"But this didn't happen. Instead, the Washingtonians permitted
politicians and reformers, both alcoholic and nonalcoholic, to use the
society for their own purposes. Abolition of slavery, for example, was
a stormy political issue then. Soon, Washingtonian speakers violently
and publicly took sides on this question. Maybe the society could have
survived the abolition controversy, but it didn't have a chance from
the moment it determined to reform America's drinking habits. When the
Washingtonians became temperance crusaders, within a very few years
they had completely lost their effectiveness in helping alcoholics."
(Twelve and Twelve, Tradition Ten, pg. 178)