РефератыИностранный языкCaCarry Nation Essay Research Paper As America

Carry Nation Essay Research Paper As America

Carry Nation Essay, Research Paper


As America moved to the cities traditions were changed or altered. These


alterations included women?s interests and their challenge to America?s traditional values.


One such woman was Carry Amelia Moore Nation. The daughter of George and Mary


(Campbell) Moore, was born on November 25, 1846, in Garrard County, Kentucky. A


formidable woman, nearly 6 feet tall and weighing 175 pounds, she dressed in stark black


and white clothing. She was enrolled in Warrensburg Normal Institute and, after


receiving a teaching certificate, taught school in Holden, Missouri, for four years. In 1877


she married David Nation, a lawyer, newspaperman, and sometime minister in the


Christian Church.


The Nations moved to Texas in 1879 and settled on a cotton plantation on the San


Bernard River near Houston. After they failed to make the plantation a success, Carry


supported the family by managing a hotel in Columbia. The eventual sale of the


plantation enabled them to buy a hotel in Richmond, which Carry ran with sporadic


assistance from her husband, who practiced law and corresponded for the Houston Post.


As a child she had undergone a dramatic conversion at a revival meeting, and during her


stay in Texas she had numerous mystic experiences. She came to believe that she had


been elected by God and that she spoke through divine inspiration. After the Methodist


and Episcopal churches barred her from teaching in their Sunday schools, she started her


own weekly class in the hotel. David Nation also became involved in the


Jaybird-Woodpecker War after he denounced the Jaybirds in an article for the Houston


Post. To escape assaults and intimidation, the Nations moved in 1889 to Medicine Lodge,


Kansas, where David became pastor of the Christian Church.


In Kansas, as in Texas, Mrs. Nation was known for her charity to the poor.


Having been a drunkard’s wife herself, she was especially moved by drink-related


poverty. But her fanatical views and eccentric behavior made her unpopular, and the


abrasiveness of her exhortations to righteousness provoked the Christian Church to expel


her from membership. In 1892 she joined the Baptist minister’s wife in Medicine Lodge


in organizing a local chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and was


appointed jail evangelist. In the name of home protection she began a crusade against


alcohol and tobacco that lasted the rest of her life. Alone or accompanied by


hymn-singing women, she would march into a saloon and proceed to sing, pray, hurl


biblical-so

unding vituperations, and smash the bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet. In


her book Nation says, ?Sometimes a rock; sometimes a hatchet; God told me to use these


to smash that which has smashed and will smash hearts and souls. The sound of this


loving deed will stir conscience and hearts…? This was her reason for taking her hatchet


to a saloon and smashing everything in sight until someone would listen to her. At one


point, her fervor led her to invade the governor’s chambers at Topeka. Jailed many times,


she paid her fines from lecture-tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets, at times earning


as much as $300 per week. She herself survived numerous physical assaults.


Nation challenged various people such as saloonkeepers, alcoholics, casual


drinkers, and others that didn?t care to hear constant singing and praying about


temperance. Most of the challenge was from men though, because a majority of the


temperance crusaders were women. Men looked at saloons as places for intimate


conversations, a chance for good fellowship, advantages for employment, and friends in


times of strikes. It was hard to try to influence people about temperance when most


saloonkeepers wouldn?t even let some crusaders into their saloons.


On January 1911, she collapsed during a speech in Arkansas and was taken to a


hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas, where she spent the remaining months of her life in


mental confusion. She died there on June 2, 1911, and was buried in Belton, Missouri.


Carry Nation lived a life which influenced many people and her efforts helped the later


enactment of national prohibition. Nation often described herself as ?a bulldog running


along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn’t like? was a colorful member of the


Women’s Christian Temperance Union and one of the greatest temperance crusaders.


Bibliography


Encarta Free Concise Encyclopedia. ?Nation, Carry Amelia Moore.? [Online] Avaliable


http://encarta.msn.com, February10, 2000.


Kansas State Historical Society. ?Carry Nation’s Hammer.? [Online] Avaliable


http://www.kshs.org/places/coolcary.htm, February 10, 2000.


Nation, Carry Amelia Moore. The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation. 1905.


The Handbook of Texas Online. ?Nation, Carry Amelia Moore.? [Online] Avaliable


http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/NN/fna7.html, February 10,


2000.


Women in American History. ?Nation, Carry Amelia Moore.? [Online] Avaliable


http://www.eb.com:180/women/articles/Nation_Carry_Amelia_Moore.html, February 10,


2000.

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