The Rum Riot Part 2: Dirty Tricks in Politics
Discussed in this post:
Vote Suppression
Anti-Irish Sentiment
Irish Resentment
Some Details of the Maine Law
How did the Republican coalition win?
Our recent elections and court cases, and discussion of the upcoming election, 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 in Boston. Cases 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 Mundy writes.
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. Thus major sources of employment for the Irish work force of Portland dried up along with the liquor supply. Dow came into office facing the ire of thousands. If anything, he increased it by fulfilling his vow to aggressively enforce the Maine Law. His aggressive enforcement of the aggressively-constructed (by him) law would lead to numerous ironies.
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. This feature was in the law because local law enforcement officers were frequently lax in their enforcement because they were friends with the liquor sellers (or depended on them for votes). As Mayor, Dow sidestepped the existing law enforcement apparatus, creating his own rum squad.
His enemies turned the feature against him.
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.