APPLETON, James, and temperance reformer, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 14 February 1786: died there, 25 August 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's militia, and after the close of the war was made a Brigadier-General. During his subsequent residence at Portland, Maine, 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 abolition and total abstinence. In his report to the Maine legislature in 1837 he was the first to expound the principle embodied in the Blaine law. See his "Life," by S. H. Gay.