Written Initially Several Years Ago, Published this Week for the Anniversary of the Portland Rum Riot
The Gathering Crowd
Bricks thudded against the door of Portlandʼs City Hall. Fifty to 75 young men, most under 20 stood, shouted, and occasionally hurled bricks at the door on the Middle Street side of the building in the early evening of June 2, 1855. Another five- or six-hundred stood about the area, drawn by the ruckus or called out by the earlier fire alarm. Some, like Elbridge Hall had followed Deputy Marshal Oren Ring, “with no more object or interest than to see him seize an Irishman.” Others had come intent on seeing Mayor Neal Dow, “The Napoleon of Temperance” fined and imprisoned, given “a taste of his own medicine.” All would be disappointed. Some would be injured. One would be killed.
The 'Maine Law' Background
In the early nineteenth century Portland, Maine was a drinking city. In his memoirs Dow claimed, "It was normal for workers to drink on the job, for ministers to drink before delivering a sermon, or for a gentleman of society to get beastly drunk and dance a jig on top of a table at a public gathering. The town bell rang at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. as a reminder for workers to break for some rum, which employers were expected to provide.” A city report in 1840 estimated one thousand of Portlandʼs 12,000 residents were addicted to the excessive use of intoxicants.
But Portland, like the rest of New England also was a hotbed of intellectual and spiritual reform. The reform-minded, Neal Dow and others, saw drunkenness as contributing to the degradation of Portlanders. Prohibition would become Maineʼs contribution to the progressive struggle to remake America as John Winthropʼs “Shining City Upon a Hill.”
Over the course of several years the political parties in Maine had been shattered by conflict over 'The Maine Law' -- prohibition. Imagine the recent splitting due to the Tea Party and Occupy movements occurring at a time when the main parties were less firmly entrenched in power. A reform-minded progressive group, the new Republican party, arose from the remnants of the old Whig party, and joined with the anti-immigrant Know-Nothings in a coalition of convenience to challenge the recently dominant Democrats. The Democrats supported the interests of merchants and businessmen, pandering to Irish immigrants by demonizing the Republicans. A local political broad sheet addressed "To the Irish Voters" attacked a Whig newspaper for calling Irish voters "Irish cattle," attempting to lure Irish voters to the Democrats. Irish outnumbered blacks in Portland at this time, so this political tactic would have been advantageous to the Democrats.
The Republican/Whig/Know-Nothing coalition won out in Portland in 1855, and Neal Dow, the main spokesman on the main issue in Maine politics for the past half decade, was returned to the office of Mayor of Portland. Our recent elections and court cases feature political controversy about voter fraud and vote suppression; in 1850 an anti-Maine Law member of Portland's Board of Aldermen who had moved to Boston returned to assume the chairmanship and entered hundreds of "illegal" voters on the city's rolls. To counter that, In March of 1855 Maine passed two other pieces of legislation that gave the Republicans an advantage (and made the Irish feel unfairly targeted). First, immigrants had to register and show their naturalization papers three months prior to election day, disenfranchising hundreds of qualified voters for the approaching April elections. Second, any voter rejected at the polls for whatever reason in Republican Maine, must appeal in Federal court. Cases here could take weeks just to get on the docket.
In those April elections Neal Dow became Mayor by a 47-vote margin. He vowed to fully enforce the “Maine Law.” In 1850, there were 2,244 Irish-born immigrants living in Portland, a full 11 percent of the cityʼs total population of 20,420, according to James H. Mundy, who quoted census reports in his book Hard Times, Hard Men: Maine and the Irish. With a push from the Democratic Party, the Irish of Portland grew to hate Dow, ʻThe Grand Pooh-bah of temperance. [H]is name became a curse on Irishmenʼs lips,ʼ Mundywrites.
Two hundred or more shops selling liquor were now out of business, seven distilleries restricted to out-of-state sales. Demand for molasses, a commodity forming the bulk of Portlandʼs trade, would be much reduced. Dow came into office facing the ire of thousands. If anything, he increased it by fulfilling his vow to aggressively enforce the Maine Law.
The Complaint and Seizure
The Maine Law allowed for the sale of alcohol for “medicinal and mechanical” uses. Dow, as Mayor, authorized the city to purchase and store $1600 worth of “medicinal and mechanical” alcohol. City aldermen accused him of overstepping his authority, as they had not authorized the expenditure. Other of his political enemies, realizing that he had signed for the purchases, saw an opportunity to have him found guilty of holding liquor "with intent to sell in violation of law." Thus "Neal Dow would be fined and imprisoned...'compelled to taste some of his own medicine,'" as he put it in his memoirs.
Another feature of the Maine Law allowed any three voters to apply for a search warrant if they believed someone in violation of the law. Thus, on June 2, 1855 a man named Royal Williams with two others, appeared at the police court and swore that Dow had liquor in his possession for the purpose of "selling them in the State in violation of the law." According to testimony at one self-serving hearing after the incident, about fifteen well-known opponents of the Maine Law were in the court, and three cases of trial for liquor-selling, with the defendants in every case Irish, were occurring.
The court issued the warrant, handing it to Deputy marshal Ring. Ring went to City Hall, found the liquor, and impounded it on site. Dow would later face trial. Whether the crowd planned to steal and/or destroy the liquor when it was moved upon seizure, as Dow and his supporters later claimed, or were incensed at the apparent inaction of what they perceived as Dow underlings, as his political opponents claimed in their own hearing, the disappointed crowd became angry. Brick throwing began.
The Riot
According to a witness, William C. Ten Broeck, the crowd "seemed to be throwing bricks occasionally, but they did not appear to have any organization -- there did not appear to be any leader.” Nevertheless, Ring, City Marshal Worthy Barrows and the ununiformed police force were no match for the crowd. “Warnings were answered with insults; attempts to disperse the crowd aroused only excitement and threats; the ringleaders arrested were rescued by their fellow-rioters, and finally the marshal reported to the mayor his inability to maintain the peace with the force under his command,” Dow later said.
The ringing of the fire bell, when there turned out to be no fire, brought more men to the scene. Estimates of crowd size ran as high as 3000, though it seems fewer than a hundred men engaged in active rioting. Dow was later criticized for inadequate efforts to disperse the crowd; his orders to the Marshal emphasized protecting the stores of alcohol. The Marshal and his men entered the City Hall from the far (Congress Street) side, and held the rioters off with pistols.
Meanwhile Mayor Dow issued a an order calling out Captain Greenʼs Portland Light Guard. He met them at their armory and and ordered them "armed and equipped with cartridges as the law directs.” One, William Winship, objected,"I asked him if it was not according to all military usages and law to fire blank cartridges over the heads of the populace first and to command them to disperse. He replied, 'we know what we are abut sir, we've consulted the law sir,ʼ and I then took a chair and sat down."
Dow led the few Light Guards on hand and willing out, but even as they approached the mob some were injured by thrown stones. Mayor Dow ordered the assembly to disperse or be fired upon, then quickly ordered Captain Green to have his men fire. Ten Broeck testified, “I heard someone come into the crowd, who said, 'I order you to disperse!' A short time afterward, I heard some person say, 'Soldiers, do your duty.'” Green hesitated, and Dow gave the order himself, but the Guards did not fire. Instead they left the scene.
Encouraged by the troopsʼ departure, the crowd grew more aggressive. They attacked the door of the storage room. Ten Broeck said, “They had a plank and were trying to stave in the door.” From inside, the police scared them off with pistols, firing above their heads.Then a seeming leader, “tried to unbolt the door on the inside, by introducing his arm through the window of the door, from which the shutter had been purposely taken,” testified Marshal Barrows. “As the leader of the riot pulled the cross-bar, I fired a pistol high over his head. The cry was then 'the way is clear, rush forward.'
We lowered our pistols and fired again and again -- I think three rounds in succession. The words, I think, were: --'Blank cartridges, God damn them, the way is clear. Rush forward!' I suppose no one was hit in the first fire. There was also language that 'we were damned cowards, and daren't fire.'”
Joseph A. Ware testified, "the man who forced the door open jumped through the glass part of the door into the building, and in a moment the door flew open. There were two or three others tugging at it. Only one or two besides him entered the room. Only he went farther than two feet beyond the threshold. He may have gone five feet.”
“They did not fire for, say 10 seconds after the door was forced open. They fired once while it was being forced open. This man threw up his hands at the first fire after the door was open."
“I saw a man shot in the head,” said Van Broeck.
Meanwhile Mayor Dow had found another military company, the Rifle Guards, armed them, and brought them to the scene. Entering the Agency storeroom from the other side, they stepped forward a few feet, and fired upon the crowd from a dark room, without a word of warning, and through a door nearly closed, which prevented the crowd from seeing, and at the same time sheltered the military from the missiles of the mob.
A man fell, shot dead. James Crawford saw it from Congress Street, “I heard a discharge of some firearms and saw a man in the act of falling. He sank as if his knees gave way." Nelson Leighton was close by and claimed, "The man was standing about middle way on the sidewalk from the door to the street. Wasn't doing any thing as I know of. He began to tumble round, and I caught him.”
Now the crowd fled. The Rifle Guards, divided into squads, began to patrol the area, making arrests.
The dead man was John Robbins, of Deer Isle, Me. He was second mate of the barque Louisa Eaton, had come to the city on the day of the riot, and gone into the street in response to the fire bell.
The Immediate Aftermath
Portland officials tried to cast Robbins as a ringleader, while Dowʼs opponents, holding their own “Second Inquest” into his death tried to cast Dow as a callous, criminal racist, eliciting testimony that, “Information was brought to Mr. Dow, that a man had been killed, and he, after inquiring if it was irish [sic], said he would send some one to see about it. No farther efforts were made to discover the number of killed and wounded.”
Robbins was the only person killed, though others were wounded. One was certainly the man the Marshal heard cheering the crowd on, and whom he shot with his revolver; but he was shot before Robbins, and carried off by some of the crowd. Dr. William Young reported at the second inquest into Robbinsʼs death, "I heard the discharge of several firearms Saturday night, June 2nd, between 10 and 11 o'clock... nearly opposite the stone church... I saw several persons coming down the street, and they were bearing in their arms the body of John Robbins.” He examined the body and found the fatal wound had been caused by “a musket or a rifle ball of ordinary size."
Dow, Portlandʼs officials, and Republican apologists, blamed the events on Democrats, enemies of the Maine Law, and the lowly Irish:
The invention of the enemy in connection with violent appeals to the passions of the lowest portion of the Irish population who had been deprived by the Maine Law of the opportunity to gratify their love of whisky, and the attacks which had appeared from time to time on the character of Neal Dow in the State of Maine and the Argus newspapers had the desired effect of raising a feeling of hostility. This class of people were thus actually led to believe that Neal Dow had bought these liquors for his own private speculation and aggrandizement.
In his memoirs Dow's self-serving analysis dwelt on "What would have followed if the mob had got access to the liquors after trampling down the constituted authorities.” Separating the Maine Law from the event, “be it remembered: the enforcement of that statute, as we have seen, was not involved in the riot,” He claimed, “There would have been no disturbance of any kind had the complainants and those for whom they acted been content with the orderly enforcement of the statute under which they had sworn out the warrant."
Robbins was buried in the Eastern Cemetery at the foot of Munjoy Hill. An anti-temperance editorial declared Robbins a martyr, predicting that his grave would be remembered for all time, while Dowʼs was “lost among the wild grasses and weeds that spring from carrion carcasses, in places hideous to human tread.”
Following Years
Today the irony of Neal Dow's prosecution for violating the Maine Law is well noted. It is not much emphasized that he was acquitted with what amounts to an apology. Two or three years later Dow was nominated to represent Portland in the state legislature. His one-time enemies declined to nominate anyone to oppose him. He relates the incident as conveying a popular vindication and personal compliment.
In the meantime, anti-Republican and anti-Maine Law forces made liberal political use of the riot in the next election cycle, attacking Dow personally and the Republican party for its association with him. However, the repeal of the Maine Law in the next legislative session, far from being the end of Prohibition implied in some general overviews, led to a re-enactment within two years. In the interim the Republican party became the dominant party in Maine politics. They would hold that power for the best part of a century.
Sources
Clubb, Henry S. New York: Fowler & Wells, 1856. Internet Archive. Web. 30 May 2017. .
Connolly, Michael C., "Black Fades to Green: Irish Labor Replaces African-American Labor Along a Major New England Waterfront, Portland Maine, in the Mid-Nineteenth Century." Colby Quarterly, Vol. 37, Issue 4, December 2001. <http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3354&context=cq>
"Review of the Testimony Taken Before The Second Inquest On The Body of John Robbins, Who Was Shot in Portland, June 2d, 1855; Together with Remarks on the Report of the "Investigating Committee," Appointed by Mayor Dow and the Aldermen, June 9th, 1855." : Portland, ME. Untitled Document. Web. 30 May 2017. .
Dow, Neal. "Chapter XXI." The Reminiscences of Neal Dow: Recollections of Eighty Years. Portland, ME: Evening Express, 1898. Retrieved at <https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Reminiscences_of_Neal_Dow.html?id=dE_P6FOcQSQC>
Muston, K. A. "True Believer." Blog post. Daily KOS. KOS Media LLC, 13 Apr. 2014. Web. 30 May 2017. .
Richardson, Whit. "The Great Rum Riot." Downeast Nov. 2010: Print.
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