"My name is Walt Whitman, and I am an alcoholic." No, not precisely. But a century before AA invented that catchphrase, America had a "temperance" movement that viewed drink and its kindred indulgences as the ordinary citizen's worst enemy. Linked to such other passions of 1840s reformers as the antislavery movement and the campaign for women's right to vote, the drive to do away with strong drink became so applauded, and so widely discussed, that a rising young journalist would naturally want to jump on the water wagon's bandwagon. I mean the last word literally, since temperance societies often held high-visibility parades leading to the well-attended "experience meetings" at which reformed drunkards rose to recount the lurid narratives of their alcoholic downfall and subsequent rebirth as... More >>>