Prohibition campaigns began long before the Civil War but scored few important successes until after 1865. In 1869 anti-alcohol forces established the Prohibition Party, and in 1881 Kansas became the first state whose constitution banned the consumption of alcohol. Women spearheaded the prohibition movement by forming the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874. Frances Willard headed the group from 1879 until her death in 1898. Willard held a broad view of temperance reform that grew from religious, moral, and social justice convictions. Under her direction, the WCTU and its nationwide chapters supported women’s suffrage, laws to end child labor, and labor unions. Willard built the temperance movement around the need to protect the home. Husbands and fathers who drank excessively were also likely to abuse their wives and children and to drain the family finances. Prohibiting the consumption of alcohol would, therefore, help combat these evils. At the same time, the quality of family and public life would be improved if women received the right to vote and young children completed their education without having to go to work. Although Willard died before progressive reform had gained momentum, she influenced activists such as Jane Addams. However, with her death, WCTU leaders withdrew from supporting broad social reforms and concentrated instead on the single issue of temperance.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) became the dominant force in the prohibition movement. Established in 1893, the league grew out of evangelical Protestantism, with Baptists and Methodists leading the way. The group had particular appeal in the rural South, where Protestant fundamentalism flourished. Between 1906 and 1917, twenty-one states, mostly in the South and West, banned liquor sales. However, concern over alcohol was not confined to the South. Middle-class progressives in northern cities, who identified much of urban decay with the influx of immigrants, saw the tavern as a breeding ground for immoral activities. In 1913 the ASL convinced Congress to pass the Webb-Kenyon Act, which banned the transportation of alcoholic beverages into dry states. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, reformers argued that prohibition would help win the war by conserving grain used to make liquor and by saving soldiers from intoxication. The Eighteenth Amendment, ratified in 1919, made prohibition the law of the land.