The Fatal Journey of a Young Man ~ from the drawing room to the gallows (c1882)

The Mississippi of Intemperance

Click image to enlarge

The broadside’s central image is a map of the Mississippi of Intemperance, fed by among others Cider Run, Tobacco Creek and the Beer and Whisky Rivers—the intoxicants becoming stronger as one moves downstream. After passing through Warners Rapids and tumbling over Delirium Tremens Falls, the river spills its victims into the Gulf of Despair, where they are watched over by a horde of nasty-looking demons. Surrounding the map are twelve numbered panels showing the fatal journey of a young man down the fatal river, propelled by drink from the drawing room to bars, billiard halls and gambling dens, and then on to illness, despair, murder, imprisonment and the gallows.

Note: The narrative panels begin at center top, go down the right side to bottom center. Then jump to upper left and progress to lower left.

The poster was available for sale no later than August 1882, with Tracy apparently relying on a network of distributors. For instance:

“Dr. Tracy’s lithographic pictures “The Mississippi of Intemperance” have arrived and subscribers can obtain them at A. D. Henderson’s shoe store. The price is one dollar, and parties desiring extra copies can procure them.” (Waukesha (Wisconsin) Daily Freeman, Aug. 18, 1882, p. 8)

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N. W. Tracy
The glow of virtue around N. W. Tracy’s speechifying may have obscured a complex and perhaps even unsavory personality.

Tracy may have begun his career as a seller of patent medicines: Later in life, as will be seen, one paper described him as a “retired patent nostrum lecturer.” Indeed, in the years 1871-5, someone of the same name is pushing “California Vegetable Tincture and Blood Searcher” in The Weekly Marysville (Ohio) Tribune and The South Bend (Indiana) Tribune (See for example The South Bend (Indiana) Tribune for November 14, 1874, p. 4.)

The first possible mention of him is in April 1875, when an N. W. Tracy “of New York” assumed ownership of the Wallace House billiard hall and restaurant in Sterling, Illinois, with the stated intent that the place “be conducted on strict temperance principles.” (Sterling (Illinois) Gazette, Apr. 21, 1875, p. 3.) In any event, our Tracy was on the lecture circuit by 1879 at the latest, when an article grants him the honorific “Dr.,” mentions him speaking in Minnesota and describes him as follows: “The doctor is a Murphy [i.e., Temperance] convert, and has had a varied experience. He has known the lowest depths of a drunkard’s degradation, and is said to rival Gough in the fervor of his eloquence.” (Decatur (Illinois) Daily Republican, July 30, 1879, p. 3.) He traveled and lectured for fully four decades, and during that period received literally thousands of newspaper mentions in connection with engagements throughout the Midwest and as far afield as Durham, North Carolina and Ithaca, New York.

Somewhere along the line Tracy married, divorced, and remarried, though the second marriage seems not to have been entirely successful: In October 1889 his sons Roy (14) and Bob (12) were picked up in Lima, Ohio, having run away from home. According to a report–“Reform the Reformer”–in the Democratic Northwest and Henry County News of Napoleon, Ohio, the boys

“could not bear the treatment they were subjected to at home, arising from domestic complications. Their own mother is married again to another man; and their father to another woman, who continually found fault with them, and procured them beatings they considered both cruel and unjust.” (Democratic Northwest and Henry County News (Napoleon, Ohio), Oct. 10, 1889, p. 8)

An 1890 article in the same paper is also of interest. Under the title “Tracy, the Fakir. Store-Box Orator and Patent Medicine Vender [sic],” he is described as a “temperance evangelist and retired patent nostrum lecturer,” who fell in a dispute with his landlady and, “swearing like a trooper,” attempted to skip town without paying. Worse still,

“The “Doctor” had trouble with the ladies of the W. C. T. U. which resulted in the closing of the doors of the Congregational Church upon him. When the collection was to be disposed of one night he emptied the hat into his capacious overcoat pocket and when the ladies asked for their per centage they got $000,000,00. On account of this the church was closed to him…” (Democratic Northwest and Henry County News (Napoleon, Ohio), Apr. 17, 1890, p. 8)

In fairness, both these articles appeared in the same local newspaper, and are the only two negative mentions of Tracy in the hundreds of articles I have examined. As a prominent Temperance evangelist he would likely have had numerous detractors and enemies among the “wets,” and it is possible one or both of these articles were planted by someone seeking to smear his name. ~ Boston Rare Maps

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Title: Dr. N.W. Tracy's illustrated lecture. "The Mississippi of intemperance" / Shober & Carqueville Litho Co., Chicago.

Contributor Names: Shober & Carqueville, lithographer

Created / Published: [Chicago] : [Shober & Carqueville Litho Co.]

Date: c1882 Aug. 12.

Library of Congress: 2003677764