“Firmly and conscientiously attached to the cause of temperance”: The anti -alcohol movement in Indianapolis, 1825–1856

Researchers commonly assume that an individualistic ethos swept through the nation concomitant with the creation of a widespread market economy and that market entrepreneurs employed temperance as a means to discipline an increasingly mechanized workforce. The author proposes a communitarian thesis as a way to understand the reasons for Indianapolis\u27 temperance movement in the early nineteenth century. Visions of the Millennium meshed well with ideas that supported a market economy, but Christians---the central actors in the temperance struggle in Indianapolis---allied themselves with moral reform and economic discipline for their own reasons, not primarily because of the undue influence of a capitalist class. Residents of Indianapolis yearned for both the conveniences of the capitalist economy and the values of a traditional culture. Temperance, in Indianapolis, should be viewed as one of many strands used by Christians to establish a Protestant commonwealth