The Drunkard’s Progress: From the First Glass to the Grave
This 1846 lithograph, published by N. Currier, suggests the inevitable fate of those who drink. The drunkard’s descent into “Poverty and Disease” ends with “Death by suicide,” leaving a grieving and destitute wife and child. Temperance reformers urged Americans to take “The Cold Water Cure” by drinking water instead of alcoholic beverages. To promote abstinence among the young, in 1836 revivalist preacher Reverend Thomas Poage Hunt founded the Cold Water Army, an organization that grew to embrace several hundred thousand children, all of whom pledged “perpetual hate to all that can Intoxicate.” Library of Congress.