Bloomington Mayor Franklin Price was front and center during the wild and wooly summer of 1855 when temperance toughs battled saloon men over the sale of whiskey.

Price was a relative newcomer, having fled Cincinnati and a cholera epidemic, arriving here in May 1849 with a wife and two children.

Elected Bloomington's sixth mayor in 1855, Price won reelection the following year (back then, mayoral terms were only one year). He was the city's first two-term mayor.

The mid-1850s was a period of profound change. The first railroads (the Illinois Central and what would become the Chicago & Alton) reached the city in 1853, spurring urbanization. Between 1850 and 1855, the city's population increased from 1,600 to more than 5,000. Many were European immigrants who brought traditions tied to the use of drink, whether it was whiskey (Irish) or beer (Germans).

Temperance was the great reform movement in antebellum America. Price joined the Temple of Honor, a temperance-oriented secret fraternal organization. Some in this society were also members of the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic American (or "Know Nothing") Party.

Price, according to one source, was county chairman of the Know Nothings.

It's not surprising that native Protestants clashed with foreign-born newcomers, many of whom were Catholic. Price said the railroad boom "brought a different class" to Bloomington, transforming a "well-behaved" citizenry into one rougher around the edges.

Before the 1855 election, the city council passed a "Jacksonville ordinance" (named for the Morgan County community), designed to suppress the sale of spirits and malt liquor. Most alcohol sales were banned, making Bloomington, for all intents and purposes, a dry community.

Price ran as an "anti-license" candidate, one who supported the Jacksonville ordinance and opposed the issuance of liquor licenses. Despite his election, many saloon owners continued to publicly dispense good cheer by the glass, thumbing their noses at attempts to restrict their liberty. Temperance and Know Nothing "rectifiers" harassed saloon owners and their patrons, and the ensuing war of words, fisticuffs and legal challenges became known as the "Whiskey Insurrection."

On July 9, Price investigated a saloon "running wide open" on Front Street.

"I deliberately walked into the barroom and discovered a whiskey mill in full working order," he recalled years later. A belligerent barkeep had strong words for Price and sucker-punched him as he left.

Know Nothings retaliated. "Three groceries, or groggeries, were assaulted, about 11 o'clock by a mob of men and boys, with stones, axes and crow-bars," reported The Pantagraph. Six or seven barrels of liquor were destroyed, and rectifiers and the saloon element exchanged gunfire during an assault on Tom Maloney's "doggery."

Price ordered the city marshal to gather a posse and seize liquor from open establishments. Receiving special attention from city officials and temperance rowdies was a business run by William Reynolds and Asahel Fuller, who rectified (added flavoring and other adulterations) to alcohol. The city marshal confiscated liquor loaded onto wagons for transport outside the city, where the plan was to ferret away the barrels and kegs and leave the disposal to a court of law.

Just outside city limits, the wagons were met by a group of temperance and Know Nothing supporters disguised as baseball players. Price recalled the "barrels, boxes, bottles, etc., were smashed by axes and other implements and the liquors washed the Prairie." The losses numbered 50 barrels each of brandy, gin, vinegar and cherry bounce, as well as 50 casks each of "highwines," brandy, gin and whiskey.

The Whiskey Insurrection then moved from the street to the courtroom.

Reynolds and Fuller, represented by Asahel Gridley of Bloomington, sued for $2,000. The city retained Abraham Lincoln, who involved himself in similar whiskey cases in several other Central Illinois counties. Though a teetotaler, Lincoln represented both temperance and saloon interests during his legal career.

"The excitement was intense, and the court room was crowded during the entire progress of the trial," recalled Park E. Temple, writing in 1874.

A jury found Price innocent but two others guilty and awarded Reynolds and Fuller $600 in damages.

Bloomington residents (apparently tired of the temperance battles) voted to repeal the Jacksonville ordinance and adopt a "license system." The emerging Republican Party continued to absorb northern Know Nothings as the struggle against the expansion of slavery eclipsed anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic sentiment. Temperance remained an off-and-on crusade in Bloomington into the early 20th century.