Pubdate: Sun, 22 Dec 2013
Source: Maine Sunday Telegram (ME)
Copyright: MaineToday Media, Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/J9R991Zc
Website: http://www.pressherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/256
Author: Paul Mills

PORTLAND, CHAMPION OF TEMPERANCE

How a City That Just Enacted the East Coast's First Marijuana 
Legalization Law Was Once at the Forefront of the Nation'S 
Prohibition Movement.

The Portland city ordinance purporting to legalize the recreational 
use of marijuana took effect earlier this month  the first in the 
eastern United States. Seeing Portland take the lead in a 
loosening-up of drug laws arouses a sense of irony in that the city 
was once in the vanguard of enacting the country's first laws 
outlawing liquor, boasting prominent Prohibition leaders in America. 
A complete turnabout in the city's mindset has not, however, 
necessarily occurred, as the story of these two early Portland 
temperance advocates illustrates.

"Prohibition" is a term most frequently invoked to denounce efforts 
to regulate a variety of substances and even ideas. It's a term used 
almost interchangeably with repression.

There was a time, however, when the movement to outlaw alcoholic 
beverages was closely allied with such progressive causes as giving 
women the right to vote and civil rights for minorities. This was 
especially the case during the 65-year period from just before the 
Civil War until World War I when the Portland-based campaign for 
Prohibition had taken successful root in Maine. For almost throughout 
this era, Maine had its own Prohibition laws  put and kept in place 
by leadership from the city  well before the advent of national 
Prohibition in 1919.

The two foremost exponents of this early brand of Prohibition - both 
in Maine and throughout the nation - were Portlanders Neal Dow and 
Lillian M.N. Stevens.

Dow - one of the city's leading manufacturers - developed an interest 
in regulating liquor due to his observations of the effects it had on 
his employees. A compelling public speaker, Dow by the 1840s became 
the recognized leader of Maine's temperance movement.

By March 1851, Dow ran for mayor, running on a platform to give Maine 
an authentic prohibition law - one put on the books in 1846 being 
devoid of an enforcement mechanism. Soon after his landslide 
election, Dow was off to the state Capitol.

There, he tirelessly advocated the passage of legislation he and his 
attorney had drafted to make Prohibition a reality for the first time 
in any state in America. In terms that foreshadowed the profile of 
some contemporary marijuana laws, the bill was cloaked with an 
exemption allowing the sale of liquor for medicinal purposes.

By the end of May, the Legislature, by a near 2-to-1 majority, had 
enacted the measure. Voting crossed party lines among the two major 
parties of the day, while the nine members of an anti-slavery third 
party, known as Free Soilers, voted unanimously for the bill.Gov. 
John Hubbard, himself a practicing physician, signed the bill into 
law Monday, June 2. (It would also be a historic week for another 
reason: Just three days later, the first installment of Harriet 
Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published in National Era magazine.)

The "Maine Law" quickly became an international synonym for 
Prohibition, and at the same time Neal Dow soon became a worldwide 
celebrity in movements elsewhere to push for its enactment. Joining 
Dow's Prohibition crusade outside Maine, for example, was the Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher, brother to the author Stowe and himself also a 
recognized leader in the anti-slavery movement.

At the time of the Civil War, Dow, though now nearly 60, but with a 
zeal for the anti-slavery movement that nearly matched his ardor for 
temperance, volunteered for the Union cause. After being wounded 
twice in battle in Louisiana, he then spent eight months in 
Confederate prisons before being released in an exchange with another 
general, Robert E. Lee's nephew.

After the war, Dow spoke extensively about Prohibition both in 
America and in Europe. Back in Maine, he lent his support to the 
successful effort to solidify the Maine Law by incorporating it into 
a constitutional mandate in 1884, one that voters would not repeal 
until 1934. Dow's Maine Law still has not completely lost its grip, 
however, as even today several Maine communities continue to remain 
dry under the local option system.

Dow died at age 93 in 1897. The Congress Street home where he, his 
son Frederick  who became a longtime owner of two of the state's 
largest newspapers, the Sunday Telegram and Portland Evening Express 
- - once resided is now preserved as a museum.

The year after Dow's death, another well-known Portlander assumed the 
mantle of national temperance leadership. This was in 1898 when 
Lillian Stevens became the president of the Woman's Christian 
Temperance Union, the largest organization of American women up to 
that time, one that would grow to more than a half-million members 
under Stevens' leadership over the next 16 years.

A major figure in the Prohibition movement and a frequent 
collaborator with Dow long before Dow's death, Stevens had, for 
example, been the state WCTU president since 1878, and joined forces 
with Dow in the successful campaign to elevate the state's existing 
Prohibition law to constitutional status.

Like Dow, however, Stevens merged her passion for temperance with an 
advocacy for other issues. Among them: crusades against domestic 
violence and for giving women the right to vote. (The latter was not 
an easy sell in Maine, where even by 1917 a statewide referendum 
repudiated such an overture.)

Stevens also pursued Dow's interest in the plight of the country's 
minorities, supporting roles in the organization for 
African-Americans, despite the risk this posed to winning the support 
of Southern whites.

Under Stevens, the WCTU helped bring about passage of the Pure Food 
and Drug Act in 1906.

Prison reform was another focus of Stevens. Stevens' campaign to make 
sure that the administration of such facilities be entrusted to more 
women and to seek a separate prison for them finally came to fruition 
in Maine in 1919, five years after her death. The reformatory's main 
cottage was named for her as a tribute to such efforts.

The esteem in which Stevens was held is further signified by the 
statue in her honor in the front courtyard of the Portland Public 
Library, one of the few in Maine to celebrate a female leader. (Those 
commemorating Samantha Smith, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Joan Benoit 
are among the few others.)

It's perhaps problematic to presume that if Dow and Stevens were 
alive today, they would support the recently passed marijuana 
ordinance of their home city even though assailing alcohol was a 
theme of those backing the ordinance. Their interest in civil and 
women's rights, prison reform and other causes that were companions 
of the early Prohibitionist movement, however, would suggest that 
Dow, Stevens and today's reformers might find more than a few things in common.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom