What was a brief but violent period of civil unrest in response to the Maine law, who's opponents of an American Prohibition advocate and politician Nicknamed the "Napoleon of Temperance" rioted ?
Neal Dow Neal Dow (March 20, 1804 – October 2, 1897) was an American Prohibition advocate and politician. Nicknamed the "Napoleon of Temperance" and the "Father of Prohibition", Dow was born to a Quaker family in Portland, Maine. From a young age, he believed alcohol to be the cause of many of society's problems and sought to ban it through legislation. In 1850, Dow was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union, and the next year he was elected mayor of Portland. Soon after, largely due to Dow's efforts, the state legislature banned the sale and production of alcohol in what became known as the Maine law. Serving twice as mayor of Portland, Dow enforced the law with vigor and called for increasingly harsh penalties for violators. In 1855, his opponents rioted and he ordered the state militia to fire on the crowd. One man was killed and several wounded, and when public reaction to the violence turned against Dow, he chose not to seek reelection.
Opposition Party (Northern U.S.) The Opposition Party was a party identification under which Northern, anti-slavery politicians, formerly members of the Democratic and Whig parties, briefly ran in the 1850s. This was in response to the expansion of slavery into the new territories. It was one of the movements which arose from the political chaos in the decade before the Civil War in the wake of the Compromise of 1850. The movement arose before and was quickly subsumed by the coalescence of the Republican Party in 1856.