A Fire Bell in the Night: The Story of Maine Statehood (Part 2)

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Guest Essayist: Jeffrey Hollingsworth

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The Maine Event: The Crisis and Its Outcome

The young United States was expanding, and by 1819 had grown to 21 states from the original 13 with more territories lining up to get in thanks to the Louisiana Purchase. But this raised serious political problems. The thorny slavery issue darkened much of American political discourse and policy in the early post-independence years. A precarious balance of power in Congress between slave-holding and free states prevailed until December 1819, when pro-slavery Alabama was admitted to the Union as the 22nd state.

Missouri, carved from the Louisiana Purchase, came knocking next seeking statehood but its application ignited an enormous constitutional crisis which quickly involved Maine. In November 1818, the Missouri territorial legislature passed legislation requesting statehood and transmitted it to the U.S. Congress in December. What should have been a no-brainer for admission became bogged down in controversy over the precarious balance between slave and free states. Missouri intended to permit slavery, which prompted free-state legislators to attach “killer” amendments to the Missouri statehood bill that stalled it. Chaos and uproar ensued in Washington.

Along came Maine, where separation sentiment was growing. Many previous efforts to permit Maine to break away died in the Massachusetts General Court (legislature). But the times were catching up. Seeking to eliminate its Revolutionary War debt to the U.S. government, Massachusetts found easy money by selling off vast swaths of public land in Maine and by granting generous acreages to war veterans. Thousands of pioneer families left the crowded Bay State and trekked to the Maine wilderness seeking elbow room and new opportunities. In less than 30 years, the population more than tripled, from 91,000 in 1791 to 300,000 by 1820.

As Maine grew, so did discontent with its political and economic dependence on Massachusetts. Prosperous coastal merchants, eager to govern themselves, were the first to complain. But with continued population growth outside the old coastal towns, frustration spread to fishermen and inland farmers and woodsmen, who had little in common with the governing gentry. By 1800, they were spearheading the quest for statehood, citing a long list of economic and political grievances. The War of 1812 was the final nail in the coffin, even for the merchant class.

At last, in the summer of 1819, Mainers voted so overwhelmingly–nearly ¾ of the electorate– for statehood that Massachusetts could no longer turn a blind eye. The legislature reluctantly adopted a statehood bill for Maine in late 1819, but with one proviso: if statehood was not approved by Congress and signed by the President by March 4, 1820, Maine would remain tethered to Massachusetts.

The Maine statehood bill came up in Congress in December of 1819, mere weeks after Missouri’s bid. Maine’s application offered the possibility of a compromise. To maintain the free-state/slave-state balance, Congressional leaders pushed the two requests for statehood as a package — one new slave and one new free state. Maine suddenly found itself in the midst of a firestorm of controversy.

Abolitionists all over the Union erupted. They were firmly opposed to the admission of any new slave states. Pro-slavery interests were equally as upset. Many Mainers, most of them ardent abolitionists, were torn. To prevent the spread of slavery, they found themselves calling for the defeat of the very bill that would have granted them long-sought statehood. The most distinguished Maine native in the country was Rufus King. Born and raised in Scarborough, scion of a wealthy family, he had a noteworthy political career. A Signer of the U.S. Constitution, he was twice the Federalist Party candidate for President and was a U.S. Senator from New York at the time of the Maine-Missouri imbroglio. With a heavy heart, he opposed the Maine statehood measure because, as he correctly foresaw, the “compromise” didn’t settle the slavery issue, but merely postponed a final day of reckoning. Meanwhile, his half-brother, William King, principal author of Maine’s constitution, was elected Maine’s first Governor.

At the last minute, the bill for Maine statehood passed Congress; on March 3, 1820, and signed into law, taking effect on March 15. Maine became our 23rd state. Missouri joined the Union as a slave state in 1821. The so-called Missouri Compromise had severely tested several key articles and amendments in the U.S. Constitution during tense, angry debates. In a long letter on April 22, 1820, to his friend and political associate John Holmes, who became one of Maine’s first two U.S. Senators, the aging Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“… this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.”

Like the venerable Rufus King, Jefferson perceived that the Missouri Compromise represented “a reprieve only, not a final sentence.”  That “final sentence” would come through all-out war 40 years later.

Maine’s Constitution

The Maine Constitution is the fourth-oldest operating state constitution in the country. The 210 delegates to the statehood convention in October 1819 unanimously adopted the proposed state constitution, which is modeled closely on the U.S. Constitution. Notable contents:

  • Article I contains 24 sections, the longest of which (Section 3) painstakingly spells out provisions regarding religious liberty.
  • Thomas Jefferson authored Sections 1 and 2 of Article VIII addressing education.
  • Article I, Section 6-A is one of the earliest official codifications in the U.S. of non-discrimination against all persons without exception.
  • Article I, Section 16 is among the most explicit defenses of the right to keep and bear arms ever written: “Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms and this right shall never be questioned.”
  • Article II, Section 1 specifically grants Native Americans “residing on tribal reservations and otherwise qualified” the right to vote in all elections.

In 2015, controversy erupted when a Maliseet Tribe delegate to the Maine Legislature sought to overturn a 19th Century ban on printing the text of Article X, Section 5, which defines the state’s obligations to Native American tribes via carryover provisions from Massachusetts.

The Constitution of Maine is updated as necessary by the Revisor of Statutes upon ratification of amendments by the voters of the state. The Constitution of Maine is subject to recodification every 10 years by its own terms (Article X, Section 6). The last recodification was in 2013.

Additional Maine History

  • Printed flat maps show Maine as extremely high north. In truth, seven U.S. states extend farther north in whole or part than Maine. True globes confirm that Maine is much more easterly than northerly. Portland is the closest key seaport to Europe by a factor of hundreds of miles, as is Bangor International Airport (a former B-52 bomber base) for air traffic. The easternmost point in the U.S. is, oddly enough, West Quoddy Head in Lubec, Maine.
  • The legendary political axiom “As Maine goes, so goes the nation” stems from the fact that Maine once held its general elections in September rather than November, on the sensible reasoning that snow could be flying by then. In September 1840, Maine elected a Whig Party governor. That November, Whig candidate William Henry Harrison was elected President. That launched the saying of Maine as a political bellwether, which held true roughly 70% of the time up through the late 1920s. Maine amended its constitution in 1957 to conform to the rest of the country and held elections in November effective in 1960.
  • The baseball term signifying the batting order–“At bat, on deck, and in the hole”—originated in Belfast, Maine, in 1872. It was confirmed personally by Paul Dickson, author of the authoritative, widely cited Dickson Baseball Dictionary, based on his original research in Belfast in 1987. A 1938 Sporting News feature published recollections of an aged member of the Belfast Pastimes, who played a traveling Boston pro team on August 7, 1872, in Belfast. Team scorekeepers back then would shout the batting order each inning. Boston’s man simply bellowed the names. But the Belfast man announced “Smith at bat, Jones on deck (or ‘on the deck’), and Doe in the hold,” reflecting Belfast’s maritime roots, the hold being the below-deck storage area on a commercial vessel. The Bostonians took a fancy to the designation and popularized it. Over time, “hold” slurred into “hole.”

The original score sheet from that game is on display at the Belfast Historical Society Museum.

  • Why is Maine often referred to as “Down East?” It’s a nautical term. In warm weather, prevailing winds in New England and Maritime Canada come out of the southwest, meaning ships headed there sailed downwind. Conversely, when en route to Boston, New York, or other lower locales, sailors dealt with upwinds. To this day, many Mainers speak of going “up to Boston.” The area known as Down East is most commonly the territory east of the Penobscot River and sometimes includes Canada’s Maritime provinces.
  • In mid-coast Maine, the town of Searsport, never home to more than 2,500 residents, once boasted 17 shipyards and in the 1870s was home to fully one-tenth of all American merchant sea captains.
  • The first international telephone call took place July 1, 1881, between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, USA. For generations, Calais and St. Stephen have enjoyed close relations. One example stems from the War of 1812, when the British military supplied St. Stephen with a large supply of gunpowder for protection against the Yankee enemy in Calais. Instead, St. Stephen’s leaders donated much of it to Calais so it could enjoy a proper boom-and-bang Independence Day celebration.

Jeffrey Hollingsworth grew up in Belfast, Maine, and is a University of Maine alumnus. He is a past president of the Maine State Society of Washington, D.C., and principal founder of its charitable foundation. He is the author of Magnificent Mainers (Covered Bridge Press), a compendium of mini-biographies of 100 famous Maine natives. His articles have appeared in Honolulu and Down East magazines and in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Portland Press Herald, and other periodicals.

 

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A Fire Bell in the Night: The Story of Maine Statehood (Part 1)

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Guest Essayist: Jeffrey Hollingsworth

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD:

Barely 30 years after the contentious adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the experiment in self-government and democratic republicanism that enraptured de Tocqueville and other noted admirers of the new United States of America was at grave risk of collapse. Maine’s aspirations for statehood were at the heart of the hullabaloo. It was in a wrestling match with Missouri for admission to the Union. In fact, Members of Congress representing the District of Maine, as it was known—then belonging to Massachusetts—voted against legislation that would have admitted their home as a state even after longstanding agitation in Maine for statehood.

So why, when at long last statehood was within reach, did these officials and many of those they represented object to legislation that would unlock the door to statehood? Their reasons are at the heart of why we are “one nation, indivisible” and how small, remote Maine helped preserve the U. S. of A. at a grave hour in its early history.

Earliest Maine: How the Story Began

The first Mainers have been traced to approximately 3,000BC. They’re known as the “Red Paint People” due to their liberal use of red ochre in pottery and burial rituals. Native American tribes still extant in Maine are the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micmac and Maliseet.

Why Maine is called “Maine” (the only one-syllable state)  still isn’t clear. Some scholars say it was named after the French Province of Maine. Others suggest it’s from a maritime term for “the main” or mainland, to distinguish it from islands. Some sources claim Vikings visited Maine as early as 1000AD, but the first recorded European was Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. Others later included Capt. John Smith (yes, the John Smith) for England and Samuel de Champlain for France.

Champlain fostered an attempted permanent settlement in June 1604 on St. Croix Island off Robbinston, Maine, opposite Bayside, New Brunswick. The colony failed within a year, most settlers felled by “mal de la terre” (scurvy). It was home to the first known Christmas celebration in the New World. The island, though in U.S. waters, is an International Historic Site, the only one in North America, jointly administered by the U.S. and Canadian governments.

Instead of Jamestown, Virginia, the Popham Colony in present-day Phippsburg, Maine, could’ve been the first permanent English settlement in the U.S.A. Sir George Popham and Sir Raleigh Gilbert led 120 English settlers to landfall at the mouth of the Kennebec River in August 1607. Other English settlers had reached today’s Jamestown in mid-May 1607. The Popham colonists started off strongly. They built the first commercial ship ever constructed in the New World, the pinnace Virginia of Sagadahock. This milestone was commemorated by a 1957 U.S. stamp officially recognizing the origin of shipbuilding in the U.S.  Shipbuilding has been a mainstay (no pun intended) of Maine’s economy over the succeeding four-plus centuries.

But the Popham Colony was doomed. After experiencing winter, half the surviving cold, hungry settlers grew disillusioned and fled back to England. Gilbert later received news of his father’s passing and needed to address vital family matters. He left for England, never to return. Lacking leadership, the remaining colonists abandoned the settlement almost a year to the day after landing. Jamestown’s settlers hung on, though barely. Today, archeological excavations at both sites keep unlocking secrets about our country’s first English settlers.

Maine Grows

From Popham through the next 175 years, Maine ownership shifted from one royal grantee to another. The major promoter of Maine settlement was Sir Ferdinando Gorges, an English aristocrat later dubbed “The Father of English Colonization in North America,” though he never set foot in the New World. With Captain John Mason (a principal colonizer of New Hampshire), Gorges secured a patent from King James I in 1622 for vast territory in Maine. During  the next 50 years, disputes and squabbles over Gorges family holdings and competing land claims finally led Gorges’s grandson to sell all the property to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1677.

Maine grew slowly but steadily, yet not without incident. Devastating hostilities with Native Americans erupted periodically, and colonial conflicts took their toll. France considered all the land up to the Kennebec River, which bisects Maine, to belong to New France. Its farthest outpost was the present-day town of Castine, which see-sawed between French and British control for decades. In 1674, during a war between France and The Netherlands, Dutch naval forces captured Castine and environs, part of a grandiose venture to establish Nova Hollandia (“New Holland”). Maine suffered further privations during the French & Indian War (1754-63). Then came America’s War for Independence.

Mainers were distinguished soldiers, sailors and commanders in the Revolutionary War, and Maine was the scene of several battles. The most notorious was the infamous bombardment and burning of Falmouth—now Portland—on Oct. 18, 1775. The British Navy launched a far-flung campaign to punish seaports aiding the rebel forces, and Portland fell into the dragnet. The fierceness and merciless intensity of the assault was widely reported throughout all 13 colonies and helped inflame passions against Britain. It prompted the Second Continental Congress to pass legislation authorizing what John Adams wrote led to “the true origin of the American Navy.” Earlier, in the first naval battle of the Revolution, patriots in remote Machias swarmed and captured the British sloop HMS Margaretta in June 1775. The dead and wounded on both sides were carried to Burnham Tavern, where the plot to seize Margaretta was hatched. The tavern, a National Historic Site, still stands.

The worst American naval defeat until Pearl Harbor occurred near the mouth of the Penobscot River as vessels augmented by ground forces sought to oust the British from eastern Maine (“New Ireland,” as Britain had declared it). A 44-ship armada, reinforced by some 1,000 marines and a 100-man artillery contingent commanded by Lt. Col. Paul Revere, left Boston for Maine in late July 1779. The colonials were no match for the Royal Navy. Most American ships not blown out of the water either were scuttled or captured, then hauled upriver to Bangor and burned. The surviving colonials fled overland with few supplies or weaponry. The “Penobscot Expedition” is among the darkest episodes in U.S. military history.

Many Maine communities were occupied by British forces. It underscored the indifference and incapacity of Massachusetts toward defending the region. Maine took years to recover, and louder rumblings for statehood began. The crippling Embargo Act of 1807 made matters worse, since Maine’s economy relied heavily on seagoing commerce. Then, the War of 1812 put many Maine communities under British boot-heels yet again. Its easternmost city, Eastport, wouldn’t even be liberated until 1818, three years after the war ended. Two major (and other lesser) engagements occurred in Maine: the 1814 Battle of Hampden (near present-day Bangor), a humiliating U.S. defeat; and the electrifying clash between HMS Boxer and USS Enterprise on Sept. 5, 1813, just off Pemaquid Point near the mouth of the Kennebec River. The thunderous, furious, 30-minute slugfest, witnessed by scores of residents on shore and heard by many more, resulted in the capture of Boxer. It was a widely reported and celebrated boost for U.S. morale, memorialized by Portland native Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “My Lost Youth.” The remains of both ships’ slain commanders were ferried to Portland, then reverently buried side by side with full military honors.

The war convinced most Mainers that their area was a mere stepchild of Massachusetts and the state government was nonchalant about defending it. The earlier crippling attacks by the French and native tribes hadn’t been forgotten, either. Besides, travelling to distant Boston, the state capital, on official business was an arduous, time-consuming, risky and expensive venture. The push for statehood acquired new life.

Click Here to have the NEWEST essay in this study emailed to your inbox every day!

Click Here to view the schedule of topics in our 90 Day Study on Congress.

Jeffrey Hollingsworth grew up in Belfast, Maine, and is a University of Maine alumnus. He is a past president of the Maine State Society of Washington, D.C., and principal founder of its charitable foundation. He is the author of Magnificent Mainers (Covered Bridge Press), a compendium of mini-biographies of 100 famous Maine natives. His articles have appeared in Honolulu and Down East magazines and in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Portland Press Herald, and other periodicals.

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