by Paul R. Spitzzeri
“A Stainless Flag,” a 1907 pamphlet by the Rev. Ervin S. Chapman, who also held a law degree, employed the argument that an eternal and immutable divine law forced a moral imperative on legislators and judges, aided by public enlightenment about good and evil, to make decisions regarding aspects of American life that were deemed immoral. He cited boxing and lotteries as as examples, while linking the gradual movement against slavery, as well, as he pushed for a permanent prohibition against alcoholic beverages in the country.
After exhaustively laying out his concepts of that fundamental law, the responsibilities of legislatures and courts and numerous statutory and legal citations, along with those comparison to other bastions of moral turpitude, Chapman moved toward the conclusion of his lengthy essay to home in on the liquor trade, including his remarks on “A Demon’s Doom.” Here the clerical crusader, who gave this as an oration across the nation before the publication, thundered,
Such a doom awaits the beverage traffic in strong drink. Since the dawn of civilization the movements of civic reform and the trend of civil government have been undeviatingly and ceaselessly in the direction of such a result. With the increase of public enlightenment, one after another of the evils which infest society and seek and secure governmental prohibition has been cast out and permanently outlawed.
The “fuller accord with immutable law,” the writer insisted, meant that “we almost have realized the full fruition of our hopes” with just that one remaining “COLOSSAL EVIL” to ban. A martial tone was adopted as Chapman informed readers (and hearers) that “the keen-edged sword of justice . . . is unsheathed” and poised “to execute righteous judgment upon the greatest of all earthly foes.” The rapier “will swiftly fall,” it was asserted, when “the case of humanity vs. this ruinous traffic is brought before our National Supreme Court for trial and decision.”
When that glorious moment arrived, Chapman continued, it would constitute “THE BRIGHTEST DAY IN ALL THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD’S CIVIL JUDICATORY” as the ruling “will be more far-reaching and beneficent than those of any court decision in all human history” ending forever the “most fruitful source of immorality of all human pursuits.” He claimed that there was “Conclusive Evidence” of “the inherent iniquity of the liquor traffic,” sufficient for “its condemnation and sentence of death.” The alcohol trade had a “native hideousness” the author dared a reader to question “its early judicial doom.” The evidence seemed to be that, while business and charity, had positive elements of profit and/or service, “crime sinks to the level of the liquor traffic which has profit and no service, and is therefore iniquitous in nature, harmful in influence and fit only for judicial condemnation.”
The “Ruthless and Ravenous” nature of liquor included its pernicious effects of families and homes, “the bright jewels” of society. He sought to tug and the reader’s heart strings with an appeal to the innocence of children:
What is this which in imagination we see palpitating and quivering as it slowly moves along a shaded pathway in the mellow light of a dewy morning? Call it a baby car [stroller] if you will, but IT IS A THRONE ON WHEELS and contains the two sovereigns of the household, a baby and his twin sister. A more beautiful picture never greeted human vision or gladdened a human heart . . .
Which will encounter the greater perils along life’s path? . . . Neither; for all hell will seek the ruin is both . . . for they are alike defenseless . . . Deny or withold [sic] from either of those helpless babes the strongest protection and fullest degree of helpfulness in the power of man to give, and you will thereby merit the severest condemnation of you fellowmen and the righteous judgment of Almighty God.
As an example of “Twin Barbarities,” Chapman posited these “human cherubs” as fallen angels and applied the gendered stereotype of “one plunged into eternity from a wretched life of shame,” meaning prostitution and “white slavery” was a prominent issue of the day among the moralists, and “the other reeled and staggered to a drunkard’s grave,” though he added THE RUIN OF THE GIRL WAS NOT MORE INIQUITOUS THAN WAS THE RUIN OF THE BOY.
There was again the resort to the idea that “universal law will not permit this iniquity to escape from supreme judicial condemnation” and that “all inherently evil and harmful pursuits” and WHATEVER IS IMMORAL OR TENDS TO PRODUCE IMMORALITY, OR IS HARMFUL TO THE PEACE, PROSPERITY AND HAPPINESS OF THE COMMUNITY was determined to be mala in se or wrong in itself in legal terms. As such, Chapman asserted, “in view of the universal adjudication that the liquor traffic is inherently immoral and harmful,” there were no legal protections for it.
In fact, he went on, there were many “evils, far less malignant . . . [that] have been judicially declared unlawful” as “immoral and injurious to human interests and welfare,” but the liquor trade was the worse “in inherent wickedness or degrading and ruinous influence.” Therefore, Chapman insisted, the United States Supreme Court, as with lotteries and boxing at the state level, was bound to outlaw the trade in alcoholic beverages. He returned to the decision of the Indiana high court to rule for a widow in her suit for damages against a saloon owner and his landlord and in which it was declared “AN ORDERLY SALOON IN AN ORDERLY RESIDENCE IS, PER SE, A NUISANCE,” to remark that the national high court would institute a ban.
The pastor then cited a portion of a U.S. Supreme Court decision from 1890 in which the opinion, rendered by Justice Stephen J. Field, included his remarks that evidence existed that “a greater amount of crime and misery attributable to the use of ardent spirits obtained at these liquor saloons than to any other source” and that “there is no inherent right in a citizen thus to sell intoxicating liquors at retail.” Chapman took these in isolation to claim that, if there was no such right of sale, THAT TRAFFIC MUST BE UNLAWFUL, but he, conveniently, omitted Justice Field’s comment that “it is a question of public expediency and public morality, and not of federal law,” as well as “it is matter of legislative will only.” Moreover, Field stated “that is a matter which does not affect the authority of the state, or one which can be brought under the cognizance of the courts of the United States.”
Having thus massaged a variety of quotes and citations of court rulings into an iron-clad principle that the trade in liquor was “the voracious foe to ‘the health, wealth and happiness of the people,” Chapman again demanded, despite Field’s clear division of authority and confirmation of what local and state government could legislate, that the Supreme Court “cannot fail to deny the right and power of civil government to give that traffic any legal standing.”
As he again interpolated that the federal high court “has decided that liquor selling is not a privilege of an American citizen,” so Chapman thereby pronounced that “for governments it must therefore decide that CIVIL AUTHORITY CANNOT CONFER THAT PRIVILEGE.” He also informed his hearers and readers that selling alcoholic beverage “cannot be classed with the rights of citizenship,” though this is not what Justice Field articulated, and declared that IF THE INDIVIDUAL CANNOT CLAIM IT AS A RIGHT, LOCAL GOVERNMENT CANNOT CONFER IT AS A RIGHT.
Chapman also chose to interpret the Constitution’s famous statement of purpose concerning “domestic tranquility” as something that the use of liquor destroys, that “the common defense” implies “a stalwart citizenship, which the liquor traffic prevents,” and that “the general welfare” had alcohol as its “most rapacious foe.” It seemed clear enough to the crusader that “those wise and conscientious jurists,” faced with his view of what these words meant, “will not fail to condemn and declare unlawful” the trade in alcoholic beverages.
In his next sections, the orator and writer used the headings of “We Cannot Halt,” “Retreat is Impossible,” and “Advance is Inevitable” and he pronounced it a truism that any failure to institute a national judicial ban would mean that “the civilized world would cry out in denunciation of such retrogression. He invoked the Old Testament in asserting that “the waters of the Red Sea we are crossing, constantly close in behind us, and thus prevent our return,” while adding that “the forces which have lifted us to our present exaltation . . . preclude the possibility of our sinking to a lower level.” Because, Chapman continued, “our entire social and civic system is progressive and never permits a backward movement,” the condition was such that,
The undeviating trend of civil government in the direction of human deliverance from the curse of the licensed rum shop must continue until that unspeakable iniquity is forever at an end. From adjudications rendered we must go forward until our court of last resort places its brand of outlaw upon the immoral and harmful traffic in strong drink and peremptorially [peremptorily] denies the right and power of civil government to give it legal standing.
As sure as the sun rose toward “the zenith of high and happy noon,” the nation’s highest court was expected to make “the logical and inevitable verdict” against “the most prolific source of immorality, vice and crime” as well as “the most immoral and criminal and therefore the most manifestly unlawful and incapable of being legalized.”
Chapman once more invoked “public enlightenment” and “eternal, immutable law” to offer that an “epoch-making verdict” would such that,
It should fall like a divine benediction upon a nation fully prepared and expectant, a nation deeply sensible of their sacred rights and unyieldingly determined to maintain them. Like the order of a great commander to an obedient and thoroughly disciplined army, that verdict, denying the iniquitous liquor traffic the right to governmental sanction or protection, should be promptly carried into effect. It should find the people in readiness and eager to enforce it, by casting out the monster thus branded as an outlaw, through effective legislative enactments and efficient law enforcement.
Despite all of his exhortation, however, the cleric claimed that “our present duty is not to make any requirement of our National Supreme Court” as this would “be not only improper, but wholly unnecessary.” Besides, he intimated, the court would come to its realization based on public sentiment through lower court rulings and appeals to it, so that “when conditions are favorable and the proper opportunity is presented,” the high court would issue its fiat.
First, however, what was needed was “a nation-wide campaign of instruction and public enlightenment that would show “the unwritten, supreme and immutable law of right,” reveal the “inherent wickedness of the beverage liquor traffic” as well as the “unspeakable infamy” of government allowing the operations of “such a malignant monster,” and the coalescence of “an intelligent and intense public sentiment.” Denouncing government officials was not what was required, but exposing them to “the duty of a civil government respecting the liquor traffic,” this illuminated by the LIGHT of “public intelligence and of Christian civilization.
Naturally, said the pastor, “the Pulpit is an agency of measureless possibilities for disseminating the light so greatly needed” and Chapman claimed that “no agency has been more potent than has the Christian Pulpit in bringing this world to its present state of enlightened civilization,” while “no great reform was ever yet successful in our land without the aid of the Christian ministry, and no evil ever yet has been able successfully to resist the earnest assaults of a united pastorate.” Every cleric in the country had a duty “to turn on the light that will drive this hideous monster into hiding” and to “cause the nation to realize as it must and will the peerless criminality of governmental complicity,” so much for claiming not to denounce officials, “in the destructive rum traffic.”
Chapman also called on “the reputable press, with its bright and brainy corps of tireless molders of thought and purpose,” to take its place in the movement, even as “its influence may be quiet and unrecognized.” Educational institutions, too, should cast “a light untinted by the vapor of the brewery or distillery” so that “the public conscience” should more readily see “the tribute money of the drunkard-maker to appear as it is, loathsome and abhorrent.”
When it came to the final adjudication of the question,
That decision will place all the responsibility for the evil consequences of the liquor traffic upon the men who are engaged in it. Others must now share in that responsibility, even civil government being a partner in that pursuit. But when the partnership of that traffic with civil government is dissolved, those who ruin their fellowmen by the sale of liquor will be alone responsible for that crime.
For those engaged in the rescue of the fallen trapped “in the clutches of this monster,” a change in government was welcomed, including for Chapman, who noted his more than half a century of having “wrought earnestly to life up the unfortunate victims of the liquor traffic” and remarked on his “righteous indignation” that his “arduous labors” were made worse by the allowance by government “of that harmful traffic.”
As he reached the end of his jeremiad, the cleric invoked the “White Robes of Columbia” with a ban allowing for the end of “the humiliating reproach of coffers filled with revenue derived from vice and crime.” In fact, the federal government took in many tens of millions of dollars annually in revenue from excise taxes on the sale of alcohol, sometimes up to a half of all internal revenue. For Chapman, this was “a burning disgrace” that tended to “mantle with suffusion of shame every true American.”
Further reproach came in his “Civilization’s Darkest Blot” as “that decision [to ban liquor trafficking] will pronounce sentence of death upon the Monstrosity of civilization” and for government to allow the trade to continue “is a reproach and a disgrace.” This was because the sale of alcoholic beverages “is the Colossal Crime of the ages, the Monstrosity of human history, the doom and death” of American society.
The oration and essay ended with the title phrase, as Chapman offered that a ban on the liquor trade would be such that,
It will give to this nation A STAINLESS FLAG, a national emblem unpolluted by governmental complicity in wrong. It will exhibit hat flag in a light which never shone upon it, a light beneficent and bright, a light which will make radiant every star upon its azure field and led to its graceful folds a luster undimmed by the tears of the innocent victims of earth’s greatest curse.
Beneath that flag the strong may march to untarnished glory and the weak may rest in undisturbed security. The coming generation, bearing that purged and purified banner, will with enraptured vision view a destiny more exalted and glorious than earth ever has known.
All this will be but the beginning of a work world-wide and endless, which only the mind of the Infinite can fully comprehend, but in the accomplishment of which, even the humblest and weakest may have a part.
While former California Supreme Court Justice John D. Works offered his testimonial to “one of the ablest, clearest and most convincing legal arguments I have ever heard” and agreed that “the law of absolute and divine right” would lead to a judicial ban,” it turned out, in fact, that the national Prohibition of alcohol, following local option actions in cities, counties and states throughout the country, was achieved by legislation through the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution.
Ratification was in January 1919 and was effective a year later, though the “great social experiment” lasted a baker’s dozen years and enormous underground traffic, political corruption, the strengthening of organized crime and other factors led to a repeal in 1933. Today, only eight countries, all with Muslim-majority populations, have total bans on alcohol, while two dozen others have partial legality.
Chapman died in August 1921 at age 83, about a year-and-a-half after Prohibition began and an obituary in the Los Angeles Times observed that “Dr. Chapman gained national repute with his pamphlet, ‘A Stainless Flag’ . . . there were 3,000,000 copies sold.” The inside front wrapper contains the score to “Give Us A Stainless Flag,” written by Edmund S. Lorenz, who dedicated his song to Chapman and his “wonderful lecture,” with the chorus ringing out:
Give us a stainless flag, Men of the nation!
Drive out the greed for gain,
Let rum no longer reign;
Strive that our land obtain,
A stainless flag!