, commencing with the people who most needed reformation, and carried with it so much of sound sense, and so little of mere rhetoric, that every-where the reformed men who went about telling their own experience and salvation from the power of liquor found large and attentive audiences, and the Washingtonian movement became the chief topic both in religious and social circles.

It was quite a wonderful thing to hear a man in plain clothes, and without any of the graces of speech, declare what had been done for him, and exhorting with all simplicity and boldness that others should give up liquor ast he had done.

The common people heard these men gladly, and drunkards by thousands and tens of thousands signed the total abstinence pledge.

In this movement there was no exception made in favor of the man who could buy fifteen gallons over the man who could buy a single glass.

Ale, wine, beer, cider, every thing else that had alcohol in it, was rejected, and for motives of domestic peace and plenty, self-respect and personal honor, men were persuaded to sign this pledge.

It was assumed that every man who wished to do so was able to break off his habits of drink. The religious feature of the movement, which is its latest and crowning glory, had not then appeared. Personal experiences, droll stories, and sharp jokes at the expense of drunkards and drunkard makers; imitations of the antics and fooleries of men under the influence of liquor; sharp thrusts at the avariciousness and meanness of the liquor sellers, and at the tricks of liquor makers, formed the staple of the lecturing under the Washingtonian movement.

When this movement began, Dr. Jewitt, who was himself one of the chief agents of the reformation in Massachusetts, says, "Nineteen twentieths of the clergy were total abstainers;" and what was true of Massachusetts was substantially true throughout New England.

The progress of the temperance reform for the nine

years from 1831 to 1840 may be indicated by the following figures: In the first-mentioned year twelve millions of people drank seventy millions of gallons of liquor—an average of six gallons a year to every man, woman, and child besides wine, beer, and cider. In 1840 seventeen millions of people drank forty-three millions of gallons— a reduction of more than one half per capita.

Still more manifest were the signs of progress after the Washingtonian movement fairly got under way, and the reformed men had commenced their tour of the principal cities, relating their experience to assembled multitudes, and gathering in the people by thousands to the new society. It is estimated that under the impetus of this movement one hundred and fifty thousand drunkards signed the pledge, besides uncounted thousands of other classes of society.

Some of the leaders in this movement, so far from feeling the need of religion, declared that religious exercises of every kind were out of place in temperance meetings. They were not even opened with prayer.

It seemed to be a part of the policy to avoid every possible question that might arise concerning religion, in order that men might be the more deeply impressed with the duty of temperance. But this effort to divorce temperance from religion was the chief weakness of the Washingtonian movement. Nevertheless, in spite of this coldness toward Christ and his Church, the actual reform wrought by this means was oftentimes the forerunner of revivals of religion in local churches, and many a man was saved from his other sins through his effort to save himself from drunkenness.

JOHN H. W. HAWKINS.

Few names were more familiar to the people of the United States during the early years of the great Washingtonian movement than that of John Hawkins, of Baltimore. He was not one of the original club by which the reform was inaugurated, but joined them soon after, and presently developed such talent for temperance oratory that his services were in demand from Maine to Louisiana. During the eighteen years of his life after his reformation he spoke and organized Washingtonian societies in all the principal cities and towns of New England; and in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Harrisburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Ky., Charleston, S. C., New Orleans, La., etc.

In his journal, which was published after his death, the record of the number of signers of the total abstinence pledge at a large number of his meetings are given, usually reaching into the hundreds, a considerable proportion of them being men whose bloated countenances and trembling nerves showed how much they were in need of this salvation.

At Springfield, Mass., Newport, R. I., Saratoga, N. Y., and Portland, Maine, his efforts were notably blessed; but perhaps his most remarkable triumph was in Boston, then a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, in which it was declared at one of the Washingtonian Conventions that "four fifths of all the Boston drunkards had signed the temperance pledge."