USA > Maine > Genealogical and family history of the state of Maine, Volume I > Part 63
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After attaining his majority Mr. Dow began to take that interest in town affairs which he retained till his death. Three years earlier, at the age of eighteen, he joined the volunteer fire department of Portland, and retained con- nection with it more than twenty-five years. At that time, 1822, the department was a purely voluntary and largely a social and mu- tual protection organization. That old fire department did not last long after he became connected with it. Shortly after he became of age he prepared a bill which was enacted by the legislature, then in session in Portland, under which it was remodeled. The number of men connected with the department when at its best was about seven hundred. April 3, 1827, Mr. Dow was elected clerk at the first meeting of the "Deluge company," then having among its members many of the best men of the town. He served as clerk of the company four years, when he was chosen first director, or captain, acting in that capacity until April, 1837. In that year he was made chief of the department. He took great pride in making it thoroughly efficient, and was so far successful that in after years he wrote
that he thought there was none in the country in proportion to numbers and extent and quality of apparatus superior to it. Its mem- bers were picked men, rigidly disciplined and finely drilled. His connection with the de- partment, and especially his serving as chief engineer, had something to do with his ac- quiring a measure of local influence and a personal following of young, reliable men, then and afterwards made to serve the pro- motion of temperance, in which subject he was already taking an interest. It was then the custom to celebrate anniversaries and other events with dinners, more or less formal. Liquors were always used at these celebra- tions. Mr. Dow's first speech upon temper- ance was made while he was a clerk in the Deluge company, in opposition to a motion to instruct the committee in charge of the pro- posed celebration to provide liquors. The company adopted his views, "so far as I am aware," he writes, "it was the first affair of the kind in Portland from which liquors were excluded, and naturally attracted attention and excited a great deal of comment, favorable and otherwise-at first largely otherwise- among the firemen." Through his influence, and that of others, it became the rule to ex- clude liquors from the entertainments of the various companies, many firemen becoming total abstainers. Mr. Dow was "fire-chief" for a number of years, and in every way the peer of any man who ever filled that office in Portland. His temperance views antagonized the liquor element, which made strenuous ef- forts to oust him from office on various charges, but he always came out victor in these contests and was sustained by the elder men when charges were brought before them. In the campaign of 1828 Mr. Dow made his first political speech, as in that election he cast his first presidential vote. Speech and vote were both for Adams. His subsequent course through life in politics shows how strongly his desire to support the right ob- tained, and how little he could be controlled by party policies which he did not favor. In the campaign of 1832, though heartily opposed to Jackson, he could not favor Clay, who was a pro-slavery man; he therefore voted for the Antimasonic candidate. In 1836 he continued his general relations with the Whig party and was a supporter of Harrison. In 1837 he sup- ported the Whig candidate, Edward Kent, who was elected governor of Maine. In the memorable campaign of 1840 he entered the contest with great earnestness and enthusiasm as a supporter of General Harrison for presi-
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dent and Edward Kent for governor. Both were elected, and Mr. Dow was appointed col- onel on the staff of the latter, though he had never trained in the militia. In 1844, Whig as he was on all economic and administrative questions, he would not give his vote to Clay. Dueling, slavery, the annexation of Texas, were the disturbing points, and he acted with the Abolitionists, with whose horror of sla- very he was in full sympathy. In 1848 he favored Van Buren as the Free-Soil candidate for president. In 1852 he did what he could in Maine for the Whig candidate, General Scott, the friend of prohibition being under peculiar obligations to temperance Whigs who had supported at the polls the Democratic candidate for governor, because he had ap- proved the Maine law. In 1856 the Republi- can party, of which Neal Dow was a charter member, had been formed, and he favored its candidate for president, Fremont. It was dur- ing this campaign that he first met, as a Re- publican, his friend, Hannibal Hamlin, who had recently abandoned the Democratic party. They addressed an immense meeting from the same platform. Their presence there had more than ordinary significance, and the great ovation accorded to each by the thousands that thronged the square was not altogether personal to either. Mr. Dow was in full sym- pathy with the Republican party in 1860, and participated with voice and pen in the cam- paign resulting in the election of Lincoln. In 1864 he favored Lincoln as a matter of course, making particularly prominent the fact that if the north re-elected Lincoln it would greatly discourage the south. From 1864 up to and including the election of President Hayes in 1876, he retained his connection with the Re- publican party and supported its tickets, state and national, rendering from time to time such assistance as he could upon the platform and through the public press, his services by no means being confined to the state of Maine. In 1880 he was nominee for president of the Prohibition party. Before the assembling of its national convention at Cleveland, Ohio, it had been intimated to him that there was a disposition to make him the nominee of that organization for president. Where it was proper for him to do so, he expressed a hope that such action would not be taken. There were several reasons for his wish that some other choice might be made, one of which was that in his entire political life his name had been used in connection with his candidacy for official position, whether with or without ex- pectation of attaining to such, only as it was
supposed by friends of temperance that the cause in which they and he were alike inter- ested might thus be served. In this instance he believed that any other name would answer as well as his around which to rally the few who had come to regard prohibition of the liquor traffic a national issue of paramount importance, and he was inclined to the opinion that he could better serve the general cause if unembarrassed by even a national candidacy for office. He was, however, persuaded that others should be permitted to finally pass upon that question. His name was presented to the convention by Hon. James Black, of Pennsyl- vania, and he was unanimously nominated. Mr. Dow did not feel at liberty to decline the nomination, and accordingly accepted. Until 1880 Mr. Dow had uniformly acted with the Republican party, supporting its nominations and advocating its principles from platform and through the press in his own and other states. He had, however, been dissatisfied with the action of the party in Maine at times with reference to prohibition, and had become so much so that, with other temperance men who, up to that time, had been stalwart Re- publicans, he refused to support his nominee for governor in 1880. By 1884 he had reached an age long past that at which most men interest themselves in public affairs. His views of what was wise and expedient, under all the circumstances, led him to devote him- self wholly to securing as large a majority as possible for the prohibitory constitutional amendment which was then pending before the people of Maine. He sincerely desired the election of his long time friend, James G. Blaine, who was then the Republican candi- date for president, but was unable, had he been disposed, to lend active assistance in the canvass. That was the last presidential elec- tion in which he took more than a passing in- terest. By 1888 his old time relations with the Republican party had been completely sev- ered. He voted that year, as in 1892, the na- tional ticket of the Prohibition party.
Neal Dow was brought up in a family where he learned to do right because it is right. He early saw the evils of intemper- ance, and joined the ranks of those who sought to promote moderate drinking; but it soon became apparent to him that total ab- stinence was the only cure for the conditions that then cursed the country. Almost imme- diately after his majority he joined the Maine Charitable Mechanics' Association, and did all he could in that body in connection with others to remove the evils of intemperance. March
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31, 1833. he assisted in the organization of "The Portland Young Men's Temperance So- ciety." During the first three years of the life of this society over thirteen hundred signed the pledge, among whom was the poet, Henry W. Longfellow. Mr. Dow later became secre- tary of this society. In 1834, as a delegate from this society, he took part in the first state gathering in behalf of temperance ever held in Maine. "By this time," he writes, "al- most unconsciously, I had become so fully identified with the reform as to be in the way of knowing most of what was being done if not actually taking part in it. To the best of my recollection, however, my purpose at that time did not extend beyond my desire to as- sist in correcting the evils apparent in the city of Portland." About 1835 he began to feel that he had a special duty to perform in this line, that his field of labor ought to in- clude the state, and the idea of prohibition was developed. February 2, 1837, Mr. Dow was one of those who formed at Augusta "The Maine Temperance Union," "upon the principle of total abstinence from all that in- toxicates." The organization of the Union may fairly be regarded as the first in the series of progressive movements resulting in the en- actment, in 1851, of what has since been known as "The Maine Law." For fourteen years it maintained its existence, the recog- nized head of all public temperance effort in the state. Its last annual meeting was held in 1850, at which time Mr. Dow was elected its president. In the years of its existence Mr. Dow and those associated with him carried on a campaign of education and waged a cease- less war against the liquor traffic. Its results are known to the present generation, but for an understanding of the early conditions, the methods of that warfare and the work neces- sary to accomplish the results that finally ac- crued, they can best know by reading that great record of the temperance movement in Maine, entitled "The Reminiscences of Neal
Dow." In the spring of 1841 the Washing- tonian reform, which had been started in Bal- timore in 1840, reached Portland. In Mav some working men, friendly to temperance, invited many men of their acquaintance to meet at a specified time in a room occupied by Mr. Dow as chief engineer of the fire department. The meeting was a success, and in a short time from Portland Washingtonianism spread
throughout the state and did much good. In 1841, following the inauguration of the Wash- ingtonian Movement in Portland, a "Young Men's Total Abstinence Society" was organ-
ized. Like the Washingtonian movement, this society had its inception in the fire de- partment, and it included many of the mem- bers of that body. Mr. Dow did not join this society, but took an interest in inducing young men to become connected with it. In 1849 the legislature passed a bill which would en- able the authorities to "ferret out and sup- press the grog shops," as Mr. Dow expressed it. Governor Dana vetoed this bill. Subse- quently Mr. Dow wrote a series of articles, analyzing and explaining its features. His nomination for the mayoralty of Portland fol- lowed in 1851, on the theory of the temper- ance people that his nomination and election, because of his thorough identification with the policy of prohibition, would be of great ad- vantage to the movement. The campaign was spirited, and at the election which followed Mr. Dow lacked eleven votes of an election. There was no choice of a candidate. Another election was held, and Mr. Dow was made mayor by a larger vote than had ever before been given to a candidate for mayor of Port- land, and by a majority which had been ex- ceeded but twice in its history. His election was naturally regarded as a district triumph of the temperance element of the city. He was inaugurated April 24, 1851. After redrawing the prohibitory bill which he had advocated before the last legislature, Mr. Dow had it introduced in the legislature, where it was passed by the two houses and received the governor's signature early in June, and thus the "Maine Liquor Law" began its existence. This legislation was far in advance of any- thing of the kind previously enacted in this country, and its beneficent effects are to-day apparent in the prosperous condition of Maine people. This was a proud day for Mavor Dow, and his successful efforts for prohibitive legislation were hailed with delight by tem- perance people the world over. In closing his explanation of the features of his bill to the joint special committee of the house and sen- ate, Mayor Dow had closed with the pledge : "If you will enact this bill, the sun shall not rise on Portland, January, 1852, and find there a single open grog-shop." And he kept his word; long before the time then specified every dealer, wholesale or retail, had gone out of business, and no liquor selling was carried on except in a petty, surreptitious way. Over three hundred retail liquor shops and several wholesale establishments were simultaneously put out of business. Within a comparatively few months after the enactment of the Maine Law a considerable portion of the state, in-
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cluding most of the larger towns, was prac- tically free from the liquor traffic. The change for the better, substantially through-e out Maine, was marvelous, apparent not only in a decrease of drunkenness and of the long and varied list of disturbance, which radiate from the saloon, but in evidences of industry, thrift and material prosperity rewarding well directed labor. Mr. Dow was renominated for the mayoralty, his opponent claiming that the prohibitory law had been too strictly enforced. The Democratic vote was abnormally large, and Mr. Dow was defeated. It was claimed by many, among them the Hon. W. W. Thom- as, that hundreds of illegal votes were cast in opposition to Mr. Dow and caused his defeat. Neal Dow was known now throughout the land and in foreign countries as the apostle of temperance. Immediately after his defeat he accepted invitations to speak, and filled ap- pointments for three months in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Mich- igan, where he received ovations from the temperance people. Early in January, 1853, he again left Maine and made a speaking tour, during which he addressed a committee of the legislature of New York in Representatives' Hall at Albany, which was crowded. He also spoke at other points in New York, in New Jersey, and in Maryland and Pennsylvania, addressing the legislature of the last two states. Later he spoke in Rhode Island, Ohio and Michigan. His reception in Michigan was peculiarly enthusiastic. He also made a tour in Canada which included Montreal and Quebec. In September, 1853, he was a dele- gate to the World's Temperance Convention in the city of New York, a large and influ- ential gathering, including delegates not only from many of the states of the Union and British Provinces, but from Great Britain as well. - He was made president of that body. Subsequently he went to Pennsylvania, where he spent a month, constantly speaking, often twice a day, and later yet spoke for some time in Massachusetts. In January, 1854, Mr. Dow again went forth to discuss temperance and did not return to Portland till the day of elec- tion of mayor. In the meantime he had been nominated for the mayoralty, and in the spirited contest that followed his opponent won by one hundred and three votes. In 1855 Mr. Dow was nominated as the candidate of the Republicans of Portland for mayor, and his election followed. Out of a total of 3,742 votes, his majority was forty-six. His ad- ministration of the prohibition law was no less strict than formerly. The opposition started
an agitation which ended in a riot, bloodshed, and the death of one or more persons. Out of this grew opposition to the temperance cause in the state, and the Maine Law was repealed, then re-enacted.two years later, and stands to-day as a monument to Mr. Dow and his co-laborers who never remitted their ef- forts to again place it on the statute books and elect men to insure its support. Mayor Dow passed nearly four years in Great Britain. He was there from April to November in 1857; from May, 1866, to November, 1867, and again from April, 1873, to May, 1875, a few weeks only out of each of these periods being deducted for continental sight-seeing. Each of those visits was made at the invitation of the United Kingdom Alliance. That great and influential society was formed in 1853 in con- sequence of the adoption of the Maine Law, to aid in obtaining similar legislation in Great Britain. Mr. Dow was informed that letters written by him, in 1852 and 1853, to prom- inent and philanthropic Englishmen in their own country were useful in promoting its or- ganization. The object of his visits was to explain to the English people the principles on which the policy of prohibition was found- ed and show its results. Its labors were very successful, and he was everywhere received as the world's temperance leader. Want of space forbids further mention in this article of his work in Britain.
The services of Neal Dow to his country- men have been very justly said to be second only to those of Washington and Lincoln. He early became imbued with a desire to promote the right. The restriction of the liquor traf- fic seemed to him to be necessary. He began to agitate for it, and in a few years he found himself giving almost his entire attention to it. His field widened, and his combative nature being now fully aroused, he made prohibition the mission of his life, and achieved the splen- did success which is attested in the mighty temperance movement of to-day, the immedi- ate origin of which can be traced back to the works of Neal Dow and his temperance work- ers in Portland. He was an earnest, active and radical anti-slavery man, enjoyed the friendship and acquaintance of the leaders in that movement, and gave the abolition cause his best support. It was no more than was to be expected that he, with his well known moral and physical courage, would take an ac- tive part in the war for the Union. He wrote extensively for the press of Great Britain, ex- plaining the causes and object of the war, and his communications were extensively circu-
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lated throughout that country, being published in many of the leading journals of the United Kingdom, and had much to do in arousing that Union sentiment among the middle class- es of the country that prevented the British government from recognizing the indepen- dence of the south. In 1861 he was commis- sioned colonel and raised the Thirteenth Maine Regiment and a battery of artillery for the service of the United States. He took command of the regiment, which was one of the best drilled that Maine sent to the front, and composed of as fine a lot of young men as there was in the state. There was no drunken- ness in that regiment, swearing was prohibited, and every evening at dress parade, so long as Colonel Dow remained with it, there were re- ligious exercises, singing and prayers before the parade was dismissed. He took his regiment to Ship Island, where he remained until May 19, 1862, when he received his commission as brigadier-general. He was in command at Ship Island for a time, and was then trans- ferred to Fort St. Philip, and from thence was sent to Pensacola, where he was in command for some time. In the latter part of January, 1863, he was assigned to the command of the defences of New Orleans at Carrollton, and remained there in the discharge of the ordi- nary duties pertaining to such a position until the 21st of next May. On that date, in pur- suance of orders, he moved his brigade to Port Hudson, in the assault upon which a few days later he led his troops. While thus en- gaged he was struck by a spent ball upon the arm, which was rendered useless by the blow, causing him to lose control of his horse. Dis- mounting, he proceeded on foot until he was disabled by a rifle ball, which passed through his left thigh, two-thirds above the knee. This completely disabled him, and he was helped to the rear. In this assault, in the expediency of which General Dow had no faith, the troops under his command behaved like vet- erans, but the attack was a failure, as it was foredoomed to be. While recovering from his wounds at a house about three-quarters of a mile from his brigade encampment, Gen- eral Dow was captured by a small squad of daring Confederates, June 30, 1863. He was imprisoned in Richmond and in Mobile a little over eight months, and was exchanged for General Fitzhugh Lee, March 14, 1864. While being taken through the south he learned much of value to the Union cause which he communicated to the National government by means of letters written to friends in invisible ink. On his return to Portland General Dow
was escorted to his home by a body of soldiers and a great throng of citizens. On the next evening he was tendered a formal welcome at "the City Hall, and responded in a speech which occupied about five columns in the pa- pers. The crowd at the hall was of unpre- cedented size in Portland. The general's speech was published far and wide, and he was overwhelmed with invitations to speak in all parts of the north. These he was obliged to decline on account of the run-down condi- tion of his health from the effects of exposure and hardships. After the close of the war, during which General Dow's activity for tem- perance and prohibition were suspended, he resumed his labor in their behalf as soon as the attention of the people could be drawn from wholesale slaughter to their own moral welfare. Two of his visits to Great Britain were made after the war, and occupied sub- stantially three years and a half. "With the exception of the time thus spent abroad, Gen- eral Dow gave himself unreservedly to his chosen life work in the country until he reached the age of ninety. In the prosecution of his labors he traveled east as far as New- foundland, and west to San Francisco, and his presence was a familiar one upon plat- forms in many cities between those extremes, and through his constant and voluminous cor- respondence for the public press, his views upon his favorite topic and other subjects of general interest were made known to the English-speaking world. To the work of this description he added that necessary to keep himself thoroughly informed upon all im- portant current events in every part of the globe. He knew no idle moments, and until the last year of his life, when he was com- pelled to spare his eyes in the evening, he was constantly busy with book or pen, when not otherwise employed, while his varied daily em- ployments were such as would have exhausted a man of average strength, his junior by a score of years. The ninetieth anniversary of General Dow's birth, March 20, 1894, at the suggestion of Miss Frances E. Willard, and through the co-operation with her of the tem- perance organizations generally, was made the occasion for congratulations upon his distin- guished services, his long life and his remark- ably preserved health and strength. His home was thronged throughout the day with his fel- low townsmen, and with those from distant towns and other states, who called to pay their respects. It is questionable if any other citi- zen in private life, who had never held high official position, has been the recipient upon
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such an occasion of so many congratulatory letters, telegrams, and cable messages as then poured in upon General Dow from every quar- ter of the globe. In the evening a great meet- ing presided over by the mayor was held in the City Hall, which was crowded in every part. Congradulatory speeches were made by distinguished persons and an admirer of Gen- eral Dow presented an oil painting of him to the state.
At this time General Dow, though wonder- fully preserved in mind and body, recognized that his working days were nearly over. He continued to appear occasionally in public, making several speeches, in one or two in- stances traveling many miles for the purpose, and speaking at some length. His last ad- dress was made about a year before his ninety-second birthday. Great physical weak- ness finally forced him into complete retire- ment at his home, where he kept informed on current events until the last week of his life. When nearly seventy-five years of age Gen- eral Dow began the preparation of an account of the growth of the cause of temperance and prohibition with which he had been identified. He worked on this as he was able in the brief and infrequent intervals of leisure which he found, until the closing months of the last year of his life. From the amount of matter he thus prepared the book entitled "The Rem- iniscences of Neal Dow, Recollections of Eighty Years," was compiled, and published in 1898. This volume gives a vivid account of the life and experiences of its author and of the men and measures which finally estab- lished the prohibitory law.
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