In his 2002 book Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of the Gilded Age, author Joshua Brown shared a curious note buried in the August 16, 1851, issue of Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion:

Boston Brass Band.—We really owe our readers an apology for the miserable character of the picture on the first page of the last number of our paper, representing the band of musicians above named. It was miserably engraved, and, we shall take care to print no more so deficient in this respect.

The illustrated weekly, which had published its first issue only four months earlier, prided itself on its wood engravings, advertising: “Each paper is BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED with numerous accurate engravings by eminent artists.” Perhaps to buffer the blow, the August 16th mea culpa was placed directly above a quote from a Pennsylvania newspaper: “Gleason’s popular paper is gaining new laurels every week, by the beauty and finish of its engravings and the variety and excellence of its reading matter.”

What sort of picture could have been bad enough to warrant a printed apology? It was a wood engraving of the Boston Brass Band (Fig. 1) credited to Worcester & Pierce, a Boston firm that had already done a number of engravings for the young periodical.

The core problem for Boston Brass Band appears to be mechanical instead of artistic. Wood engravings (as opposed to woodcuts) use the non-splintering end grain of the wood block instead of cutting with the grain on the longer side of the block. Consequently, especially with wood from trees that grow slowly like the preferred boxwood, engravers are confined to working with a small surface area. To create a large design, the image has to be divided among multiple blocks that are then fastened together (Fig. 2).

With tightly fastened, well-fitted blocks, the final print should appear nearly seamless. The Boston Brass Band, by contrast, has two noticeable white vertical lines cutting through two of the musicians (Figs. 3-4).

Helena Wright, Curator Emerita of Graphic Arts at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, zeroed in on those lines. According to Wright, “The major problem is those white vertical lines indicating that the blocks were not properly attached for printing.”

Even though the horizontal lines match up, there was a vertical gap between the blocks. With time, as the blocks are subjected to the repeated pressure of printing, the fastenings can also begin to open up, with white lines appearing where the blocks are separating. Wright also notes, “There seems to be some uneven inking as well, indicating that the blocks were not level on the press, another sign of their detachment.”

Interestingly, even with its self-reproach, Gleason’s Pictorial wasn’t done with the Boston Brass Band engraving.

Prior to the August apology, the paper had already informed readers that it had decided on an overall do-over. The May 3, 1851, issue reported that Gleason’s had learned how to “improve upon our original design, after a little experience in the matter, and finding also that it would be utterly impossible for us to supply the demand for back numbers … we resolved to remedy the trouble in the only way left us, and that was to begin over again all anew.”

True to their word, a new Vol. 1, No. 1, was published on July 5, 1851, reproducing much (but not all) of the content that had appeared in the original first issue. It appears the new version began running old content as the original magazine continued to publish new content. As a result, the Boston Brass Band reappeared on the front page of the September 20th issue (Fig. 5).

In this printing, the right-hand white line was closed up, but the left one remained. Wright also found the inking to look uneven across the darks and light suggesting the blame might lie more with the original engraver, Worcester & Pierce, than with Gleason’s printer. Notably, the next issue in the new, improved edition omitted the earlier apology.

Another possible reason for Gleason’s apology was noticed by a brass instrument expert who shared the print on his website. According to the original article, the Boston Brass Band had constructed new instruments with the bells “all opening back, and pointing over the shoulders of the performers, giving the company the great advantage of hearing every note of each instrument.” In examining the image, the expert found the depictions of some of the instruments peculiar:

Closely studying this image, the artist’s rendition is imperfect in three of the instruments immediately to the right of center, that have loops in the bell section like trombones, but no hand slide section nor valves. Of course, it’s possible that there were “natural trumpets” or signal instruments with bells over the shoulder like this used in the Boston Brass Band at this time, but it seems more likely that the artist was relying on a slightly faulty memory.

Even with obvious technical flaws and possibly inaccurate instruments, one still does wonder if the engraving did indeed sink to “miserable” status. Scrolling through digitized copies of Gleason’s, one finds many examples of wood engravings with visible lines (though they generally do not distort the image). Maybe, the harsh judgment reflects the lofty goals of a young magazine—one so focused on quality and success that it was willing even to press the restart button on itself fifteen issues in.

 

The recent news that Freeman’s Auctions sold an engraved copy of the Declaration of Independence for $4.42 million reminds us that prints go beyond just pretty pictures.

Here at AHPCS, we focus on historic prints produced from a matrix, using intaglio, relief, or planographic techniques. A matrix is defined as a “physical surface that can be manipulated to hold ink.” The way the physical surface is manipulated to hold ink defines the printing processes. Common examples of intaglio, relief, and planographic prints are engravings, woodcuts, and lithographs, respectively. These techniques can be used to create much more than just pictorial content, including—as with the Declaration of Independence—texts.

The recently sold Declaration of Independence is a copperplate engraving by William J. Stone (1798-1865) printed on parchment in 1823. The engraving was commissioned in 1820 by John Quincy Adams, then the United States Secretary of State. Stone was an engraver in Washington, D.C., and his imprint also appears on maps, charts, and book illustrations. Stone etched an image of the White House (Fig. 1) around the same time he was working on his Declaration of Independence.

A Very Brief History of the Declaration of Independence 

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted to approve the Declaration of Independence, and Philadelphia printer John Dunlap was charged with producing the first printed version of the Declaration. This broadside, carrying only the names of Continental Congress President John Hancock and Secretary Charles Thomson, was distributed to every colony and American military leaders. On July 19th, Congress ordered an official handwritten version (known as an “engrossed” copy) of the Declaration to be made and signed by the Congressional delegates. In total, there would be 56 signers.

This handwritten, signed copy became the iconic “national treasure” that has been displayed at the National Archives in Washington since 1952 (Fig. 2). However in the decades after 1776, it was rolled up and moved multiple times—notably packed in a bag and evacuated to rural Virginia during the British invasion of Washington in 1814.

The end of the War of 1812 spurred a wave of patriotism in the United States and created new interest in the country’s origins, its founders, and founding documents. Printmakers recognized a market for patriotic prints, and in the late 1810s, two men competed to be the first to bring their own engravings of the Declaration of Independence to market. In 1818, calligraphy teacher Benjamin Owen Tyler published his copy, engraved by Peter Maverick (Fig. 3), and a year later, John Binns published his own version, complete with an ornate border containing state seals and vignette portraits of John Hancock, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson (Fig. 4).

Tyler and Binns strove to provide true “facsimile” (or exact) copies of the original delegate signatures. Authenticity was a key selling point, and both went as far as to include certifications from the United States Secretary of State on the actual prints.

Secretary Adams certified Binns’ copy, writing: “I have compared all the signatures with those of the original and found them EXACT IMITATIONS.” A year earlier, Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush had attested to Tyler’s print, “I have, myself, examined the signatures to each. Those executed by Mr. Tyler are curiously exact imitations; so much so that it would be difficult if not impossible for the closest scrutiny to distinguish them, were it not for the hand of time, from the originals.”

Secretary Rush’s reference to the “hand of time” introduced a growing problem for the original Declaration—the document was deteriorating. The process of creating copies proved part of the problem. In February 1819, Adams had given Binn’s permission to handle the original to “take fac similes [sic] of the signatures.” Adams later noted, “The original itself has suffered by the handling of the Engraver to take these fac-similes.”

Aware of the vulnerability of the original, Adams proposed creating an exact copy of the entire Declaration (not just the signatures), writing that it would “be kept separate from the original, and as an accurate likeness of it, in case of any accident happening to it.” Adams noted in his diary that Tyler had a “talent of imitating very exactly the handwriting of others,” and, in April 1819, he asked him to take on the task. Tyler requested $150 for the project, which was apparently too costly. Adams reported, “I therefore gave up the project.”

According to Adams’ diary, he initially met with William Stone in July 1820 about engraving a passport for the State Department. Sometime in subsequent months, Adams commissioned him to make a copperplate engraving of the engrossed Declaration of Independence. On June 5, 1823, the Washington National Intelligencer reported that “after a labor of three years,” Stone had completed his work, and the Department of State had purchased the plate. The article noted, “We are very glad to hear this, for the original of that paper, which ought to be immortal and imperishable, by being so much handled by copyists and curious visitors, might receive serious injury.”

Along with purchasing the actual copperplate (Fig. 5), the State Department also commissioned 200 copies on vellum from Stone. In 1824, Congress passed a resolution delineating the distribution of those 200 copies including to various federal and state officials, as well as two copies each to the three still-living original signers: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Charles Carroll. It is one of Carroll’s copies that sold for $4.42 million in the July auction.

The Mystery

A mystery that remains with Stone’s engraving is how exactly did he do it? How did he create such a near copy? And, did his process do further damage to the original?

One theory emerged that Stone might have made a copy using a wet or chemical transfer process that lifted up ink from the original. In 1880, Congress commissioned a National Academy of Sciences committee to investigate the condition of the engrossed original. While not specifically mentioning Stone, their report noted that “press copies have been taken from the original so that a part of the ink has been removed from the parchment.” Since the late 19th century, articles have often referenced the debate over whether a press copy was made for the 1823 facsimile, though there is no proof that Stone used such a technique.

Manuscripts expert Seth Kaller discounts the idea that Stone used a wet or chemical transfer process. Given that John Quincy Adams was already concerned about the state of the original in 1819, Kaller finds it unlikely that either Adams or Stone would have allowed continuing damage: “The whole idea that Stone would do anything that would risk deteriorating the original is not supported.”

Kaller believes it is quite possible Stone traced the original, though there isn’t any evidence, or Stone could have done the engraving freehand, with the original at his side. Kaller’s research, as well as a detailed comparison by the “Declaration Resources Project” at Harvard University, have identified small variations between the two documents. Harvard’s project pinpointed small punctuation omissions in the 1823 version, and Kaller has noted subtle differences in the flourishes of the capital “T” in “The Unanimous Declaration” at the beginning of the document (Fig. 6). It turns out that Stone’s Declaration isn’t a true “exact” copy.

In their quest to stabilize and preserve the now nearly invisible text, conservators at the National Archives have done extensive research into the history of the Declaration. In a 2016 article, NARA chief conservators Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Catherine Nicholson reviewed the physical changes to the then 240-year-old document, acknowledging, “There is little written evidence of what may have happened—or when—to alter the document.” Based on comparisons with photographs of the Declaration from 1903, notable deterioration occurred even in the 20th century.

The specific methods by which Tyler and Binns captured facsimiles of the Declaration’s signatures, and Stone the full document, remain unclear. All three produced facsimiles of the signatures, and, notably, that portion of the document is most faded.  In October 1870, The Historical Magazine was reporting that the original was “said to be rapidly fading out, so that, in a few years, only the naked parchment will remain. Already, nearly all the signatures attached to the Declaration of Independence are entirely effaced.” Even without a wet transfer process, tracing likely would have brought the engravers into direct physical contact with the document. (Watch printmaker Andrew Stein Rafferty demonstrate the reproductive engraving process from tracing to printing.)

It would be ironic if Adams and Stone’s efforts to help safeguard the iconic document had indeed hastened its deterioration. But it remains a monumental achievement. As NARA archivist Leonard Rapport wrote in a 1979 article on fakes and facsimiles, “From the original Stone copperplate engraving, directly or indirectly, stem all the millions–literally, millions–of facsimiles of the engrossed Declaration of Independence.”

Exploring the Declaration Yourself

Below we offer you the opportunity to examine and compare digitized images of the original engrossed Declaration of Independence with the facsimiles and zoom in on the mysteries that remain between the original and the prints. Note that due to different angles of the original photography, the texts may not fully line up in the layered view.

 

Image Credits

Engrossed Declaration of Independence [Manuscript on parchment, sheet 75 x 62 cm, 1776] Courtesy of the National Archives.

Benjamin Owen Tyler (publisher), Peter Maverick (engraver), In Congress, July 4th, 1776, the unanimous Declaration of the United States of America [Engraving, sheet 80 x 65 cm, 1818]. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

John Binns, Declaration of Independence [Engraving and etching, sheet 91 x 68 cm, 1819]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

William J. Stone, In Congress, July 4, 1776, the unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America [Engraving, sheet 84 x 66 cm, 1823]. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

Levin C. Handy (photographer), Declaration of Independence as it appeared in 1903 while at the U.S. State Department [Photograph, April 23, 1903]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

 

Learn more about the Declaration of Independence and early engravings

Declaration Resources Project, Harvard University.

John Bidwell, “American History in Image and Text” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1989.

Seth Kaller, America’s National Treasure: The Declaration of Independence & William J. Stone’s Official Facsimile.

Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Catherine Nicholson, “The Declaration of Independence and the Hand of Time” in Prologue Magazine (Fall 2016, Vol. 48, No. 3).

 

 

Around 1882, a miner visited little Annie Ellis (1875-1938) and her very poor family in Bonanza, Colorado. The miner had just struck it rich, and he gave Annie’s mother a gift of twenty-five dollars. In her memoir, Life of an Ordinary Woman (1929), Annie remembered:

There must have been many things Mama longed for (we never had any carpets or curtains), but after talking it over with [her husband] Henry, she decided to get something we could all enjoy! Their choice fell on a picture. The next question was, what picture? I am quite sure Henry made the final decision, ‘The Battle of Waterloo!’ The twenty-five is turned over and the picture sent for. After what seems a long time it comes taking three men to unload it. We children all gather around; the crate is removed, and it stands forth in all its glory. I was disappointed, and think Mama was, too, but neither of us ever admitted it. It is about five feet long and two and a half wide, in a heavy gold frame.

Given the price and size, the Ellis family probably purchased a painting—not a print. But there in the closing decades of the 1800s, the Ellises took part in an American consumer tradition that had been molded by a generation of moral and cultural leaders. Art was seen as a vital furnishing in a wholesome, pleasant American home.

From its earliest days, the influential American Art-Union (1838-1853) identified one of its core goals as cultivating “good taste in the Fine Arts” in the United States. In its 1844 annual report, the AAU promoted the benefits of a landscape painting for city dwellers: “Those who cannot afford a seat in the country to refresh their wearied spirits, may at least have a country seat in their parlors.” The AAU sent prints directly to subscribers to help fulfill its mission. Each year, subscribers received an engraving that reproduced a painting by an American artist “as may appear worthy of the distinction.”

Being able to hang and enjoy art emerged in the 19th century as an important component of American home decoration. The ability to reproduce artwork on a mass-level, first through engravings and then with less inexpensive lithographs and chromolithographs, allowed authors of homemaking manuals to recommend prints as an integral home furnishing.

The American Woman’s Home: or, Principles of Domestic Science (1869) by Catharine Beecher and her sister the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe emphasized that a well-decorated house went beyond aesthetics: “it contributes much to the education of the entire household in refinement, intellectual development, and moral sensibility.”

The Beecher sisters calculated that if a household had $80 to decorate a parlor, nearly a quarter of the budget should be reserved for pictures. Chromolithographs were recommended: “The educating influence of these works of art can hardly be over-estimated. Surrounded by such suggestions of the beautiful, and such reminders of history and art, children are constantly trained to correctness of taste and refinement of thought.”

What is particularly fun for print collectors is that the Beechers went beyond broad dictates and actually suggested four chromolithographs:

 

These specific recommendations allow us to see just what sort of prints the Beecher sisters had in mind.

Louis Kurz after Juliana Oakley, Making the Scrap Book [Chromolithograph, 1868]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

L. Prang & Co. after Eastman Johnson, The Barefoot Boy [Chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1868]. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

L. Prang & Co. after H. R. Newman. Fringed Gentian [Chromolithograph, ca. 1861-1868]. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

L. Prang & Co. after Albert Bierstadt. Sunset [Chromolithograph, 1868]. Courtesy of the Huntington Library.

Why these four prints? Stowe provided a broad rationale for such choices in her contemporaneous article “What Pictures Shall I Hang on My Walls?” in The Atlantic Almanac for 1869. 

Stowe began by acknowledging that most people could remember a time when “with some rare exceptions, no houses had pictures.” Now, pictures were affordable even to those of “the humblest means.” The question was no longer whether to purchase but what to purchase. It was an important decision, after all, because these images would “look you in the face at all hours of day or night.”

She provided some basic rules:

• Don’t be pressured into buying art you don’t like or “high art” (i.e. works that “professed artists and instructed people” considered important): “[Pictures for the home] should express sincere ideas and tastes of the household, and not the tyrannical dicta of some art-critic or neighbor.”
• Let personal sentiment and taste be your guides: “A respectable engraving that truly is felt by a family as an artistic pleasure is a better thing for them than a much higher one that they do not understand or care for.”
• Be careful of traumatizing your family: “All pictures of shocking, painful, and brutal subjects are unfit for family pictures.”
• Don’t overlook honest, good depictions of nature: “A bunch of apple-blossoms, a blue gentian, so represented as to excel average painting, forms a charming domestic ornament, unpretending, unambitious, and always beautiful.”

Just as we could enjoy the specific prints recommended in The American Woman’s Home, Stowe’s article also provided examples of the “high art” images she would not recommend for the family parlor.

The Beggar Belisarius and his Son

“Who wishes at all hours to be confronted by the image of a blind father with a son bitten by a serpent in his arms, however well represented?” Stowe cautioned that if displayed in a bedroom, the print might give nightmares—better to keep it safely buried in a portfolio.

Auguste Desnoyers, Belisarius [Engraving with etching, 1806]. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Michelangelo’s Sculpture of Moses

“Neither should we recommend a photograph of Michael Angelo’s Moses,” Stowe wrote. “With two well-developed horns on his forehead and a supernatural beard, as being, because a standard work of art, a proper thing to frame for household daily contemplation.”

Saint Peter’s Basilica, Moses for Tomb of Julius II [Photograph of sculpture, 19th century]. Courtesy of the Washington University (Saint Louis, Mo.) Art & Architecture Library.

Frans Snyder’s The Boar Hunt

“A splendid copy of Snyder’s boar-hunt, for example, with its tangle of bleeding dogs and its hellish fury of animal struggle is a very barbarous ornament of a dining-room.”

Johnson (engraver), after Frans Snyder, The Wild Boar Hunt [Engraving published by John Tinney, 1760]. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Ary Scheffer’s Francesca di Rimini

“As we should not think it amusing to have Satan’s Speech to the Sun recited at our breakfast-table, notwithstanding it is the highest style of poetry, so neither should we think Sheffer’s [sic] picture of Francisca di Rimini [sic] a proper thing to be forever talking to us from the walls of our parlors or bedrooms.”

Luigi Calamatta (engraver) after Ary Scheffer, Francesca da Rimini [Engraving, state before letters, undated]. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum.

Stowe’s argument wasn’t against these pieces of art in general; she just didn’t think they were well suited to “family life.”

Stowe closed her article urging families to invest in a good picture by a living artist: “We would recommend to every family to aim to have at least one good picture somewhere by some living artist.” Not only did it help support the artist, but it set a “standard” for other pictures. It may not be a coincidence that the chromolithographs selected in The American Woman’s Home reproduced paintings created by four living American artists: Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), Henry Roderick Newman (1843-1917), and Juliana Oakley (1835-1909).

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Top image credit: Untitled (Victorian Collage), 1880-1890. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Art Museum.

On January 17, 1920, Prohibition went into effect in the United States. The 18th Amendment was ratified in 1919, but it gave the country a whole year to prepare for the actual outlawing of the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.”

The story doesn’t begin in 1919 or 1920, though. It took a lot of time—more than a century of work—to persuade the entire nation to give up its liquor. Generations of reformers worked tirelessly to convince Americans that alcohol was a scourge that destroyed lives and families.

In 1784, Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, published the first American medical treatise against drinking: An Enquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Human Body and Mind. In subsequent decades, regional temperance associations were formed, and the first national group, the American Temperance Society was established in 1826.

Reformers made steady progress throughout the 19th century. In 1845, Maine became the first state to prohibit alcohol, and by 1913, more than 50% of the United States population lived in a state or region with some type of liquor prohibition. As the temperance movement grew, American prints reflected the changing culture.

In 1848, Nathaniel Currier published Washington Taking Leave of the Officers of his Army. This print depicted Washington’s final words to his officers following the end of the American Revolution in 1783. According to Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge who attended the meeting, the officers met in a tavern, and “the General filled his glass with wine” before turning to address his officers.

N. Currier, Washington Taking Leave of the Officers of his Army, at Francis’s Tavern, Broad Street, New York, Decr. 4th. 1783 [Lithograph, 1848]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

When Currier & Ives revised to the print in 1876, the image was nearly identical—except for two notable differences: Washington was no longer holding a wine glass, and his hat had replaced the decanter and glasses at the center of the picture.

Currier & Ives, Washington’s Farewell to the Officers of his Army. At the old Tavern, corner Broad and Pearl Sts. New York, Dec. 4th 1783 [Lithograph, 1876]. Courtesy of the Museum of City of New York (58.84.6).

The changes in Washington’s Farewell reflected the growing influence of the temperance movement on American life. But, prints could be more than just a mirror of the times; they could also be used as agents of the movement.

Strong words, both spoken and written, were the central vehicle for denouncing America’s culture of drinking. In a representative example, Virginia doctor Richard Carter took the time in his 1825 memoir to remind his readers that:

It is proven to a demonstration, that the immoderate use of ardent spirits, is more baneful to our commonwealth than devastation and war. For drunkeness is the annoyance of modesty, the trouble of civility, the spoiler of wealth, the destruction of reason. … A drunkard is a wife’s woe, his children’s sorrow, and resembles more the brute than the man.

Images also could communicate these temperance messages. A year after Dr. Carter published his memoir, New Haven engraver J. W. Barber published a pictorial denunciation of intemperance, The Drunkard’s Progress, or the Direct Road to Poverty, Wretchedness & Ruin.

J. W. Barber, The Drunkard’s Progress, or the Direct Road to Poverty, Wretchedness & Ruin [Engraving, 1826]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Barber’s engraving is one of the earliest American examples of a trope that would be regularly used by temperance reformers throughout the 19th century: drinking as the road to ruin. Many prints told cautionary tales that delineated a clear path from a man’s innocent first drinks to ruin (and even death).

Edward Gallaudet, The Progress of Intemperance [Engraving, 1831]. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.

E.B. & E.C. Kellogg, The Drunkard’s Progress [Lithograph, 1846]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

With prints, artists could include a literal “road,” steps, or even railroad tracks down which the drunkard descended. The storyline stayed remarkably consistent all the way from Barber’s 1826 engraving to lithographs published in the 1890s.

New York Lithographing and Engraving Co., Inebriate’s Express [Lithograph, 1870]. Courtesy of the Huntington Library.

Currier & Ives, The Progress of Intemperance [Lithograph, 1881]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Haasis & Lubrecht (publishers), The Drunkard’s Progress [Lithograph, 1884]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

A.B. Graham Co. (lithographer), Milton W. Garnes & Co. (publisher), The Railroad that Leads From Earth to Hell [Lithograph, 1894 or 1895]. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

This general theme of progression allowed the prints to communicate a didactic message through a compelling narrative that was accessible to viewers of any age. Artists could also embed interesting visual details into the tale of woe to keep the viewer entertained. As the temperance movement grew, reformers began focusing their work towards children—hoping to teach them about the ills of drinking before they were old enough to take a sip. These prints were visually captivating, making them perfect for younger audiences.

One of the most well-known prints of this genre was Black Valley Railroad, which first appeared in 1863. Surrounding the detailed scene of a demonic railroad train fueled by alcohol are names of forty rail stops including Sippington, Brothelton, Idiot Flatts, and finally Smashup Rock and Destruction.

S. W. Hanks, Black Valley Railroad [Lithograph, 1863]. Courtesy of the Huntington Library.

 

The print was copyrighted by New England minister Steadman W. Hanks and then widely reused by temperance groups including the National Temperance Society. It was advertised in Christian and temperance periodicals.

If we wonder where Americans would have seen these prints in daily life, the advertisements give us some idea. One 1869 ad in The Christian World emphasized, “It should be hung in every Depot, School-Room and Workshop.”

For all of the speeches, sermons, articles, canvassing, songs, parades, and prints that helped lead to national prohibition, the 18th Amendment would prove to be a failure. It became the only United States constitutional amendment to be repealed (by the 21st Amendment in 1933). Not surprisingly, the movement to repeal prohibition would have its own images.

Woman’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, Their Security Demands You Vote Repeal [Poster, 1932]. Courtesy of the Princeton University Posters Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

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Top image credit: National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, National Constitutional Prohibition by Your Vote Help Conserve Your Country’s Resources [Poster, undated]. Courtesy of the Princeton University Posters Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.