Historian, author, and tour garrett peck. Tool hasrance related been featured on cspan, book tv, and a program with henry rollins. He was featured on a documentary history channel. He is the author of 11 books including prohibition in washington, d. C. how dry we werent. Prohibition was a before we get started i want to invite all of you to join us in the lobby following the presentation to enjoy a sample cocktailibition era courtesy of sounding spirits gin. Ding spirits garrettet me introduce peck. [applause] peck thank you, everyone for joining me at our wake, our try wake. We will commemorate we are not going to celebrate this. Adventure tonight we will have a chance to celebrate with a french 75 cocktail in the lobby. I appreciate everyone coming year, and as well for cspan2 come out and film asir for the national audience. Thank you so much. This is a rather triggering image, especially for a year drinker like myself. They are pouring beer into the sewer its a tragic. When i covered tonight why it came to be and ultimately why it did not last, why we ended up repealing the 18th amendment to the point where most of us now drink and we do not think anything all of it. Giant movement in American History that push this upon the country. And that movement was the Temperance Movement. This is from the library of congress. They had these beautiful painted on the inside. This was part of the progressive era intended to make americans better people, more middleclass, and of course, sober. The initial idea was they would try to get people to drink more moderately. Whiskey. Butnking radicals seized to be moment and they decided no one could drink anything at all. If you drink anything at all your on the slippery slope to becoming a drunkard. They really demonized drinking. As you will see from this showing kingster, alcohol in his Prime Minister. You see the king standing on the barrel full of spirits and the Prime Minister next to him death. You may see things in the foreground. Does the family to the right, minus their father. And of course you have a widow in the foreground. Women were so important to the Temperance Movement because oftentimes women were victimized by the fact that their husbands were drinking so much. The Temperance Movement did not come out of nowhere. It was a legitimate, societal response to the drinking of the 20th century. They took it to the extreme of, no oneo one hey, should drink at all. Women are so important to this movement and in 1873, it was the beginning of the womens temporas Temperance Movement. The controlled all breweries. This was headquartered as well. Frances willard is this incredible woman in American History. She is the first woman to get a in thein statuary hall u. S. Capitol. Shes a really big deal. She was one of the leading proponents of womens rights in our history. I really take my hat off to her. Was do everything. They took up every imaginable issue. Children working in factories, what not. Its incredible what they took up. But women did not have the vote yet. So women could only have influence, but they couldnt actually vote on these different issues. At its peak, they numbered about a quarter million members. Very strong movement. They got into the classrooms. Children to be ashamed of alcohol. My grandmother grew up with that. I come from a long line of methodists. Methodists. They had heavyhanded moralizing. They built numerous water fountains around the country. Here in d. C. We have a water fountain, not put up by the wctu. Theres one in rehobeth beach, what ocean city. Ive seen both of those. D. C. We have because well temperance fountain, which i swear all of you have passed. Its catty corner from archives. This is our temperance housing. It was once an active water fountain. Symbolism was to tell people to drink water instead of whiskey. They tried to use moral suasion drinkingeople from alcohol. After 20 years or so, the moral suasion thing was not taking root. Americans shifted away from drinking whiskey and now they beer. Inking founded they Antisaloon League. They only existed for 40 years. One of the early hires college student. Was this college student. Wayne wheeler. Anyone heard of Wayne Wheeler . Powerfulthe most lobbyist in American History. He invented this term called rusher politics. He figured out how to squeeze the politicians to force them to vote dry. Politicians first job is to get reelected. Thenyone bucked him on prohibition issue he made sure they did not get reelected. This was their base. The evangelical protestant teachers preachers. This was a progressive initiative. Today we think of dry counties as being very conservative, but this was a progressive movement. This is really about making americans p juul using the power of the government to make us into better all. , theimportantly Antisaloon League. There were very important constitutional amendment. Obviously, one of them is prohibition. One of them you can probably guess from this photo. The 18th amendment and the 19th amendment. They began the 17 by you can see the alliance fell apart after 1920. They got the right to vote and they decided they wanted the speakeasy, too. There is one thing in American History that really makes roy bush and come about. The Antisaloon League recognized Wayne Wheeler said in a public statement, we need to change the constitution really quickly because this is our very last chance. The, considering where country was, a census was going to be taken. Werecould see the cities starting to outnumber the countryside. They are expecting the majority of americans then in cities and that would outweigh the Temperance Movement. We have leading up to 1920 the ofhest proportion immigration into our country. The highest proportion ever and our history. In many ways, the Temperance Movement is an Nativist Movement because many of these immigrants were coming in, are catholic, overwhelmingly or they are russian jews. People are bringing their drinking habits with them. In a lot of ways the prohibition is targeted at these catholic immigrants. Do you all know who the biggest Ethnic Community in the country germans. Me was the they were the biggest bulwark against the Antisaloon League. Wayne wheeler and the other began spinning beer drinking into propaganda. This talked heart strings. It had all kinds of things. There was the brewers association. There were newspapers and they brought out a lot of these shenanigans through hearings. This was all about further marginalizing them through world war i. Intotially, they spun it it went through Congress Without much debate. Most americans as the polls were going to ratify the amendment, the majority of states ratified the them the amendment itself. We need silver soldiers who can fight the vaunted army. Most people thought they were outlawing liquor they did not know that they were in for surprise in january 1920. Everybody has a handout of eight prohibition era cocktails. I want to talk about the very first one, the one we will sample afterwards, which is one of my alltime favorites. It is the french 75. And then if you remember this was an incredible topsecret project for the french. They call this the double gum. After they had almost no armaments capability during the war, they had to borrow everything. Is what they used for the u. S. Army. In fact the very first artillery shell was at the wilson house. Here it is. The french 75 artillery shell. President wilson took responsibility for sending these 2 million soldiers off to fight. You can see it on the mantelpiece. You can see it when you woke up in the morning. He felt that responsibility of sending the nation to war. Another famous man committed a battery. Its this man. , from kansas city. He was 35 years old when he led his battery of kansas city misfits. A lot of them are catholic. They were an ill disciplined group. Them into shape. And he led them very effectively during the war. Leg. Nit was mostly cap lifelongers became political supporters. They saw the prohibition amendment had passed. Generally 16th, 1990. Daughter heis is talking to all the soldiers. He said, it looks to me like the anyway,liberty will it looks to me like mentioned businesses would be pretty good in the land of liberty. And some of us want to get in on the ground floor. You know how wet that city was. York, detroit, and so on. What were they thinking . How is this ever going to work . The 18th amendment was ratified january 16, 1919. I will put up the first part of it. The transportation of the liquor was prohibited. To have a law to define what do they mean by intoxicating liquors. Uhuh. Eeler was the hall ish all going to be made illegal. You can see his amazing mustache. Next yes. He was a republican and he chaired the house judiciary committee. I think this bill had 67 67 parts in this bill. He went back as a big enemy for having written this law. They took a hard line. 05 alcohol was illegal. That was considered intoxicating. Evenforbade anyone from calling near beer. They could not call it that. You had to come up with a bunch of other names you would not really want to drink. And this act had a number of loopholes, many of which are quite famous. You have heard of medicinal whiskey. Before prohibition, the american medical association, just like today, said this is not medicine. During prohibition, the doctors could prescribe, they could make 100 prescriptions of a pint of whiskey for month. All of the doctors wanted to get in on this game, so they totally changed tax. Abused. Idely you had sacramental wine because ,he catholic church, the jewsm the lutherans, the piscopo alien the up his fifth alien the Episcopalian Church still needed it. They gave a huge license to midwestern farmers. Everyone could take 200 pounds of fruits. You could make up to 200 gallons of preservative food fruit. Orange on itsn counter, you had it on the counter for a couple days, its just a natural process. Leave any fruit and it will from it. You might notice that with an old banana. Ts just a natural process that is a carveout for midwestern farmers and italian immigrants. A whole bunch of loopholes law. En into the president wilson actually vetoed the volstead act. His stroke. After he had a stroke after he is trying to sell his national barnstorming tour. He at horrible headaches. It effectively ended the second term of his presidency with three weeks left in office. More likely his chief of staff signed up for him. He vetoed it because he believed wine and beer should still be illegal, but Wayne Wheeler believed otherwise and he was so , the very next day, congress overrode the veto and thus we got this very strict interpretation of prohibition. Bear g like 3 or 4 beer is not intoxicating. Most people woke up. Wow. That is what we signed up for . Yeah. I mentioned the Woodrow Wilson house. Houseilson left the white , he actually had a wine collection and he did not want to leave it behind because his Warren Harding was a heavy drinker. So wilson got a permit to collection. S wine if you had alcohol in your prohibition before prohibition, that was yours to keep. They were not going to take it from you. You could not manufacture, sell, or transport. You had to get special permission to transport out from the white house to his new house. Andot that permit approved they came by the house. We had a prohibition tour and at the end of the tour, they saw the prohibition era winds wine cellar. It was really unique. Its amazing. Now look right up front. That short bottle in the center, that is cointreau. The packaging has hardly changed. Its amazing. Many of the bottles, we believe, wilson got from the french ambassadors house. Grateful forvery helping to save france, so we believe that the wilsons got a perpetual resupply from the french embassy. They were considered foreign territory so they could supply their own alcohol. Hence the wilsons got their own supply. Another thing i wanted to point out to you was her time ishibition was which in oxymoron. A billts attached to after the war ends. Attached onto the appropriations bill effectively outlawing these sale of distilled spirits until after the war. So they shut down the distillers. All beer must be under 2. 57 alcohol. They had to shift it down. Do you notice what they are drinking . They are all drinking. Do you see a single cocktail in their hands . They were drinking beer. Thats the only thing that was legal to drink at the time. What else is missing. Women did not go to saloons. The 1920s women started going to speakeasies, but for, saloons were on mens only culture. Women got the vote. They got equal rights. Virginia ratified will rights amendment. Yes. My home state. Yes. So, prohibition starts again, clockars ago today as the ticks over to january 17. All of the leading prohibitionists got together and went after speech after speech. From the navy Wayne Wheeler was there. Illiam hart russell was there most importantly, the man who , williammidnight jennings bryan, the great commoner. He died five years after that. This his career at this point is really waning, but at midnight he delivers this fiveminute dynamic sermon. , who isres king herod trying to kill the baby jesus, and he made that analogy to jesus escaping to egypt, to the wet cause trying to kill the 18th amendment. He declares victory and he says they are dead that sought the childs life. They are dead excavation work they are dead they are dead they are dead applause. Ponders they believed the drive millennium is upon us and everything is going to get better. Midnight comes. The baby is born and this baby is thirsty and cranky and want to drink. So prohibition begins. Actual one of the few dry congressman. William upshaw from georgia. I love this photo. He is symbolically holding an umbrella over the u. S. Capitol, signifying we are drive. Of course, Congress Never went dry. At one point in 1930, it becomes a Huge National invest embarrassment when one bootlegger spills the beans. We end up with prohibition lasting almost 14 years or as hl 13 awfulalled it the years. He is an atheist and he sees the Temperance Movement for what it is. That is tryingnt to make us into better people and he is not having any of it. Rider. Uch a hilarious hes one of the leading literary recs of the 19 teens, 1930s and disparagingly of every politician on both sides of the aisle. Hes very funny. He has such a great sense of humor. In 1929 he writes this very funny article, surrendering to the fact that prohibition is going to be around a little bit longer. Basically saying this is what weve got. He draws this comparison like, back in the day we used to have steak and now we have to get all of the stuff from our bootleggers. Basically sandwiches and hot dogs. He writes this very funny , letle basically saying us, while waiting for the end of the methodist millennium do the best we can. On improving the sandwich and give some attention to the dog. This is the humor he had. Lets make the most out of the rut got jen the bootleggers are supplying us. He had a car, which he sold in to8, and use the proceeds fill up his cellar with alcohol, thinking that that would last for the duration of prohibition. Hefour months later discovered a whole bunch of letters were supplying alcohol, or as he called them boot icians. So prohibition goes into effect and then in than august does anyone remember the actual date . Any tennesseans . Amendmentratifies the the 19th amendment and women get to vote for the very first time in the president ial election. That elects Warren Harding, one of our worst president s ever. This is alice paul who is about five foot nothing and an absolute, fears proponent of suffrage. Every time they would get a state they would add another start to it, so she is toasting that tennessees flag is attached to the suffrage by. Prohibition, but there is still this major question i have always been asking myself. It we made it into the constitution. We only have 27 amendments. Its really hard to amend the constitution and the framers put that very high hurdle in place to make sure we did not amend because the solution. They really wanted us to have a National Consensus before we monkey around with the constitution. Why did prohibition fail . Since the drive caused get their way, what do people immediately start bootlegging afterward. There are a number of answers. Part of it is that the Antisaloon League took such a jacobian measure towards prohibition. They had zero tolerance and that is when they took away peoples of people were really offended by this. President wilson called for congress to reinstate beer and in 1920the congressman, or eight wheeler set over 300 congressmen came to him and complained. They were hearing from constituents they wanted to have beer again. 300 were complaining. It really took a lot of people by surprise how to coney and prohibition turned out to be. A lot of them saying i am going to start drinking and very quickly, there were bootleggers who are willing to supply the alcohol for price. Alcohol actually goes down during this era. There is a myth that people are thinking more than ever, which is not true. Its just more expensive. Very famously, we think of hemingway and fitzgerald and so on, but they were living in paris. Many of the great bartenders went to paris during the prohibition. That showed upgs right away was this thing called rum wrote. All of these ship captains were docking their ships, full of alcohol, three miles off shore. The limit,ust off filling the boat with alcohol and resupplying and whatnot. This became known as rum love rum row. There is this idea that the also thee limit came, threemile limit cocktail. This is one of the schooners they seized. In the mid1920s, the country negotiated a secret agreement. Ith the british the british wanted to keep bringing alcohol in on their transatlantic liners. They were allowed to do so if they were willing to extend it out to 12 miles, so they could trap all the bootleggers. The british agreed to this. The coast guard went out and captured a bunch of ships. And guess what . Guess what the new cocktail is called . Righte came up with that away. Those bartenders are pretty creative. You start to see right away, you have beer flooding over the borders, from the ocean, through canada. Alcohol flooding into our country. Many people are setting up stills, oftentimes in their bathrooms. Your local bootlegger could fit be out, and obviously may burn your house or apartment down. This is one of the larger stills in the backyard. Its kind of amazing. Your bootlegger would come around once a week or so and give you cash money for it. Ok. T of people were like, i will start producing alcohol as well. Very quickly people are starting to break the law, whether they drink or not. This extended the moonshine culture everywhere around the country. Its just amazing. One of the more famous photos from prohibition is this slide of a speakeasy. Ofs is a very common form easy. Was rated three times. The way this speakeasy worked, you had a legitimate building up front. Passcode ory the joe sent me or whatever and they would let you go into the back, a little darkroom and you could get a pint of beer. You can see they are pulling all of the kegs of beer out of the cellar. They were rated three times. This is the site of the department of justice. And then this next photo, very heartbreaking for me because the Prohibition Bureau is destroying 18,000 bottles of beer. These were bottles intercepted on the highway, and the judge ordered them all destroyed. The agents are throwing the beer bottles. In the middle, you see them breaking. The bottles are shattering. Dog is underneath one of the parking lots. The bottles are still there. They are just underground. One of the great novels that comes out of prohibition is a satirical novel. You have all heard of sin care lewis, yes . Wrote main street. He very famously got the pulitzer for this book im sorry, the nobel. He wrote this in 1922. He has this one little statement in the book and i think he captures why prohibition is going to fail. It is set on a train in this guy is passing out a flask of gin and he makes this statement. I dont know how you guys feel about prohibition, but it strikes me its a very thing for a fellow who does not have those likebut for us, is an infringement of personal liberty. Prohibition is for someone else to obey, but not me. I know my bootlegger. That is that. Those catholics, they need to stop thinking. I am a protestant. I am going to handle my booze. Pure democracy. 1922. Only tws into the noble theriment two years into noble experiment in use re popular sentiment is when to turn against us. We have become a nation of hypocrites and scofflaws. Give this a try sometime. You need real grenadine, which is easy to make. Andthat Pom Wonderful stuff mix it with equal syrup and you have grenadine. Whiskey, driver move. How does that work . Its delicious. And its also bright pink, so it looks like a cosmopolitan. It tastes very different. It is one of my alltime favorite prohibition that word, scofflaw, was invented in 1924. There is a guy named king who is a harvard graduate. He was very upset at seeing all of the drinking going on at harvard. And so he sponsored this National Competition to come up with a word to name those lawbreakers. There was a 200 prize. Two people came up with the name. It was announced on the anniversary of National Prohibition. So in 1924, two people came up with the word scofflaw. It is an ingenious word, someone who scoffs at the law. One week later, in harrys bar in paris, the scofflaw cocktail was invented. [laughter] garrett yay, bartenders. This particular word shows you the alliance that broke down between the Suffrage Movement and the Temperance Movement. Now that women had the right to vote, and now that it was illegal for everyone to go to a saloon to drink, now women could equally break the law, along with men, and go to the speakeasies. So 1920s is really our first sexual revolution. Family planning tools come into effect. Women start cutting their hair. Look at this woman. She is actually a dancer. This shot was done in 1925. Women didnt cut their hair before the 1920s. It is just remarkable. She is showing how the young kids are partying today. You keep a hip flask in your garter. Everyone does that today. Women started getting in on the game as well. And it became fun to break the law. It is glamorous to break the law. Really, breaking the law is glamorous . Yeah, we became a nation of scofflaws. Why did the country turn against prohibition . A couple of things happen. Everyone saw the organized crime that was going on. Especially as the 1920s progressed, you saw in cities like chicago more people were getting killed over gangrun violence, over who was going to control neighborhoods. Very famously on valentines day 1929, the st. Valentines day massacre, where al capone eliminates his rival gang in chicago. They are machinegunned by his gang in chicago in a garage. That makes national headlines. It really stunned country, and it really showed how violent prohibition was becoming. So many people were saying this is out of control at this point. The violence, the bribery, all of these prohibition agents were horribly corrupt. All of the judges that were getting bribed, it was endemic in society. And it was undermining our democracy to have all of this corruption that was going on. People saw it as a problem in the 1920s. How did we unwind prohibition . It took a crisis to get us to the 18th amendment, which was prohibition. It took another crisis to enable a political switch in the country. The democrats ran on the repeal platform. That crisis in the country appeared in late october 1929, when the stock market crashed. The Great Depression. That is ultimately what nailed the coffin shut on prohibition. Suddenly the peak, or i should say at the trough of prohibition, a quarter of the American Workforce was out of work. It was the worst financial crisis in our country. The economy shrank by one third. Horrible. It was just unreal how bad the Great Depression was. The democrats seized on this. The 1920s, by the way, the Republican Party owned the 1920s. They own both houses of congress, and all three presidencies of the 1920s were all republicans. Even though prohibition passed as a bipartisan measure, it was up to the republicans to enforce it. They were running the country. The democrats washed their hands of prohibition in 1930 and said were going to call for a repeal amendment. When prohibition went into effect in 1920, the country lost quarter of a million jobs. Suddenly in 1930, a quarter million jobs looks pretty good. They called for an end to prohibition as part of their election plank. Hearing this in 1930, the leading prohibitionist in the senate, a man who sponsored the 18th amendment, morris sheppard, laid down the gauntlet to the wet cause. He made this very famous statement. He said, i quote, there is as much chance of repealing the 18th amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. If that doesnt sound like a challenge, then nothing is. [laughter] garrett right after this, an irishman and a captain during world war i, rufus lusk, he is a real estate guy. People might remember the 1980s. The lusk papers. He has a real estate guy who gets together data points. You know what . I can take all the police data from all the raids and put them on a map and embarrass the dry cause. He does this in 1930 and again in 1932. This made not Just National news but this made global news. Washington, d. C. Was considered the model dry city. During prohibition, there were 3000 speakeasies. I do thats nothing compared to new york city, which had 50,000 speakeasies. In 1932 i found this in the library of congress. It is so cool. This is the 1932 speakeasy map. Rufus lusk marked the spot where booze had been bought. This is pretty incredible. This was put together by the crusaders. They were crusading for the wet cause. I will point out some of the stuff. There are 1155 dots. They found alcohol. There were another 600 in 1931 where they did not find alcohol. He put up here those are federal offices where raids took place. By the capital, he put up the methodist building. It is right by the supreme court. He put up there the antisaloon offers and the womens christian Temperance Union. He put all the dots, showing all of the raids. Again, this is a piece of wet propaganda. It was very effective. He published this in september of 1930. About a month later, the main bootlegger for Congress Comes forward with an incredible story. The Washington Post gets everyone thinks about watergate being their first great scoop. The first was George Cassiday. He had bootlegged for congress for 10 years. For the first five years, he worked on the house side. In fact, congress liked him so much, they gave him an office in the basement. So he hauls his liquor in a suitcase everyday. Congressmen would play cards with him, buy alcohol. It was great. He was arrested, so he shifted over to the senate. Senators were worse than congressman were, so they would send their secretaries down to get the booze. He was arrested again. Part of the plea agreement with the judge, he agreed he would not bootlegged again. Which actually he did leg later on. So he was arrested again. The Washington Post approached him. Would you like to write a few articles for us . Sure. He published six frontpage articles in the Washington Post. The last one was published a week before the Midterm Election of 1930. That was a seismic election. This was a wave election. Congress shifted from a dry to an openly wet democratic and republican majority. Its incredible. The wets had taken over congress. And cassiday helped make this happen. This shifted. There we go. I did not realize this hadnt shifted. Computer malfunction. There is George Cassiday right there. That is him in october, 1930. There is his green hat. He earned that nickname when he got arrested. Some journalists pointed them out and said that guy in the green hat, he just got arrested. And the nickname stuck. We have a local distiller that opened up in 2012 that named a gin after him, the columbia distillers, and it is called green hat gin. The role of women is so important in undermining prohibition. In the late 1920s, this organization got together called the National Organization for this always trips me up here, but it is the Womens Organization for National Prohibition reform. And it was headed up by Pauline Morton sabin, who was the heir to the morton salt family. She got this organization together to counter balance the womens christian temperature in in, with claim they spoke for all women nationally. Pauline morton sabin had supported the dry cause. She realized it wasnt working. These are all very famous women. They were very ecumenical. They were workingclass women. They were targeting women of every stripe to get them involved in this. Younger women got very heavily involved in the organization. It was a National Movement to reform prohibition. And ultimately they endorsed the democratic appeal to repeal prohibition. Morton herself was a republican. She said this is not working, support the democrats. That formed a counterbalance to the wetu, which always assumed that it was speaking for women. I love this poster. This is that depression era are. Two young women are pointing out that they should be supporting that all women should be supporting the repeal of the 18th amendment. So with prohibition and the Great Depression underway, prohibitions days are numbered. The idealism that the Antisaloon League had and the Temperance Movement had really shattered on reality. That the country turned out to not be in support at all for this dry cause. There was so much lawbreaking that was going on during prohibition. The country got cynical about it. You know what, lets end this, lets stuff this genie back into the bottle, lets get control, and repeal this amendment. The recall movement erupted once roosevelt ran on the repeal platform. The democrats have seized control of the government in the 1930s. They are running on the repeal platform. Roosevelt is the last president to be sworn in, on march 4, 1933, and before he is sworn in, congress has already debated and passed the 21st amendment. That goes on to the states. It gets ratified in astonishingly short time. The first state to ratify is michigan. Michigan is a great beer state. That is on april 10. This is a couple of days after roosevelt signed a law, which declares 3. 2 beer is not intoxicating. He had run on a platform of making beer legal again. And by having a law that is saying it is not intoxicating, therefore it did not violate the 18th amendment. The 18th amendment said intoxicating liquor is prohibited. On april 6, the country went out and partied. Prohibition was coming to an end. The states were lining up to ratify. And it is incredible. Given that the democrats now control the country, they put into the 21st amendment language that it would be ratified by a state convention. Since the democrats controlled most of the statehouses, the states were lining up and voting one by one. How long do you get took . Given michigan was the very first day, april 10, how long do you think it took for us to ratify the 21st amendment . Keep in mind, the 18th amendment took 13 months during the war. How long did the 21st amendment take . It took a little bit longer than that. It took eight months. Eight months. Just incredible. This is going to stun everyone. I am giving you a trigger warning. The state that put it over the top was utah. [laughter] garrett yes. The 36th state was december 5, 1933. Henceforth known as repeal day. Or cinco de drinko. My button says party like its 1933. I know we want to get to a q a session. I have got a couple of more slides to talk about. Some of my Upcoming Events for the smithsonian associates, ive got a cool tour in maryland. It is where the smithsonian capital is. We have a daylong tour on april 18. We get a bus to go out there area, and we start off seen the castle. We get to see the quarry itself. Lunch is at a winery. I got my first nearly week long tour for the smithsonian. Its where i grew up in california. I grew up in sacramento. It is a fiveday tour of the California Gold rush. That is in october 10 through the 15. Thats going to be a lot of fun. That is really beautiful countryside. We are going to cram in a lot of history. You get to be with me for five days. [laughter] garrett ive got a quick announcement. You guys are the first ones seeing this. I have a book coming out on june 2. Its a contemporary history called a decade of disruption america in the new millennium, 2000 to 2010. It is a history of all the stuff we lived through from the dot com meltdown to the Great Recession and everything in between. It has been a decade now. It is an opportunity to see what happened. We are dealing with the impact of to this day even. That is coming up here in a few months. Lastly, if you want to read more about prohibition, four of my eight books have the topic of prohibition in them. The most recent one, if you want more local history, prohibition in washington, d. C. How dry we werent, which of course has 11 cocktail recipes in it. [laughter] garrett including the scofflaw and a bunch of others. I want to thank you so much for coming out tonight. Thank you for coming out our dry wake. [applause] garrett we will be happy to take questions. Do we have a microphone, by chance . Lauren no. Garrett state the question loudly, and i will repeat it back to the audience. Does anyone have questions . How did bootleggers respond to the threat of repeal . Im sure they didnt want to go down without swinging. Garrett how did the bootleggers respond to prohibition . They probably did not want repeal. You are right about that. They were making so much money taxfree. That is when the key constituents were like, no al capone and his gang were making money hand over fist. We forget about that, al capone, he is the most famous gangster in world history. He overwhelmingly made his money being a bootlegger. Just incredible. It was not just the dry cause, but many of the bootleggers did not want prohibition to end, either, for financial reasons. Right here, the man in the yellow. What was the penalty for breaking the law . For the speakeasies . For a person, you know, just a general person . Garrett so how stringent was the punishment for breaking the law during prohibition . Initially, it was fairly strict. You got a fine. Sometimes you might get 90 days in jail and whatnot, but many people simply paid the fine. Ok, fine, i will pay it. I will plead guilty, and on they went. By the mid1920s, so many people, not proving to be a it is deterrent. Because the speakeasies reopened right away, because there was so much money to be made selling booze. By the mid1920s or so, new york city decide take, lets padlock the businesses. That spreads around the country. It is padlock for a year. Guess what the owners do . They find another spot to reopen. They are fine. Thats a temporary measure. Somebody just find another place to open up. The one president who really tries to enforce prohibition is herbert hoover. The public is already quite cynical. By the time hoover gets to the white house in 1929, the public is already opposed. He is sworn in march 4. This is after the st. Valentines day massacre. The country is cynical about prohibition. And here he is saying, i am going to enforce this thing, and most of the public is like, why . It creates more cynicism. He gets a new act passed, which imposes severe penalties. You have a fiveyear prison sentence and a 10,000 fine. It dramatically raises the penalty. All this does, most of the bootleggers were just reaching plea deals. Ok, i will pay my fine and then go. Well, now, everyone is getting a jury trial. You can imagine how many tens of thousands of bootleggers there are. This completely gums up the legal system. There are so many trials have to be held. The judicial system, its overwhelming. Another unintended consequence of prohibition. Because you have so many people breaking the law. It shows how unenforceable for whole thing is. It makes the public more cynical towards it, because it shows this cannot be enforced. Repeal prohibition and put reforms in place, and that is the democrats selling point. Did they expunge the records of the people after the amendment was passed . Garrett expunge the records . No, they did not. That is how i know George Cassiday got arrested a couple of more times. In the 1930s and 1940s, i sent them to his son, in fairfax county. Right here, next question. What drew you to that topic . Garrett half of my books are dealing with prohibition. Its partly family history. I come from a long line of methodists. You see me poking fun at the methodists. The methodists were the first church to embrace the Temperance Movement. Of course most methodists now drink. It was a big deal. The methodist perennial prohibition. Back in 2003, i had my first book idea. The hangover. The idea came directly from christmas eve. I had brought a really nice burgundy to my grandmothers in scottsdale. I was there with my mother and my grandmother. Three generations. My grandmother kind of tuttutted about the wine. You know i dont drink. It is christmas this was a generation of value that did not pass on to us. My grandmother was protestant. They were taught by the womens Temperance Union to be ashamed of drinking. So there was a stigma that her generation grew up with, and that lasted well into the 1970s and 1980s. I think the baby boomers are the first generation that did not have a stigma around alcohol that earlier generations did. Drinking is just what we do. Its how we socialize. There is no stigma or shame. It is part of our lives. And it is easy for us to judge, but what my grandmother went was quite different. She also insisted that she didnt drink at all. After she died, we were cleaning some stuff out and we found a liquor cupboard in the kitchen. [laughter] garrett ok, that goes along with the social shame. If anyone sees you drinking, theyre going to think you are a drunkard. And therefore dont let anybody see you doing that. So it is, you know, that at some of her generations issue, and i empathize with that. We all have to deal with that today. Thank you for that. Another question, dan, here in the back, in the white shirt. Dan a completely unrelated question, garrett, but you mentioned earlier that a lot of people have misconceptions about speakeasies and what they were really like. I would love it if you could elaborate on that. My second question, bringing it to contemporary times, do you see parallels between the move to legalize marijuana and the sort of traditions and how it was made illegal in the first place and the underpinnings of that with the prohibition movement. Garrett usually only one person asks this question every audience. The speakeasies themselves, we i think we tend to create a lot of mythology around them. For the most part, they are in peoples homes. People simply turn their homes into a place where you can buy a drink. You have a legitimate business upfront, if you go to capitol hill to tune in, that really greasy spoon. Before hand, it was a candy store. And they sold liquor out of the basement. That is a form of speakeasy. You were not going there to buy cocktails, but you were going there to buy a bottle and wrap it up and take it home. It was not like a cocktail in a club where there was a jazz band playing and people were dancing. Most places are not like that. They are not good places given the quality of the gin. In the case of scotch, you would add caramel and turpentine to it. Thats with the bootleggers are doing, and people were drinking it. Just incredible. The other question we had about the legalization of cannabis, and it is such an interesting question. You might remember this movie from the 1930s called reefer madness. Basically it is a propaganda film creating stigma around cannabis smoking. When prohibition ends, the country sort of turns now, ok, now we have to target pot smoking. They really kind of demonize pot smoking. So does richard nixon. Here we are with pot being a schedule 1 drug. Up there with crystal methamphetamine and cocaine and whatnot. I am not a pot smoker myself. I would not be ashamed of myself if i was, though. But how many of my friends have come out of the woodwork. Doctors and lawyers. Dr. Soandso is a pot smoker. I know some notable conservatives who are as well. It is really this shift that is underway in our society. If you noticed during the Obama Administration, the gallup poll survey does a poll on this question. Once the Obama Administration saw the majority of americans are in favor of legalization, why should we step into this battle . Youre only going to lose the battle politically. There was no win out of this. Let the states sort of handle it. Thats why you see all of the states legalizing it for medicinal purposes. Its not hard to get a medical prescription. Just like during prohibition. Then of course, then the next step is legalization for personal use, which more states are doing that now, too. I think it is interesting. I think you see the writing on the wall. This is where im in favor. I will put my cards on the table. Im in favor of legalization. Not because i am a pot smoker, but for the fact that so many people have to buy pot illegally. Consumers have no idea what they are buying. Similarly during prohibition, you were buying industrial alcohol with turpentine in it. If you could actually have some regulations. In this case, i am in favor of regulations, so consumers will know what they are buying, so they can know what the strength of that is. Just like if you go and buy a beer, you know its 4. 5 versus 9 , etc. , so you know which one to have or not to have. Im all in favor regulations. Consumers have better choices and they can make better decisions, rather than picking it up from some guy on the corner. You know . Anyway, thats a long answer. But it was two questions. Thank you, dan. Another question . Anyone . I think everyone is thirsty. I know i am. [laughter] garrett very good, everyone. Thank you so much for coming tonight. [applause] garrett and we have cocktails outside for you. The french 75, and we will toast to our right to drink alcohol. Thank you for coming. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv, every weekend on cspan three. Each week, American History tvs railamerica brings you archival films that provide context for todays Public Affairs issues. Covered a lot has of territory and a short time. I would like to know how it all got started. Point of origin for the influence of virus is of is not known. The epidemic, had it again in hong kong and singapore. This is in early april. Disease becamehe an epidemic in both of these cities and remains so throughout. Singapore, in and early may, the disease moved to an island. Asis estimated that as many a halfmillion people were attacked within a relatively short time. Of may,ing the month the disease made its appearance in japan. Major shipping centers, the disease very rapidly scattered into widely separated india,such as indonesia, guam, and the philippines. The first cases, also in late may, the disease was as far away as australia and on board en route from australia to San Francisco. The first appearance of the disease in the United States was june 2. This date was important. It means only a short six weeks from the time the cases were reported in china, in the United States. Influenza and influenza like diseases can spread all over the world. By mid june, this disease had the globe, circled including southeast and southwest asia, the middle and late in june, the disease made its appearance in north africa, introduced probably by the muslims returning from the pilgrimages to mecca. Finally, in late july and early july, south america. Months, every continent on the globe have been involved in this great pandemic. You mentioned it had been reported on ships en route to San Francisco and some locations were definitely diagnosed in newport, rhode island. Wouldnt it have been comparatively simple to isolate the known cases and prevent them from coming in at all . Simple,tunately, not so for the reason that the quarantine, against influenza, is not effective. Had it been possible to have been isolated, it would have had little effect on the actual spread of the disease because they were many more people on board the same ships, who, by reason of a more recently acquired infection, would have shown no symptoms of the disease and could not have been readily they were passing through a quarantine station. 1957nd more about the influenza outbreak this sunday on American History tv. Up next, William Jack Davis offers is in sight as a civil work story historian, explaining how historiography has evolved to present day. He talks about lessons he has research,om past including the causes and responsibilities of the war. He is the author of the cause loft lost. As part of a symposium held at the library of virginia richmond. John this years symposium here did not come together as smoothly as they often do and as smoothly as i would like and that is entirely my fault. It took me a long time to come up with a concept and title. My working title was civil war bucket list, what you should know before you go. A title that just did not sing for some reason. [laughter] i want to thank our longsuffering panelists for bearing with me as i arrived at a workable concept and title