author
Carry Amelia Nation
1846–1911
Best remembered for marching into saloons with a hatchet, this fiery temperance activist turned direct action into national spectacle. Her campaigns made her one of the most recognizable — and controversial — reformers of the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
by Carry Amelia Nation
About the author
Born in Kentucky in 1846, Carry Amelia Nation became one of the most famous figures in the American temperance movement. She is widely associated with Kansas, where her dramatic attacks on saloons brought her national attention and helped make her a symbol of the push against alcohol before Prohibition.
Nation had deeply personal reasons for her crusade: her first husband struggled with alcoholism, and that experience shaped the fierce moral urgency that defined her public life. Beginning in 1900, she gained notoriety for entering bars and smashing bottles, mirrors, and fixtures — first with rocks and later with the hatchet that became her trademark.
She was admired by some as a fearless reformer and criticized by others for her destructive tactics, but she was impossible to ignore. Until her death in 1911 in Leavenworth, Kansas, she lectured, wrote, and traveled widely, turning herself into a national celebrity while pressing her case that alcohol harmed families and communities.