This near end of his political career, however, only meant new opportunities in Bryan’s reforming and religious career. He soon threw himself into the Prohibition cause and played no small role in securing passage of the Eighteenth Amendment outlawing alcoholic beverages across the country after January, 1920. This was probably the last successful evangelical crusade for a moral America. Later, Americans tended to view Prohibition as the austere weapon of a pack of blue-nosed “Puritans” who found life a joyless thing and were determined that no one else should be allowed to distill a drop of
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