Wisconsin and the Repeal of Prohibition

This past December 5 marked the 80th anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition, America’s experiment in the creation of an alcohol-free society. Prohibition officially ended in 1933 with the ratification of the 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution. The new Amendment repealed the earlier 18th Amendment, which had made the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. The repeal of Prohibition is an event that has been celebrated daily in Wisconsin for the past eight decades. Somewhat remarkably, Wisconsin, long associated with the production of alcoholic spirits, did actually vote for Prohibition. On January 17, 1919, in the wake of intense anti-German sentiment throughout the United States and in the aftermath of World War I, in which the U.S. government had used its war powers to sharply curtail the production of alcoholic beverages, the Wisconsin legislature approved the 18th Amendment by a majority vote. However, in “defense” of the legislature, Wisconsin’s approval did not come until after the Prohibition Amendment had already been ratified by the requisite number of states to bring it into law. At the time of the Wisconsin vote, 39 other states had already ratified the proposed Amendment, three more than necessary. North Carolina, Utah, Nebraska, Missouri, and Wyoming had all ratified the Amendment the previous day (January 16), bringing the number of ratifying states to 38. (The 39th state, Minnesota, ratified the Amendment earlier the same day that Wisconsin voted for it.) That the Amendment was already set to take effect was known in Wisconsin at the time of the vote. But having approved of Prohibition in 1919, the enthusiasm of Wisconsin residents for the “Noble Experiment” quickly waned, even though 45% of the state had actually enacted local option prohibition laws prior to the passage of the 18th Amendment. Even the state’s highest ranking officials began to express their reservations. Republican Governor John James Blaine (of Wingfield, Wisconsin) began to publically question the wisdom of Prohibition as early as 1923, and by the middle of the decade state (as opposed to federal) enforcement of the anti-alcohol laws had come to a halt. In 1926, advocates of repeal managed to get a measure on that year’s state ballot asking voters if they thought the 18th Amendment should be repealed or drastically modified, and just under 72% of participants voted “yes.” The following year the legislature adopted a statute legalizing beer, which was vetoed by new governor Fred Zimmerman (R. Milwaukee), but only on the grounds that it was clearly unconstitutional. In 1928, Wisconsin went so far as to repeal all of its state laws enforcing Prohibition, and by 1932, the party platforms of both Republicans and Democrats openly called for repeal of the 18th Amendment. Wisconsin eventually took the lead of the repeal movement when, on December 6, 1932, former Governor Blaine, now a United States Senator, introduced the original draft of the 21st Amendment into Congress. (Blaine himself was a lame duck senator at the time, having been defeated in…

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Why Is the Word “Redskin” so Offensive?

The debate over the appropriateness of Native American team names rages on. Whatever the propriety of generic Native American team names like Indians, Chiefs, Braves, or Warriors, or tribal names like Utes, Chippewas, or Seminoles, there seems to be a widespread belief that the term “Redskins” is especially offensive and insulting to Native Americans. How this perception came about is somewhat puzzling, as it appears to be of relatively recent origin. There is little evidence that the perception of “redskin” as an inherently offensive term for Native American existed before the late 1970’s or early 1980’s. Traditionally, the word “redskin” was viewed as a synonym for Indian or Native American and did not carry the sort of negative connotations that have long attached to ethnic slurs like “chink,” “wetback,” “kike,” or “nigger.” Sportswriters covering teams with Indians nicknames during the first three quarters of the twentieth century routinely substituted “Redskins” for “Indians” or “Braves” in search of variety, and they apparently did so without being aware that this alternative word choice was more offensive than the original. Although the name “Redskins” was earlier used by the Muskogee, Oklahoma, minor league baseball team and the Miami University of Ohio football team, the Redskins name is today primarily associated with the Washington team in the National Football League. The team we now know as the Washington Redskins began its existence in 1932 as the Boston Braves. The name was changed to “Redskins” the following year. The new name was chosen in conjunction with the team’s relocation from Braves Park (named after Boston’s National League baseball team) to Fenway Park. The name change was also consistent with team owner George Preston Marshall’s plan to market the team as one playing in the tradition of “Indian football.” (In the early 20th century, Native Americans were widely believed to be especially talented when it came to football, as borne out by the success of Indian college teams like Carlisle and Haskell and the Oorang Indians, an all-Indian NFL team from 1922 and 1923 which, like Carlisle a decade earlier, featured the great Indian athlete Jim Thorpe on its roster.) Marshall’s plan for Indian football included hiring an “Indian” coach and several Native American Players, as well as adopting an Indian head logo and adorning all the players with war paint during games. This goal, of course, could have been accomplished just as easily had the team retained the name “Braves.” Moreover, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Marshall chose the name “Redskins” because he thought it was pejorative. (It is not at all clear why anyone would name a team using a non-ironic ethnic slur, since to do so would be to impute supposedly unfavorable characteristics to one’s own players.) Most likely, the name Redskins was chosen because it fit with Marshall’s plan to revive Indian football and because of the name’s similarity to Red Sox, in whose park the team was now playing. (The name “Indians” was apparently reserved for the NFL’s…

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Remembering a Classic Work of Constitutional History

November 2013 marks the centennial of Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, arguably the most important book written on the United States Constitution other than the Federalist Papers. Few works of historical scholarship have ever so dramatically transformed the scholarly (if not the public) debate over the meaning of a major American event. At the time of the publication of An Economic Interpretation, the Indiana-born Beard was a 39-year-old Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, the school from which he had received his Ph.D. in 1904. As his title suggested, his new book argued that the framers of the United States Constitution of 1787 had been motivated, not exclusively by nationalistic or democratic concerns, but by the desire to protect the property rights of wealthy Americans, especially those (including themselves) who had invested in federal bonds and had speculated in western lands. Prior to Beard’s work, most accounts of the drafting of the 1789 Constitution were highly celebratory, and the framers were almost universally lauded for their ability to put the public interest ahead of their personal priorities. Democratic political theory, rather than self-interest, was the animating force behind the document. Beard’s book turned this argument on its head. As a result of his research, he concluded that the Constitution had been drafted by men who at best identified the national interest with their own economic interests. As he put it in the concluding chapter, “The members of the Philadelphia Convention which drafted the Constitution were, with few exceptions, immediately, directly, and personally interested in, and derived economic advantages from, the establishment of the new system. The Constitution was essentially an economic document based on the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities." (p. 324) The implications of this conclusion were apparent. The Constitution was a conservative, property-oriented document that was designed, not to expand democratic power, but to contain it. It was the democratic “excesses” of the period 1776-1787 that required a new constitution, not the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation. As Beard wrote in the book’s concluding paragraph, “The Constitution was not created by ‘the whole people,’ as the jurists have said; neither was it created by ‘the states,’ as southern nullifiers long contended; but it was the work of a consolidated group whose interests knew no state boundaries and were truly national in their scope.” Most controversial of all was his claim, allegedly justified by the records of the United States Department of the Treasury, that a significant majority of the framers had invested in United States bonds during the Confederation period and thus had a personal reason to want to establish a strong federal government intent on establishing the security of such bonds. While many wealthy Americans opposed the ratification of the new constitution, their wealth, according to Beard, was concentrated in real, rather than personal, property and they were not heavily invested in…

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