What was the Matter with Kansas?

I have come to learn that on 19 February 1881, Kansas enacted a statute declaring that “No person shall manufacture or assist in the manufacture of intoxicating liquors in this state, except for medical, scientific, and mechanical purposes.”

Defying good sense and decency, on December 5, 1887 the US Supreme Court upheld the validity of Kansas’ law. Justice John Marshall Harlan — known as “The Great Dissenter” for his unorthodox views on black civil rights — in this case delivered the majority opinion for the court. According to Harlan, Kansas was perfectly within its constitutional bounds to force sobriety upon its citizens.

There is no justification for holding that the state, under the guise merely of police regulations, is here aiming to deprive the citizen of his constitutional rights; for we cannot shut out of view the fact, within the knowledge of all, that the public health, the public morals, and the public safety, may be endangered by the general use of intoxicating drinks; nor the fact established by statistics accessible to every one, that the idleness, disorder, pauperism, and crime existing in the country, are, in some degree at least, traceable to this evil.

Through no fault of my own I’ve never been lit up in Kansas, but good grief — and I mean no disresepect here to any readers from the Jayhawk state — I can’t think of anything I’d rather do in Kansas than get utterly pie-eyed. I’ve slurred my speech in several depressing states (e.g., South Dakota, Iowa, Oklahoma) but never in Kansas, the first state in US history to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol.