The Perils of "Pure Democracy": Minority Rights, Liquor Politics, and Popular Sovereignty in Antebellum America

One would suppose that even in a country so young as this is - more Republican, or more Democratic as some would call it, in its character than any other - that some questions would, by this time, be settled, and especially those which give to the people the power of establishing their own publicly expressed regulations.Pittsburgh (PA) Gazette (1847)1He who fears or objects to trust the people in any matters pertaining to general or national questions should have written on his forehead anti-American.Select Committee of the Maryland General Assembly (1847)"A law which we have shown to be monstrous and abhorrent in principle, and both demoralizing and dangerous in tendency, should be swept from our living records and consigned to an oblivion from which it should be hoped the curious historian of after ages would never rescue it." So concluded Abel E. Chandler, Samuel J. Davis, and Joseph Davis, three New York assemblymen who in the spring of 1847 considered petitions demanding the repeal of a law, in operation scarcely a year, that empowered local voters to decide directly an issue of public policy that was previously the responsibility of government officials. These legislators, one Whig and two Democrats, agreed that the law facilitated a form of "despotism" in the Empire State. It established a "new and antiAmerican kind of democracy" that authorized the unchecked "will of the majority" to hold "supreme control over the minority," leaving their "social rights" at the mercy of the popular vote. Only if the law were repealed would "the people be restored to the freedom they have lost." Freedom and true American democracy required that power be taken away from the people.3The law these legislators opposed concerned liquor licenses. In the mid- 1840s state and territorial legislatures in the Mid- Atlantic, Midwest, and New England passed new laws that created a referendum-like mechanism for determining local license policy. Previous laws had given local administrative bodies discretionary authority to determine whether or not to issue licenses, but the new local option laws (as they would eventually be known) called voters to the ballot box for a special license election and presented them with the stark choice of "License" or "NoLicense." A "License" victory authorized government officials to issue licenses and approved the sale of liquor by license holders. A "NoLicense" victory prohibited licenses from being issued and rendered the sale of liquor illegal. There was no space for compromise. Simple majorities ruled.4For temperance reformers and other advocates, local option laws were beacons of freedom and emblems of democracy. To them, licensing was an immoral governmental practice that sanctioned drinking and the "drunkard-making business" of liquor dealing. It obstructed their mission to emancipate the nation from alcohol and should be abolished. Finding most state legislators reluctant to end licensing explicitly, reformers lobbied for laws that allowed the people to decide the license question. Drawing inspiration from the Jacksonian ethos of majoritarian democracy and popular political empowerment, advocates maintained that local option was "purely democratic in its character and tendency." It guaranteed that public policy was rooted in "public sentiment," authorized "the will of the majority" to control the sale of intoxicating liquors, and recognized that "the people . . . are the legitimate source of power - the sovereigns of the land." Local option was American popular sovereignty incarnate.5Yet as legislators implemented local option and voters returned NoLicense decisions, many antebellum Americans were prompted to rethink exactly what this commitment to popular sovereignty entailed. As a consortium of liquor dealers and their allies joined together to challenge local option in multiple states and locales, a debate ensued about the wisdom of advancing temperance with legal coercion, but some also asked if the ballot-box mechanism was a legitimate mode of democratic decision making. …