The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition The author of The Alcoholic Republic began researching this book to find out what prompted so many to attack alcohol consumption in the early nineteenth-century. W.J Rorabaugh found statistics, in his research, to support his idea that the Temperance Movement was “launched as a response to a period of exceptionally hearty drinking” (ix). Though there were many factors that contributed to an increase in alcohol consumption and society widely accepted it, the fact is that America as a nation at this time did have a dangerous drinking problem. The author used numerous primar