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.”