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Thanks for the clarification, not that it has any real significance regarding the issue.

From Dale Gieringer, head of California NORML:

It was investigated by a Lincoln scholar at the request of Ollie Steinberg of the Minnesota Grassroots party. Like Mark, he found no record of any speech by Lincoln on the alleged date (Dec 18, 1840).

I've been told that according to the Home Book of Quotations (16^th edition), it was fabricated in the 1880s - apparently by anti-Prohibitionists in Atlanta courting the Negro vote. Lincoln was well-known for his temperance sympathies. According to Herbert Asbury's "The Great Illusion," he authored a dry law modeled on the Maine law, which was rejected by Illinois voters in a special referendum on June 4, 1855. He was also alleged to have authored and signed a total abstinence pledge in 1846. According to temperance authorities, Lincoln was reluctant to sign the 1862 whiskey tax that helped fund the Civil War, on grounds it would condone the liquor trade. According to a temperance leader who spoke with him on the day of his assassination, Lincoln predicted that the next great question after slavery would be abolition of the traffic in legalized liquor.

I'm sorry to say that the Lincoln quote seems bogus, since I had it printed on California NORML's matchbooks. It's so good, I feel tempted to quote it as "attributed to Lincoln."

Abe Lincoln's dad worked at Waddie Boone's Knob Creek distillery. When they moved to Indiana Thomas Lincoln took a partial payment for his Kentucky farm in whiskey. The Lincoln's were a famous whiskey making family.

In 1832, Abe Lincoln and William Berry applied to the state for a retail liquor license and opened a tavern in New Salem. Lincoln lived in the back room. Later, Lincoln and Berry bought two more taverns. Lincoln continued in the tavern business until he became a lawyer in 1837 and moved to Springfield. He never joined a temperance society, but he personally did not drink except for an occasional "drop of champagne, just to be civil." He preached against the evils of alcohol, but advocated education, not government regulation.

The 1840 quote is typical Abraham Lincoln. He needed the support of the temperance society to win the vote and abolish slavery. In Lincoln's time, the temperance movement was about temperance, (moderation) not prohibition. Total prohibition of alcoholic beverages only became the movement's goal decades after Lincoln's death.

Abraham Lincoln would never have supported prohibition.
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