Between 1865 and 1920, Congress passed laws to regulate obscenity,
sexuality, divorce, gambling, and prizefighting. It forced Mormons
to abandon polygamy, attacked interstate prostitution, made
narcotics contraband, and stopped the manufacture and sale of
alcohol. Gaines Foster explores the force behind this unprecedented
federal regulation of personal morality--a combined Christian
lobby.
Foster analyzes the fears of appetite and avarice that led
organizations such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and
the National Reform Association to call for moral legislation and
examines the efforts and interconnections of the men and women who
lobbied for it. His account underscores the crucial role white
southerners played in the rise of moral reform after 1890. With
emancipation, white southerners no longer needed to protect slavery
from federal intervention, and they seized on moral legislation as
a tool for controlling African Americans.
Enriching our understanding of the aftermath of the Civil War and
the expansion of national power,
Moral Reconstruction also
offers valuable insight into the link between historical and
contemporary efforts to legislate morality.