Serving twice as mayor of Portland, Dow enforced the law with vigor and called for increasingly harsh penalties for violators.

He joined the Union Army shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general.

After losing the election, he continued to write and speak on behalf of the prohibition movement for the rest of his life until his death in Portland at the age of 93.

[5] Dow struggled to conform to the tenets of his parents' Quaker faith; he was hot-tempered and enjoyed brawling from a young age.

[8] When he turned eighteen, Dow sought to avoid the required militia musters, more out of distaste for the drunkenness that they often involved than out of Quaker belief in pacifism.

[11] At times Dow let his politics interfere with his duties; after being promoted to fire chief, he allowed a liquor store to burn to the ground.

In every grocer's shop were casks [of] ... rum punch constantly prepared in a tub, sometimes on the sidewalk, just as lemonade is to be seen now on the Fourth of July.

"[21] Many of Portland's middle- and upper-class citizens, including Dow, believed drunkenness was a great threat to the city's moral and financial well-being.

[24] In the 1832 presidential election, unsatisfied with both Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, Dow backed William Wirt, a minor-party candidate.

[25] That year James Appleton, a Whig representative in the state legislature, proposed a prohibition law, and Dow spoke often and forcefully in favor of the effort, which was unsuccessful.

[27] Maine's Whig governor, Edward Kent, granted Dow a colonel's commission in the state militia in 1841 as a reward for his efforts, despite his lack of military experience.

[27][28] Dow spent the early 1840s attending to his tanning business, but also found time to encourage individual drinkers to take up abstinence.

[29] In 1842, he and his allies succeeded in getting the city government in Portland to require licenses for liquor dealers and to prosecute unlicensed sellers; a referendum on the question was decided in the prohibitionists' favor later that year.

[30] The next year saw the Democrats win election to city government, replacing the more prohibition-friendly Whigs, and many liquor-sellers resumed their trade as prosecutions were deferred indefinitely.

[38] After the Maine law came into force, Dow allowed liquor dealers a two-week grace period to sell their stock out of state, then began confiscations.

[39] His enforcement efforts quickly drove respectable drinking establishments out of business, but less fancy saloons, especially those frequented by Portland's poor and immigrant residents, simply moved their operations to secret locations.

Both Dow and his opponents engaged in anonymous newspaper campaigns against the other, often making personal attacks alongside political arguments.

[42] While the Democrats rallied behind their candidate, Dow's vigorous enforcement of prohibition divided his party, and in two wards the Whigs ran an anti-Dow ticket instead.

[49] That evening, June 2, a crowd of anti-prohibitionists gathered to demand that the law be enforced, shouting threats to spill "Neal Dow's liquor".

[52] Republicans lost the governorship that fall, and in 1856 the Democrats combined with the remaining Whigs in the state legislature to repeal the Maine law entirely.

[62] Dow continued to promote prohibition after leaving office, but also added his voice to the growing chorus advocating the abolition of slavery.

[67] He spent much of the time quarreling with his second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Francis S. Hesseltine, while the regiment occupied forts around New Orleans.

[72] He also (without authorization from Washington) began to recruit black troops from the local slave population while continuing his confiscation of rebel property.

[78] Dow was taken by wagon and train to Jackson, Mississippi, then to Montgomery, Alabama, before finally being confined to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, the Confederacy's capital.

[82] After the war, Dow returned to his leadership of the prohibition movement, co-founding the National Temperance Society and Publishing House with James Black in 1865.

[85] Despite that minor victory, Dow began to sour on the Republican party, believing them insufficiently committed to his cause and disappointed at their failure to protect the rights of Southern blacks as Reconstruction came to an end.

[87] They had won very few votes in the 1872 and 1876 presidential elections, but as temperance advocates grew disenchanted with the Republican Party, they hoped to win converts in 1880.

[91] Garfield narrowly won the popular vote over Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, but in the electoral college, he carried a clear majority.

In 1888, at the age of 84, Dow accepted the Prohibition Party nomination for mayor of Portland, an office he had held more than thirty years earlier.

[98] He began to write his memoirs, The Reminiscences of Neal Dow: Recollections of Eighty Years, but died on October 2, 1897, before completing the book.