A Thirst For Destruction

Carrie Nation brought her beliefs and hatchet to Americas saloons.

- Mark Boardman

Carrie Amelia Moore, born in Kentucky on November 25, 1846, grew into a crusader who chopped her way to legend as Carrie Nation.

In 1867, Carrie married Dr. Charles Gloyd, a drunk who destroyed the marriage and died in 1869, making his wife violently opposed to alcohol. In 1874, she married lawyer-journalist David Nation, a widower evangelist who preached on the evils of liquor. After the family moved back to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, in 1889, Carrie organized a local chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

During the 1880s-90s, in Kansas, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma Territory, she and her colleagues marched into saloons, sang hymns and read scriptures, and harangued the clientele. When asked to leave, they did so without arguing or violence.