19191776 Club
Congress overrides Wilson; the Volstead Act becomes law despite his veto
The same day Wilson rejects it, both chambers vote again and the enforcement law for Prohibition stands.
Nine months after the Eighteenth Amendment banned liquor on paper, the country still had no law to enforce it. On October 28, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson vetoed the Volstead Act, the bill written to give that ban teeth. Congress overrode him the same day, and the measure, named for Minnesota congressman Andrew Volstead and drafted by Anti-Saloon League attorney Wayne Wheeler, became law. It defined any drink over 0.5 percent alcohol as intoxicating and set the penalties Prohibition would run on…
