William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 - July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, statesman, and politician. He was a three-time Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States. One of the most popular speakers in American history, he was noted for his deep, commanding voice. Bryan was a devout Presbyterian, a strong proponent of popular democracy, an outspoken critic of banks and railroads, a leader of the silverite movement in the 1890s, …

Samuel Fenton Cary, Sr. (February 18, 1814 - September 29, 1900) was a congressman and significant temperance movement leader in the nineteenth century. Cary became well-known nationally as a prohibitionist author and lecturer. Cary was born on February 18, 1814 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Miami University in 1835 and at the Cincinnati Law School in 1837 being admitted to the bar the same year, practicing law out of his in office in Cincinnati.

Dr. Henry Daniel Cogswell (March 3, 1820 - July 8 1900) was a dentist and a crusader in the temperance movement. He and his wife Caroline also founded Cogswell College in Sunnyvale, California. Another campus in Everett, Washington was later dedicated in his honor. Born in Tolland, Connecticut, Cogswell's family were descendants of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne. As a youth, he worked in the New England cotton mills and studied by night.

Rolland Fisher (1900-1982) was a minister and evangelist who actively promoted the temperance movement. He was Executive Secretary of the Kansas Prohibition Party in 1948-1950, was State Chairman of the party in 1962-1968, was Vice-Chairman of the Prohibition National Committee in 1963-1967, and was the Prohibition Party candidate for Vice-President of the Untted States in 1968.

Mary Hunt became one of the most powerful women in the United States temperance movement promoting Prohibition of alcohol. As Superintendent of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction she worked from the grass roots to the national level to ensure passage of laws requiring that textbooks teach every school child a curriculum promoting complete abstinence for everyone and alcohol prohibition.

David Justin Hanson, PhD, (born 1941) is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the State University of New York at Potsdam, NY, USA. Hanson researched the subject of alcohol and drinking for over 30 years, beginning with his PhD dissertation investigation, and has written widely on the subject.

Green Clay Smith (July 4, 1826 - June 29, 1895) served as a major general during the Civil War, was a congressman from Kentucky and was the Territorial Governor of Montana from 1866 to 1869. He also ran for President of the United States on the Prohibition ticket in 1876. Born in Richmond, Kentucky, Smith pursued academic studies as a young man.

Wayne Bidwell Wheeler was born at Brookfield, Ohio to Mary Ursula Hutchinson and Joseph Wheeler. He graduated from Oberlin in 1894 and in law from Western Reserve University in 1898. While a student he engaged in temperance work, and after graduation joined the Ohio Anti-Saloon League as a field secretary. In 1902 he became superintendent, and in 1906 led a successful fight against the reëlection of Governor Myron T. Herrick.

Clinton Bowen Fisk (December 8, 1828 - July 9, 1890), for whom Fisk University is named, was a senior officer in the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. He joined the Union Army in 1862 and served for the duration of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). After the Civil War, Clinton worked through the Bureau of Refugees, …

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William Eugene "Pussyfoot" Johnson (25 March 1862-2 February 1945) was an American Prohibition advocate and law enforcement officer. In pursuit of his campaign to outlaw intoxicating beverages, he openly admitted to drinking liquor, bribery, and lying. He gained the nickname "Pussyfoot" due to his cat-like stealth in the pursuit of suspects in the Oklahoma Territory.

John Pierce St. John (February 25, 1833 - August 31, 1916) was eighth Governor of Kansas and a candidate for President of the United States. Born in Brookville, Indiana, St. John served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War. From 1873 he sat in the Kansas Senate, and was the Republican Governor of Kansas from 1879 to 1883. Active in the temperance movement, he successfully promoted a prohibition amendment to that state's constitution. St.

Neal S. Dow nicknamed the "Napoleon of Temperance" (March 20, 1804 - October 2, 1897) was a prohibitionist mayor of Portland, Maine, known as the "Father of Prohibition". He sponsored the "Maine law of 1851", which prohibited the manufacture and sale of liquor. Dow was widely criticized for his heavy handed tactics during the Portland rum riot of 1855.

Timothy Shay Arthur was a popular nineteenth-century American author. He is most famous for his temperance novel "Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There" (1854), which helped demonize alcohol in the eyes of the American public. He was also the author of dozens of stories for "Godey's Lady's Book", the most popular American monthly magazine in the antebellum era, and he published and edited his own "Arthur's Home Magazine", …

Lawyer and newspaper owner-editor Gideon Tabor Stewart (August 7 1824 - 1909) was very active in promoting the temperance movement. He was elected three timess as grand worthy chief templar of the Good Templars of Ohio. Throughout the 1850s he attempted to organize a permanent prohibition party. In 1869, Stewart was one of the delegates to the convention that established the national Prohibition Party.

William Daniel (1826-1897) was an American politician. He graduated from Dickinson College, studied law, and began practicing it in Maryland in 1851. Upon election to the state legislature in 1857, he promoted laws permitting local option regarding the prohibition of alcohol. Eventually, 13 of the 23 counties opted for prohibition. Daniel became president of the Maryland Temperance Alliance when it was formed in 1872.

Lillian M. N. Stevens (1844-1914) was an American temperance worker, born at Dover, Maine She was educated at Foxcraft Academy, taught school for a time, and was married to Michael Stevens of Portland, Maine, in 1867. In 1874 she assisted in founding the Maine Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of which she was treasurer in 1874-77 and thenceforth president until her death. She was vice president of the National W.C.T.U. in 1894-98, …

James Black (1823 - 1893) became a leader of the temperance movement in the United States after having a bad experience with alcohol intoxication, if not alcohol poisoning. Black was born in Union County, Pennsylvania to John Black and Jane Egbert Black. He married Eliza Murray in 1845. Black was actively involved in establishing the Good Templars, a temperance organization. In addition, he co-founded the National Temperance Society and Publishing House with Neal S. Dow, …

David M. Fahey (1937 -) was a history professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After his retirement in 2006, he continues to teach modern British and world history at Miami on a part-time basis. Educated at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana he has written extensively on the Anglo-American temperance movement and, in particular, the Good Templar fraternal temperance society.

Ernest Cherrington (1877-1950) was a leading temperance journalist (see temperance movement). He became active in the Anti-Saloon League and was appointed editor of the organization's publishing house, the American Issue Publishing Company. He edited and contributed to the writing of "The Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem", a comprehensive six-volume work. In addition, he was active in establishing the World League Against Alcoholism.

Judith Ellen (Horton) Foster (1840-1910) was an American lecturer, born at Lowell, Mass. She removed to Iowa, studied law, and was admitted to the State bar in 1872. She also became superintendent of the Legislative Department of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and when that organization was affiliated with the Prohibition party, identified herself with the Non-Partisan Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of which she became president.

John Bidwell (August 5 1819- April 4, 1900) was known throughout California and across the nation as an important pioneer, farmer, soldier, statesman, politician and philanthropist. He is famous for leading one of the first emigrant parties along the California Trail, and for founding Chico, California.

Edith Smith Davis was a major leader in the temperance movement. She served as Superintendent of the Bureau of Scientific Investigation and the Department of Scientific Temperance Instruction of both the U.S and the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Smith also edited "The Temperance Education Quarterly" (1910-1917). In 1907 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters (Litt.D) degree from Lawrence University.

Bishop James Cannon, Jr. (13 November 1864 - 6 September 1944) was an American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, elected in 1918. He was also a prominent leader in the temperance movement in the U.S.A. in the 1920s until derailed by scandal. H.L. Mencken said in 1934: "Six years ago he was the undisputed boss of the United States.

Carolyn Merrick (1825-1908) was described by Frances Willard of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) as a 'lady who can make the WCTU a success, even in the volatile city of Mardi Gras." After a ten-year term as president of her local WCTU chapter, Merrick became president of the National WCTU in 1882.

Sidney Perham (March 27, 1819 - April 10, 1907) was a U.S. Representative and Governor of Maine and was an activist in the temperance movement. Born in Woodstock, Maine to Joel and Sophronia Bisbee Perham, Perham attended common schools as a child and later engaged in agricultural pursuits. He was elected a member of the Maine Board of Agriculture in 1853, was a member of the Maine House of Representatives in 1854, serving as Speaker of the House that one year, …

Percy Andreae was an influential anti-prohibitionist in the U.S. during the early part of the twentieth century. After the anti-Saloon League made sweeping victories in the 1908 Ohio state elections, Andreae organized effective resistance to the temperance movement. He then organized and became president of The National Association of Commerce and Labor to fight temperance organizations on the national level.

Howard Hyde Russell (1855-1946), was the founder of the Anti-Saloon League. Following a religious conversion, he gave up the practice of law to become a minister. In 1893 he organized the Ohio Anti-Saloon League. In 1895, when the Anti-Saloon League was established at the national level, Russell was elected superintendent. He mentored future leaders of the league, including Wayne Wheeler and Ernest Cherrington.

Edward C. Delevan (1793-1871) was a wealthy businessman who devoted much of his fortune to promoting the temperance movement. He helped establish the American Temperance Union; attacked the use of wine in Christian communion; established a temperance hotel in Albany, New York; traveled to Europe to promote teetotalism; sent a million copies of a temperance tract to every soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War; and sponsored a series of periodicals.

Bishop Adna Wright Leonard I (November 2, 1874 - May 3, 1943) was a Methodist Bishop in Buffalo, New York and the first chairman of the Methodist Commission on Chaplains. He was killed in 1943 in a plane crash on his way to Iceland to visit Methodist chaplains and their troops.

A lecture by Diocletian Lewis in 1873 inspired Eliza Thompson to begin leading groups of women into saloons where they sang hymns prayed for the closure of the establishments. These direct, non-violent “Visitation Bands” were successful and quickly spread first across the state of Ohio and then to a total of 22 other states from New York to California. "Mother Thompson" and others claimed often dramatic conversions by saloon keepers.