Prohibition, legal prevention of the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic beverages with the aim of obtaining partial or total abstinence through legal means. Most countries that have experimented with the ban have soon lifted it, including the United States. Learn more about prohibition.
Eighteenth Amendment, amendment (1919) to the Constitution of the United States imposing the federal prohibition of alcohol. It was repealed in 1933, following the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment. The Eighteenth Amendment thus became the only amendment to have secured ratification and later been repealed.
United States
The postwar Republican administrations
After the end of World War I, many Americans were left with a feeling of distrust toward foreigners and radicals, whom they held responsible for the war. The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the founding of the communists’ Third International in 1919 further fanned American fears of radicalism. Race riots and labour unrest added to the tension. Thus, when a series of strikes and indiscriminate bombings began in 1919, the unrelated incidents were all assumed incorrectly in most cases to be communist-inspired. During the ensuing Red Scare, civil liberties were sometimes grossly violated and many innocent aliens were deported. The Red Scare was over within a year, but a general distrust of foreigners, liberal reform movements, and organized labour remained throughout the 1920s. In fact, many viewed Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory in 1920 (