Picture of the Day: November 26

Carry Nation

Carry Nation, seen here brandishing her trademark hatchet and Bible, was born Carry Amelia Moore in Kentucky on November 25, 1846. After her first husband died a drunkard, she married David Nation and they moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas. There, she was elected president of the local chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Even though Kansas was technically a dry state, Medicine Lodge had seven saloons. When Carry Nation's appeals to close the saloons were ignored, she took matters into her own hands–she drove a buggy, full of bricks and stones she had wrapped in newspapers, up to a saloon, smashed its mirrors, glasses, bottles and windows, and said to the proprietor as she left, 'I have finished. God be with you.' Nation repeated her barroom attacks across the state and the country. One of her last actions was at Washington's Union Depot, where she used three hatchets that she called Faith, Hope and Charity. Nation, who was arrested about 30 times for her saloon rampages, died in 1911.

Photo: Library of Congress

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