![]() Before getting the Maine law on the books, Dow had been instrumental in getting the so-called "Twenty-Eight Gallon Law" passed in 1846, writes author Kate McCarty. Dow believed “rum and slavery fed off each other,” the historical society writes.ĭow was a founding member of the Maine Temperance Society and was instrumental in Maine's prohibition movement, the historical society writes. ![]() He hated alcohol for reasons related to the Christian temperance movement, but also for its links to slavery. Dow led the temperance movement in Maine, records the New England Historical Society. An ambitious politician and a Quaker, he was the mayor of Portland from 1851 to 1858. “Tavern owners saw fines as a cost of doing business,” she writes, while pharmacies and grocery stories sold legal “medicines” that just-so-happened to be alcoholic.Īt the center of Maine’s early experiment in alcohol prohibition was Portland, and its mayor, Neal Dow. Farmers made hard cider and wine out of fruit. Some brewed booze at home and sold it to neighbors out of their kitchens. Mainers found ways around the law, Bouchard writes. Like the national Prohibition that stretched from 1920-1933, the law also didn’t stop many people from drinking. The Maine law wasn’t a complete ban on alcohol: “an exception for ‘medicinal, mechanical and manufacturing purposes’ kept many liquor wagons rolling,” writes Kelley Bouchard for the Portland Press-Herald. It foreshadowed the national pushback against the era of Prohibition almost 70 years later. The Portland Rum Riot, as it came to be known, resulted in one death and several injuries, as well as the loss of the mayor’s political career. On this day in 1851, the state of Maine passed a law banning the sale of alcohol.įour years later, 3,000 rioters stormed a Maine city hall looking for illicitly purchased booze.
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