November 21, 2018

Prohibition: The Volstead Act

November 21, 2018/ Robin von Seldeneck

In 1919 the United States was technically still at war because Congress rejected the famed Versailles Treaty, which Wilson had worked so hard to pass. So when the Volstead Act was passed by the House and Senate and set before Wilson in October of 1919, it contained two sections: one that provided for the enforcement of the new Constitutional Amendment, and one that sought to enforce Wartime Prohibition, even though most Americans considered the war over.

November 14, 2018

Prohibition: Early Days

November 14, 2018/ Robin von Seldeneck

In the first decades of the eighteenth century, people in the United States drank more than a bottle and a half of hard liquor each week, far more than today. They recognized that drinking added to numerous social problems, and it came to be seen as an enemy to the moral rectitude of the American home.