Temperance--voluntary abstinence from alcohol--was popular in the 1890s, and widely promoted by the largest women's organization of the Gilded Age, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Prohibition--national, state, or local laws preventing the sale of alcohol--was more controversial. A minority faction of Republicans supported national prohibition, as did some Populists (mostly in the West rather than the South). Since 1869 the strongest supporters of anti-liquor had banded together in the Prohibition Party.
