... distilled liquor in doing their farmwork the ensuing season. Organized societies of a similar kind began to be formed in 1811, and in 1826 the first public temperance society was organized in the United States . The total abstinence principle was not adopted until 1836, when a national convention held at Saratoga, N. Y., took that higher stand. The Washingtonian Society, the first formed on total-abstin...