Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Appleton, James

APPLETON, James, temperance reformer, b. in Ipswich, Mass., 14 Feb., 1786; d. there, 25 Aug., 1862. When a young man he was elected to the legislature of his native state, and during the war with Great Britain he served as a colonel of Massachusetts militia, and after the close of the war was made a brigadier-general. During his subsequent residence at Portland, Me., he was elected to the legislature in 1836-'37, but he returned finally to his native town, where he died. By his speeches and publications he exercised great influence upon public sentiment in favor of total abstinence. In his report to the Maine legislature in 1837 he was the first to expound the principle embodied in the Maine law. See his “Life,” by Sydney Howard Gay.