MARC L. HARRIS
The Process of Voluntary Association:
Organizing the Ravenna Temperance
Society, 1830
With attention beginning now to focus
on voluntary association as a
characteristic feature of pre-Civil War
American life, it is important
not to lose sight of the phenomenon of
voluntary organization as it-
self a historical problem. One aspect
of this problem that particu-
larly needs discussion is a complex of
issues arising from the extra-
parliamentary nature of voluntary
groups. This aspect matters be-
cause such groups, it is generally
accepted, often intended to pro-
duce public benefits; indeed, they
often aimed to revolutionize the
American economy and way of life.
In a famous and widely-quoted passage
in his 1836 classic, Democ-
racy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville recognized both the ubiquity
of voluntary organizations and the
public nature of many of their
aims:
Americans of all ages, all conditions,
and all dispositions constantly form as-
sociations. They have not only commercial
and manufacturing companies, in
which all take part, but associations of
a thousand other kinds, religious,
moral, serious, futile, general or
restricted, enormous or diminutive. The
Americans make associations to give
entertainments, to found seminaries, to
build inns, to construct churches, to
diffuse books, to send missionaries to
the antipodes; in this manner they found
hospitals, prisons, and schools. If
it is proposed to inculcate some truth
or to foster some feeling by the encour-
agement of a great example, they form a
society. Wherever at the head of
some new undertaking you see the
government in France, or a man of rank in
England, in the United States you will
be sure to find an association.1
It is particularly important in this
context to stress Tocqueville's decla-
ration that such projects would have
been sponsored by the govern-
ment in his native France. But in the
United States, he observed,
Marc Harris is Acting Associate
Director, Division of Research Services, Louisiana
State University.
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, ed. and tr. Phillips Bradley, 2
vols. (New York, 1945), 2:114.
The Process of Voluntary
Association
159
voluntary action by individuals was
apparently an established mode
of addressing such concerns.
Most of those who followed Tocqueville
have accepted his judg-
ment that voluntary association was not
only not problematic, but was
accepted as a method of achieving public
and personal goals. In-
deed, the president of the Organization
of American Historians has
recently stated that "Tocqueville's
familiar comment . . . could apply
to any moment in our history."2
And this view of voluntary associa-
tions underlies much recent
historiography on those who joined and
used them. Don H. Doyle and Walter S.
Glazer have stressed that
voluntary associations served important cohesive
functions in early
nineteenth-century towns and cities;
Mary P. Ryan has focused on
their role in developing and
transmitting new ideas of family life,
while Lawrence Friedman has concentrated
on the mutual reinforce-
ment members gave each other while
working for radical social aims.
Dorothy Ann Lipson has discussed the
fraternity and sodality, as
well as mutual business and social
advantages, which members
could enjoy. And Anne Firor Scott has
pointed to voluntary associa-
tion as the only effective means by
which women could wield "social
power."3 The existence
of such societies has been taken, as by
2. Anne Firor Scott, "On Seeing and
Not Seeing: A Case Study of Historical Invisi-
bility," Journal of American
History, 71 (June, 1984), 8-9.
3. Don H. Doyle, "The Social
Functions of Voluntary Associations in a Nineteenth-
Century American Town," Social
Science History, 1 (Spring, 1977), 333-55; Doyle, The
Social Order of a Frontier Community:
Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825-1870 (Urbana,
Ill.,
1978), 156-93; Walter S. Glazer,
"Participation and Power: Voluntary Associations and
the Functional Organization of
Cincinnati in 1840," Historical Methods Newsletter, 5
(Sept., 1972), 151-68; Mary P. Ryan, Cradle
of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida
County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge and New York, 1981), 105-44; Lawrence
Friedman, Gregarious Saints: Self and
Community in American Abolitionism, 1830-1870
(Cambridge, Eng., 1982); Dorothy Ann
Lipson, Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut
(Princeton, N.J., 1977); Scott,
"Historical Invisibility," 7-21.
There are other interpretations of the
meaning of voluntary associations. Rowland T.
Berthoff held that they were largely a
reaction by concerned conservatives to in-
creases in social disorder during the
early nineteenth century. Richard D. Brown has
viewed them as evidence of increasing
cosmopolitanism and heterogeneity, phases of
modernization, during the period.
Berthoff, An Unsettled People: Social Order and
Disorder in American History (New York, 1971), 254-74; Brown, "The Emergence of
Urban Society in Rural Massachusetts,
1760-1820," Journal of American History, 61
(June, 1974), 29-51, Modernization:
The Transformation of American Life 1600-1865
(New York, 1976), 94-121.
Among surveys of social history, Alice
Felt Tyler's Freedom's Ferment: Phases of
American Social History from the
Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New
York, 1962) does not consider the
existence of voluntary associations as problematic,
although it does seek to explain the
reforming impulse. Russel Blaine Nye's Society and
Culture in America, 1830-1860 (New York, 1974) mentions that reformers found the
principle of association a
"powerful tool," p. 37.
160 OHIO HISTORY
Tocqueville, to be a natural feature of
life in the United States.4
Yet the existence of private groupings
in the early nineteenth-
century United States ought not to be
taken for granted. During the
same period in which voluntary
associations proliferated so luxuri-
ously, so, equally, did pervasive
suspicions of plots, factions, com-
binations and conspiracies. The future
of American liberty was
proclaimed to be violently threatened at
various times by George
Washington's officers in the Continental
Army, Daniel Shays's rebel-
lion, the pro-French faction in
Washington's cabinet, the pro-English
faction in Washington's cabinet, the Whiskey
Rebels, the Society of
the Cincinnati, the
Democratic-Republican societies, the Illuminati,
the Jeffersonian Republicans, the
Hamiltonian Federalists, the Essex
Junto, Aaron Burr and his
co-conspirators, British intriguers and
their tools on the frontier, intriguers
with the Spanish interest, organ-
ized Freemasonry, the Jackson party, the
anti-Jackson party, the Ro-
man Catholic Church, the Jesuits,
anti-slavery agitators, and the
Slave Power, to name only a few
proclaimed sources of danger. Fears
reached the level of public hysteria in
many cases. In all cases, the
suspicious feared combinations of
private persons against the public
interest, and precisely why voluntary
associations should have re-
mained beyond suspicion-if in fact they
did-is not immediately
clear.5
This important issue is too vast to
approach directly in a short es-
say. A related, but smaller, one may
nevertheless be opened. Histori-
ans have not only followed Tocqueville's
lead in accepting the natu-
ralness of voluntary associations in the
democratic United States,
they have generally accepted his
explanation for their prevalence. No
one person in a democratic society, he
opined, could wield great
power, and none could compel others to
do anything against their
will. In order to combat their
individual weakness, citizens united
and found their strength in numbers:
"A people among whom indi-
viduals lost the power of achieving
great things single-handed, with-
out acquiring the means of producing
them by united exertions,
would soon relapse into barbarism."
Or, as recently rephrased by
4. I do not propose here to discuss
whether voluntary associations attempted to
address real problems or represented
exercises in social control. The definition of
problems that needed solving is another
matter altogether; for present purposes what
matters is that such problems, however
defined, were addressed by means of volun-
tary organization.
5. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid
Style in American Politics (New York, 1965);
essays by Marshall Smelser, David Brion
Davis, and Russel B. Nye in Richard O. Cur-
ry and Thomas M. Brown, eds., Conspiracy:
The Fear of Subversion in American His-
tory (New York, 1972).
The Process of Voluntary
Association
161
Anne F. Scott, people needed to form
"the habit of relying on groups
of peers to get things done."6
Thus, group action is taken to be the
logical kind of action which equals
should take in a society of equals.
But this approach bears two related and
important flaws. It has,
for one thing, ignored the dynamic
nature of voluntary organization; a
voluntary society was a process begun
by its organizers or "projec-
tors" that involved discrete steps
and procedures. Examination of
that process is needed, if only to
assess whether Tocqueville's views
were correct. Beyond that, however, no
clear understanding of the
nature and role of voluntary associations
is possible without some
idea how they came into existence.
Second, Tocqueville's approach takes no
account of the crucial fact
that where an organization's members
intended public benefits,
achieving those benefits necessarily
depended upon social interac-
tions between members and non-members.
What we now know of
early nineteenth-century American
society, a society of sharp social
and economic distinctions, does not
permit us to regard those inter-
actions with complacency. The known
stratification of American soci-
ety affected both the process of
organizing voluntary associations
and the later interactions between
members and non-members.7
The present essay attempts to address
these concerns by exam-
ining the organizing phase of a local
temperance society that was
formed in Ravenna, Ohio, in 1830. An
account of the society's forma-
tion, rare for organizations of this
type, survives in the private papers
6. Tocqueville, Democracy in America,
2:115-16; Scott, "Historical Invisibility," 9.
An older generation of political
theorists argued programmatically in favor of this view,
as summarized in Charles E. Merriam, Public
and Private Government (New Haven,
1944):
"In a government of the many . . .
these associations are the bases of liberty, order,
justice, democratic habit and practice,
bulwarks of the republic. Out of the ener-
gies, the enterprise, the rivalries, the
adjustments of these associations arises what
we call public opinion, the final
stabilizer and judge of liberty, justice, order" (p. 19).
7. Among many modern works which discuss
the inequalities of early nineteenth-
century American society, those of
Edward Pessen perhaps deserve first mention. See
his "The Egalitarian Myth and the
American Social Reality: Wealth, Mobility, and
Equality in the 'Era of the Common
Man,'" American Historical Review, 76 (Oct.,
1971), 989-1034; "The Social
Configuration of the Ante-Bellum City: An Historical and
Theoretical Inquiry," Journal of
Urban History, 2 (May, 1976), 267-306; Riches, Class,
and Power Before the Civil War (Lexington, Mass., 1973). The dynamics of life in a
flu-
id, yet structured society are explored
in (among many) Doyle, Frontier Community;
Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's
Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New
York 1815-1837 (New York, 1978); Leonard L. Richards, "Gentlemen
of Property and
Standing:" Anti-Abolition Mobs
in Jacksonian America (New York,
1970); Stephan
Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress:
Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (New
York, 1970).
162 OHIO HISTORY
of one of its founders, Darius Lyman. A
lawyer and politician, Lyman
graduated from Williams College in 1810
and was one of the many
graduates of the pioneering Litchfield
(Connecticut) Law School to
seek his fortune in the West. His father
had served as an officer dur-
ing the Revolution and sat for Goshen,
Connecticut, in the first Con-
gress of the United States. Shortly
after he arrived in Ohio, Lyman
married into the families of two
well-to-do Goshen natives, the mer-
chants and land developers David Hudson
and Heman Oviatt. Ly-
man was professionally associated with
several active politicans, and
was also involved in religious and reform
affairs.8
The Ravenna Temperance Society, one of
Lyman's major projects,
was the work of a very small group of
locally prominent men who had
been inspired by the minister of a
nearby town. This small group
adopted a constitution and organized
systematically to enlist mem-
bers into the society and promulgate its
ideas.
I
Settled for barely a generation by 1830,
Ravenna belonged as their
primary investment in the Connecticut
Western Reserve to the Tappan
family, a mercantile and land-holding
clan from Northampton, Mas-
sachusetts. The family also held large
properties along the Ohio Riv-
er as well as an extremely successful
retail dry-goods business in New
York City. Benjamin Tappan, later a
state senator and an important fig-
ure in early Ohio politics, lived
briefly in Ravenna in about 1804 be-
fore moving to Steubenville. His
little-known brother William lived
quietly in the town until the middle
1830s.9
As the seat of Portage County, Ravenna
was the legal and agricul-
tural center of a thirty-township area
comprising some 1,250 square
miles. The village itself numbered
approximately one thousand resi-
dents in 1830. Portage County, like the
rest of the Western Reserve,
8. [Richard C. Brown and J. E. Norris], History
of Portage County, Ohio (Chicago,
1885), 338, 533, 839-40; "Portage
County Marriage Records," TS, 6 vols., Western Re-
serve Historical Society, Cleveland,
Ohio, 4: 950; Harold E. Davis, "Social and Eco-
nomic Basis of the Whig Party in Ohio,
1828-1840," (unpubl. PhD diss., Western Re-
serve University, 1933), 165-69;
"Names of the Early Settlers of Ravenna, Ohio," MS,
n. pag., n.d., Reed Memorial Library,
Ravenna, Ohio.
9. On the Tappan family, see Bertram
Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangel-
ical War Against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969), and biography of Lewis Tappan, MS,
n.d.,
Reed Memorial Library; on Benjamin Tappan, Jr., his
"Autobiography," ed. Donald
Ratcliffe, Ohio History, 85 (Spring, 1976),
109-57; on William Tappan, "Names of the
Early Settlers of Ravenna," Reed
Memorial Library, n. pag., "Portage County Ohio
Death Records Taken from Newspapers,
1825-1860," TS, W.R.H.S., 57.
The Process of Voluntary
Association
163
closely resembled western New York,
another area settled by New
Englanders; in many cases the same
families and individuals pio-
neered both areas. Portage County was
primarily an agricultural re-
gion, but it had two growing mill
settlements. An established center
at Franklin Mills, later Kent, lay
immediately to the west of Ravenna,
while to its southwest the Ohio and Erie
Canal stimulated a new
complex of mills at Akron. The Canal's
effects made themselves felt
throughout the western tier of townships
ever since work on it had
begun in 1825; by 1830 it carried
traffic from Lake Erie almost half-
way to Columbus, and greatly spurred
farm production all along its
course. 10
Ravenna was not only the county seat, it
was also a crossroads. The
town bisected the main road between
older, more densely settled
areas of the Western Reserve and the
mills and ports of the Ohio Ca-
nal. It also lay astride the most direct
line of land transportation be-
tween an emerging lake port at Cleveland
and the Ohio River, the
major artery of western commerce.
Drovers regularly moved their car-
goes through town, and they found
accommodation at the local tav-
erns.
Like many towns in the newly-settled
West, Ravenna thus found it-
self enmeshed in several kinds of
economic changes. Its surrounding
farmlands entered a mature phase of
market production, while mill
towns developed nearby and road traffic
through town increased.
The town's legal business must also have
changed from frontier-style
dealings in very large properties to
smaller land exchanges and com-
mercial cases. Though it is impossible
to prove, it is highly likely that
Ravenna and its hinterland shared a
level of alcohol consumption
and drunkenness comparable to that of
similar communities, and
quite high by modern standards.11
10. Harlan Hatcher, The Western
Reserve: The Story of New Connecticut in Ohio
(New York, 1949), 76-158; Henry Howe, Historical
Collections of Ohio (Columbus,
1896), 102-03; Whitney R. Cross, The
Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual
History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York,
1800-1850 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1950);
Robert L. Jones, "The Dairy
Industry in Ohio Prior to the Civil War," Ohio Archeo-
logical and Historical Quarterly, 56 (Jan., 1947), 46-69; Harry N. Scheiber, Ohio
Canal
Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy,
1820-1861 (Athens, O., 1969),
48-52, 185-246.
11. Similar changes had occurred a
generation earlier, in the absence of canals, in
Connecticut; see Bruce C. Daniels,
"Economic Development in Colonial and Revolu-
tionary Connecticut: An Overview," William
and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. ser., 37 (July,
1980), 429-50. On alcohol consumption in
early nineteenth-century America, see Wil-
liam J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic
Republic: An American Tradition (New York, 1979),
3-23, 223-39; Jed Dannenbaum,
"Drink and Disorder: Temperance Reform in Cincin-
nati, 1841-1894," (PhD diss.,
University of California at Davis, 1978), 1-28;
164 OHIO HISTORY
In one respect, however, Ravenna
differed from many contempora-
ry communities: it was one of the main
strongholds of the Antimason-
ic movement in Ohio, political as well
as social. In 1829 the New York
newspaper editor Lewis L. Rice was asked
to move to Ravenna to
found an Antimasonic press, and he began
publication in January,
1830. With the aid of Rice's Ohio
Star the movement gained in
strength through 1832. In that year the
state's leading Antimason,
Darius Lyman, ran for governor on a
fusion ticket with the National
Republicans and lost badly. The party
rapidly declined thereafter
but remained in being, with Lyman on the
national executive commit-
tee, until the spring political season
of 1836.12
II
In these surroundings-the county seat of
a settling commercial ag-
ricultural area with growing industries
and canal traffic nearby-
there is little reason to doubt that
inebriation and drunken behavior
of the kind widely seen in the United
States could be found quite of-
ten on Ravenna's streets. Of the
voluntary societies that seem to have
been a preferred answer to this problem,
some things have been gen-
erally known. They were governed by
constitutions, which members
signed in order to demonstrate their
willingness to abide by the
rules; members then made themselves
subject to some sort of group
discipline. Their activities generally
included hosting speeches on
the subject of temperance, as well as
organized proselytizing for new
members. Beyond that, we have known
comparatively little about
the process of organization and public
reactions to that effort. The
course of events in Ravenna emerges from
Darius Lyman's manuscript
notes on the subject.13
As late as 1828, he wrote, no
"active public sentiment in opposition
to Intemperance" could be found in
the entire county. But in 1829
Rev. John Seward, the dean of Western
Reserve ministers, pub-
lished a series of articles in a Ravenna
newspaper owned by William
Coolman and Charles Thompson, who were
later involved in Raven-
Ian R. Tyrell, Sobering Up: From
Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America,
1800-1860 (Westport, Conn., 1979), 16-32.
12. Francis P. Weisenburger, The
Passing of the Frontier: 1825-1850, vol. III of Carl
Wittke, ed., The History of the State
of Ohio (Columbus, 1941), 263-71.
13. All papers quoted here are found in
Darius Lyman Family Papers, MSS. 3364,
Container 8, Folder 1, Western Reserve
Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. Several
different papers, all undated, bear the
heading "Temperance." Original spelling and
punctuation are retained.
The Process of Voluntary Association 165 |
|
na's temperance society. In his series Seward urged each township in the county to form a temperance society, and apparently provided a great impetus in that direction. By April, 1831, nineteen of the coun- ty's thirty townships had done so.14 Seward's success can be at least partly ascribed to his personal qualities and influential connections, but these could hardly have sufficed to achieve such results. It is true that Seward occupied a pivotal place in Western Reserve society. A Williams College gradu- ate, he had been pastor at Aurora for sixteen years and continued to maintain his ties with the Connecticut Missionary Society. On his ar- rival he had married into the family of Elizur Wright, Sr., and moved easily among the Reserve's large land-holders and developers. He also wielded great influence in the Synod of the Western Reserve and took a particular interest in its project to form a college, a project which had come to a head just before he turned his attention to the temperance cause. But it took hard work at the grass roots by people like Lyman to create the township societies. Influencing public opin- ion had only begun with the newspaper campaign of 1829.15
14. "Temperance," n.d., Lyman Papers, cont. 8, folder 1, W.R.H.S. 15. [Brown and Norris], History of Portage County, 402; "Portage County Marriage |
166 OHIO HISTORY
Seward's series of articles evidently
convinced Darius Lyman that
Ravenna needed a temperance society, and
he set about to organize
one. His efforts followed a sparsely
attended meeting in Ravenna of
the Seward-inspired Portage County
Temperance Society in April,
1829. "The People in Ravenna took
no interest in the meeting," he
noted, "some half dozen only
attending."16
Fewer than even this number eventually,
after a series of false
starts, organized the township society.
As such attempts persisted,
however, the public's initial
indifference turned to active dislike.
Lyman told the tale of mounting
hostility:
Several efforts were made to form one
before the object was accomplished:
at three different meetings of those
friendly to the cause, were attempts to
form a society presented, and they were
obliged to separate without accom-
plishing their object. The friends of
temperance were jeered and hissed at:
abused in public and in private: but
they persevered and formed a society,
and that society consisted of fifteen
members: five individuals only first
signed a temperance constitution and
called the meeting at which the society
was formed.17
Ravenna's temperance society thus owed
its existence to the five per-
sistent individuals who braved public
abuse to call the organization-
al meeting. In another document Lyman
discussed the meeting at
which the constitution had first taken
shape:
The First Temperance Township meeting
ever held in Ravenna, was in March
1830. It was at the office of Darius
Lyman, persons present 2. himself and the
Rev. Alvan Nash: they two proposed a
Constitution for a Temperance Socie-
ty. Darius Lyman first put his name to
it the name of Alvan Nash was next:
they then procured the names of three
others: viz. William Coolman, Isaac
Swift & Anson Beeman.
Mr. Lyman then gave public notice, for
meeting to be held at Salmon
Carters Tavern: for the purpose of a
more general and thorough organiza-
tion.18
Formal temperance organization had
begun, then, with an agree-
ment between Lyman and Nash in Lyman's
office. That such a proj-
ect was in the offing was generally
known and not unanimously ap-
proved, and Lyman and his associates
received some public abuse
for their pains. Lyman and Nash then
took their document to three
Records," 5: 1336; William S.
Kennedy, The Plan of Union: or a History of the Presby-
terian and Congregational Churches of
the Western Reserve (Hudson, Ohio,
1856), ch.
5.
16. "Temperance," n.d., Lyman
Papers, cont. 8, folder 1, W.R.H.S.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
The Process of Voluntary
Association 167
men favorable to the cause-Coolman had
already committed the
newspaper to temperance with Seward's
articles-and signed them
up. The five signers included Lyman, a
politician and lawyer from a
political family and of impeccable
personal background; Nash, the
town's Congregational minister and son
of a Massachusetts minister;
Coolman, a lawyer, politician, and
newspaper publisher; Swift, the
town doctor; and Beeman, who appears to
have been a merchant. All
were active churchgoers.19
Lyman's move to formalize and expand his
organization provoked
a focused attempt at resistance, an
escalation from continued personal
harassment. Opponents tried to pack the
initial public meeting:
At this meeting, a large number, some 60
or more assembled; most of them
for the purpose of defeating any
measures that might be taken to aid the
cause of Temperance: but when they got
there, finding men there who were
not to be driven from their purpose, the
most of them dispersed.
Others to the number of 15 and no more:
added their names to the Consti-
tution which had been proposed at
Lyman's office, and organized them-
selves into a Township Temperance
Society.20
When Lyman and Nash took the
constitution to the public, they,
along with the three other signers and
fifteen new converts, had to
thwart an attempt to pack the meeting
with opponents. But the meet-
ing was vital. Only after the public
meeting had taken place did
Lyman consider the society to have been
organized.
Opposition to Lyman's innovation reached
its peak of violence
shortly afterward. In mid-April, 1830,
the Portage County Temper-
ance Society was to hold its scheduled
annual meeting. Lyman de-
scribed a concerted effort of
intimidation that remarkably resembled
that later undertaken against
abolitionists.21 First, he noted, special
arrangements had to be made about a
meeting place:
The Society was not permitted to meet in
the Court House or at any public
building.
Mr. Lyman rented Mr. Sloan's barn with a
few acres about it for the pur-
pose of holding the meeting. The
provision of taking a Written lease of the
premises was taken: in order to control
the place if any insult or violence
should be offered.22
19. On Lyman, see note 8. Biographical
data on Nash is found in "Manual of the
Congregational Church of Ravenna, Ohio," n. pag., n.d.,
Reed Memorial Library.
Data on Coolman is found in [Brown and
Norris], History of Portage County, 258, 270,
287, 362, 531, 553, 556; "Names of
the Early Settlers of Ravenna," n. pag. Data on Swift
and Beeman is found in "Names of
the Early Settlers of Ravenna," n. pag.
20. "Temperance," n.d., Lyman
Papers, cont. 8, folder 1, W.R.H.S.
21. See Richards, "Gentlemen of
Property and Standing," esp. 27-30.
22. "Temperance," n.d., Lyman
Papers, cont. 8, folder 1, W.R.H.S.
168
OHIO HISTORY
Barred from the courthouse, the
temperance advocates rented a soli-
tary, easily defensible barn, and
further protected themselves with
rights of tenancy.
Opponents made Lyman himself a target of
intimidation. "Mr.
Lyman, who was to address the
meeting," he wrote, "was publickly
insulted in the streets by his
neighbors; and his effigy stuck up be-
fore his door: with all manner of
insulting and scandalous writings
upon it."23
The Portage County Temperance Society
went through with its
meeting despite such public abuse. At
that time it claimed 120 mem-
bers. Women, who formed the backbone of
many temperance and
benevolent societies, did not yet belong
to this society, and only
three local women attended the 1830
annual meeting. Through the
course of that year, however, some 1,200
people joined the various
township societies. By 1831, the number
of members in the township
societies reached 1,600, and the annual
meeting of the county society
was apparently held in Ravenna without
incident.24 Direct opposi-
tion to temperance organization no
longer showed itself in any signifi-
cant degree.
III
What had happened? Broadly speaking, two
influential men, later
joined by three others, had carried
through the project of organiz-
ing a township temperance society.
Opponents had failed to prevent
the society's formation.
However, this extremely complex
situation deserves more discus-
sion. It is true that proponents of
temperance, few though they were,
could count on the pulpit and the town
newspaper to press for their
position. At least some of them, Lyman
and Nash especially, exhib-
ited a very definite habit and
expectation of command which had
been bred into them. But they did not
anticipate an easy time. Influ-
ence and position, after all, underwrote
no guarantees. Lyman himself
quite clearly expected resistance and
abuse from the general public
and understood where it would come from.
He realized that he was
asking for a major change in personal
and social habits, and that tem-
perance threatened vested interests. He
wrote of the temperance pro-
gram that:
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
The Process of Voluntary
Association 169
It required a powerful effort by the way
of argument, to induce people to be-
lieve that their household gods, were the very Idols of
depraved appetites,
that by gratifying this appetite, they debased the
generous feelings of the
heart, and extinguished all the lofty
and noble sentiments of the soul.25
No one was inclined to believe that the
normal social practice of
consuming alcohol would cause moral degradation.
Liquor was rou-
tinely available. As Lyman wrote, and
research has tended to con-
firm in outline if not in lurid detail:
Public sentiment sustained individuals,
in taking the daily dram and passing
round the social glass; it went further
it obstinately demand[ed] and re-
quired that people should do so; it
exercised an inquisitorial search and
required that every man should have his
bottle in his cupboard: it was
deemed necessary to sustain health good
manners and hospitality. The
Brewery Bottle and the Whiskey Jar were
house hold gods in every family:
and every member of every family were
scrupulous in paying their devotions
to them.26
Powerful social practices, he realized,
supported the use of alcoholic
beverages.
In addition, Lyman singled out
individual enemies whose interests
worked in favor of intemperance. Among
the worst he considered
"the retailers of ardent spirits;
the ring of a Shilling upon their bar
counter, from the pocket of the
inebriate, has as yet drowned the ad-
monitions and supplications of the
public voice."27 Yet, not all retail-
ers could be tarred with that brush. Two
tavern-keepers, Ephraim
Shaler and Salmon Carter, were among the
first fifteen members of
the township temperance society.28
If Lyman knew who his opponents would
be, we must suppose that
they were probably men of his own
stature, based on Leonard L.
Richards's findings about anti-abolition
mobs and taking account of
the fact that they could withhold use of
county buildings for the so-
ciety's meeting in 1830. Whatever the
case, their failure, as much as
Lyman's success, needs to be examined.
Lyman, though he drew on habits and
traditions of family leader-
ship, stood for a change in personal and
social habits. He needed
to get some people to subscribe to his
and Nash's constitution in
a publicly-announced, publicly-held
meeting. With this accom-
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. "History of Ravenna,"
Ravenna Republican, Aug. 31, 1899.
170 OHIO HISTORY
plished, his society came into being and
the small group organized it-
self to pursue its single purpose.
His opponents stood for no change in
current customs, but drew
upon a myriad of personal and social
conventions surrounding the use
of liquor. They thus, over the long run,
had multiple objects and
goals rather than a single one. Their
only hope for concerted action
lay in the early stages of Lyman's
enterprise; in order to succeed they
had to stop Lyman from forming his
society. Once he had gotten that
far, it would be impossible to prevent
temperance activities from tak-
ing place under the society's auspices
without offering an unsustain-
able level of violence and intimidation
to all of its members all of the
time. Lyman's opponents, furthermore,
would have had to mobilize
people who wanted to be left to do as
they pleased. In effect, they
would have had to form an
anti-temperance society to agitate continu-
ously for their desire to be left alone.
In proposing his single, though radical,
goal, Lyman therefore had
the advantage over his opponents. They
had to try to convince peo-
ple that the stakes were high enough to
justify continuous, concerted
resistance to a very small group of
people with a strange idea.
Lyman and his fellow temperance
advocates of 1830 had no doubt
of the stakes. Much later, he wrote:
The Temperance reformation is improving
the Phisical, Intilectual and moral
condition of Society.
Its progress is presenting humanity
itself in a more interesting and agreeable
form.
Wherever the Temperance reformation has
been carried on for the last fif-
teen years; there the condition of
society has been changed for the better.29
But this opinon was Lyman's. It seems to
have prevailed through
the unremitting pressure which a small
organized group brought to
bear on an unorganized populace. Perhaps
many of those whose lives
had been thus affected might have
disagreed with his assessment.
29. "Temperance," n.d., Lyman
Papers, cont. 8, folder 1, W.R.H.S.
MARC L. HARRIS
The Process of Voluntary Association:
Organizing the Ravenna Temperance
Society, 1830
With attention beginning now to focus
on voluntary association as a
characteristic feature of pre-Civil War
American life, it is important
not to lose sight of the phenomenon of
voluntary organization as it-
self a historical problem. One aspect
of this problem that particu-
larly needs discussion is a complex of
issues arising from the extra-
parliamentary nature of voluntary
groups. This aspect matters be-
cause such groups, it is generally
accepted, often intended to pro-
duce public benefits; indeed, they
often aimed to revolutionize the
American economy and way of life.
In a famous and widely-quoted passage
in his 1836 classic, Democ-
racy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville recognized both the ubiquity
of voluntary organizations and the
public nature of many of their
aims:
Americans of all ages, all conditions,
and all dispositions constantly form as-
sociations. They have not only commercial
and manufacturing companies, in
which all take part, but associations of
a thousand other kinds, religious,
moral, serious, futile, general or
restricted, enormous or diminutive. The
Americans make associations to give
entertainments, to found seminaries, to
build inns, to construct churches, to
diffuse books, to send missionaries to
the antipodes; in this manner they found
hospitals, prisons, and schools. If
it is proposed to inculcate some truth
or to foster some feeling by the encour-
agement of a great example, they form a
society. Wherever at the head of
some new undertaking you see the
government in France, or a man of rank in
England, in the United States you will
be sure to find an association.1
It is particularly important in this
context to stress Tocqueville's decla-
ration that such projects would have
been sponsored by the govern-
ment in his native France. But in the
United States, he observed,
Marc Harris is Acting Associate
Director, Division of Research Services, Louisiana
State University.
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy
in America, ed. and tr. Phillips Bradley, 2
vols. (New York, 1945), 2:114.