Ipswich Town (part 3 of 3)

But the legislative report, though the most complete, was not the earliest attempt made by General Ai)pleton for the suppression by law of all traffic in ardent spirits. It is remembered in his family that he dated his convictions upon the subject from the year 1831. It came to him - when listening to an earnest debate in the Massachusetts Legislature, of which body he had been a member - as a sudden revelation, as a discovery in morals, that the way to stop intemperance was to stop it. If the drinking of spirits was always wrong and dangerous, and the source of all the monstrous evils charged to it, then it was not to be tolerated, nor dallied with by license laws, but put an end to. If there was no liquor, there would be no drunkenness ; if the sale was made illegal, the traffic in it and the use of it would become disgraceful as well as dangerous. It might not, indeed, be possible to suppress it altogether and at once by act ot the Legislature; but, as an argument, this was just as true of the laws against murder, arson, forgery, theft, or any other acknowledged crime, which bad men would still commit in defiance of the law.

Though persuaded in his own mind that he had discovered the true remedy for the monstrous evil, the first application he proposed was tentative and indirect ; not that he wanted faith in the perfect efficacy of that remedy, but he doubted if the public mind was yet ready for heroic treatment. Accordingly, he prepared a petition to the Massachusetts Legislature - this was before he removed to Portland, and when he was residing at Marblehead - praying that the sale of liquor in any quantity less than thirty gallons be forbidden by law.

The proposition was clearly meant as the first step toward absolute prohibition ; indeed there was no pretence in the petition of concealing the hope of its author that a limitation of the sale of ardent spirits to a minimum of thirty gallons would take from the large majority of drunkards all chance of getting drunk. The purchase of rum in so large a quantity would be beyond their means, while the moderate drinker who could affijrd it would easily and almost unconsciously abandon a habit, unless very firmly fixed, which called for more forethought and larger immediate outlay than the gratification was worth.

But even this compromise aroused more opposition than ])robably General Appleton was prepared for. The agent of the Massachusetts Temperance Society, a Rev. Mr. Hildreth, pounced upon it at once as a mischievous measure. His notion evidently was that among the "inalienable rights" of man was the right to rum. He fairly represented the timid public opinion of that day, which in the temperance, as in the anti-slavery, movement, shrunk from any denunciation in " harsh language " of a popular wrong, and from any proposed remedy that would be pronounced " radical." Moral suasion " was the cant phrase of the time, and if there were a few tender souls - Mr. Hildreth may have been one of them - who used the term in its true sense, with the multitude it only meant that they would not tolerate any onslaught upon evil which reflected upon respectable sinners, was likely to open their eyes and bring them to repentance.

The letter of Mr. Hildreth and that of another writer, who signs himself " Danvers," show the spirit in which General Appleton's moderate proposal was met. He was quick to reply whether to argument or cavil, and in three clear and forcible letters signed " Essex," to be found in the Salem Gazette of February, 1832, he sets forth his reasons for the faith that is in him, and the real object he had in view in the petition. On one point, however, he acknowledged his error, and accepted, in his own way, the rebuke of his opponents. He ought not, he confessed, to have asked the Legislature for a limitation in the traffic in ardent spirits, whether to thirty gallons or any other quantity. The trade, it was plain to him now, should be not regulated, but prohibited. The opposition he had aroused was an evidence of the foolishness of any proposed compromise between right and wrong. He meant prohibition, and ought to have said so directly, rather than have condescended to an expedient which pleased nobody and would deceive but few. " I made a great mistake," he said to a member of his family - " a great mistake." And this he publicly reiterates, it will be observed, in a postscript to his third and final letter, - " We wish the prayer of the petition had been without any qualification, for its authors, we believe, intended the absolute prohibition of the traffic, as their argument abundantly evinces." But here was the end of the matter. Perhaps he had gained all he had hoped for in provoking some discussion of the subject, and it is doubtful if the petition, which probably nobody but himself would have signed, was ever presented to the Legislature.

Here for ihe first time prohibitory legislation was proposed, though with no other immediate result, apparently, than to convince its author that the opposition to it would be formidable, if not insurmountable. He may have been for a time discouraged, but he was not defeated. He knew he was right, and he had learned, moreover, a lesson of practical value. If ever again he could make an opportunity to urge his principles upon any legislative body, there should be no mistake of a want of directness in his method.

Meanwhile he had removed to Portland, and in 1836 he was elected a member to the Maine Legislature. The opportunity he had vvaited for came when a petition on the license laws was referred to a Committee of which he was chairman. He could speak now with a certain authority, and did not need, even were he so minded, to appeal to public attention by the suggestion of an indirect and experimental measure. The whole subject was, no doubt, much clearer in his mind than when he put forth his thirty gallons petition, and he was ready to meet the unbelieving or the timid at all possible points of difficulty or objection. He covers the ground so completely, presents his argument so frankly, confidently and forcibly, that the report might go before any State Legislature to-day as an exhaustive presentation of the whole question of prohibition.

The report, of course, was laid upon the table, and it is not remembered whether it gave rise to any debate. Very likely not; for doubtless to most, if not all, of the honorable members, it seemed as preposterous as it was novel, and not even worth talking about. Nevertheless, "The Maine Law " was born then and there, though it was not till nine years later that the first tentative act M-as passed as the beginning of prohibitory legislation. The years of agitation and discussion which preceded and prepared the way for legislation also had a beginning, and there is neither record, nor tradition, nor memory of the oldest inhabitant that can trace it beyond the Appleton Report to the Maine Legislature of 1886-37, unless it be to the Appleton petition to the Massachusetts Legislature of 1832. But both came from the same man, and together they leave nothing more to be said as to the question of the origin of this special temperance policy. James Appleton, as a private citizen of Massachusetts, publicly suggested in 1832 the wisdom of a prohibitory liquor law, and in 1837 the same James Appleton, as a member of the Maine Legislature, urged upon that body the enactment of such a law. When at last, in 1851, the " Maine Law," as it now stands upon the statute-books of the State, was passed, it was a fitting recognition of his early devotion to the principle of prohibition that he, among others, should have been called upon to aid in the preparation of the act.

He lived to see ten years of the enforcement of the perfected law in Maine and in other States. It was, in spirit and purpose, of his own devising, and he would sometimes speak at his own fireside with natural pride and profound thankfulness of the result of his work. But he left it to others to show at some future time how much was due to his foresight, his keen moral sense and his courage.

Hon. Charles Kimball

Charles Kimball was born in Ipswich, Mass., on December 24, 1798. His parents were Jeremiah and Lois Kimball. Twelve children were born to them, of whom he was the youngest. His mother was of the Choate family, of Essex, made famous by the "great Rufus." His father was a lineal descendant of Richard Kimball, who came from Ipswich, England, in 1634, the same year in which its namesake on this side of the water began its existence as a body corporate. This ancestor located in Watertown, Mass., but three years later, 1637, removed to Ipswich, and there made a permanent settlement ; and from that date to the present the male line in Ipswich has been unbroken. The father of Charles, like his progenitors, was of sturdy mould, and "honest, manly and efficient." Of the twelve children, five of them attained the age of moi-e than eighty years, two of them the age of seventy-five or more, one the age of ninety-one and another the a£e of ninety-seven, a remarkable record of longevity for one single family. In 1815, when Charles was sixteen years old, he entered the office of Nathaniel Lord, Jr. (who married his sister Eunice, and who was the father of the late Judge Otis P. Lord), in Ipswich, then register of probate, and at the same time became a member ot his family. He began active life with few educational privileges, but the head of the family in which he made his home was a graduate of Harvard College, a man of letters, of exact knowledge and accurate business methods, and of the advantages these afforded he fully availed himself. In 1827 he was elected colonel of one of the militia regiments from the office of adjutant, the latter being equal, only in rank, to the modern lieutenant, a very marked promotion, and the cause of many heart-burnings at the time, but soon forgotten, as his special fitness for the position became apparent. His precision and promptness in the discharge of his duties was readily acknowledged, and his dignified and soldierly bearing and easy and graceful horsemanship won many commendations. In 1830 he voluntarily resigned this office, but the title followed him through life. In 1829 he married Mary Ann Outein. Her father was of French origin ; her mother of New England birth. Three children were the fruit of this union, two sons and one daughter. The elder son, Charles A., was a lawyer, and died at the age of thirty-eight ; and the daughter died at the age of thirty-five. Both were unmarried. The surviving son, Edward P., is a lawyer, and at present postmaster, and resides at the homestead. The wife and mother was a woman of great intelligence, of remarkable simplicity of character, of earnest, sincere piety, faithful in her conjugal relations and her filial duties, and self-sacrificing to the last degree in her devotion to her family. In 1836 he was elected to the State Senate, and served therein till 1840, the Hon. Edward Everett being then Governor. This was also a marked honor, as he had had no previous legislative experience. From 1841 to 1847 he was county commissioner, and perhaps the highest compliment ever paid him was that of one of his associates on this board who remarked that he " never saw a man so anxious to know and do the right." In politics he was a Whig, but upon the dissolution of that party, he, like many other conservatives, associated himself with the Democracy. In 1851 he was candidate for State Treasurer. In politics, as in everything else, he acted from conviction and principle. He held, at different times, various town offices ; was selectman one year. School Committee man and clerk and treasurer of two boards of trustees of educational funds for many years, and for thirty or more consecutive years moderator of town meetings. In 1851, on the retirement of Mr. Lord from the office of register of probate, he established an office in Salem. He had been all this time acquiring a knowledge of probate county as a practitioner in the Probate C )urts of rare skill and experience. In 1858, at the age of fiftynine, on the petition of Judge Perkins, Wm. C. Endicott, Wra. D. North end and others of mark in the profession, he was admitted to the bar, a very high compliment to his ability, learning and personal worth, and unique in itself. Hitherto in all his cases before the courts, except the Probate Court, he had been obliged to call to his aid some member of the bar; but now a wider field of practice was open to him, and from that date to the close of his business career, he devoted himself assiduously to his profession. On the 10th day of December, 1877, at the age of seventy-nine, he suddenly lost, while in his office, all capacity for business. In a moment the power of connected thought was gone. Everything became one confused mass in his mind, and in this condition he remained to the day of his death, November 30, 1880. It was not alone in business that he was active. In 1880 he united with the South Congregational Church, in Ipswich, and to its spiritual welfare gave much of his time and thought. He served on church and parish committees, was superintendent of the Sabbathschool for over forty-five years, and in 1868 was chosen deacon. He understood the creed of his church, and could and did stoutly maintain it against all antagonism. He was versed in ecclesiastical law, and was prominent in Ecclesiastical Councils, notably, the famous one at Manchester, in the deliberations ot which he took an active and leading part. He prepared a paper on ecclesiastical law, which he read before the Essex Congregational Club, and which was regarded as a valuable contribution to this difficult and occult branch of legal lore. On the occasion of his funeral, which was largely attended by the people of the town and many others, including members of the bar, his pastor, the Eev. T. F. Waters, preached a discourse which was a discriminating analysis of his life and character, and a glowing tribute to his sterling worth.

At the December Term of the Supreme Court, 1880, resolutions in memoriam were offered by the Hon. Wm. D. Northend, seconded by James Gillis, Esq., and responded to by his Honor, Judge Bacon, the presiding judge, and by him ordered to be entered on the records of the court.

Such is the mere outline of this long and useful life. While the record speaks for itself, behind it lies the secret of his success. Slow and patient toil, close application and an absorbing interest in his work, led him, step by step, thro' rugged paths to the standing in his profession which he attained. Unlike the majority of the profession, he entered upon his work without any knowledge derived from the textbooks. He learned first in the school of experience, and then he sought the books, and they accompanied him in his labors. His keen observation, quick perception, logical acumen and retentive memory, enabled him to build on a sure basis and to acquire an accurate and precise knowledge of the law. The bare routine, the mere knowing how to do a thing, did not satisfy him. He must know the theory, the underlying principle of every legal rule, and he delved deep till he found it. With the law relating to real estate, to trusts and matters in equity, with their technicalities and fine distinctions, he was specially familiar. In the drafting of wills and in all matters pertaining to probate law and practice, he was regarded as authority. His clientage included every town in the county. For sound and judicious advice and delicate and intricate business he was sought after. He became an instructor of those who desired to practice in the Probate Courts, and many are they who owe all their knowledge of probate matters to his tuition. His name was frequently mentioned in connection with the judgeship of the Probate Court. The late Judge White, of that court, said of him, " No man was better fitted than Col. Kimball for Judge of Probate." His qualifications for the position were generally recognized, and he probably would have been so appointed if he had urgently pressed his own claim. This his sense of propriety forbade. While his business life covered a period ofsixty-three years, during which he never took a vacation, and his professional services were in constant demand he yet found time for other duties. He responded to every call of the church, the parish, the town or larger community. Whatever he did he aimed to do with care and exactness. His standard was of the highest. He allowed no opportunity for mental or moral advancement to escape him. He was of an intense religious nature. As the Constitution was his guide in civil life, so were the Scriptures his guide in moral action. He was true to his convictions, possessed of great moral cournge, and when he had once determined upon the right nothins^ could swerve him from his course of action. He had the confidence of his fellow-men. They felt safe with him.

He was prominent in every public gathering of the citizens of his native town. He presided over their meetings with efficiency, impartiality, ease and dignity. His self-possession never forsook him. He was a natural leader of men.

In disposition he was kindly and sympathetic, generous and liberal in every good cause, and his deeds of charity were numerous and at the same time unostentatious. He loved his family, his home and the town.

In the closing years of his life, when the chain of thought was broken, and the affairs of the world which once engaged his attention had become a myth to him, his religious principles had been so