The Eighteenth Amendment

On January 16, 1919, Nebraska’s legislature voted to ratify the eighteenth amendment that prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” Because Nebraska was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, the temperance movement had the necessary two-thirds of the state legislatures’ approval. A year later, at midnight on January 17, 1920, the amendment, and the Volstead Act to enforce it, turned the United States dry.

Temperance officials believed that a Federal law was the best solution to the liquor problem, and so they had pushed this amendment through...