Barr Spangler and the Prohibitionists: A Century of Change in Pennsylvania
Barr Spangler (1822–1922) spent his entire life in Marietta, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but the political movement to which he devoted himself extended far beyond the small Susquehanna River community. A merchant, banker, civic leader, and lifelong advocate of temperance, Spangler became involved in prohibitionist politics decades before the Prohibition Party was formally established in 1869. He repeatedly sought political office under the Temperance and Prohibition banners, attended party conventions, served in organisational roles, and maintained connections with reformers across Pennsylvania. He never won statewide office, yet his political career illustrates an important feature of nineteenth-century American politics – that influence did not always require electoral victory.
Spangler’s story is particularly useful to understanding the history of prohibition because it demonstrates how the movement was shaped not only by national organisations and prominent reformers, but also by locally rooted businessmen, community leaders, and political activists who translated temperance ideals into local and state politics. His political career developed alongside his life as a businessman and community leader. He was not a professional politician who left Marietta to pursue office in Harrisburg or Washington. Instead, he remained deeply rooted in his local community while participating in a reform movement that operated across Pennsylvania and, eventually, the rest of the United States. His career, therefore, offers a window into how national political causes could be sustained by people whose daily lives remained firmly local.
Spangler’s commitment to temperance began long before the Prohibition Party existed. Contemporary accounts later recalled that he attended a temperance meeting in 1842 with his brother William. During the Washingtonian temperance movement of the 1840s, he publicly signed a pledge of abstinence, a commitment that, according to later accounts, he maintained throughout his life. In 1848, he travelled to Columbia to associate himself with the Sons of Temperance, and, by the early 1850s, his involvement had developed into a more public form of activism ( The Age and Lancaster and Chester County Weekly Gazette, 23 July 1842, 3;The Daily Evening Express, 10 March 1863, 2). This chronology matters. Spangler did not encounter prohibitionist politics suddenly when the Prohibition Party appeared in the late nineteenth century. His political involvement grew out of several decades of participation in temperance organisations. The movement provided its supporters with institutions through which they could meet, lecture, organise, and campaign. For someone such as Spangler, temperance was therefore both a personal commitment and a form of public activity.
Newspaper accounts from the period repeatedly described Spangler participating in temperance meetings and speaking publicly about alcohol in general and its negative effects. In 1853, for example, he was noted as an officer of the Sons of Temperance and as a member of a local political committee. Other accounts record him giving lectures concerning the effects of alcohol on the body and mind and participating in temperance organisations elsewhere in the region (The Daily Evening Express, 10 March 1863, 2; The Saturday Express, 23 July 1853, 2). This activity demonstrates why it can be misleading to view nineteenth-century temperance solely through the later lens of national Prohibition. The movement existed for decades before the Eighteenth Amendment took effect in 1920. It operated through churches, voluntary organisations, political meetings, lectures, and local associations. Temperance was a significant American reform movement that extended well beyond the campaign for national Prohibition. Spangler’s life provides a particularly local example of that broader process.
Spangler’s role as an officer of the Sons of Temperance is particularly significant because it places him within the organized voluntary societies through which temperance operated at the local level. His lectures on the effects of alcohol on the body and mind also show that temperance arguments were not limited to demands for legal prohibition; they could be framed around health, individual behavior, and social welfare. His involvement in political and civic organizations further suggests that temperance was woven into ordinary community life rather than functioning solely as a national political campaign. Spangler therefore illustrates how nineteenth-century temperance activism could combine voluntary association, public education, and civic participation decades before national Prohibition.
For Spangler, temperance also became connected to political action. In 1851, he ran for the Pennsylvania Assembly under what contemporary reports described as the Temperance banner. A contemporary account praised him as “constant in the charge of duty” and “faithful in a Son of Temperance” (The Saturday Express, 23 July 1853, 2). His campaign illustrates the gradual transition in his public life from temperance organisation to electoral politics. The distinction is important. Spangler's earliest political activity predates the formal organisation of the Prohibition Party, so his career cannot simply be described as a lifelong membership in the Party from its outset. Rather, his political identity developed through the broader temperance movement and later became associated with organised prohibitionist politics.
The Prohibition Party was established nationally in 1869. The party’s emergence gave people like him a formal political vehicle through which prohibition could be pursued at the ballot box. Pennsylvania presented an interesting environment for such a movement. The Commonwealth had strong Republican and Democratic organisations, while religious and reform communities provided support for temperance activism. Prohibitionists nevertheless faced an obvious electoral problem: opposing the established parties required voters to abandon organisations that were much more likely to win elections. Spangler experienced this problem repeatedly.
Spangler became the Prohibition candidate for Pennsylvania Auditor General in 1871. He received only a small fraction of the statewide vote, 3,186, while Republican candidate David Stanton won the election by a substantial margin, securing over 284,000 votes. (Partisan Prohibition Historical Society) The result, however, did not end Spangler’s political career. Spangler again appeared as the Prohibition candidate for Auditor General in the early 1870s, receiving 1,260 votes (Partisan Prohibition Historical Society). Contemporary reporting described him as a man of “high respectability and perfect probity” who was not a self-seeking politician but instead held firmly to his convictions (Lancaster Daily Intelligencer, 1871). Such descriptions are significant because they show how his reputation operated within politics. His candidacy could attract attention, even though his party lacked the electoral strength to compete successfully with Pennsylvania's major parties.
This juxtaposition between political participation and electoral success is central to understanding Spangler. He was not a successful politician in the conventional sense. He did not build a career by winning statewide elections or accumulating public office. Instead, his political importance stemmed from his repeated participation in the organisations, conventions, campaigns, and public discussions surrounding prohibition. His involvement also extended beyond his own candidacies. In 1887, he was selected as a delegate to the Pennsylvania State Prohibition Convention. He later served as treasurer of the Pennsylvania State Temperance Union. These positions demonstrate that his relationship with the movement endured despite individual electoral defeats.
By the 1880s, Spangler had become a recognisable Prohibition candidate in Pennsylvania. In 1884, the Prohibition Party nominated him for Congress in Pennsylvania's Ninth Congressional District. The following year, he was the party's candidate for Pennsylvania State Treasurer. His candidacy attracted attention in newspapers beyond Lancaster County, although contemporary political observers did not expect him to defeat the Republican candidate, Matthew Quay. The election results illustrate the difficulty faced by third parties. Spangler received 15,047 votes, or 2.41% of the vote (Partisan Prohibition Historical Society). From an electoral perspective, the campaign was a failure. From the perspective of political activism, however, it represented something different. Spangler continued to place prohibition before Pennsylvania voters, even when the chances of victory were extremely slim. The party's political programme also reveals the broader objectives of prohibitionist politics. The platform supported the prohibition of the importation, manufacture, and sale of intoxicating liquor. Prohibitionists also supported the Women's Christian Temperance Union and, in some platforms, other reforms that placed the movement within a wider tradition of nineteenth-century social reform.
The Prohibition Party, therefore, should not be understood simply as an organisation that sought to close saloons. It represented a particular political response to what its supporters regarded as a major social problem. For many prohibitionists, alcohol was connected to poverty, domestic instability, crime, and other forms of social disorder. Their solution was not merely to persuade individuals to drink less, but to use political power to restrict or eliminate the legal liquor trade. Spangler's repeated candidacies placed him squarely within this political tradition. What makes Spangler particularly interesting, however, is the location of his political activity. Marietta was not Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or New York. It was a small river community whose economy was connected to the Susquehanna, canal transportation, manufacturing, lumber, commerce, and agriculture. Yet Spangler participated in temperance and prohibition politics at several levels. This was not simply a phenomenon of major cities. Reform activity also took root in smaller communities, where local residents organised meetings, promoted temperance, supported prohibition candidates, and connected their communities to wider political movements.
Among the major denominations in Pennsylvania, and particularly in Lancaster County and the borough of Marietta, were Mennonites, Amish, Brethren, Quakers, Baptists, Church of God members, Methodists, and Methodist Episcopalians who were associated with strong opposition to alcohol consumption. For many of these religious communities, abstinence was more than a personal preference; it was connected to religious expectations and, in some cases, served as a condition of membership. Barr Spangler was a member, benefactor, and prominent leader within the Methodist Episcopal Church in Marietta, a denomination that supported the temperance movement and prohibition. His position within the church therefore connected him to a broader local network in which religious beliefs, community expectations, and moral reform reinforced one another.
This religious environment also contributed to support for the Prohibition Party in Pennsylvania, especially in communities such as Lancaster County and Marietta where temperance had strong institutional and social support. Spangler was familiar with the religious and social attitudes that shaped his community and became associated with the Prohibition Party, which drew considerable support from Protestant denominations committed to temperance, including the Mennonites, Amish, Brethren, Quakers, Baptists, Church of God, Methodists, and Methodist Episcopalians. His involvement can therefore be understood as part of a larger local culture that connected religious convictions with political efforts to restrict alcohol. At the same time, Spangler's commitment to the Prohibition Party again appears to have extended beyond political calculation. His involvement began when he was only twenty years old, suggesting that temperance was an established component of his personal beliefs rather than simply a strategy for advancing his political career.
Spangler’s political life therefore demonstrates why local communities matter to the history of American reform. National organisations depended on activists in places like Marietta to translate national political goals into local action. They held meetings, distributed ideas, attended conventions, raised support, and appeared on ballots. The significance of Spangler’s career is not that prohibition politics existed in an unusual place, but that his experience reveals how a national reform movement operated beyond the major urban centres that often dominate accounts of American political history. His career shows that the success and reach of prohibition politics depended on networks of local activists who brought national reform into the everyday political life of small communities.
At home, he served on Marietta Borough Council and held other community roles. He participated in local political meetings and represented his community at county and state gatherings. At the same time, he maintained a career in business and banking, eventually becoming president of the First National Bank of Marietta. Businessmen were active in nineteenth-century American politics, but Spangler’s political commitment was distinctive in its persistence and its association with a third party rather than the dominant political parties of his era. He repeatedly ran for statewide office on the Prohibition Party ticket, even though the party attracted only a small share of the vote, and he continued to participate in the movement after these defeats.
His political commitments do not appear to have prevented his professional advancement. Spangler remained a director of the First National Bank of Marietta for fifty-nine years, until his death in 1922, and continued to hold prominent positions in the community. His career therefore suggests that his prohibitionist views did not necessarily conflict with his standing as a businessman. Instead, he maintained two prominent public identities at once: successful local businessman and persistent advocate of prohibition. That combination illustrates how political conviction could coexist with professional success in a small-town community, even when the cause itself remained electorally marginal. Spangler’s example also complicates the assumption that political influence should be measured solely by votes won or offices held. His campaigns attracted newspaper coverage, his opinions were discussed by political observers, and he continued to receive organisational responsibilities even after losing elections. His reputation as a businessman and community leader gave him credibility within the reform networks in which he operated.
Spangler's political world was not confined to Marietta. His correspondence and associations connected him with figures involved in the wider political and reform movements of nineteenth-century Pennsylvania. Among these connections was Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, with whom Spangler corresponded during the Civil War. The surviving correspondence places Spangler in direct communication with Stevens during the Civil War, including a September 1862 letter concerning deserters passing through Marietta and a January 1864 letter regarding a draft act. These exchanges do not establish that Stevens shared Spangler's temperance views, but they do demonstrate that Spangler had access to a prominent Lancaster County political figure and was willing to communicate with him about matters of public concern. His political world was therefore broader than his later Prohibition Party candidacies suggest. At the same time, Pennsylvania's temperance movement developed channels for influencing public policy beyond electoral campaigns. The Pennsylvania State Temperance Union brought petitions concerning the liquor question before Congress, including petitions calling for federal action on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.
In 1882, representatives of the Pennsylvania State Temperance Union petitioned the Senate to consider a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture, importation, and sale of intoxicating liquors throughout the United States. Spangler's involvement in Pennsylvania's temperance organizations consequently placed his local activism within a political culture that used personal correspondence, voluntary associations, petitions, conventions, and elections to press reform questions into wider public debate, even when prohibitionist candidates themselves failed to win office (The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens, Volume 1). His later life also brought him into contact with prominent prohibitionists, including James Black and Neal Dow. Contemporary accounts described Spangler as a personal friend of Dow and an associate of Black, both major figures in the national prohibition movement (The York Dispatch, 1922).
These relationships should be analysed with care. Association with prominent reformers does not necessarily show that Spangler shared all of their political positions, nor does a surviving letter establish the full extent of a friendship. What the evidence does demonstrate is that Spangler was connected to political and reform networks that extended beyond Lancaster County. That distinction is important when reconstructing the political lives of people who left relatively few personal papers. Newspaper reports, election returns, organisational records, correspondence, and later biographical accounts can establish where a person participated and with whom he interacted, but they cannot always tell us precisely what he thought about every political question.
Spangler’s record is strongest when it comes to temperance. He repeatedly identified with the cause, campaigned under its political banners, spoke at temperance events, and remained involved in prohibitionist organisations over several decades. The obvious question is why he continued to participate in a political movement that rarely won major elections. One answer is that electoral defeat did not necessarily imply political irrelevance. Third parties could influence public debate even when they failed to win office, offering voters alternatives to the major parties and keeping particular issues in public discussion. The Prohibition Party’s 1872 platform illustrates this broader role. Alongside its demand for legal prohibition of the liquor trade, the party addressed other questions of government and social reform, demonstrating that prohibition could be presented as part of a wider political program rather than as an isolated issue.
Temperance activism also operated through religious and voluntary organisations, meaning that political campaigns were only one part of the movement. Spangler’s career reflects this broader understanding of reform politics. He did not abandon temperance after losing an election; instead, he continued speaking, organising, attending conventions, and participating in political and civic organisations. His commitment also appears to have been personal. His political affiliation therefore cannot be reduced to electoral calculation. He had been involved in temperance organisations since early adulthood, before the Prohibition Party offered him a political label. Spangler is therefore useful not simply as an example of a man who supported a third party, but as evidence of how political commitment could persist through repeated electoral failure when it was reinforced by personal conviction, voluntary association, and participation in local and Commonwealth-wide reform networks.
Spangler's political career raises a broader historical question – what does it mean to be politically successful? If success is defined solely by winning elections, Spangler was unsuccessful. He never became Pennsylvania's Auditor General or State Treasurer. His campaigns attracted only a small share of the statewide vote, and the Prohibition Party never displaced the Republican or Democratic organisations as Pennsylvania's dominant political forces. Yet electoral results alone do not capture the full range of political activity. His reputation as a businessman and community leader enabled him to participate in political circles beyond his immediate surroundings. His career therefore supports a broader interpretation of third-party politics, in which political activity could operate through organisations, public advocacy, reform platforms, and sustained local participation as well as through electoral victory. Political movements were sustained by people willing to campaign even when victory was improbable.
This is particularly apparent when considering the span of Spangler's life. He entered the temperance movement in the 1840s, participated in politics before the Civil War, became associated with the Prohibition Party after its formation, continued campaigning in the 1870s and 1880s, and remained connected with the movement into old age. His political life consequently spanned generations of American history. The cause itself changed during that period. Temperance moved from voluntary pledges and moral reform into organised political campaigns, state legislation, and eventually national prohibition.
Spangler died in 1922, having lived through a century of extraordinary political change. He was born during the presidency of James Monroe and died during the administration of Warren G. Harding. Between those two moments came the Civil War, Reconstruction, industrialisation, the rise of mass political parties, women’s suffrage activism, and the growth of the prohibition movement. The Prohibition Party itself survived long after Spangler’s early campaigns, although it never became one of the country’s major parties. Its continued existence demonstrates the persistence of prohibitionist politics as an organised third-party tradition. By the time Spangler reached his hundredth birthday in January 1922, national Prohibition had been in effect for two years under the Eighteenth Amendment, ratified in 1919 and implemented in January 1920. Spangler therefore lived long enough to see the central political objective around which he had organised for much of his adult life become federal law. His life demonstrates what that national movement looked like when viewed from a Pennsylvania community rather than from Washington or a larger state, and how political movements depended upon people willing to spend decades organising locally, campaigning statewide, and maintaining political networks despite repeated electoral defeats.
Barr Spangler’s political career does not fit neatly into the conventional narrative of American political success. He was neither a governor nor a congressman. He did not win a statewide election, and the party he represented never became a dominant force in Pennsylvania politics. Nevertheless, he remained politically active for much of his adult life. His story demonstrates that political movements are not created solely by the people whose names appear on election results. They are also built by delegates, organisers, candidates, speakers, local leaders, and activists who repeatedly commit themselves to a cause.
The history of prohibition is often told through national legislation, famous reformers, and the eventual passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. Spangler offers a different perspective. His life shows how a national political cause depended upon local participation and how a man could remain firmly rooted in a small Pennsylvania town while taking part in political networks across the Commonwealth. His century, therefore, offers more than a biographical story. It provides a case study in how political ideas travelled from reform meetings into local communities, from local communities into party organisations, and from third-party campaigns into the broader political culture of the United States. For Spangler, political success was not measured solely at the ballot box. His legacy was built on persistence and personal conviction – a lifetime spent advocating for a cause he believed was worth supporting, even when electoral victory remained out of reach. One campaign did not transform Pennsylvania politics. One convention did not establish national prohibition. One temperance speech did not close the state’s taverns. His influence instead developed through repetition - decades of participation that connected his small community with a much larger political movement.
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Author Biography:
Eric Schubert is a public historian, internationally featured genealogist with ES Genealogy, and human identification expert whose work has been featured on Good Morning America, in People Magazine, and across national and regional media. A White House Historical Association Next-Gen Leader and History M.A. graduate of Millersville University, his work especially focuses on presidential history, local biography, genealogy, and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. His research and writing have appeared in History Is Now, the Made By History national column, LancasterOnline, PennLive, EPOCH History Magazine, and other publications and organizations. His Master’s thesis at Millersville University, “Barr Spangler (1822–1922) and the Prohibition Party of Pennsylvania,” was recognized by the Pennsylvania Historical Association. Schubert has also conducted extensive research on civil rights trailblazer W. Miller Barbour (1908-1957), publishing on Barbour’s life and legacy. His work about and for Barbour has received recognition from the Pennsylvania House, Pennsylvania Senate, Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus, Dauphin County Commissioners, and National Urban League President Marc H. Morial. He has presented his research through the independent W. Miller Barbour Lecture Series to historical organizations throughout Pennsylvania.