In 1826, a century before Prohibition, Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher wrote, “No sin has fewer apologies than intemperance.” Beecher founded the American Temperance Society, one of America's first such organizations, in 1824. At its conventions, Beecher gave speeches with heavy-handed warnings such as: “. . . of all the ways to hell, which the feet of deluded mortals tread, that of the intemperate is the most dreary and terrific." Preachers such as Beecher are often associated with Prohibition and its precursor, temperance. Prohibitionists argued that their opponents were immoral and un-American. They claimed Prohibition would end crime and poverty and create a ...