In the language of Frances E. Willard, in her history of “The Woman’s National Christian Temperance Union,” to be found in the Centennial temperance volume:  “The women who went forth by an impulse sudden, irresistible, divine, to pray in the saloons, became convinced, as weeks and months passed by, that theirs was to be no easily-won victory.  The enemy was rich beyond their power to comprehend.  He had upon his side the majesty of the law, the trickery of politics and the leagued strength of that almost invincible pair—­appetite, avarice.  He was persistent, too, as fate; determined to fight it out on that line to the last dollar of his enormous treasure-house and the last ounce of his power.  But these women of the Crusade believed in God, and in themselves as among His appointed instruments to destroy the rum-power in America.  They loved Christ’s cause; they loved the native land that had been so mindful of them; they loved their sweet and sacred homes; and so it came about that, though, they had gone forth only as skirmishers, they soon fell into line of battle; though they had ignorantly hoped to take the enemy by a sudden assault, they buckled on the armor for the long campaign.  The woman’s praying-bands, earnest, impetuous, inspired, became the woman’s temperance unions, firm, patient, persevering.  The praying-bands were without leadership, save that which inevitably results from ‘the survival of the fittest;’ the woman’s unions are regularly officered in the usual way.  They first wrought their grand pioneer work in sublime indifference to prescribed forms of procedure—­’so say we all of us’ being the spirit of ‘motions’ often made, seconded and carried by the chair, while the assembled women nodded their earnest acquiescence; the second are possessed of good, strong constitutions (with by-laws annexed), and follow the order of business with a dutiful regard to parliamentary usage.  In the first, women who had never lifted up their voices in their own church prayer-meetings stood before thousands and ‘spoke as they were moved;’ in the second, these same women with added experience, and a host of others who have since enlisted, impress the public thought and conscience by utterances carefully considered.  The praying-bands, hoping for immediate victory, pressed their members into incessant service; the woman’s unions, aware that the battle is to be a long one, ask only for such help as can be given consistently with other duties.”

As the result of this intelligent effort at effective organization by the women who inaugurated and were prominent in the “Crusade,” we have “The Woman’s National Christian Temperance Union,” with its auxiliary and local unions in nearly every State; one of the most efficient agencies in the practical work of temperance reform which the country has yet seen.

CHAPTER XII.

THE WOMAN’S NATIONAL CHRISTIAN TEMPERANCE UNION.