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Civil War Soldiers - Dow
| Dow, Neal, brigadier-general, U.S.
Army, was born in Portsmouth, Me., March 20, 1804, of Quaker
parentage, was educated in public schools and in the Friends' academy
in New Bedford, Mass., and was trained in mercantile pursuits,
succeeding to the management of his father's tannery in 1861. Early in
life he became a champion of the temperance movement, and in 1851
succeeded in getting through the legislature a radical, anti-liquor
law. He made many addresses on temperance throughout the state, was
elected mayor of Portland in 1851 and again in 1855, and was a member
of the state legislature, 1858-59. On Dec. 31, 1861, he was appointed
colonel of the 13th Maine regiment, which he had raised, as he had
also the 2nd Maine battery, and was assigned with his regiment to join
Gen. Butler's expedition to New Orleans. He was in the steamer
"Mississippi" with about 2,500 men when she was run aground on Frying
Pan shoals off the coast of North Carolina. Soon after the arrival of
the expedition at Ship island, he was commissioned brigadier-general
of volunteers, April 28, 1862, and was placed in command of the forts
at the mouth of the Mississippi and afterwards of the district of
Florida. In the attack on Port Hudson, May 27, 1863, he was wounded
twice and taken prisoner while lying in a house near, and spent eight
months in Libby prison and at Mobile. He was exchanged for Gen. W. H.
Fitzhugh Lee, in March, 1864, but his health was so undermined from
privations of prison life that he was unable to take the field again,
and on Nov. 30, 1864, he resigned his commission. After the war, Gen.
Dow resumed his temperance work, and in 1880 was candidate on the
Prohibition ticket for the presidency, receiving 10,305 votes. In
1884, as the result of his many years of labor for the cause, the
state of Maine adopted an amendment forbidding forever the manufacture
or keeping for sale of intoxicating liquors. Gen. Dow died in
Portland, Me., Oct. 2, 1897. Source: The Union Army: A History of Military Affairs in the Loyal
States 1861-1865, Volume 8 Biographical, 1908
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