USA > Maine > Biographical encyclopedia of Maine of the nineteenth century > Part 13
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both branches of the Legislature, of " An Act in relation to the sale of intoxicating liquors," which prohibited such sales under severe penalties, and gave an unrestricted right to scarch all places for evidence of such sale, under warrant from any justice of the peace, issued upon a complaint in writing, stating the belief of the complainants that liquors were sold in violation of the law. This act was vetoed by Governor Dana, who returned it to the next Legislature with the objection, among others, that it allowed the search of private residences and upon process issued without any sufficient proof. He characterized the bill as "an ill-digested outrage upon almost every right of our citizens;" stated that he regarded it as a truism that the community could not be compelled to be temperate ; that it was generally admitted that intemperance had increased under the Act of 1846, and that the system of legislation, of which the bills in question were part, was objectionable, because it cultivated a general disrespect and disregard of laws which could not be enforced. " Is it not time," he asked, "to pause and candidly consider whether the whole system is not founded in entire ignorance or disregard of the motives which universally control human actions? And if thus radically wrong, whether it can be so perfected in detail as to produce favorable results."
In May, 1851, the act passed both Houses in a form greatly extended and elaborated. It contained some safeguards against the unwarrantable search of dwellings, but the search and seizure clauses and the penalties for violations of the law were rigorously drawn. The sentiment in favor of the law had been steadily growing ; its substance was desired by a large part of the voting population of the State, and legislators had been chosen with a view to its passage. While neither one of the controlling political parties was yet prepared to pronounce in favor of the law, neither was prepared to take a positive stand against it It was believed that not a few prominent Democrats, who were opposed to it, voted in the Legislature for its passage ; under belief that it would be vetoed, as it was known that Governor Hubbard had expressed his view that the act of 1849 should not have become a law; but his approval was the result to which Governor Dana's argu- ment had brought him.
Governor Hubbard, on the 2d of June, approved the "Act for the suppression of drinking-houses and tippling-shops," and it became a law.
While he had some doubts as to the result in the form adopted, he was in favor of the object which it sought to accomplish. His view upon the subject was that a clear majority of the people desired the law and were entitled to have it, and that he had no right to veto it for party or personal considerations. "Two sessions of the Legislature," he said, "have been occupied since the veto of the preceding act in discussing and maturing the subject. It passed both Houses at the recent session by a vote of about two thirds. It could not, then, be looked upon as of that description of hasty and inconsiderate legislation which alone can authorize the interposition of the veto power-a power at all
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times somewhat arbitrary, and one which the Constitution did not contemplate as a part of the ordinary process of legislation."
His view of the subject was further expressed in answer to communications addressed to the various candidates in the gubernatorial contest of 1852 by committees appointed at the various temperance conventions held that year, and in his address to the temperance convention held at Augusta, over which he presided. "The Maine Law," he said, "is the law of the people, deliberately matured by them through a series of years, and enacted by the only organ authorized by the constitution and the spirit of our Government to trans- form the wishes of the people into law-the Senate and the House of Representatives in Legislature assembled-by overwhelming majorities. It is a constitutional law. I am prepared to enforce it as it now stands, and am opposed to its repeal until it shall have had a fair trial before the people. I have always approved the object of this law, 'the suppression of drinking-houses and tippling-shops,' and am therefore opposed to any amendments which would impair its efficiency ; while I am, nevertheless, of the opinion that it is susceptible of amendments that would not only not impair its efficiency, but would render it easier of execution and more efficient." He considered it matter for deep regret, however, that a law involving a question of moral reform should have been unnecessarily and rashly drawn-as this law was at that time-into the arena of party politics to subserve selfish purposes. No question of morals, he thought, could, under the complication of motives arising from such a contest, receive that impartial consideration which should secure its success upon its own merits. There could, he said, be no doubt that the people, through their representatives, have the right to enact a law to abate or suppress so monstrous a scourge as intemperance. And there could be as little doubt that the law in question was, in its main scope, within the limit of their constitutional power. That this law had, on the whole, done good, could not, he thought, be denied by any candid and* observing person. It would seem to have been owing to a forced construction and rash application of it that complaints had arisen. The object, he said, "the suppression of drink- ing-houses and tippling-shops," must surely meet the approbation of every well-ordered mind, and the execution of it, confined to such object and within the limits of construction given it by the judiciary, could certainly have given no offence to any one whose opinions were worthy of regard. The mischief, he said, had been that too much was, by some, expected of it. It had been construed and applied in a manner to interfere with the private concerns and every-day business of society ; to intrude upon the secrets of families and enter the sacred precincts of the domestic fireside. It had been thought capable of purifying the motives and controlling the habits of man. "An egregious mistake ! Human laws can for the most part control only the overt acts of men, by giving the proper warning and affixing due penalties to such acts as shall conflict with the general good of society. To purify the heart, to correct the motives, to change the vicious habits
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of mankind and direct every action into the unruffled channel of public and private good, can be consummated only by the divine precepts and influences of the Author of our faith."
The law, in modified form, continues in force in Maine, and laws of similar purport now exist in many of our States where formerly intemperance was conspicuous. Governor Hubbard also was among the first to suggest as a means for checking intem- perance, that sellers of drams should be held directly responsible for damages caused by the sale. This remedy has with good results been provided by the laws of many of the States.
During the period of Governor Hubbard's administration the national question which overshadowed all others was slavery extension.
It was in 1850 that Congress was occupied in discussing the vital issues raised by the application of California for admission to the union of States, and in debating what are known as the slavery compromises and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. These matters of national consequence were all-important to the several States, and it is of interest to know the attitude of their chief magistrates.
Governor Hubbard's course was consistent with the views he had always entertained. In his first message to the Legislature he expressed them as follows: "It is our distin- · guished prerogative, under Divine Providence, to shape our own destinies as individuals and as States. Here, for the first time in the history of the civilized world, is every man allowed to enjoy his natural rights. We establish our forms of government ; we enact our own laws. If we pervert or abuse this high prerogative, we are criminal or foolish. If we do not transmit such blessings to posterity, we are ungrateful to our fathers and unjust to our children." Referring to the institution of slavery, he said it is "so palpable and flagrant an invasion of natural rights as to excite abhorrence, and to insure its eventual overthrow."
He suggested that further legislation upon the exciting subject of slavery extension was unnecessary and might be pernicious, in view of the fact that the opinions and wishes of the State upon this all-absorbing subject had been too frequently and freely expressed to be misunderstood ; that Maine was ably and faithfully represented in both branches of the National Legislature ; that instructions to her representatives through the State Legislature might not express the opinions of the people, which find their best expression upon subjects for legislative action at the ballot-box.
His second Message referred to the compromises of 1850, as an adjustment not such as either party had desired, but a compromise, the most satisfactory to both parties which, under the circumstances, could be obtained. He counselled obedience to the law, and dissented from the argument that the "higher law" of conscience enjoined disobedience or resistance. With its opponents he held that the law of God is always of paramount
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authority ; but he pointed out the danger of accepting as the law of God the variable standard of individual conscience.
Conscience, he said, is not infallible, nor does it always reflect the will of God. The conscience of one age becomes the derision of the next. The conscience of one man impels him to do what the conscience of another man under the same circumstances impels him to forbear. "It was conscience," he said, "which impelled the Catholic to torture and burn the Protestant-which impelled the Protestant in his turn to persecute the Catholic. The enlightened Hale could conscientiously thank God that he had been permitted to order a witch to execution, and to be instrumental in the extirpation of witchcraft. And the pious Las Casas believed he was acting in obedience to the higher law while he was laboring to establish the African slave-trade and to fasten upon this continent the curse of African slavery.
" This man," he said, "would rescue his fellow-man from bondage, be the conse- quences to all others what they might. In the accomplishment of an object so desirable he would put at defiance the law and the Constitution. That man would uphold every clause of the Constitution, and would deem it dishonest to throw off the obligations devolved upon him by any contract after he had enjoyed the benefits which it conferred ; and especially would he deem it madness to abrogate a contract involving the interests of millions equally with himself entitled to a voice in the premises.
"Our institutions," he said, "are founded on the right of the majority to control ; limited and restrained by the provisions of the Constitution. ... The controlling will. . is the voice of the majority manifested through the ballot-box. Every man is allowed to en- tertain his own opinions, to promulgate and enforce them upon the convictions of others. Every measure of government he has an unquestioned right to canvass and discuss : by argument, by invective, by ridicule, to render it odious, if he can, to the power who may modify or abrogate it at their pleasure. But when he goes one step further and claims the right to determine for himself whether he will obey the law or resist its execution, he claims that which no government can concede and exist.
In 1852 the disruption of party ties was beginning. The independent action of Governor Hubbard upon the subject of the Maine Law aroused against him the violent opposition of its enemies in his own party.
His action in reference to the public lands concentrated in opposition to his re-election a powerful interest embarked in their appropriation to private lumbering operations. His. hostility to the institution of slavery alienated the pronounced pro-slavery men of his party. The consequence was a division of the Democratic ranks, and his nomination was bitterly opposed in the Democratic State Convention of 1852.
Writing to him on this subject a friend of national reputation said : "There is a class of men who have acted toward you more like fiends than men ; and not satisfied with that,
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they now seem determined to give the State into the hands of the Whigs?" Governor Hubbard, however, received the nomination of his party in the Convention of 1852, but the disaffected members held a separate convention and put in nomination a gentleman know as the Anti-Maine-Law candidate.
Governor Hubbard received a large plurality of the popular vote, and indeed a larger number of votes than at either previous election. But as the total vote was- swelled far beyond its usual proportions, and as there were four candidates in the field, he failed by some five thousand votes of a popular majority. The election therefore devolved upon the Legislature, where, by a combination between the Whigs and the disaffected Demo- crats, the Whig candidate, Mr. William G. Crosby, was chosen Governor.
It is to be noted that from this time until 1856, when Hon. Hannibal Hamlin was elected by a decided majority, no Governor of Maine was elected by the people ; though in the mean time Governor Crosby (Whig), Governor Anson P. Morrill (styled " Maine Law Know-nothing"), and Governor Samuel Wells (Democrat), were chosen in succession by ballot in the Legislature. With the exception of Governor Wells, who served during one year only (1856), Maine had no Governor from the Democratic Party from the term of Governor Hubbard until 1879.
Upon retiring from the position of Governor he resumed at once the active practice of his profession, in which he had for years occupied a foremost rank in the State. Indeed he had continued his professional labor during his term of office as far as the discharge of his public duties would allow, and more earnestly than a proper regard for his own health justified.
He maintained his connection with the Democratic Party until the condition of the country during the civil war impelled him in 1864 to cast his vote for President Lincoln. He took no active part, however, in political contests.
In May, 1857, during the Administration of President Buchanan, he was appointed a special agent of the Treasury Department to examine the several custom-houses in the State of Maine, with especial instructions looking to the efficient and economical enforce- ment of the revenue laws. His services in this appointment were so important, that in 1858 they were extended to all the collection districts in the New England States.
In March, 1859, he was appointed by the President, and confirmed by the Senate, as Commissioner under the Reciprocity Treaty concluded between the United States and Her Britannic Majesty, June 5, 1854.
One object of this treaty was to settle disputes and to put an end to collisions in respect to the right of inhabitants of the United States to take fish in the bays, harbors, and creeks of the British Provinces, and to land upon their coasts and shores for the pur- pose of drying nets and curing fish. Differences threatening serious consequences had from time to time arisen between the citizens of the two contracting powers engaged in
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the fisheries, and an effort had been made to exclude American fishermen from all waters within a marine league of the coasts. The treaty conceded to the citizens of either party the right to fish in all places upon the Atlantic coasts of the other, except in rivers and the mouths of rivers, and made provision for the appointment of commissioners to ex- amine and decide upon all such places as were intended by the treaty to be reserved and excluded from the common liberty of fishing.
Governor Hubbard held this position for two years, during which he. made careful examination of the coast-line from Maryland to the northern shore of the St. Lawrence, and joined the commissioner appointed by Great Britain in defining, for the purposes of the treaty, the mouths of the various rivers within those limits. This was the last official position he occupied. The late years of his life were saddened by the events of the war, in which his eldest son lost his life. Upon the questions which preceded the war and led to it, his views have already been given.
He believed before the conflict that the safety of the Republic depended upon the success of the Democratic Party, because in his opinion it was the only National party maintaining the equality of rights and of duties belonging to the separate States. He foresaw that the success of the Republican Party at the polls would probably result in a conflict of forces, and he believed that such a conflict must end in the destruction of the Union. "Would that Congress had supreme control over the whole subject," he said. " Would that they might in an orderly and amicable manner abolish slavery forever, and dispose of the slaves themselves, in a way to promote their happiness and advance them in the scale of civilization. But we must take things as they are, not as we would have them. The Constitution must be obeyed, or we are no longer a nation." In the Constitution he read the recognition of slavery, and he remembered too that several of the Slave States were admitted to the Union as such during the lifetime and under the sanction of the framers of the Constitution. He thought he saw in the tendency of events the fulfilment of Mr. Jefferson's fears.
The forecast was correct-of all save the final result of the conflict, and this was to be shaped by. Providence better even than the young and sanguine friends of freedom had dared to hope. And when the conflict came Governor Hubbard did not hesitate where to bestow his sympathies and his influence.
In the election which preceded the war he acted with the party known as the Douglas Democrats. From the first collision between North and South he was firm in his con- viction that for the North the only honorable course was to put forth all its strength, and suppress by force the Southern power that had appealed to the arbitrament of force.
Writing to his son, who had just entered the army, he said : "Greater hardships, privations, and dangers are probably before you, but I know you will meet them like a man. Where duty impels, the burden of labor is greatly lightened. I have only to say,
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Be cautious, be prudent ; brave I know you will be, fearless where duty leads ; and may God be with you !" A letter to the same son, written at the close of 1861, expresses his views, very advanced for the time, as to the use of the slaves in the war. Referring to the Trent affair, and the danger of war with England, then thought to be imminent, he wrote :
"The contest would appear to be a more formidable one, and our chance of bringing it to a suc- cessful issue in the re-establishment of the Government more doubtful. I am, however, by no means certain it would be so. It would, as a matter of necessity in my judgment, run immediately into a servile war-a war for the extermination of slavery. The slaves would be armed and disciplined, and made free. And this right as well as necessity would demand, for in such a contest for our own liberties and independence, a contest for the maintenance of a government for ourselves and for posterity, we are bound to use all the legitimate means that God and nature have put into our hands. . . . Let Great Britain join the South, and let the war be waged by us to destroy slavery, and the hollowness of her pretensions will be made apparent to the civilized world. She would be stripped of her mask, and self-interest be demonstrated to be the motive of her policy, as it always has been. We should prob- ably then gain alliances and aid from other quarters."
The death of this son, who fell in the first assault upon Port Hudson in May, 1863, was a sorrow the father, then advanced in years, could never wholly conquer. He lived, indeed, to see the success in arms of the North, but not the complete results of the war in the re-establishment of the present harmonious relations between North and South, and the great material development of the Southern country. His death occurred February 6, 1869, and its manner was fitting the course of his life.
Though age and some infirmities of body had caused him to forego the severest toils of his laborious profession, he still went daily to visit the sick where vicinity permitted and the severity of the case required his experience and skill. The day before his death he had made such a professional call, and if his life had continued a few hours longer he would have repeated it. He was suffering at the time from a severe cold threatening congestion, and on the morning of his death stated in answer to inquiries of his wife that he was as sick as onc could be and live. It had been his custom through life never to forego his work for his own indisposition. Twice in his earlier years he had continued his daily avocations while suffering from fractured bones-the result of accident-without omitting work for a day, while his healing progressed. On the morning of his death he went from his house to his office-near at hand-to make preparation for the work of the day. While there he was overcome with vertigo resulting from defective circulation induced by his disease, and fell to the floor. His daughter came to his aid, and was presently. joined by friends. One suggested that a doctor should be called. He understood what was said, and understood his own case, and answered, "No : keep the doctors away." Presently a friend suggested that he should be lifted from the floor and carried to his house. "Let me lie
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Hoffe and on
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here while life lasts," he said; and there, in the place where for many years he had minis- tered to the diseases of others, his own life ended. He died with his head on his daughter's lap, and as his eyes grew dim she heard him calmly utter his final question, " Are you still there ?"
This brief sketch shows his character better, perhaps, than any studied analysis might do. His temperament was judicial rather than partisan or aggressive. His disposition was to maintain rather than gain. He was formed to be a bulwark of society, rather than an originator of new social methods. His career presents few phases to captivate the imagi- nation, but it illustrates the strength, solidity, and justice which constitute high character in the individual and safety for the State.
In person Governor Hubbard was a man of impressive appearance-six feet two inches in height, erect and well formed, with large head, black hair and eyes, and a com- manding presence. His tastes and habits were simple, and democratic in the best sense of that word. He was fond of books, and in his latest years found recreation in reviewing the classical studies of his youth and in extended reading of Greek and Latin authors. His most prominent traits were his absolute love of justice and his courageous adherence to his convictions of right.
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NDERSON, HUGH JOHNSTON, ex-Governor, was born in Wiscasset, Maine, May 10, 1801.
His father, John Anderson, was a native of County Down, in Ireland, and his grandfather, also John Anderson, was a prominent and influential member of the Scotch Protestant colony in that section of the county.
John Anderson, the father of the subject of this memoir, married in 1789, and started immediately with his bride for the New World in the West, toward which the adventurous and aspiring spirit everywhere. was already turning. Two of his brothers had preceded him-his brother Frank settling in Belfast, Maine, and becoming a prominent merchant there, and his brother William in Savannah : the latter was a physician, and successfully practised his profession in the city of his adoption, for a number of years, until carried off by one of the epidemics common to that region.
It was originally, the intention of John, to go to Savannah, from which place his brother William was writing the most glowing accounts ; but landing in Wiscasset in the spring, he was induced to remain through the summer, during which time he saw enough of the natural advantages of Wiscasset to convince him that it was destined to become a large and prosperous city, and that it offered inducements for business greater than he
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could hope to find in the South. At that time Wiscasset was one of the most important towns in New England. Its harbor was unsurpassed, and, in addition to a profitable and prosperous West-India trade, it carried on a large general commercial traffic, both foreign and domestic. It had accumulated wealth, and was the seat of a refined and cultivated society, possessing to an unusual degree that freedom from provincial prejudice and that catholicity of sentiment which always characterize a community fostered and enriched by commercial enterprise. Here the young adventurer concluded to settle-a conclusion he was helpcd to by the predilection which his wife had already formed. She had been care- fully and tenderly reared, and she doubtless found in the social atmosphere of Wiscasset a warmth and congeniality which at once won her heart.
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