USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 60
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CONTRIBUTING MEMBERS OF THE CONVENTION
It is impossible in the space assigned for this chapter to characterize or even to mention all the active members of the
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Convention who devoted their talents and abilities to the task. The present editor of the Commonwealth History had a part in the deliberations of the Convention, where he warmly ad- vocated the I. & R. As clerk of the special Committee of Rearrangement, he prepared a logical classification of the existing text of the Constitution, hoping that in any case it might be useful to a future Constitutional Convention. He desires here to put on record the appreciation of the Con- vention for the service of Augustus P. Loring, member from Beverly, whose preceding story of the Convention leaves out of account his own influence and service as chairman of the Committee on Form and Phraseology, and as a member of the Committee to Rearrange the Constitution.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
BRIDGMAN, ARTHUR MILNER .- A Souvenir of the Massachusetts Constitu- tional Convention, Boston, 1917-18-19 (Bridgman, Stoughton, 1919). BRIDGMAN, RAYMOND LANDON .- The Massachusetts Constitutional Con- vention 1917 (Privately printed, Boston, 1923).
BURRILL, ELLEN MUDGE .- The State House (Boston, 1927)-Semi-official. CARENS, THOMAS .- [A biography of Martin Lomasney] (Boston Herald, Dec. 2-Dec. 27, 1885).
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY-LEGISLATIVE DRAFTING RESEARCH FUND .- Index Digest of State Constitutions (Albany, 1915)-Prepared for the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1915. Indispensable in com- paring constitutional provisions of various States.
COMMITTEE ON PUBLICITY FOR THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION .- Initiative and Referendum a Menace to Popular Rule (Boston, The Committee, 1917).
EVANS, LAWRENCE BOYD .- "The Constitutional Convention of Massachu- setts" (American Political Science Review, 1921, Vol. XV, pp. 214- 232).
-Also published separately.
EVANS, LAWRENCE BOYD .- "Workings of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention" (Am. Library Association, Bulletin, Vol. XII, pp. 314- 321, Chicago, 1918).
FROTHINGHAM, LOUIS ADAMS .- A Brief History of the Constitution and Government of Massachusetts (Cambridge, Harvard Univ., 1916)- See especially chap. VIII, "Legislative Procedure."
KING, WILLFORD ISBELL .- The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States (N. Y., Macmillan, 1919)-Authoritative statements of the distribution of wealth, available for the Constitutional Convention. [Massachusetts] Commission to complete information and data for the Constitutional Convention (Boston, Bureau of Municipal Research, 1917).
MASSACHUSETTS CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION .- Amendments Passed by the Constitutional Convention for Submission to the People-Nov. 5, 1918. Together with an Explanatory Address by the President of the Convention (Boston, 1918).
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MASSACHUSETTS, CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1917-1919 .- Debates (4 vols., Boston, 1917-1919)-Excellent index.
MASSACHUSETTS. CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1917-1919 .- Manual (Boston, 1917).
MASSACHUSETTS. CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1917-1919 .- Bulletin, Nos. 1-37 (2 vols., Boston, 1918-1919).
MASSACHUSETTS. CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1917-1919 .- Journal (Boston, Wright & Potter, State printers, 1917).
The Massachusetts State Library contains a collection of original docu- ments, briefs and circulars having to do with the rearrangement of the Constitution; used by committees and by the Constitutional Convention, or presented before the Court and the Legislature (Made and used by Loring of Beverly, and annotated by him).
MASSACHUSETTS-SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT .- "Opinion that a Convention may be called by law to amend and revise the Constitution" (Mass. Reports, Vol. CCXXVI, pp. 606-610).
MASSACHUSETTS-SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT .- "Opinion that the Rearrange- ment of the Constitution adopted by the people November 4, 1919, is not the Constitution of the Commonwealth" (Mass. Reports, Vol. CVCCXXXIII. p. 603.
MASSACHUSETTS-SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT .- "Loring v. Young : Decision of the Court, two Justices Dissenting, that the Rearrangement of the Constitution is not the Constitution of the Commonwealth (Mass. Reports, Vol. CCXXXIX, p. 319).
MORISON, SAMUEL ELIOT .- The Vote of Massachusetts on Summoning a Constitutional Convention (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, April, 1917, pp. 241-248. Also a reprint).
ROOT, ELIHU .- Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution (Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 1913)-Deals with the assault by Socialism against individualism and existing institutions, and with such remedies as the initiative and referendum, and recall of decisions.
The Social Law Library, located in Suffolk Court House, possesses a set of newspaper clippings relating to the Constitutional Convention of 1917-1919, which have been assembled chronologically into seventeen volumes.
CHAPTER XXII
THE COMMONWEALTH AT ITS TERCENTENARY BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART
HISTORICAL POINT OF VIEW
Until the founding of the Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, of which this is the concluding chapter, the point of view of historians who undertook anything like a comprehensive view was that everything that has happened in Massachusetts in the last three centuries is referable to the beginnings. The mind of the reader has usually been carried back to the earliest colonists, the earliest organization of gov- ernment, the earliest differences within the Colony, and the earliest appearance of an independent spirit. He was led to believe that the Colony, Province and State were always measured by the ideals and successes of the earliest Massa- chusetts people. Hence, within this State of the Union, which has educated, trained and supported a group of unrivaled American historians, not one of those eminent writers ever published a book intended to follow Massachusetts all the way along, and to show what had been the influence of all this magnificent history upon the State and its population.
From the first chapter to the last of the Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, the writers have kept in mind that they are a part of a body of collaborators who carried the history of the State all the way through, with a view to that accumulation of aspirations and experiences which has made the people of Massachusetts a strong, vigorous, self-reliant people, with their faces always set toward the destination of the body politic of their State. Conjoined with this appre- hension of the history of Massachusetts as a living, moving, vital story which could be understood only in the light of the latest results of the development of the State, the editor and writers have labored unceasingly to bring to the common
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task studies of the numerous fields of effort and of organiza- tion in which the energies of Massachusetts have been engaged.
Till a comparatively recent period, all the formal historians of Massachusetts were interested chiefly in the long, slow and often interrupted development of free popular government. That is certainly one of the noblest evidences of the underly- ing character of the Massachusetts people, but is only a part of their experience. We moderns are likely to suppose that the principal subject of interest, the principal topic of dis- cussion, from 1630 to the present day, was the controversies between the different parts of the Massachusetts government. That long series of disputes over who should govern was deeply connected with the troubled period of the pre-Revolu- tion, of the Revolution itself, and also with the attitude of the people of Revolutionary Massachusetts toward their own government and that of the Federal Union. Hence the few attempts at something like a brief, comprehensive history of Massachusetts have been unsuccessful because constitutional disputes and legislative quarrels and struggles in constitu- tional conventions, constitutional decisions by the courts, and constitutional arguments by the great Massachusetts minds, however significant, are far from being the whole history of the Commonwealth.
MASSACHUSETTS AS A PART OF THE WORLD
The keynote of this history is struck by the first chapter. of the first volume, WESTERN WORLD MOVEMENT. Massa- chusetts is not a miracle; it is a part of a movement toward a free church and a free State. They wanted to be free from antecedent control, whatever might be the domination by men and influences springing from within. Massachusetts history is a part of English history and world history. It is one of several English colonial enterprises of the seven- teenth century. Aside from the very one-sided international relations with the Indians (Volume I, chapter vi) and with other neighboring New England settlements (Volume I, chapter viii), the international side of Massachusetts is strongly brought out in the New England Confederation
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(Volume I, chapter ix). The early beginning of shipping, involving touch with the southern colonies, the West Indies and Europe, is another evidence that from the beginning Massachusetts has been a part of the world. The wars with the Indians and with the French (Volume.I, chapter xix ; Vol- ume II, chapters iii, vii, xiv) are carried in the revolutionary period into maritime wars against the European powers (Vol- ume III, chapter ii). Later on we find the same spirit of adventure and of establishing relations with the uttermost parts of the earth, in the springing up of oriental trade (Vol- ume III, chapter xviii), and the wonderful development of the clipper ships (Volume IV, chapter xv). The services of Massachusetts men as diplomatic representatives comes out in the chapters on the Revolution and the statesmen of the nineteenth century. As a coastal State, as a maritime State, as an adventurous State, as a commercial State, Massa- chusetts has had perhaps the longest and the closest touch of all the States in the Union with other nations and with international policies.
EXTERNAL RELATIONS OF MASSACHUSETTS
One of the reasons for the importance of Massachusetts throughout the three centuries of its existence has been its contact with regions outside its boundaries. Both Massa- chusetts and Plymouth sprang out of peculiar social conditions in England (Volume I, chapters iii and iv). It furnished settlers and friendly relations, rising to the formation of the New England Confederation with its neighbor colonists ( Vol- ume I, chapters viii and ix). Its shipping early brought it into profitable relations with other parts of the world, sustained down to the present day (Volume, I, chapter xvi; Volume III, chapter xviii; Volume IV, chapter xv, Clipper Ships).
Massachusetts people were trained in international rela- tions both through their early controversies with the home country (Volume I, chapter xvii) ; then through the French wars (Volume I, chapter xviii). In the eighteenth century, the struggle to exclude France from North America was renewed and successful (Volume II, chapter iii). After the
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Revolution came a remarkable development of commerce and shipbuilding, establishing relations with the Orient (Volume III, chapter xviii; Volume IV, chapter xv).
With these oversea relations may well be included the status of Massachusetts among sister communities. Virginia and South Carolina joined in opposition to the British repres- sive policy; but Massachusetts had been protesting against British control in one form or another for half a century be- fore the Revolution (Volume II, chapters xv to xvii). Mas- sachusetts took a leading part in the movement which resulted in the Continental Congresses of 1774 and 1775 (Volume II, chapter xviii). Massachusetts may fairly be considered a leader in independence (Volume III, chapter iv). Its part in the government of the Continental Congress and the Con- federation was active and directive (Volume III, chapter vi). The ratification of the Federal Constitution in Massachusetts (Volume III, chapter xiii) was essential to the success of that instrument. In the later period, Massachusetts parti- cipated in the development of its own western territory (Vol- ume IV, chapter xii) ; and was a leader in the organization of the North in the Civil War (Volume IV, chapters xvi and xvii), and in the process of reconstruction (Volume IV, chapter xix). In the nineteenth century, Massachusetts was a powerful agency in building up the West by its emigrants to that region, and by its application of capital.
MASSACHUSETTS IN THE MIDST OF NEW ENGLAND
With the exception of the Albany Congress in 1754, Massa- chusetts, outside of trade, had very little relation with the middle and southern Colonies. On the other hand, Massa- chusetts enjoyed a geographic situation (Volume I, chapter ii) which made it the fountain from which issued the colonial streams of Maine, Vermont, Plymouth, Rhode Island and Connecticut (Volume I, chapter iv; Volume II, chapters xvi, xvii; Volume III, chapter xix, SEPARATION OF MAINE). The part of Massachusetts in the Revolution, as a leader among the northern colonies, can never be forgotten.
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THE MASSACHUSETTS PEOPLE
The people of Massachusetts have never been lacking in appreciation of the great services of Massachusetts people to the State, the nation and the world so far as they were not members of the wrong political party. All authorities agree that the New England Colonies and States had a social life of their own, many features of which have been preserved in Massachusetts throughout its history. The origin of the social elements of Massachusetts (traced in Volume I, chap- ter iii) is chiefly in the rural parishes and smaller industrial cities of England, somewhat tempered by the side influence of the Dutch and the Plymouth pilgrims. Nothing is clearer in Massachusetts history than the sense, which has not entirely disappeared, that the descendants of the original Massa- chusetts stock were the Lord's anointed. Few were the French and Scotch and Irish in the first two centuries of Mas- sachusetts history. It would be impossible to understand Massachusetts democracy without knowing that from the be- ginning down to near the present day there were in most parts of the Commonwealth traditional families who were fre- quently preferred for public office (Volume I, chapter iii). Throughout this work especial attention has been paid to social life in the Colonies and in the States. Witness in the first half century (Volume I, chapter x) ; in the eighteenth century (Volume II, chapter ix) ; in the Revolutionary period (Volume III, chapter x) ; and in the early nineteenth century (Volume III, chapter xvii). Taken together, these chapters make up a brief social history of race elements, population, manners and customs and social institutions.
IMMIGRATION
All the early colonists were immigrants (Volume I, chap- ters iii, iv), and immigration on a small scale continued for two centuries. In a sense the Massachusetts people who cast their lot in other colonies were immigrants into Rhode Island and Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and, to some de- gree, Vermont. A few French, some Scotch-Irish and a few Irish from Ireland found their way into Massachusetts Colony, and the most perservering of them were eventually
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accepted as fellow citizens, though Baptists and Quakers and Episcopalians were discouraged. The slaves, both Indians (Volume I, chapter xix) and Negroes (Volume II, chapter ix), were never very numerous, and their treatment was hardly more severe than that of the lowest stratum of Eng- lish men and women. The slave trade was a profitable Massa- chusetts industry till long after the Revolution. The first word of "Part the First" of the Constitution of 1780 de- clares that "all men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights." This clause was subsequently held by the highest court to make chattel slavery impossible. As is shown in Volume III, chapters x, xvii, the situation of very poor people of any cult was wretched in the eighteenth century. Orphans and other poor children were held in a state not far removed from slavery. How- ever, the State was freed from the curse of chattel slavery; and when the issue of slavery in its relation to the national government arose (Volume IV, chapter xi), Massachusetts became a hotbed of antislavery; and in the political crisis preceding the Civil War (Volume IV, chapter xvi) was distinctly antislavery.
The immigrant question re-arose about 1930 with the com- ing in of foreign immigrants (Volume V, chapter xiv). Massachusetts stood out for Lincoln's Proclamation of Eman- cipation; the Thirteenth Amendment, which destroyed slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave equality of legal status to the Negro race; and the Fifteenth Amendment for so reorganizing the Southern States that Negroes should participate in the State government. The whole subject of immigration, including the groups now living in the State, is treated in Volume IV, chapter v.
MASSACHUSETTS WOMEN
No Massachusetts history could get on without taking ac- count of the character and services of the women of the Commonwealth. Besides the early participation of women in the debates on government and religious freedom, (Vol. I, chapter xiv) there are several special chapters exclusively devoted to women (Vol. I, chapter xi; Vol. II, chapter xii;
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Vol. III, chapter xi; and Vol. V, chapter vii). In addition, their influence comes out in most of the chapters on social life, education, art and literature throughout the series.
PERSONALITY IN MASSACHUSETTS
It is not enough for a history to recount what has been done in the many fields of human endeavor by the people of a commonwealth. There is no genuine history which does not recognize and accent the personal element. First of all, through the leaders of the community from decade to decade ; and second, through that interplay of individuals which con- stitutes social history. Nearly all the leaders in the Common- wealth, down to the Revolution, are characterized or placed in the narrative chapters. Nearly all the governors of colony, province and State are at least mentioned. Many of the principal clergy are characterized. The most eminent wo- men, particularly the extraordinary group of Revolutionary ladies, are characterized in Volume III, chapter xi. The Index reveals the astonishing number of names of persons mentioned first or last in the five volumes.
Among the groups of individuals discussed in the Com- monwealth History are the early statesmen (Volume I, chapters v, ix, xiii, xiv, xx, xxi). The heads of the govern- ment are particularly discussed in Volume I, chapter xx; Volume II, chapters iii, v, vi, x, xv; Volume III, chapters iii, iv, vi, viii, xi, xiv, xv; Volume IV, chapters i to iv, xvi to xx; Volume V, chapters iv, vii, xv, xvii.
The plan of the work includes in each volume a representa- tive character, a man who seems better than any one else to sum up the character and ambitions of the people of Massachusetts in the five periods covered by the five volumes. This list includes John Winthrop (Volume I, chapter vii) ; Cotton Mather (Volume II, chapter xi) ; John Adams (Vol- ume III, chapter viii) ; Daniel Webster (Volume IV, chapter iv) ; and Charles William Eliot (Volume V, chapter x). For each of these five leading characters, and for many others, additional material will be easily available through the chapter bibliographies.
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MASSACHUSETTS PERSONALITIES
No colony-not even Virginia or Pennsylvania-included so many men who are an acknowledged part of national his- tory. Captain John Smith might fairly be called the first Massachusetts man. John Winthrop was both the political and historical head of the Colony. Roger Williams, Mrs. Hutchinson, John Endicott, Thomas Dudley (Volume I, chapter vii), Edmund Andros, William Phips, Joseph Dudley, John Adams, Samuel Adams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, James Otis, Joseph Warren, John Hancock, John Quincy Adams, Harrison Gray Otis, Daniel Webster, Horace Mann, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Bancroft, Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, William Ellery Channing, William Lloyd Garrison, Donald McKay, John A. Andrew, George F. Hoar, Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles Francis Adams-these are some of the many names of Massachusetts men who have made themselves national characters.
MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNMENT
Much of the published history of Massachusetts is consti- tutional in type, and for the best reasons, for the Colony of Massachusetts has lived through seven constitutional periods. (1) Under the original charter (Volume I, chapter v). (2) Under a semi-revolutionary government (Volume I, chapter xx). (3) Preceding the Revolution of 1689 (Volume I, chapter xxi). (4) Under the Province Charter of 1691 (Volume II, chapter i), including conflicts with the royal governors (Volume II, chapter v) and the pre-Revolutionary controversies with Great Britain, which culminated in revolu- tion (Volume II, chapters xv-xviii). (5) The irregular Revolutionary period without charter or constitution. (6) Under the Constitution of 1780. (7) As a member of the United States of America, with the Federal Constitution of 1789. Not one of the sister States went through such a long, thrilling and educative training in resistance to an unloved government.
The process of constitutional government within the State is shown particularly in Volume III, chapters iii, iv, vii. The
HARRIS & ENING
From a photograph by Harris and Ewing
CALVIN COOLIDGE
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT
same subject came up again in the long-disputed constitu- tional amendments (Volume IV, chapter i), and in the Fourth Constitutional Convention of 1917 (Volume V, chapter xxi).
In this slow but sure constitutional development, Massa- chusetts was not only training her own citizens to respect an orderly process of constitutional change, but was setting a pace for other States in the Union. No sister common- wealth has had so long, so varied, and so successful an experi- ence of peaceful revolution by constitutional changes made by legal forces and registered in a body of free institutions. A particular service by Massachusetts to itself and to the coun- try was in its ratification in a great crisis of the Federal Constitution of 1787 (Vol. III, chapter xiii).
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
New England is the traditional home of town government and town meetings; all the larger Massachusetts places have been transformed into cities, but the original type of town meetings and town officials still exists in several hundred communities. That system goes back to earliest Massachu- setts. The State representative system in Massachusetts be- gan by the claim of representatives of the towns to share in the government of the Colonies (Volume I, chapter v). The town system expanded into the neighboring Colonies (Volume I, chapter viii). Much of the social legislation of the colonial and later period is the work of the town meetings, as illus- trated in Volume I, chapters x, xii, xv, and Volume II, chapter iv, which is a careful account of the colonial town system. The town of Boston, which was the site and the origin of many of the great political and constitutional is- sues, is the subject of Volume II, chapter viii. From the towns came much of the impetus for the Revolution (Volume II, chapter xviii). The siege of the town of Boston by its own friends, the Continental Army under Command of George Washington, resulted in the first defeat of a British army by Revolutionary forces. In the last hundred years of Massachusetts history, the action of the towns is merged in the action of the State as a whole. It is also tangled up in the Unitarian movement, which involved town churches
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(Volume IV, chapter ix). Boston government in the last half century is reviewed in Volume V, chapter iii.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Massachusetts has the honor of being the most important member of the first Federal government founded in the Americas, the New England Confederation of 1643 (Volume I, chapter ix), which was the germ of the Albany plan of 1754 (Volume II, chapter xv), and of the Congress of 1774 (Volume II, chapter xvii). The attitude and action of Massachusetts during the Revolution (Volume III, chapters iii, iv) gave strong support to independence; and the im- portant share of Massachusetts in forming a national Federal government appears in Volume III, chapters vi, xiii. No statesman of the period had more influence on the creation of a stable permanent Federal government than John Adams of Massachusetts (Volume III, chapter viii). One of the curious side issues of the Revolution, the banishment of the Tories, who were thus excluded from any form of American government, is brought out by the story of the Massachusetts loyalists (Volume III, chapter ix). The attitude of Massa- chusetts to the Union after the Federal government was set up is described in Volume III, chapter xiv; Volume IV, chapters x, xi and xvi.
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