2 of 3 on Prohibition In 1832, Washington, NC, resident and physician William Shaw delivered a series of lectures to the Washington Temperance Society where he indicted intemperance as a “source of disease” and a “national evil.” The consumption of alcohol “fills prisons with dishonest, weak, and wicked criminals…fills alms houses with paupers…makes tens of thousands of men poor and wretched, and leaves their widows indigent and destitute [and throws] on the charity of this c

1 of 3 on Prohibition North Carolina has had a long, contentious relationship with liquor, a relationship muddled by religion and politics, rural culture, women’s suffrage, and racism. Early in the Republic, “American whiskey was usually 50 percent alcohol; not aged; colorless; cheaper than coffee, tea, milk, or beer; and safer than water, since alcohol killed germs.” [1] Scotch-Irish immigrants were already experienced distilling small batches of whiskey and brandy when they