the days before presidential elections every six years. United States Prohibition in the United States focused on the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages; exceptions were made for medicinal and religious uses. Alcohol consumption was never illegal under federal law. Nationwide Prohibition did not begin in the United States until January 1920, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. The 18th amendment was ratified in 1919, and was repealed in December 1933 with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment. Concern over excessive alcohol consumption began during the American colonial era, when fines were imposed for drunken behavior and for selling liquor without a license. In the mid-19th century evangelical Protestants denounced drinking as sinful and demanded the prohibition of the sale of beer, wine and liquor. Apart from Maine, they had limited success until the early 20th century. By the 1840s the temperance movement was actively encouraging individuals to immediately stop drinking. However, the issue of slavery, and then the Civil War, overshadowed the temperance movement until the 1870s. Prohibition was a major reform movement from the 1870s until the 1920s, when nationwide prohibition went into effect. It was supported by evangelical Protestant churches, especially the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Congregationalists, Quakers, and Scandinavian Lutherans. Opposition came from Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans. The Women's Crusade of 1873 and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), founded in 1874, were means through which certain women organized and demanded political action, well before they were granted the vote. The WCTU and the Prohibition Party were major players until the 20th century, when the Anti-Saloon League emerged as the movement's leader. By 1913, 9 states had statewide prohibition and 31 others had local option laws in effect. The League then turned their efforts toward attaining a constitutional amendment and grassroots support for nationwide prohibition. The German American community was the base of the beer industry and became a pariah when the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917. A new constitutional amendment passed Congress in December 1917 and was ratified by the states in 1919. It prohibited "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof." On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, known as the Volstead Act, to implement the new 18th Amendment. After a year's required delay, national prohibition began on January 16,