Repealing Prohibition - Senator James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr.

In 1919, State Legislatures ratified the 18th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, making the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages a federal offense. The United States of America officially became "dry" and Prohibition was the law of the land.

Eight years later, at the home of former Senator James W. Wadsworth, a number of prominent businessmen, bankers, politicians, and philanthropists, met to discuss the beginning of a campaign to repeal the 18th Amendment.

Wadsworth started his political career in the New York State Assembly before taking a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1915 as a Republican. As a vocal opponent of the intrusion of government into the personal and private lives of Americans, Wadsworth may have sacrificed his political position by opposing powerful organizations such as the Anti-Saloon League and the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

After losing his Senate seat in 1927, Wadsworth stepped up his efforts to repeal the 18th Amendment. On the morning of December 12, 1927, a group of influential men gathered at 2800 Woodland Drive in northwest Washington D.C., to discuss the possibility of mounting a campaign to repeal the amendment. The group included Pierre S. du Pont, retired chairman of the board of both General Motors and E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company; Charles H. Sabin, president of Guaranty Trust Company of New York; Senators Walter E. Edge of New Jersey and William Cabell Bruce of Maryland; Edward S. Harkness, philanthropist and heir to one of the nation's largest fortunes; and World War I Assistant Secretary of War Benedict Crowell.¹

During their meeting in December and a second meeting in January of 1928, the group committed to reorganizing and reviving the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment (AAPA). Their decision proved to be an important turning point in the struggle to reverse national prohibition. Wadsworth began making speeches across the country where he stressed his belief that the purpose of the Constitution was to limit powers of government and to protect the rights of citizens. It was his ability to communicate the danger of laws like the 18th Amendment, which ultimately led to its repeal in 1933.

James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. eventually returned to government as a U.S. Congressman from 1933 to 1951. Wadsworth was also an opponent to women's suffrage, and was the Grandson of General James S. Wadsworth, a Union General and American Civil War hero.

¹ Repealing National Prohibition, David Kyvig, 1979 by the University of Chicago Press