The “morally shaky” business model of the 1890s saloons, backed by the so-called liquor trust, was falling into disfavor, and the alcohol question was “mucking up” the political alliances of an old-South governor at the close of Reconstruction.
One state went dry, another made money.
The story of the North Augusta Dispensary is one that pulls from numerous taps, and it’s a story that easily captured Michael Lewis.
Lewis is an associate professor of sociology at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va. He’s also a Historical Sociologist by training. As he put it, “I look for big patterns across history and try to understand how those patterns work.”
Which is what brought him to South Carolina, first to Columbia and then to North Augusta.
The Coming of Southern Prohibition by Michael Lewis tells the story of the North Augusta Dispensary, also featured on the book’s cover.
Elizabeth Hustad/Staff
The Coming of Southern Prohibition, published in 2016, was written over about four years, and the whole thing started, Lewis said, when someone nudged him that the