Our brush with an intemperate temperance activist
by Jack Neely
In 1902, Depot Street was the address of East Tennessee's busiest train station, and the one place in town where you were most likely to encounter strangers and, occasionally, celebrities.
You would have noticed this one celebrity on that cool October morning, even if you didn't know her name. You would have noticed her because she was nearly six feet tall, and dressed all in black. She carried a Bible and, sometimes, a hatchet. The eastbound train had hardly stopped at the depot before this 56-year-old woman was out on the landing, striding up the stairs to Depot Street. There she began shouting at the Wednesday-morning crowds about the evils of alcoholic beverages.
"The crowd was a large one," the Journal would report the next day—a couple hundred right off the bat—"and it began to increase when it was whispered that the speaker was none other than Mrs. Nation of Kansas."
That was Carry Nation to her friends. Her first husband had been a drunk and died not long after they were married. She never forgave the substance that killed him. Her second husband, Mr. Nation, had divorced her just last year.
He wasn't a drunk, but after tolerating his wife's saloon-smashing crusades for a decade, he had charged her with desertion. She kept his name, of course, because she believed it had been preordained by God. Carry A. Nation had every intention of doing just that. She'd been out west earlier in the month; just two weeks ago she made the national news when she refused police orders to leave a Texas saloon she intended to smash.
She also believed that God protected her from harm, and on Depot Street she may have found more reason to believe.
She already had allies in Knoxville, of course. The Anti-Saloon League of North Knoxville had met at Second Baptist a few days ago; the influential organization was courted by the Republican Party.
In 1902, you didn't have to be a fanatic to believe closing the saloons would cure society's ills. Circumstantial evidence was everywhere. Murder was almost a nightly habit, and most of our shootings and knifings did take place in or near saloons. A YMCA lecturer estimated that Knoxville was among the South's most dangerous cities, second only to New Orleans, and largely because of our concentration of saloons. There were indeed nearly 100 saloons in downtown Knoxville in 1902, several of them within a hatchet's throw from where Carry Nation stood that day.
The closest establishment was probably the Eye-Wink Saloon where, just a few days ago, Constable Tom DeWine and bartender W.D. Woods had shot each other, apparently over a misunderstood joke about a liberty-head nickel.
Both wounds were believed life-threatening; DeWine was shot in the chest, Woods in the head. First DeWine was thought to be dying; then he was getting better, but Woods was dying. When Carry Nation was lecturing in front of the Eye-Wink, both men were recovering in the new Knoxville Hospital, enjoying a strange camaraderie. When DeWine sent Woods a bowl of fruit, it made the papers. "They have become the best of friends, so far as is possible on the premises," reported the Journal.
If the proprietor of the Eye-Wink recognized Mrs. Nation on his block, he might have drawn the deadbolts and hidden his best Scotch in the trapdoor. Today he was lucky. Carry Nation was in a hurry. She was on her way to a scheduled appearance in Asheville that evening. It was just a whistle-stop speech, not an official business trip.
As she shouted at the crowd, a heckler appeared beside her. Was it not true, he asked, that Jesus Himself had manufactured wine when he performed the wedding miracle. Carry Nation looked annoyed, they said, and insisted there was nothing in the world wrong with the particular sort of wine Jesus made.
Her answer "did not appear to satisfy the questioner, for he commenced to speaking boisterously...apparently with the intention of breaking up the meeting." When a pro-Nation bystander attempted to intervene, the stranger grew more aggressive and seemed to be "preparing to make things lively for Mrs. Nation."
She was spared a physical attack when a wholesale huckster named Bob Duncan stepped forward. Duncan threw an uppercut at the infidel, catching him on the jaw and sending him sprawling on the pavement. Duncan and the Nation-friendly crowd kicked the heckler a few unnecessary times "just for luck," as the Journal reported.
The stranger arose, said he was man enough to admit he was licked, and walked toward the train station. No one had seen him before; he told somebody there that he was a detective.
Carry Nation thanked Duncan for the "prompt manner in which he protected her." Then she reached into the black fabric of her dress and drew out something that she pinned to the lapel of Duncan's jacket. It was a small hatchet, inscribed with Nation's simple motto: Death To Rum.
"Mr. Duncan is now the proudest man in Knoxville," reported the Journal.
As Carry Nation finished her brief but dramatic presentation, the crowd gave her three hurrahs and she returned to her train. As she did, she spotted several boys lounging on the passenger landing, smoking cigarettes. As she got back onto her car, she berated them for smoking. "Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?" she said. She was apparently still yelling at them from the rear platform of her car as the train eased out of the station.
Some said the stranger who accosted her had boarded the same train. The rumor spread around downtown that he was a hired agitant who traveled around with Mrs. Nation to make her appearances more dramatic.
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