The Colored Men of Portland Have Always Enjoyed All Their Rights

Abstract

Black politics matured early in Maine, led by activists like Reuben Ruby, a fixture in Portland’s politics from the 1830s to the 1860s. He worked closely with General Samuel Fessenden, who had been a leading Federalist. The latter became Maine’s leading abolitionist in the 1830s, working with Ruby in the National Republican and then Whig parties (they were both delegates at the latter’s 1834 founding convention). Although they tried to bring black voters into the Liberty Party in the 1840s, Portland’s black electorate remained strong. Whigs, led by Abram W. Niles, who held low-level city jobs and party positions. Repeatedly, these voters garnered national attention, as when the younger William Fessenden defeated Portland’s Democratic congressmen with their votes in 1840; in 1848, efforts to bring them over to the Free Soil Party were also widely publicized. By the later 1850s, the black electorate was incorporated into the Republican Party, with Ruby holding a federal patronage position.