CARRY NATION STIRS THE REGION AS PART OF HER TEMPERANCE TOUR

A Kansas woman, known nationally for her sometimes violent involvement in the temperance movement at the turn of the century, stirred the crowds when she brought her anti-alcohol crusade to Southeast Missouri.

Carry Amelia Moore Nation visited Cape Girardeau for two days in April 1907 as a part of a temperance tour that had taken her throughout the southern states. She also lectured for two days at Poplar Bluff and a day in Jackson during her time in Southeast Missouri.

Newspaper accounts at the time said Nation would "deliver a lecture publicly at which time she is expected to pay her respects to some of her ancient enemies." Foremost among her enemies was alcohol. She didn't disappoint the crowds that flocked to see her.

Her first public appearance in Cape Girardeau was scheduled for 8 p.m. on a Monday at the Baptist Church, then at Broadway and Spanish streets. Crowds began to make their way down Broadway toward the church at 7 o'clock. By 7:30, the church was packed and "people were turned away by droves, unable to get within hearing distance of the church."

But it wasn't just alcohol and saloons that she lambasted during her lecture. She also railed against tobacco, narcotics and intoxicants in any form.

Another target of her attack was the Republican Party, then in power in the White House, saying that it was "responsible for the condition of drunkenness, which is the scourge of the country" because it controlled the issuing of liquor licenses. She also said that the Democratic Party was as bad because if it were in power it, too, would keep legal the liquor business.

But it wasn't just in the public forum that Nation brought her temperance message to Southeast Missouri.

On the day of her first lecture in Cape Girardeau, Nation left her room at the St. Charles Hotel to look around the city's downtown area and to purchase a bag of apples. On her way back to the hotel, she saw a man entering a saloon at Main and Broadway streets, a block from where she would be lecturing that night.

Nation followed the man into the saloon and began "a quiet denunciation of the proprietor, who was serving drinks behind the bar." Then, turning to the man she had followed in, "she upbraided him for the ruination he was causing himself."

Nation, who had been in Poplar Bluff on her way back north from a tour of southern states, came to Cape Girardeau at the invitation of the local chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Founded nationally in 1874, the WCTU had as its primary purpose to stop the sale and use of alcoholic beverages. Some of its members became militant in their efforts, destroying saloons and bars whenever and wherever they could. Among its most famous and most militant members was Carry Nation.

Biographers attribute Nation's disdain for alcohol to her first marriage. When she was 21, she married Dr. Charles Gloyd, an alcoholic who died soon after they were married.

Ten years later, in 1877, she married David Nation, a lawyer and a minister. She began to see visions and believed God was calling her to the work of temperance movement. Even her new name, Carry A. Nation, she saw as providential of her calling.

Nation stood nearly 6 feet tall and weighed close to 180 pounds. When she walked into saloons with a Bible in one hand and a hatchet in the other, she presented a rather ominous figure. Prize fighter John L. Sullivan was reported to have run and hid once when she entered a New York City saloon in which he was drinking.

She once described herself as "a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like." And with that image of herself and her work, she continued her crusade. Between 1900 and 1910, Nation was arrested more than 30 times after leading her followers into saloons and encouraging them to destroy the drinking establishments. "Smash, ladies, smash," was her cry.

There is no evidence that Nation brought any of her destructive crusade to Southeast Missouri when she visited. She did, however, bring the fury of her message.

In its account of her visit to Cape Girardeau, The Daily Republican said at the time, "With her vast experience in anti-saloon crusades, with the hatchet and from the platform, she is prepared as possibly no other person in the world to defend her opinions and statements."