American Historical Ephemera & Photography

3 3/4 x 5 3/8 in. photoengraving on cardstock mount (some chipping and loss to image surface, discoloration and soiling throughout print and mount; mount with chipping to edges and corners). Identified and credited in the negative to Nichols & Davidson of Topeka, KS and "W.H. Buchanan[?], publisher, Chicago." Here, Nation is featured holding a Bible and a hatchet, items for which she became known in the public eye. 

Caroline Amelia Moore Nation (1846-1911) developed a deep animosity toward the evils of drink, likely stemming from a failed first marriage to a young physician who suffered with alcoholism. She started up a local branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, and campaigned for banning the sale of liquor in the state. Though she began her activism with simple protests, her methods soon took a turn for the dramatic. Her signature spectacle became smashing bottles of alcohol with a hatchet, for which she was continuously arrested, more than 30 times between 1900 and 1910. Her tactics attracted public attention, and people paid to attend her lectures at which souvenir pins in the shape of hatchets were sold, further solidifying her radical legacy.