Temperance Songs in American School Songbooks,1865–1899

Abstract

The period from 1865 to 1900 proved to be one of tremendous growth for music education in the United States, as well as a time of renewed activity for the temperance movement. Numerous single-volume school songbooks were published, and several sources note the inclusion of temperance songs in these songbooks. By conveying the temperance message to school children, reformers both indoctrinated those children to temperance ideology and used them as intermediaries to convey the message of temperance to their parents and other adults. This study examines temperance songs included in sixty-seven school songbooks from this period, noting common themes and tactics employed by temperance lyricists as well as variations in dominant themes across this thirty-five-year span.