A Savage Conflict by Daniel E. Sutherland

Historians have long noted that before the Civil War, white southerners were slow to embrace temperance reform. This embrace of prohibition signals a shift in white southerners' prevailing attitudes about controlling liquor manufacturing. Passing prohibition was necessary to promote the public good. Likewise, both crises could be mitigated by prohibiting distilling at the state level. Both crises, they believed, were exacerbated by distillers, who put profits ahead of patriotic sacrifice. When discussing prohibition, Confederates regularly cited two intertwined concerns: soldier discipline and food shortages. Nevertheless, in early 1862 six Confederate states passed prohibition, and a seventh followed suit a year later.

After all, most of the historiography suggests that white southerners failed to support temperance reform (a movement they sometimes even ridiculed). (2) At first glance, these conversations might surprise historians. Whittle's exchange with his constituent proved emblematic of the prohibition-related conversations occurring throughout the Confederacy, but especially in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. to save the cause of the country.' He insisted that he was 'no temperance man & had no such view in my vote.' His teetotalism, as he understood it, was a patriotic gesture. Knowing that whiskey 'has killed more than the Yankee,' he vowed 'to take not a drop. Even Whittle was willing to adjust his habits.

'Certainly some will lose money' by being unable to distill, he acknowledged, 'but we all lose money by the war & no one ought to complain on that account.' Instead, Whittle insisted, all patriotic Virginians must embrace the financial hardships caused by the war. The problem with distilling during a time of war was twofold: the state was running out of grain, and 'the army has been demoralized by liquor.' If distilling continued, Whittle pointed out, there was no way for the Confederacy to sustain its war effort.

Writing to a friend and political supporter in Pittsylvania County, Whittle explained that though he had been encouraged 'to support the stills'-specifically those of Virginians who distilled grains for their own private use-he believed that the prohibition on distilling could be borne stoically and patriotically. He received angry letters from his constituents-the farmers of Pittsylvania County-for his trouble. The legislature had recently voted to prohibit distilling because it wasted grain, and Whittle had voted in support of the measure. IN EARLY 1862, VIRGINIA STATE SENATOR JAMES M.

A Savage Conflict by Daniel E. Sutherland