nl_e17

Powell, "President's Opening Address," 1896
Document 19: Excerpts from Aaron M. Powell, "The President's Opening
Address," in The National Purity Congress, Its Papers, Addresses, Portraits
(New York: American Purity Alliance, 1896), pp. 1-7.
Introduction
In 1893, the New York Committee for the Suppression of Legalized Vice and
the WCTU organized a National Purity Congress at the 1893 Chicago Columbian
Exposition. (See "How Did African-American Women Define Their Citizenship at the
Chicago World's Fair in 1893?" also on this website.) The success of that first
congress led purity reformers to form a new national organization, the American
Purity Alliance, and to convene another National Purity Congress in Baltimore in
1895. The congresses broadened the appeal and increased the popularity of purity
reform, and made the social purity movement a mass movement.[15] Aaron Macy
Powell, as president of the new national purity group, gave the Presidential
Address, which emphasized the continuing importance in the larger purity program
of campaigns to raise the age of consent.
NATIONAL PURITY CONGRESS
__________
THE FIRST SESSION.
__________
THE PRESIDENT'S OPENING ADDRESS.
__________
BY AARON M. POWELL, OF NEW YORK, PRESIDENT
AMERICAN PURITY ALLIANCE.
We meet on this occasion in the First National Purity Congress
held under the auspices of the American Purity Alliance. Our objects in
convening this Congress are, the repression of vice, the prevention of
its regulation by the State, the better protection of the young, the
rescue of the fallen, to extend the White Cross work among men, and
to proclaim the law of Purity as equally binding upon men and women.
Purity is fundamental in its importance to the individual, to the
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