The Eighteenth Amendment began with thunderous applause. It was decades in the making by a conglomerate of progressives and conservatives who were mostly evangelical Christians.
It was none other than the famed Progressive reformist and the founder of the Hull House in Chicago, Jane Addams, who was a strong supporter of the ban on alcohol that alcohol led people, mostly men, to houses of prostitution. She also felt that without alcohol men would be home at night and not out at brothels.
Things do not always work out as reformists. They usually want to use government to create a law that hey feel makes society better. However, that is not always the case when a law bans a popular product such as alcohol.
On the other side of the ideological spectrum, the most famous preacher in the early twentieth century, Billy Sunday. Sunday has been a famous professional baseball player that felt God was speaking to him.
He would give up baseball and become a preacher and leading proponent of banning alcohol sales. Sunday strongly believed people who drank alcohol were going to Hell. His sermons would break attendance records as he traveled around pushing for a nationwide ban on alcohol sales.
The big issue was revenue. Many politicians did not want to support prohibition on booze because the government would lose tons of revenue they made in taxes. That is the basis of the 16th Amendment that allows the government to tax income. With that out of the way, many felt politicians could not make any excuses to keep alcohol legal.
On the other side, were immigrants, mainly Catholics and secularists, who were happy drinking and did not want that disturbed. It is said they were too busy drinking to understand the powerful forces that were pushing the government to take their booze away.
The Eighteenth Amendment was ratified on January 16th, 1919 and took effect a year later.
The rise of State power that this amendment produced was unprecedent in American history. Politicians that had supported Prohibition decided they wanted to keep drinking and found a way to do that. Warren Harding built something similar to a saloon in the White House where he kept plentiful supplies of whiskey during Prohibition.
It is extreme hypocrisy that others were forced to drink booze in the underground economy led by the mafia, or not drink at all. All the while, powerful politicians were buying whiskey openly.
Ethnic immigrants began to mobilize as they felt prohibition was being led by people that disliked their presence in America. Immigrants, especially the hated Germans, drank frequently. They begin to mobilize, which causes the first major opposition to the Prohibition.
Alliances began to form among mostly Catholics and immigrants that would form a contrast to the Anti-Saloon League, progressives, and evangelicals that got Prohibition passed.
The 1920s saw huge increases in criminal activity due to prohibition laws under the Volstead Act, which was the enforcement law of the 18th Amendment. Many of the people’s hearts in America wanted the freedom to consume alcohol if they chose, but prohibition prohibited that under law. This led to many criminal enterprises that formed to feed a thirsty public.
The rise of Charles “Lucky” Luciano from a backbencher to forming the Commission of the five mafia families and the head of the Chicago Outfit in 1931, came from bootlegging that the federal ban on alcohol had. One of the most famous is Al Capone, who was the head of the Chicago Outfit amassed most of his power from bootlegging.
When people are deprived of something it tends to make them want it more. The current drug wars that have led to countless deaths across the world and given rise to the cartels is a contemporary example of this.
As crime began to rise and the Great Depression set in, the government was looking for a way to ease crime and generate revenue. They had lost the taxes on alcohol, so wanted that back.
That led to the ratification of 21st Amendment that repealed the 18th Amendment. During the intervening years, the 19th Amendment, granting the rights of women to vote and the 20th Amendment, moving the new terms of federally elected representatives to January, had been passed.
The 18th Amendment is the ONLY amendment that took freedoms away. It is considered the worst and only amendment ever repealed.
https://www.history.com/news/a-brief-history-of-presidential-drinking
