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====The Long Crusade Against Booze====__NOTOC__Americans have a complicated relationship with alcohol. Even before they established Plymouth, William Bradford lamented that the puritanical Pilgrims were ready to go to the mainland as their “victuals [were] much spent, especially our Beere (sic).” Both Virginia and Plymouth had vibrant alcohol industries, and during the colonial period many backcountry farmers found distilling spirits or fermenting cider to be effective ways of preserving their agricultural production. The heavy reliance on molasses, rum, and sugar in the colonies also created an interwoven trade network crisscrossing the Atlantic Ocean, providing a source of income and building dependencies across the European colonial holdings.  Through the revolution, major political and social leaders drank alcohol and extolled its virtues as part of the natural social process. This began to change with the advent of industrial production, however, and the rise in religiosity fueled by the Second Great Awakening. Throughout most of the 19th century, Temperance, (the desire to moderate and restrain from all sorts of excesses, but mostly alcohol) was one of the most important social issues of the day. With the Second Great Awakening and the social movements of the 1820s and 1830s, alcohol became a scapegoat for a wide range of social problems that included joblessness, domestic abuse, immorality, and declining adherence to religious beliefs. ====The Long Crusade Against Booze====

While the “roaring 20s” raged in the cities with alcohol flowing to speakeasies and blood flowing in the streets, deeper economic problems in the country's farmland and financial markets indicated there were even bigger storm clouds on the horizon. With the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, the demand for alcohol and its ancillary entertainment venues declined. Simultaneous with the decline in government revenue as a result of the Great Depression, a Democratic coalition emerged and supported Franklin Roosevelt in his bid for the presidency. Roosevelt made job creation his priority and included the repeal of Prohibition on his platform. Political concerns also extended beyond simply appealing to potential voters.  If the passage of a federal income tax granted the nation’s legislators the flexibility to eliminate excise taxes on alcohol, the declining revenues from taxing those incomes encouraged them to reconsider. Almost immediately after Roosevelt’s inauguration, Congress proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would repeal Prohibition, and in less than a year enough states approved the resolution to end nationwide Prohibition in December of 1933. As before, states and local governments were able to enforce their own prohibitions, but the issue of a nationwide ban on alcohol has never been seriously considered again.