BRIGADIER GENERAL NEAL DOW - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 09/13/1892 - HFSID 264500

NEAL DOW
Signed handwritten letter (1892), making the case for alcohol prohibition
ALS: "Neal Dow", 1 page, 8¼x9¾. Portland (Maine), 1892 September 13. To Mr. M.E. Wheeler. Begins: "Dear Sir". In full: "The frank and cordial manner in which you assure me that you are in full sympathy with my life-work encourages me to say of it in your Book of Autographs what I might otherwise think would not be suitable and proper. I am confident that the question of protection to the people from the enormous evils of the liquor traffic will at some day not very distant, become so important as a national policy that it will occupy public attention almost exclusively. It seems to me amasing (sic) that an intelligent people as those of this country are, should give legal support to a trade which directly and indirectly wastes every year twenty two hundred millions of dollars of the wages of labor and the profits of legitimate industries and kills annually more than one hundred thousands of its victims and fills more than 500,000 homes with a poverty and misery and wastedness so great that it cannot be described nor even conceived." Neal Dow (1804-1897) was a zealous crusader for the cause of temperance and prohibition, both in Maine and throughout the country. In 1838, he formed the Maine Temperance Union, an organization that advocated total abstinence from drinking alcohol. Dow lobbied the state legislature for the passage of a prohibition law, and in 1851, after he was elected Mayor of Portland, he succeeded. The Maine Law remained in effect, except for a lapse of three years, until the repeal of National Prohibition in 1933. It made liquor manufacture, trade and use illegal in Maine, except for medicinal or mechanical purposes. During the Civil War, Dow commanded the 13th Maine Volunteer Infantry and sought to promote the temperance cause among his soldiers. Lightly creased at upper margin, lightly soiled at right margin. Upper right corner chipped off, irregular left edge from removal from bound book. Overall, fine condition.