USA > Maine > Biographical encyclopedia of Maine of the nineteenth century > Part 33
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Dr. Shepard's severity of denunciation, tenderness in pleading, decisive, prompt, and fearless utterance, repeatedly induced his friends to compare him to the prophet Elijah. In one of his own sermons on this grand and rugged minister, he unconsciously drew a par- allel between Elijah and himself. He remarked that "the men who have had the qualities to impress and bless the world have commonly come up from obscurity. They have strug- gled with hardships and have made themselves-or rather God has had the ordering, and has made them, and they show the marks of His workmanship. How obvious and com- mon a truth, that the overwhelming mass of reliable and useful, influential, and controlling men of the world have had this sort of origin !"
Professor Harris, one of Dr. Shepard's colleagues at Bangor for a number of years, in a memorial discourse on Dr. Pond paid an eloquent and glowing tribute to the memory of the departed Professor of Sacred Rhetoric. He described him as " a man of massive form and massive majesty of movement ; strong, yet with the simplicity of a child; mighty in
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condensing thought, as the energies of a storm are sometimes condensed into a single burst of lightning, thunder, and rain ; his countenance becoming luminous in the moments of his intensest ardor in public speech ; with life-long earnestness for high and noble ends, glow- ing with flameless anthracite heat."
Professor Talcott, in the beautiful peroration of his discourse delivered soon after Dr. Shepard's death, eloquently sets forth the living and posthumous influence of a life so laborious and devoted as his had been in the following language :
"Not only did our brother do a blessed work in life which can never be undone, but he is working still, working widely, working mightily, and will continue to work as long as the world shall stand. His was pre-eminently a moulding influence, and it was largely exerted upon those whose business it was to exert a moulding influence upon others. To say nothing of the self-propagating influences toward all good that may have been set in operation through the peculiar opportunities he had of preaching far and wide; when we consider in how many seminaries besides our own he labored, and at how many different times, and often in contact with large classes of young ministers-there is no extravagance in affirming that he is now giving character continually to the form in which the Gospel is presented to thousands upon thousands in every region of the globe. Not only among English-speaking races, but to multitudes upon whom his most impassioned exhortations would have been spent without effect, he speaks continually through those who have learned from him to speak with power. In Arabic, Turkish, and Armenian; in the tongues of Hindostan and China; and in savage dialects first reduced to writing by his pupils-words that to him would have been unmeaning, are every Sabbath and every week-day wrought into new and more expressive combinations, and convey the message of salvation with a more commanding energy because he has lived and taught. The wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke will be transmitted. And it well may be that, long ages hence, the dwellers on the steppes of Asia, as they hear in their own tongues the wonderful works of God, and are moved to holy reverence and trust and love, while all unable to trace the origin of that inspiration which makes old familiar words to fall upon their ears with such strange power, will have reason, though they know it not, to be thankful for the grace that was poured into the lips of one that sleeps on the banks of the Penobscot."
Dr. George Shepard was married to Lydia, daughter of Dr. Josiah Fuller, a promi- nent physician of Plainfield, Connecticut. Eight children-four boys and four girls- were the fruit of their union. Five of these are still living.
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JOW, NEAL, of Portland, Maine; father of the Maine Law, and the great leader of the Temperance Reform. Born in Portland on the 20th of March, 1804. He is a descendant, on his father's side, in the seventh generation from Henry Dow, who came to this country from Norfolk, England, in 1637 ; and on his mother's side from Christopher Hall; who came from England in 1645.
Josiah Dow, father of Neal Dow, was born in Deering, New Hampshire, and moved to Portland in 1797. He was an influential member of the Society of Friends, and carried on the business of tanning. He was repeatedly honored by his fellow-citizens in municipal affairs, and trusted in places of responsibility and influence in the business enterprises of Portland, where he spent all his active life and declining years. He lived to be ninety-five years and nine months old, retaining his faculties almost unimpaired until within three days of his death.
All the material needful to the making of a first-class man was present in Neal from his birth. Observant, reflective, judicious, and constantly associated with business men, he received that development of his native powers which best fitted him for the prominent, philanthropic, and patriotic part he was destined to play in the future political and social affairs of the United States. During his early years he devoured with intense zest the best general literature of the times, assimilated it and utilized it, and has since made his pro- ficiency apparent to all. The habit then contracted has been uniform to the present hour. His extensive, carefully selected, and well-worn library attests the diligence with which he has sought knowledge ; and the military, literary, and legislative history of his country shows how admirably he has applied it to the attainment of the best ends.
In the business of his father's calling he was no less thorough. His mastery of principles, applications, and details was complete. The success of his operations throughout active secular life was uniformly in harmony with entire control of his honorable art. Mr. Dow soon acquired the reputation of unusually sound judgment in commercial affairs ; and had he devoted himself exclusively to acquisition, either in manufacturing, railroad con- struction, commerce, or finance, there can be little or no doubt that his singular abilities would have commanded conspicuous success. His own countrymen and the citizens of other lands are thoroughly familiar with his fame as the great banner-bearer of prohibitory liquor legislation, and as one so intimately identified with the temperance reform, that the thought of one suggests the thought of the other ; but only a limited circle of acquaintances is cognizant of his uncommon business aptitude and splendid administrative genius. Thousands of superficial thinkers have hastily leaped to the conclusion that one so daring in project and far-reaching in aim must necessarily be visionary, unpractical, and fanatical ;
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Neal Down
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but those who know the zealous reformer are fully aware of the fact that his information is : exhaustive, his judgment the soundest, his methods the most available and effective, in view of the grandly Christian ends he has always kept in view.
Neal Dow's beneficent life presents itself to the study of contemporaries and successors in three different departments, namely, the civil, the military, and the reformatory. The civil first claims our attention ; the military and, far more than the military, the reformatory, deserves the closest scrutiny. From early manhood, during all those years which most men feel justified in devoting to their personal pecuniary interests, to the present moment- when at over fourscore years he furnishes an instance of mental and bodily vigor rarely paralleled-has he regarded no personal sacrifice, either of time or money, too great which should measurably contribute to the advancement of the cause with which his name will be identified for all time. Nor has he been inactive or unsuccessful as a business man ; but in the modicum of time which his devotion to the temperance movement would enable him to devote to his private business, has accumulated a handsome property, and ranks among the wealthier residents of his native city. Becoming a partner, on attaining his majority, with his father in the tanning business, he retained an interest in it until 1875. General Dow has also been identified with many of the business enterprises of Portland, in which his advice has always been highly prized. He was for a long time a director in the Manu- facturers and Traders' Bank, in the Portland Company, in the Androscoggin and Kennebec Railroad Company, the Portland Manufacturing Company, and the National Traders' Bank ; also a trustee of the Maine Savings Bank, and President of the Portland Gas Light Company.
Though Mr. Dow has always taken a lively interest in all questions of public mo- ment, and kept himself thoroughly informed upon all political topics, presenting his views upon them through the press and upon the platform, he had no special taste for political life. His positive convictions, his entire reliance on his own judgment as to what was right, his iron will and great determination,-characteristics all of every great reformer,- unfitted him for the sometimes seemingly devious paths of the politician. He was a Whig during the lifetime of that party, but participated in the organization of the Republican Party, of which he was one of the most influential promoters.
Such official positions as he has held, he accepted more with reference to the opportu- nities thereby presented for aiding more effectively his great life-work than for any other purpose. He has been twice elected Mayor of Portland, and twice represented the city in the State Legislature. Severe contests followed his nominations. It used to be said "that it took more votes to elect and more votes to defeat him than any other man who could be named."
In his younger manhood he was chief engineer of the old volunteer fire-department, then numbering nearly fourteen hundred men. His skill as an engineer and his ability
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to command in that capacity has been preserved as a tradition to this day in his native city, and kept him in that position for many years, without regard to political changes in the body which elected him.
The military episode in General Dow's marvellously influential life is worthy of more than passing notice. It also was the outgrowth of his strong, sensible, and noble principles, his self-consecration to the welfare of humanity, his abhorrence of slavery, and his patriotism. The local citizen of true public spirit cannot fail to step boldly into the wider sphere of personal activity, when called thereto by the imperious voice of his country's nced and the glory of his people's God. After the war for the preservation of the National Union began, he was efficiently active in securing pecuniary aid for the State ; thus enabling Maine to respond promptly to the call of the National Government. Not only that, but he himself entered the arena as a combatant. Recruiting was very dull at the close of the year 1861, and Mr. Dow was called upon by Governor Washburn to raise a regiment. This he promptly proceeded to do at an age when most men hesitate to burden their strength with unusual activity. The veteran of moral and social reform proved no less valorous and skilful upon the field of military warfare. Twenty-five hundred men responded to his summons, and constituted the nucleus of several regiments. As Colonel of the Thirteenth Maine Volunteers, Neal Dow-then at the age of fifty-seven- sailcd in the expedition, under General B. F. Butler, against New Orleans. On the voyage thither he suffered shipwreck, but escaped serious injury. Commissioned brigadier-general soon afterward, he was placed in command of the National troops stationed south of New Orleans, was then transferred to the command of Pensacola, and again from that to Carrollton, above New Orleans. In the siege of Port Hudson he took an cffective part ; and at the sanguinary engagement before that place on the 27th of May, 1863, General Dow and his command richly earned the special compliments they received. In the charge led by General Dow his brigade lost in killed and wounded every field-officer and thirty- three per cent of its rank and file ! The brigade camc off the field under the command of
a captain-the highest officer in rank left unhurt. General Dow was wounded twice-once early in the battle, in the right arm, and later was shot through the left leg, which neces- sitated his being taken off the field. General W. T. Sherman, the division commander, whose leg was shot off while he was conversing with General Dow during the advance, afterward sent his special compliments to him, with the statement that in his experience in two wars he had never seen a finer charge, and expressed the belief that if General Dow's brigade had been properly supported it would have entered Port Hudson. The loss of the brigade in this charge shows the desperate nature of the service, and the no less desperate bravery of the men. While convalescing from his wounds, General Dow was captured by the enemy's guerillas, and was a prisoner for nine months, most of the time in Libby Prison. At the expiration of that time he was exchanged for General Fitz Hugh Lee, and returned
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to his home after a continuous absence in the army of three years. He was now over sixty years of age, and the hardships he had endured proved too severe for his constitution. Necessity demanded his resignation, and he never resumed active service. His work in that department, however, was well and nobly done. While in the army, a suit was brought against him in the State courts of Louisiana, based upon alleged depredations committed by troops under his command, but not in his presence. He paid no attention to the summons, and allowed judgment to go against him by default. This judgment was afterward sued in the U. S. Court in Maine. The Government assumed the defence ; Justice Clifford decided against General Dow ; but when the case was argued before and decided by the highest appellate tribunal, General Dow was sustained. This case settled a very important question as to how far military authority could be subordinated to the civil courts in the enemy's country in time of war.
Tried, true, and heroic in the service of his country as General Neal Dow was in the dark days of the Rebellion, he has rendered still more heroic service to it in his warfare against the liquor traffic-a warfare that has been and still is eminently scientific, sober, and successful. In his early manhood there was, as he himself wrote to the Alliance News, "in every city, town, village, and rural district in this State" (Maine) a condition of things in which "every tavern was a rum-hole, and every grocery was a groggery. The immensely valuable pine timber with which the State abounded was sent in great quantities from all our ports to the West Indies; and the returns were almost nothing else than West India rum and molasses, to be distilled into New England rum, and these products of the lumber trade were consumed by our people ; and so our grand forests went down their throats in the form of rum." "The distilling business was very large. In Portland alone were seven distilleries, often running night and day, and at the same time cargoes of West India rum were landed at our wharves. I think I have seen nearly an acre of puncheons of West India rum at one time on our wharves, just landed from ships. . .. At one time a Gorham man told me three fourths of the farms in that town were mortgaged for store debts, which would not have been contracted but for rum. . . . The farmers were all poor, their farms and farm buildings were neglected and dilapidated, and everything about the country as well as about the towns had decided marks of the presence of the drink demon." The Hon. William P. Frye, in a letter to the Chicago Advance, under date of March 19, 1874, said, " Twenty-five years ago, poverty, crime, suffering, and ignorance pre- vailed ; our jails were full, our farm-yards empty ; the landlord rich, his neighbors for miles around poor ; his house well painted, glazed, and blinded, and full of comfort; theirs un- painted, the windows stuffed with rags, the rooms full of nothing but sorrow." Judge Woodbury Davis (" Maine Law Vindicated," p. 7) completes this picture by the words, "Men helplessly drunk in the streets and by the waysides were a common sight ; and at
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elections, at military trainings and musters, and at other public gatherings, there were scenes of debauchery and riot enough to make one ashamed of his race."
All these scenes stirred the intensely emotional nature of Neal Dow to its depths. His opposition to drinking and trafficking in drinks became sternly determined. The fires of his indignation served also to purify his mental vision. He saw that there could be no compromise with so pestilent an evil, and resolved to stamp it-out by every process of equity, instruction, legislation, and force. With all the ardor of youth he had thrown him- self into all the onward movements of the total abstinence adherents. Of compromise with moderate drinking he would none. Too distinctly he perceived that moderate led to im- moderate drinking, and that to the utter ruin of the entire man, and often of his relatives also, to permit himself to parley with or offer terms to so deadly a habit. Cato could not be more deeply convinced of the policy of destroying Carthage than Neal Dow of the necessity and rightfulness of annihilating the rum traffic. Such an aim, in his just estima- tion, was worthy the noblest efforts of the best citizens of his native commonwealth. To that he devoted himself.
Prior to the year 1836 some of the temperance reformers of the State compromised with wine-drinkers, and formed a body entitled "The Maine Temperance Union." This, like all compromises with evil, resulted in injury to their own cause. The experience of this led a multitude of sound thinkers to the adoption of demonstrated truth, and of policy corresponding thereto. Neal Dow from the outset was one of their leaders. In 1837 these advanced reformers made their first appearance in the Legislature of Maine. A memorial drawn up by General James Appleton of Portland (to whom much credit is due) was presented to that body, demanding the abrogation of all license law, " as the support and life of the traffic," and also " an entire prohibition of all sale, except for medicine and the arts." The reason for these demands was stated to be essentially one with that which justifies the State in making laws to "prevent the sale of unwholesome meats, or for the removal of anything which endangers the health and life of the citizen, or which threatens to subvert our civil rights, or overthrow the government."
The Commonwealth of Maine was not then sufficiently enlightened to adopt measures so radical, and Neal Dow, together with his wiser associates, was obliged to labor and to wait. The Washingtonian excitement followed ; beginning in a tippling-house in the city of Baltimore, in 1840. After a hot discussion with the landlord on temperance, the six topers who opposed him formed themselves into a temperance club, which they styled the "Washingtonian Total Abstinence Society," and adopted a pledge requiring total abstinence from the use of all intoxicating liquors. John Hawkins early joined the society, and for eighteen years afterward, to the time of his death, was one of its most eloquent and effective advocates. After his labors in Boston, it was said that " four fifths of all the Bos- ton drunkards had signed the temperance pledge." In 1842 the Washingtonian movement
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was under full headway in New England. John B. Gough was one of thousands captured and saved by it. Hundreds of thousands were induced to sign the pledge. Neal Dow was equal to his opportunities. He not only distinguished himself by his diligence, by lectur- ing, often eight or ten times a week, but by guiding these intensely earnest social forces to the accomplishment of his great ulterior aim-the legal proscription of the liquor traffic.
Mr. Dow courageously seized and. held impregnable ground in his aggressive warfare on the common enemy. He insisted that " if the rum traffic could not be outlawed, no permanent ground could be gained, and that while moral suasion was to be used with the inebriate, the man who effected his ruin must not only no longer be licensed in his horrid work, but must be rooted out and driven from his business by the strong arm of civil power, for it could be done in no other manner."
To the enactment of prohibitory legislation he now consecrated all his richly cultured powers. Neither time nor talent nor funds were spared to rouse the indignation of his fellow-citizens against the atrocious traffic which had corrupted, desolated, and ruined all that lay in its path. Several times during his public labors was Mr. Dow attacked by personal violence. Muscular and active, as well as skilled and courageous, he knew how to defend himself, and did defend himself successfully. His labors resulted in the passage of the first Prohibitory Liquor Law ever enacted in the United States of America. This was in 1846.
Slowly and by wearisome steps had Neal Dow and the prohibitionists climbed to this consummation. As the author of the Maine Law, the name of General Dow is now familiar as a household word to all the people of English-speaking Christendom, and indeed to educated philanthropists of all lands. This famous statute placed the sale of intoxicating liquors, for purposes of indulgence, among the other infamous crimes punishable by fine and imprisonment. It provided for the establishment of an agency, of which the officer in charge was to be appointed by the Governor, for the sale of pure liquors for medicinal, mechanical, and manufacturing purposes. "This agency furnished the town officers or corporation with liquors for such uses, but the sale of intoxicating liquors was prohibited to all others. This law was amended in 1851 so as to confiscate all liquors stored for sale by private parties." It has since been amended to meet the various devices resorted to to evade it : it now provides that "no person shall be allowed at any time to sell by his clerk, servant, or agent, directly or indirectly, any intoxicating liquors, except as herein provided. Ale, porter, strong beer, lager-beer, or other malt liquors, wine, and cider, shall be con- sidered intoxicating liquors, and coming within the meaning of this charge, as well as also distilled spirits ; but this enumeration shall not prevent any other beer, or mixed liquors of any kind, from being considered as intoxicating." Civil-damage clauses, giving the right of suit and recovery at law to persons who have been injured by the sale of intoxicating
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liquors, are also incorporated. The liquors seized are to be forfeited and destroyed by pouring them upon the ground.
Such are some of the more prominent provisions of this celebrated statute, which is drawn up in precise terms and at great length. Prohibitionists regard it as the most per- fect form of statutory prohibition extant. The impress of Neal Dow's knowledge, experi- ence, and legislative genius is manifest in every line. Henceforward he must neccessarily rank with the most influential legislators of history.
Is the law efficacious ? Does it accomplish what the author intended, or is it inoperative as the Pope's bull against the comet ? These are questions that have received an enormous amount of discussion throughout the United States, and in all Anglo-Saxon countries. The answers thereto are naturally colored by the prejudices of respondents. Those of the dealers in intoxicants are least worthy of respect or consideration. Accurate information, coming from persons whose testimony is entitled to the fullest credence, has been collected by Mr. Dow, and given, through many channels, to the world.
It should be borne in mind that, as William P. Frye testified, "when the law was enacted, I have no doubt two thirds of the people were at heart opposed to it." "Now," he adds, "they could not be induced to repeal it." The justification of the last averment is found in the pertinent and convincing evidence of numerous and unexceptionable witnesses. "What," asks Judge Woodbury Davis, "has become of this mass of corruption and disgusting vice, formerly so prevalent in the State? It seems so much like some horrid dream of the past, that we can hardly realize that it was real and visible until twenty years ago. The Maine Law has swept it away forever. No observing man, who has lived in the State for twenty years and has had an opportunity to know the facts, can doubt that the Maine Law has produced a hundred times more visible improvements in the character, condition, and prosperity of our people than any other law that was ever enacted. And notwithstanding the unfaithfulness or timidity of temperance men, the difficulties of enforcing the law, the inadequacy of its penalties, and the effect of the war in retarding its execution, I am convinced, by what I have seen, that it has accomplished an incalculable amount of good." "In one hundred out of four hundred towns of the State it was wholly efficacious" (in his judgment). " In at least two hundred, liquor is sold only by stealth," and in the remaining hundred "the traffic generally shrinks from the public gaze, conscious of its guilt and shame. The condition of things, therefore, even in such places, is far better than ever it was under the license law." In June, 1872, Governor Joshua L. Chamberlain wrote that "the liquor traffic has been greatly repressed and diminished here (in Brunswick) and throughout the State, and in many places has been entirely swept away. The law is as well executed generally in the State as other criminal laws are." To the same effect is the letter of Governor Sidney Perham to General Dow, under date of June 3, 1872 : "In some places
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