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What happens when a private drinking habit becomes a question of conscience, family peace, and the common good?
Select Temperance Tracts brings together the American Tract Society's moral appeals against strong drink. These short essays explore harm to the body, home, and purse. Their writers argue that alcohol weakens health, unsettles households, and takes money needed for food and rent. Plain argument meets urgent warning in their call for sobriety.
The collection also explores moderate drinking, conscience and faith, and the power of personal example. Within the Society's Protestant outlook, self-command is presented as a duty to God and neighbors. These tracts reveal how nineteenth-century temperance writers connect individual conduct with community life—and place their hope for a better society in choices made by ordinary people.
What you’ll discover
- Body, home, and purse Explore the writers' linked concerns about health, household peace, and money for daily needs.
- The disputed first step Consider the reformers' claim that danger begins with moderate use, not only excess.
- Conscience as a guide See how these Protestant appeals frame sobriety through faith, duty, and care for neighbors.
- The reach of example Trace the belief that one person's conduct can shape the choices of others.
- Reform in plain words Encounter short moral essays that bring warning and appeal into the same urgent argument.
Who will love it
Readers drawn to nineteenth century reform writing, American social history, sermons, and civic addresses will enjoy this collection. It also suits those curious about family recovery.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A town counts the cost
- Drinking harms the whole household
- Spirits offer only borrowed warmth
- Alcohol gives stimulation without nourishment
- An ordinary custom teaches the habit
- The seller profits while neighbors pay
- Knowledge makes the seller responsible
- Kindness opens a way back
- Count every family in the cost
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Select Temperance Tracts
A Massachusetts farmer tells his men there will be no rum on his six hundred acres, and the work goes on.
Medium level5–10 hours to read20 languages
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In short
What would happen to a town if it gave up strong drink for a single year? One writer answers with arithmetic.
Select Temperance Tracts at a glance
- Reading time
- About 8 h6 h 20 min fast, 9 h 30 min slow
- Length
- 113,900 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Drunkenness is a disease with plain symptoms
Benjamin Rush opens the collection with a physician's eye. He defines ardent spirits as liquor made by distilling fermented matter, and he names drunkenness a loathsome disease.
He lists its signs in order. Talkativeness or silence comes first, then quarrels, swearing, slurred words, and fights. At last the limbs wobble, and the drinker falls into a deep sleep. Recovery brings shaking hands, a hoarse voice, and days of dazed weakness. Attacks come closer together, until a man is hardly ever sober.
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Cite this edition
American Tract Society. Select Temperance Tracts. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/select-temperance-tracts.
American Tract Society. (2026). Select temperance tracts. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/select-temperance-tracts
American Tract Society. Select Temperance Tracts. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/select-temperance-tracts.
@book{americantractsociety2026select,
author = {American Tract Society},
title = {Select Temperance Tracts},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/select-temperance-tracts}
}
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What is Select Temperance Tracts about?
It gathers nineteenth century American tracts arguing against distilled liquor. Doctors, ministers, and storytellers describe its effects on health, money, and families, and urge readers to sign a pledge of total abstinence.
What does ardent spirits mean?
Ardent spirits means liquor made by distilling fermented grain, fruit, or molasses, such as rum, whiskey, and brandy. Benjamin Rush uses the term in the opening piece and limits it to these distilled drinks.
Who wrote the temperance tracts in this book?
They were published by the American Tract Society, and the writers include Benjamin Rush, Thomas Sewall, Edward Hitchcock, Heman Humphrey, and Austin Dickinson. Some pieces are narratives with no named author.
The author
American Tract Society
American religious publisher
The American Tract Society is a Christian publishing organization, not a person. It was founded in New York City in 1825. It published and distributed religious tracts and books, including material on temperance. Its work included producing inexpensive publications for readers in the United States and supporting their distribution abroad.
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