Existing comment:
1852 New York Temperance Convention
As with abolition, suffragists learned from the temperance campaign how to raise money, hold public meetings, conduct petition drives, and deal with hostile audiences. At a temperance convention in Rochester, New York, in April 1852, Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed 400 to 500 people. She called for the total rejection of alcohol -- "Let us touch not, taste not, handle not, the unclean thing" -- and linked divorce reform to the need to protect wives and children from abusive "confirmed drunkards." |