John
Pierce St. John was born in 1833. He became a lawyer in Kansas
City and a leading figure in the Republican
Party. St. John's father had been an alcoholic and from an early
age was active in the temperance movement
and eventually joined the Prohibition
Party.
In
1879 St. John was elected governor of Kansas. Four years later he
succeeded in making Kansas the first state to outlaw alcohol by constitutional
amendment. This action made him the hero of the temperance movement
and in 1884 the Prohibition Party
chose
St. John as their presidential candidate.
St.
John won only 150,369 votes in the election but it was a great improvement
on previous candidates. He also took valuable votes from the Republican
Party candidate, James Blaine, and
helped Grover Cleveland of the Democratic
Party to win victory. Cleveland was the first Democrat to become
president since the Civil War. One
newspaper described him as a "Judas Iscariot" and Republicans
in over a hundred towns burned his effigy.
John
Pierce St. John
died in 1916.
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