History of the United States I / Unit 13 USH1 1832 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Fifteen-Gallon Law
The idea
Massachusetts passed a law in eighteen thirty-eight prohibiting liquor sales in quantities under fifteen gallons. It was repealed in eighteen forty, and Massachusetts towns then banned alcohol locally, with close to one hundred going dry by eighteen forty-five. Mississippi enacted a similar law in eighteen thirty-nine outlawing sales of less than a gallon, which shows a northern and a southern state agreeing about alcohol. Maine passed the first statewide prohibition law in eighteen fifty-one.
In practice
A statute setting a minimum purchase quantity rather than banning the substance outright.
Where people slip
Read the mechanism, because it is not what it appears. A fifteen-gallon minimum does not prohibit drinking. It prohibits buying in small quantities, which is how poor people buy. A wealthy household could purchase a barrel and a labourer could not. The anchor says the measure was designed to make it difficult for ordinary workmen of modest means to buy spirits. Temperance legislation of this shape is class discipline wearing the clothes of moral reform, and the same movement produced genuine relief for abused women. Both are true.
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