Chapter 1: The Maine Laws and the First Wave of Prohibition 1846–1872
“As goes Maine, so goes the nation” — popular quote beginning in the 1820s
The Prohibition movement began to transition from more than moral teachings and recommendations in the 1830s when proponents sought to wield the power of government and make the abolition of alcohol the business of the government. Tennessee was the first to do so and on January 26th, 1838, it became a state misdemeanor to sell alcohol. As counties and states began to implement restrictions on alcohol sales, one man began to envision an accelerated future. This chapter explores the early career of Neal Dow, a Maine man with the dream of ridding the nation of the scourge of alcoholism. 50 years before it would pick up steam again with its own rise and fall as a constitutional amendment, Dow sat at the crest of the first wave of anti-liquor legislation. It would encounter the same roadblocks as the more famous push in the 20th century, and its revolution in the orbit of the true believing and narcissistic Dow would catapult him to new highs and lows. In the process Dow would seize on the anxieties and the turmoil of a nation on the brink of civil war and remake the political coalitions, forever changing politics and giving birth to two of the longest lasting American parties. This is the story of a grassroots movement in its infamy, the power of public opinion, and the tragedy of a man on a divine mission.
Part 1: Neal Dow, the First Republicans, and Chaos in Maine
“The Maine-Law question has caused such a derangement of parties as to make it difficult to draw any conclusion what-ever from the votes.” — unnamed paper from Dow, Reminiscences
“Dow ought to be hanged, and if we succeed this fall, he will be hanged.” — Maine Democratic candidate F.O.J. Smith
Neal Dow grew up a Quaker and would often cite (probably untruthful) anecdotes from his childhood as formative in his beliefs about alcohol. One famous example was when he reached for his dad’s silver watch put away on a counter and ended up accidentally breaking it. In the middle of being chastised by his father, he flipped the tables and scolded his father for tempting him by putting the watch within reach. As he grew up, these views hardened and he watched a friend, too drunk to remember what had happened after a night of binge drinking, become accused of a crime and thrown in prison until the real criminal confessed. Dow became extremely hardened in his views, and they mixed with his patrician and elite attitude.
In 1837, Dow worked with the leaders of the Mechanic’s Association to pass a slew of small regulations for drinking on the job and put out a written report for the state legislature recommending complete prohibition. This would foreshadow the later push for Prohibition when the main lobbying wing would be bankrolled primarily by industry leaders like Henry Ford who was desperate for a more efficient workplace. 1837 was also the year that radicalized Dow who made the MA push primarily on his own while the more mainstream temperance group he belonged to wished to avoid concrete action. They advocated moderation and would usually drink only a little daily, but Dow was disgusted and pushed for a complete abstention of the consumption of all alcohol.
Instead Dow watched the movement grow and made an alliance of convenience with the Washingtonians, who were former alcoholics who now advocated for never drinking again. Dow liked their stance but considered himself above this society, most of which were former working class who like many others in their economic standing, drank an obscene amount and were frequently drunk all the time, every day. As the movement grew, so did Dow’s ambitions and he championed the first statewide law prohibiting alcohol sales in 1846, except for industrial and medicinal use.
Drunk with success, Dow took up the mantle as the champion of Prohibition but watched as lackluster means within the bill made it impossible to enforce and didn’t actually cut back on drinking. In 1847, the local Whig party went to recruit Dow throw his support behind their candidate, state representative Phineas Barnes. Barnes visited Dow and appealed to Dow’s hatred of Democrats, but Barnes had opposed the 1846 law. Dow instead would run on his own party line and preached for total prohibition as an Independent. Dow would fall far behind on the ballot, but Barnes only won a plurality of the vote as several Whigs who favored Dow’s stance on alcohol moved to his side. Deprived of a majority, it would take 5 more elections before Barnes finally won a majority and Dow would retreat from public life for a few years, licking his wounds but suddenly becoming a celebrity in Portland.
Dow began agitating the legislature to do more and pass a law with teeth but their hands were tied. Democratic governor John Dana was vehemently opposed to the measure, calling it, “an ill-digested outrage upon almost every right of our citizens” and vetoed legislation in both 1849 and 1850. Dow got to work, trying to elect members for the spring elections that would back the Maine Law and he got lucky when John Hubbard was elected as Governor, along with several allies downballot. Hubbard was still a Democrat but he bucked his party on this issue and was sympathetic to the popular support for temperance restrictions and signaled his support. Dow, believing that it would pass, began his run as the Whig candidate to be the mayor of Portland, hoping to impose order to liquor. It was not meant to be though, and in that summer, it passed the state house but was killed on a tie vote in the state senate.
1851 would be a big year for Dow. Though forced into a runoff in April, he would win the mayoral election with, in his own words, “a larger vote than any other candidate had ever received, and that without having abated any of my zeal.” Renewed and with a mandate, Dow went back to the state legislature and this time they were finally able to pass the Maine Laws that Dow wanted through a bipartisan committee and government. Maine, being a Northern state, was very anti-slavery and so was Dow as a Northerner and man of the Lord. The Democrats were inching closer and closer to a regional party as their support for slavery drove them out of the North (we will also see later that Prohibition would throw out a sizable number of Democratic governors as well). As Democrats became the major obstacle for the temperance movement, it began to take on a more Northern and anti-slavery tone and the issue would break apart on these partisan and soon ideological lines. Dow intertwining these two issues led one Democratic opponent of the Maine Laws to claim that Democratic politicians that switched sides and voted with Dow were under the reign of, “n*****ism and fanaticism.” This hyperbole was an attempt to inject the racial element into the Prohibition debate but considering that the pro-slavery faction was outnumbered in Maine, Dow saw an attempt to overthrow the Whigs by siding with the abolitionists. The Whigs were more interested in worker productivity in the industrialized areas and did not take Dow’s moral view, but this alliance of convenience began to slowly turn Maine’s historical lean to the Democrats.
Dow now had free rein to enforce anti-alcohol legislation and he threw himself into the role, going through people’s supplies with unwarranted searches and harassing shipping. The later would provoke even international incidents, as Portland forces would disrupt commerce and damage goods coming into the port. During this time his star rose, and he began to link up with the National Temperance Society and correspond with others in different states pursuing their own versions of the Maine Laws, once being introduced as the, “moral Columbus.” This would have a mixed record over the next decade that is explored deeper in the next section. Following a contentious re-election in 1852 where Dow was burned in effigy over and mocked over his elitism, he lost the race to a candidate that was for the Maine laws but against such strict enforcement. Dow could not accept this, and blamed the heavily drinking immigrant communities, especially the Irish, and vowed in his next election that he would create voter identification laws to disenfranchise this group.
Dow stayed involved in Maine politics that year with an important governor’s election on the ballot. The three major candidates and results were:
· John Hubbard — Democrat but anti-liquor and anti-slavery, endorsed by Dow, received ~45% of the vote
· Anson Chandler — pro-liquor and pro-slavery Democrat, received ~23% of the vote
· William Crosby — Whig who was mildly anti-liquor
Democrats still controlled the legislative and pro-liquor wanted to prevent Hubbard from winning, as he didn’t get a majority and they would choose. However, the Senate was likelier to vote for a Whig than a democrat so in a Machiavellian move, the pro-liquor Democrats joined the Whigs in sending the choice in the state senate to be between Hubbard and Crosby. The choice was then easier in the upper house and Crosby was made governor. Slavery becoming an issue scrambling the party labels in Maine as well as the Prohibition issue being at the forefront meant that the coalitions were in flux but hardening quickly.
As the Whigs remained torn over slavery and fading and democrats became a regional Southern party, Dow was the one leading the charge for a new fusionist party, one bounded by anti-liquor and anti-slavery sentiments, for morals and the rights of the enslaved. Dow would lead this new party as a model for a new one nationwide, but letting Dow personally impose his will on it leads to a darker beginning of the party of morality. A true fusion party in Maine would be larger with a coalition of every opposition group but that would include the recent surge of the Know-Nothing party. This was a secretive xenophobic group that was against new immigrants, bringing culture and religion. Dow, still blaming the immigrant community for his mayoral loss, welcomed them with open arms in a way that a different head of the party may have not. The new party would condemn slavery, but it would also say that the top issues of, “slavery, rum, and foreigners,” were “three allied powers” and represented the “the worst foes of our liberties.” The specific platform strongly backed the Maine Laws but also endorsed legislation to prevent immigrants from engaging in political activities. This group would be called Republicans but weren’t exactly and were more a small regional blueprint of a new opposition party. The stain of the Know-Nothings would be imprinted on the history though as this model began to spread to other states and was a frequent attack of hypocrisy by pro-slavery Dems. Abraham Lincoln wrote in a letter that he feared that the Know-Nothings would even be strong enough to take over the fledgling party. The first Jewish congressman, Lewis Charles Levin, was an editor of a journal called The Temperance Advocate and warned against the dangers of alcohol before pivoting to attacking the pope, Catholics, and the Irish. He was then elected to Congress in Pennsylvania for three terms as a member of the Know-Nothing party but also against the first Republican nominee. The ties between xenophobia and temperance were linked but they would not yet have a political home, or if they did, it varied state to state.
1855 would be the crescendo of first wave temperance and Dow wanted to ride that wave by making a comeback bid in another run for Portland mayor. But this time, Dow wanted to tilt the scales in his favor. He did that by taking his new fusion party and running Anson Morrill on the Maine Law/Know-Nothing fusionist party in late 1854. The 4-way race, with the numbers shown below, show Morrill beat out a wide range of options to nearly capture a majority. Dow’s coalition would also sweep downballot and Morrill would be ushered in, he was re-elected in 1855 explicitly under the Republican ticket showing the natural progression of the coalitions.
The new Maine Law/Know Nothing/Republican coalition quickly went about fulfilling Dow’s wish list. Despite targeted attacks over his association with the Know-Nothings, Dow recognized both the electoral benefits of those voters as well the alignment of their agendas so that he could be put back in the mayor’s office. The state legislature would pass new immigrant naturalization law, the key being that state courts could not get involved in the process. This meant that naturalized citizens removed from the voting rolls could not appeal to the state court but instead had to navigate to the deferral government which would take a far longer amount of time and likely not until after the 1855 mayoral election. The other law required immigrants to present their papers to elected officials at least three months before an election to get added to the voter rolls, conveniently covering the whole period before the April mayoral election and any immigrants not currently registered could not get added. Except for Missouri’s treatment of the Mormons in 1838, these were some of the first voter suppression methods introduced in the United States, adding to Dow’s list of being a pioneer in a movement though this was much more selfish and sinister.
These efforts would pay off and almost certainly help Dow win the 1855 mayoral election, only winning by 46 votes out of 3,742 cast. Despite the razor thin margin, Dow went right back to the same tactics that sunk him in the last election by being overzealous in his enforcement. One resident wrote, “He sends his policemen like the frogs of Egypt into any man’s kneading trough and cupboard, croaking for liquor.” Things would come to a head in the late spring of 1855.
In May of 1855, a rumor started spreading throughout Portland that Neal Dow himself had a large stash of liquor in his basement. The rumor turned out to be true and Dow himself was violating the own laws he pushed for but only because of a weird quirk in the Maine Laws. Alcohol was still allowed for medicinal purposes and to prevent abuse, each town could appoint a designated member to make the purchase without it being a criminal offense. Dow appointed himself to the committee that would eventually choose that agent but ordered the supply before he was officially named that agent, in clear violation of that law. A rival on the city council leaked this news to the opposition, which began gearing up local propaganda branding Dow as a hypocrite. The Democratic newspaper Eastern Argus publicly broke the allegations on June 2nd and curious people began to stop in front of City Hall to see if Dow would be taken into custody and arrested. The throng of people began to grow as the day went on and Dow ordered the police and two militias to protect him and control the crowd. In later testimony, one militia leader said that Dow overruled him on his request to load their guns with blanks to scatter the crowd but instead use live ammo and he ordered his group to stay home while the other arrived with live rounds. The militia on the scene ordered the crowd to disperse, but the crowd threw some debris at them. Without any of the warning signs of attaching bayonets or firing blanks, Dow ordered them to fire on the crowd but the captain asked to regroup with more reinforcements. When the militia left to link up, the crowd became more emboldened and started moving forward and throwing more debris at the room where it was held. When one man managed to successfully put a hole in the door, the police attachment to Dow opened fire. Just as it all exploded, the militia and reinforcements arrived to fire volleys over the crowd, but the incident left one man dead and several more injured.
The collapse of a party system allowing new legislators in with different mandates/citizen agendas can scramble what gets passed and how popular ideas can manifest into legislative action. With this example of the Maine Laws, the consequences of the quirky 1854 midterms stand out.
In May of 1855, a rumor started spreading throughout Portland that Neal Dow himself had a large stash of liquor in his basement. The rumor turned out to be true and Dow himself was violating the own laws he pushed for but only because of a weird quirk in the Maine Laws. Alcohol was still allowed for medicinal purposes and to prevent abuse, each town could appoint a designated member to make the purchase without it being a criminal offense. Dow appointed himself to the committee that would eventually choose that agent but ordered the supply before he was officially named that agent, in clear violation of that law. A rival on the city council leaked this news to the opposition, which began gearing up local propaganda branding Dow as a hypocrite. The Democratic newspaper Eastern Argus publicly broke the allegations on June 2nd and curious people began to stop in front of City Hall to see if Dow would be taken into custody and arrested. The throng of people began to grow as the day went on and Dow ordered the police and two militias to protect him and control the crowd. In later testimony, one militia leader said that Dow overruled him on his request to load their guns with blanks to scatter the crowd but instead use live ammo and he ordered his group to stay home while the other arrived with live rounds. The militia on the scene ordered the crowd to disperse, but the crowd threw some debris at them. Without any of the warning signs of attaching bayonets or firing blanks, Dow ordered them to fire on the crowd but the captain asked to regroup with more reinforcements. When the militia left to link up, the crowd became more emboldened and started moving forward and throwing more debris at the room where it was held. When one man managed to successfully put a hole in the door, the police attachment to Dow opened fire. Just as it all exploded, the militia and reinforcements arrived to fire volleys over the crowd, but the incident left one man dead and several more injured.
The story spread like wildfire around the nation, and pro-liquor interests seized on Dow’s controversial reputation to discredit the movement. Firing on an Irish crowd so soon after the Lager Beer Riot in Chicago (more below) and periodic attacks by members of the Know-Nothing party fueled a narrative that temperance would only lead to sectarian violence, at the same time that the nation was rushing to defuse tensions over slavery. This was the beginning of the end of the first wave of temperance, one that burned bright but fast. Dow would accomplish a lot and legitimized the anti-liquor movement across most of the nation, and a lot of the Maine Law copycats would stick. The next section explores how these laws fared in other states and you can see the momentum for several years and repeated efforts in the face of several roadblocks. Dow also turned his moral movement into a selfish one, a mission from God that involved making a deal with the devil, and the Republicans would be forced to battle charges of Know-Nothingism for a long time. Battle lines were drawn, but in the end, not many lessons were learned. The same allies and detractors would be there during the renewed push, the same failures of the law would be included in the Constitutional amendment, and Dow’s downfall and impulsiveness would be repeated 75 years later. Dow would be dubbed the, “Napoleon of Prohibition,” and continued to stay active but his reputation was never the same. He did recognize the power of coalition-building for the temperance movement which would carry on for good an ill when the movement flared up again and as a true grassroots movement, it was a force of nature. This is the beginning of the Prohibition movement, led by one man, defeated by many factors.
For more on Dow beyond this summary, I took a lot from this excellent thesis by Andrew J Hermann of Colby college that you should read to get a fuller picture: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1265&context=honorstheses
Part 2: National Spread and Obstacles
“Neal Dow (may God bless him!) had opened our eyes — PT Barnum, entertainer
“Pick out the Stars” — alleged last words shouted before shots were fired at the Lage Beer Riot
The whole timeline by year can be found here: https://public.tableau.com/profile/noah7751#!/vizhome/MaineLaws/Dashboard1
For each year, the top map shows in green whether there was a version of the Maine laws on the record, and red means an effort failed. If you hover over a state, it will present you with current status, when it last changed, and any details on the popular vote or the performance in the state legislature. This was collected from a wide variety of historical sources that I am extremely grateful for, from news clippings to old Prohibition party records. The chart on the bottom keeps count of the number of success and failures. Any state in white is in the Union but did not attempt to pass the Maine laws currently.
You can explore every year on the interactive chart, but I’ll break down a few of the key years. This only applies to statewide legislation, during this time several Southern states deferred to county and city ordinances that still spread but would put an emphasis on local control as the separatist sentiments bubbled over:
1850 — The Maine laws face some resistance spreading outside the Northeast corner. Vermont voted down their addition in a referendum by a margin of about 8,000 votes. Meanwhile in Massachusetts the bill stalled out, passing the House but failing in the Senate
1852 — A banner year for the temperance advocates. Laws passed in the state legislature in Oregon, Minnesota, and then go back and succeed in Vermont and Massachusetts. On the second time around, they have been *ahem* watered down a bit. Massachusetts included a religious exemption to sacramental drinks, which would appear again in the Prohibition amendment 70 years later. Neal Dow liked that it was spreading to other states but wrote to a Massachusetts advocate against the clause. He thought that it would separate from the religious origins in the first place and the high ground, writing, “it will in my judgment weaken its moral power amazingly.”
1853 — Maine doubles down, passing another restrictive set. To its west, Vermont ratifies the changes in a referendum decided 51%-49% by a margin of 541 votes. In Michigan there was more of a mandate, and it passed by a wide margin of 64%-36% after a successful vote in the state legislature. Indiana would join as another Midwestern state with a law through the state legislature. However, the earlier example of Delaware ruling that it was an overreach of personal liberties began to catch up. Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island all saw failures due to judicial rulings. In Connecticut, Democratic governor Thomas Seymour vetoed the legislation. Wisconsin would vote 53%-47% to pass the Maine laws but it failed in the legislature by one vote.
1854 — Another busy year with more failures than successes. Good news for the temperance movement was successful bills in Ohio and Connecticut, the latter passing by a wide vote of 13–1 in the Senate and 148–62 in the House. These margins meant that there could not be another veto, but it would not matter. Prohibition may have helped put new Whig governor Henry Dutton in charge who was a fan of the Maine Laws and he enthusiastically signed it into law. A referendum in Texas also gave the movement their first Southern state to jump on board, and proponent of the Maine Laws Sam Houston must have been pleased. But there were also setbacks. Even after the large popular vote win, the courts would overturn the law in Michigan and then did the same to Indiana, reversing gains from 1853. In Maryland, it would die in the state legislature and even though it sailed through in New York, Democratic Governor Horatio Seymour would fight once again with the legislative branch and vetoed it. In Pennsylvania, which would remain bitterly split on the Prohibition issue for a long time, saw a close referendum loss 49%-50%, and it is recorded as a loss by 5,139 votes.
1855 — The peak of the first wave Prohibition movement, this year saw 15 states with successful versions of the Maine Law come into effect. New Hampshire passed a second round of laws, and the ping-ponging Massachusetts also got a bill through the state legislature. Under new Whig governor Myron Clark, the New York legislature passed the set of bills again, and this time was signed into law. Ignoring the referendum, Pennsylvania forged ahead as well as did Delaware which had a version overturned by the courts all the way back in 1848. Passage of bills through a state legislature continued to be the most successful and Michigan and Indiana modified theirs to pass again, as well as Nebraska. The new Iowa territory would see a bill pass with a vote of 53%-47% in favor of the Maine laws. Though it was a peak by flipping states, there were setbacks in a lot of new states the movement tried to reach out to. It failed in California by 10% in a referendum, and one vote in the state house and state senate killed the bill in North Carolina and New Jersey respectively. The court repealed the bill in Ohio and further up the Great Lakes, Democrat William Barstow would follow in his party’s footsteps and veto the bill passed by the state legislature. Proponents of Prohibition in his own party would abandon him in his re-elect at the end of the year and he would lose, though fraudulent votes in made up precincts almost handed him a victory by fraud and when it was discovered, militias geared up for a possible civil war within Wisconsin itself!
The most crushing result for the temperance advocates was Illinois. The legislature had passed it 46–26 and the Maine Laws seemed well on their way to become law. In the March 1855 elections, the anti-immigrant Know-Nothings overwhelmingly won the Chicago elections and piggybacked on the success of the anti-alcohol movement as an excuse to target German and Irish immigrants and passed several temperance measures like increased costs for shorter liquor licenses and a Sunday ban. A police crackdown began on illegal bar owners and the jails became crowded. This link describes the events and the ensuing demonstrations extremely well: https://brewedculture.org/2017/05/04/the-lager-beer-riot-chicagos-first-north-side-war/. At one point, it turned violent, and the reporting on the pro-slavery Boone and the heavy-handed tactics would lead to violence. This followed shortly by the Portland Rum Riots would turn popular opinion in the headlines away from the temperance movement as one of division and bloodshed. When it came up for a statewide vote, Illinois would go 46%-54% in favor and the bill lost, though both sides acknowledged in the record that there was rampant vote fraud. The next year saw repeals in Iowa and Maine, and a New York court overruled the bill.
1855 also brought in a new wave of random opposition parties focused on Prohibition laws that moved this from the grassroots to the mainstream. The elections at the end of 1854 saw the US house splinter into multiple parties, with the toplines detailed below:
As the Whig Party collapsed across the nation, several new smaller parties popped up in its place but Democrats were still dominant. It was only until after the midterms that the Kansas-Nebraska Act had caused anti-slavery sentiment in the North to really turn them against Dems. In its place was a new Fusionist Party that was essentially just a lot of people opposed to the Democrats, and they split on a few key issues though abolition was at the forefront. The new Republican party would be stronger in the Midwest but was only just starting to win races. The key 3rd party to rise with 51 seats (only 3 behind the Whigs) was the American Party, also referred to as the Know-Nothings, which was maybe the original of the early Populist parties backing more personal freedoms and corporate regulation but also moralism and xenophobia. While an Ohio Republican was originally the favorite, he bowed out several rounds into balloting and the Speaker of the House would not be chosen for 2 whole months and it finally settled on Massachusetts resident Nathaniel Baker by only 3 votes. Baker was an acceptable choice because while he was a Know-Nothing that had some Southern support (they were the only opposition party on the ballot in the 1852 presidential election when Millard Fillmore ran) he was anti-slavery and anti-immigrant but not a firebreather on either issue.
Baker was from the state most caught up in the Know-Nothing wave electing all of their reps under the party banner, the governor, the entire state senate, and all but three of the state house reps and this gave them a lot of control. This not too long writeup goes into how they added 50% to the state budget by expanding public schools and services while regulating companies and giving women more rights, such as divorce: https://www.westfield.ma.edu/historical-journal/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Taylor-summer-2000-combined.pdf. A lot of the bills specifically targeted at new immigrants and the Irish wouldn’t end up clearing 2/3rds and failed but the rallying cries of the fusionists for slavery abolition and temperance were advanced a lot. MA began to not follow the Fugitive Slave Act for one. On the temperance front they imposed harsh penalties for public drunkenness and created new systems of liquor licenses and blue laws for sales on Sunday. This set of crackdowns was referred to as the Maine Laws and had been steadily gaining support. 1855 had been a high point with a lot of successful pushes to enact the Maine Laws where the bars below detail successful pushes in green and failed pushes in red.
I went back and divided up the successful status by how it got passed, with the main options being the state legislature or by a popular vote on a referendum. Now the difference is clear as the leadup to 1854 was mostly by popular vote and now state legislatures were enacting it:
The collapse of a party system allowing new legislators in with different mandates/citizen agendas can scramble what gets passed and how popular ideas can manifest into legislative action, and court actions against referenda forced a change in tactics to pass them in state bills. With this example of the Maine Laws, the consequences of the quirky 1854 midterms stand out.
After this flurry of activity, there was a period where there were relatively few changes in the laws nationwide, as the nation held its breath and the issue of slavery took over. Temperance was put on the backburner and the South seceded in 1861. When the union was whole again, the state legislature in Kansas would pass a restrictive law and the state itself would be the last one to overturn statewide Prohibition in the end. In 1868, a constitutional convention ruled by the upstate region in New York brute forced through Prohibition reforms but the enforcement in the city would be lax. That same year saw a repeal in Massachusetts and another referendum in Michigan go down 46% to 54%, with a losing margin of over 13,000.
Part 3: The Aftermath
Though there were some modifications after, the 1868 vote was really the final nail in the coffin for the first wave of Prohibition laws. Whether by courts or by votes (both rigged and not), the populace was tired of fighting after a civil war and the temperance movement began to die out. On its face, the map in 1872 did not look terrible for the cause, with 12 states having a version of the Maine Laws statewide and a similar 13 where they were not. The geography mattered though. While Kansas and Nebraska were steadfast dry and would be throughout the whole course of the movement, most of the rejected states came from the Midwest, where the movement really was stronger on the ground. Several of the Northeastern states that had nominally adopted the laws either saw it watered down or ignored, especially in the cities. In his 1876 pamphlet explaining why he helped found a separate national Prohibition Party, James Black notes all the instances where the state by state basis failed or was overturned, calling for an end to the, “instability,” of popular vote wins to enacting Maine Laws.
This is the story of the birth of an organized and centralized movement to put Prohibition front and center on a national scale. How one man made many enemies but spread his gospel, creating the spark for two different political parties, and creating the first wave of Prohibition in the national consciousness. As this series continues, I hope to continue to take a look on a regular basis at key players in the electoral history, their impact on the nation’s politics and elections, and geographic pockets of support. Each writeup will have a breakdown of the cast of characters that were the nominees, the party platform, and the party performance, drilling down to specific counties, states, and trends. There are fascinating trends in the rise, fall, and continual limbo of the Prohibition party that deserve to be explored and I hope to treat it with both the appropriate amounts of reverence and irreverence that it deserves. From here I will have a regular series breaking down every election the Prohibition Party is on the ballot, from 1872 to 2016. You can already see the interactive county results here: https://public.tableau.com/profile/noah7751#!/vizhome/HistoricalProhibitionPartyPresidentialPerformance/ProhibitionParty.
Resource credits that aren’t credited within the article:
https://www.politico.com/story/2012/01/this-day-in-politics-071959
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=T7ApAAAAYAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA74
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/maine-first-state-try-prohibition-180963503/
“The Temperance Demonstration” Barre Gazette (Vermont), Jan 30, 1852
Maine vote 1855 statbook
