John Hubbard was an American physician and governor of Maine.
Background
He was the fifth of twelve children and the eldest son of Dr. John and Olive (Wilson) Hubbard. His parents had moved in 1784 from Kingston, N. H. , to the pioneer settlement of Readfield in the district of Maine. His father was selectman, first town clerk, and had a profitable country doctor's practice until health failed him in middle life. At an early age John took charge of the three-hundred-acre farm.
Education
He attended the district school in winter, and spent ten months at the Hallowell and the Monmouth academies. Leaving home in 1813, he tutored in a private family at Albany, N. Y. , for a year, entered Dartmouth College in 1814, and graduated in the class of 1816. He received the degree of M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1822.
Career
He taught at Hallowell Academy, 1817-18; in Dinwiddie County, Va. , 1818-20. For the next seven years he practised in Dinwiddie County, Va. , where he acquired warm friends, an insight into Southern character, and an abhorrence of slavery. After further medical study and hospital work at Philadelphia, 1829-30, he settled at Hallowell, Me. , where he resided until his death. There his practice covered an extensive territory.
Although Hubbard was a Democrat in politics, he was elected in a strongly Whig district to the Maine Senate and served for the term 1842-43. In 1849 he was elected governor, in 1850 reëlected, and by a constitutional amendment changing the time of legislative sessions was continued in office until January 1853. On June 2, 1851, he signed an act "for the Suppression of Drinking Houses and Tippling Shops, " providing for search and seizure and the maintenance of municipal liquor-dispensing agencies. This famous "Maine Law, " vetoed by his predecessor, Governor Dana, caused intense opposition, and a split in the Democratic party.
Hubbard received a plurality of the votes cast in the election of 1852, but he was defeated in the legislature by a combination of Whigs and Anti-Maine Law Democrats. As governor he was independent and decisive. He urged state aid for an agricultural school and for higher education for women, the repeal of oppressive bank laws, the opening up of free lands in northeastern Maine to counteract migration to the West, and successfully secured the segregation of young from old offenders by the establishment of a state reform school. He also urged obedience to the compromise measures of 1850 and to the federal Fugitive Slave Law in particular.
His medical practice was interrupted from 1857 to 1859 by his service as special Treasury agent to examine custom-houses in the Eastern states, and from 1859 to 1861 when he was a commissioner under the Reciprocity Treaty with Great Britain, concluded in 1854. In 1860 he aligned himself with the Douglas Democrats, but in 1864 voted for Lincoln.
After a long and useful life, he died in his country doctor's office at Hallowell, having just returned from a professional call.
Achievements
Politics
As a legislator he opposed measures violating the rights of slave states. Slavery was abhorrent to him, but emancipation, he contended, should be gradual, fair to the South, and consistent with law and the Constitution. He denounced radical Abolitionists as mischievous and dangerous disunionists.
Connections
On July 12, 1825, he was married to Sarah Hodge Barrett of Dresden, Me. He was the father of six children, one of whom was Thomas Hamlin Hubbard.