This is an updated version of a column that originally ran in Feb. 2017.
Vermont had a drinking problem. Like the rest of the young nation, Vermont during the early 1800s was awash in alcohol. Seemingly any gathering was an excuse to drink — weddings, funerals, house-raisings, even militia training days. One Vermonter commented that cavalry soldiers understood only three commands: “Mount! Drink! Fall off!”
The impact of alcohol abuse on Vermont, however, was no laughing matter. Drinking had serious social ramifications. Chief among them was that drunks often left their families destitute. Things were so bad that a state legislative committee in 1817 found that in some towns, people spent more on liquor than on schools and all other public expenses combined.
Social reformers created a temperance movement to combat the evils of drink. The movement tried moral suasion to get drinkers to quit. When that failed to change society, reformers looked to change the laws.
The temperance crusade, one of the strongest social movements of its day, had friends in the Legislature. In 1844, lawmakers banned the selling of alcohol in all Vermont communities, but they intentionally left a massive loophole. Honoring the state’s tradition of local control, the Legislature created a “local option” system. Communities could opt out of the statewide ban if voters decided to approve the granting of local liquor licenses.
Two years later, the Legislature addressed the issue again, this time passing a law requiring a license for anyone who wanted to sell distilled liquor, wine or beer. No license was required to sell “small beer,” beer with a very low alcohol content. Licenses for selling harder stuff were to be awarded by county judges. Licensing fees were set steep so that not just anyone would get one.
State lawmakers, however, devised an unusual mechanism by which it would actually be the public that decided whether the licensing system went into effect. The legislation called for a statewide referendum on the question to be held on Town Meeting Day in March 1847. If a majority of Vermonters approved the licensing system, it would be enacted. If most Vermonters opposed the licensing law, then judges would only be allowed to issue licenses for “medicinal, chemical or mechanical purposes.” The referendum was purely advisory — Vermont doesn’t have a binding referendum system — but legislators made it clear they would abide by the majority’s will.
Teetotaling Vermonters won the day handily, outvoting pro-license Vermonters 21,798 to 13,707. Only in Essex County were pro-license voters in the majority.
Temperance supporters, however, didn’t get to celebrate for long — not that they were the type to get carried away anyhow — because the law called for this sort of referendum to be an annual Town Meeting Day occurrence.
Percival Clement’s opposition to a ban on alcohol sales and consumption won him the governorship in 1902. Photo via the Vermont Historical Society
The public turned out to be ambivalent about the issue. At town meetings in 1848, the pro-license faction prevailed, though by the slenderest of margins — 14 votes statewide. But the victory was short lived. The following year, Vermonters again overwhelmingly voted against issuing licenses.
Many lawmakers grew tired of this vacillating. In 1850, they scrapped the annual referenda on liquor and voted to make the entire state “dry,” but left in exceptions for things like small beer and cider, and judge-issued licenses for alcohol use that was deemed necessary for “medicinal, chemical and mechanical purposes.”
Two years later, the Legislature decided to make the state drier still, banning the sale or production of all alcohol, though leaving exemptions for medicinal purposes and communion wine. But lawmakers still seemed unsure what the public wanted, so they called for another nonbinding statewide referendum. They said that after this vote, however, there would be no more annual reconsiderations of the question. If nothing else, Vermonters showed that they were of two minds on the issue, approving prohibition 22,315 to 21,794, a margin of only 521 votes statewide.
The state was divided geographically on the issue. The strongest support for prohibition came from the west side of Vermont, while all of the eastern counties, except Caledonia, opposed it. In general, large towns favored prohibition, while small ones resisted it. Residents of large communities, which had seen a sudden influx of immigrants in the mid-1800s — Burlington was one-third Irish in 1850 — feared that the newcomers would exacerbate the state’s drinking problem. People in smaller towns, who hadn’t experienced this influx, opposed prohibition, presumably because they didn’t want to have their rights curtailed.
In 1853, lawmakers demonstrated that they were as conflicted on the issue as other Vermonters by considering repealing the brand-new prohibition law. But they decided to leave it alone. The law would stand for half a century.
Defeat didn’t sit well with anti-prohibition politicians. They found a target for their outrage in Erastus Fairbanks, the Republican governor who had been a major force behind prohibition. In the election of 1853, Fairbanks easily outpolled his opponent, Democrat John S. Robinson, 44 to 38 percent. But since neither candidate had won a majority, the decision went to the Legislature. At the time, each town had a representative to the Legislature, so small-town representatives were able to band together and give the election to Robinson (who would be the last Democratic governor until 1963).
A half-century after Fairbanks’ defeat, Percival Clement entered the picture and things changed. It’s easy to picture Clement as Rich Uncle Pennybags, the top-hatted mascot of the Monopoly game. Clement, the scion of a moneyed Rutland marble quarrying family, owned the Rutland Railroad and the Rutland Herald, as well as hotels, a bank and a brokerage house in New York City. He wasn’t short on money, but what he wanted was more power.
A former Rutland mayor, state representative and state senator, Clement decided to challenge the establishment candidate, John McCullough, for the Republican Party nomination for governor in 1902. Clement used prohibition as a wedge issue. He said the law was another example of government trying to control people’s lives. Clement proposed adding a local-option proviso to let towns again decide whether to become “wet,” by allowing alcohol to be sold and produced within their boundaries, or to remain “dry.”
Republican leaders were incensed that Clement would challenge the establishment’s man and use the explosive issue of prohibition to do so. At their state convention — these were the days before direct primaries — Republicans gave McCullough the nomination.
Not to be silenced, Clement mounted a strong third-party bid in the general election, but lost to McCullough by roughly 3,000 votes statewide.
In a way, however, Clement prevailed. His call for local option proved so popular that lawmakers approved such a law in 1902. Again, however, they left it to Vermonters to decide whether it would take effect. The Legislature called a public referendum to decide what date the law would be enacted — 1903 or 1906. If they picked the later date, it was understood, lawmakers would use the grace period to revoke the law.
This time, nearly 70% of the state’s smallest towns backed prohibition by voting for the later date. But Vermont’s largest communities now supported local option and their side again carried the referendum. These larger communities, as well as tourist towns, had changed their position on alcohol, because they now saw prohibition as interfering with recent efforts to promote tourism in the state. They reasoned that more tourists would choose to visit “wet” Saratoga Springs, New York, rather than “dry” Vermont towns like Manchester, Woodstock and Stowe,
But the new law only lasted 18 years. Passage of the 18th Amendment, which instituted national Prohibition, took the power to decide the issue away from the states. Ironically, Vermont’s governor at the time was Percival Clement.
Nationwide Prohibition proved as unsuccessful in ending alcohol consumption as previous statewide efforts, and it died in 1933 with passage of the 21st Amendment.
But local-option remains alive in Vermont today. Communities still have the right to vote at Town Meeting whether to be dry or wet, which, if nothing else, would guarantee a good turnout.
Local option, however, is little used in Vermont. It’s been decades since a handful of towns voted to become dry, and most of the towns have since voted to remove themselves from that list. At Town Meeting this year, voters in Athens voted to make their community a wet town. That leaves only Baltimore and Maidstone in the dry category. You can still consume alcohol in either of them, just don’t try to buy or sell a drink.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Then Again: Wet and dry towns.