Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 7

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802

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This calm was broken in 1773 with the passage of the Tea Act, which gave the East India Company a monopoly for the sale of that beverage .

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

in the colonies and lowered the duty until it could no longer be smuggled profitably. Shippers who had illegally imported tea in the past were swept from business, as well as the merchants who handled its shipping and sale. The Tea Act alarmed Colonial business classes, who, fearing Parliament might create similar monopolies on other products in the future, were driven once more into the hands of the radicals. Sam Adams was in his glory. In a series of carefully planned meetings he worked Boston sentiment to a new height, then, at the climax of a great gathering in the Old South Meeting House, sent a group of disguised laborers and tradesmen to dump the tea on three East India Company ships into Boston Harbor.

The reaction both in England and America to this wanton destruction of property was one of instant revulsion, particularly among the merchant group that had aided the patriots in the past; nevertheless a wise handling of the situation would probably have quieted revolutionary agitation for some time to come. Instead, the British Ministry blundered badly. A series of Coercive Acts were hurriedly passed by Parliament closing the Port of Boston to trade, altering the charter, revising the legal system, and inflicting penalties on Massachusetts which were to be removed only when restitution for the destroyed tea should be made. Most of the Colonial merchants, even in Boston, were willing to take this step, but the Coercive Acts had put the radicals in control again. Unable to secure merchant co-operation in a boycott of England, they determined to attempt united political action, and from Massachusetts and other colonies a call for a Continental Congress was issued. The Boston Tea Party gave the patriot forces of the Revolution the unity required for success.

The Massachusetts Assembly chose its delegates to this first Congress with the door of the legislative chamber locked, and with Governor Thomas Gage vainly shouting through the keyhole that the legislature was dissolved and could transact no further business. Under these con- ditions, duplicated in other colonies, the delegates selected were naturally of the radical wing, and the Continental Congress quickly showed their domination. They endorsed the Suffolk Resolves and enforced a general boycott of English goods. As yet the members had no thought of inde- pendence; it remained for further developments in Massachusetts to lead them to the point where relations with the mother country could be severed.

Tension had been high in the Bay Colony ever since the arrival of General Thomas Gage, who had been sent with a large force of troops to

Massachusetts: The General Background

enforce the Coercive Acts. Clashes between the soldiers and patriots were narrowly averted on several occasions during the fall and winter of 1774- 75, and only served to hurry the process by which the colonists were arming themselves, drilling their militia, and forming groups of Minute- men who were ready to swing into action against the British at a moment's notice. On April 19, 1775, the opportunity came. General Gage had re- solved to send a detachment of troops to Concord to overawe the country- side by a show of British strength and to secure the supplies accumulated there by the colonists. The march began on the night of April 18, but the patriots were prepared for such a step and immediately dispatched two riders to warn their countrymen. One rider, Paul Revere, was cap- tured before he could reach Concord; the other, William Dawes, suc- ceeded in spreading the alarm. Minutemen began gathering immediately. A small group assembled on the village Green at Lexington, where they were met by the larger British force. In the scuffle that followed a shot was fired - the shot heard round the world. The troops then marched on to Concord, destroyed the stores, and returned to Boston, with a rising countryside following their steps and keeping up a steady fire that lasted until the last British soldier was safe in Boston.

The siege of Boston followed naturally, for the English had retreated to the safety of that city and it was inevitable that the colonists should decide to keep them there. The city then lay at the tip of a narrow peninsula, so that this could be accomplished easily if all avenues to the mainland were properly guarded. One such avenue lay across Boston Neck; this was carefully watched by the army of twenty thousand men authorized by the Assembly, and commanded first by General Artemus Ward and after July 2 by George Washington. Another possible route was across Charlestown Neck, and to protect this the Americans had to fortify Bunker Hill. This was done on the night of June 16. Actually it was Breed's Hill that was fortified rather than Bunker Hill, and it was there that the famous battle was fought the following day. The poorly prepared American forces were driven slowly backward, but acquitted themselves well, and demonstrated for the first time that the colonists could cope successfully with the supposedly invincible British arms.

After Bunker Hill, the siege of Boston became one of quiet waiting until the spring of 1776. Not until cannon which Ethan Allen had captured at Ticonderoga were sledded to Boston was it possible for Washington to attack. These new arms, mounted on Nooks Hill, Dorchester Heights, commanded the entire city, and immediately began to throw shot upon the helpless British. Finally General Howe, now in command, recognized

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

the inevitable. On March 17 the evacuation of Boston took place and the entire British army, together with many Tory citizens, sailed away to Nova Scotia. Massachusetts had not only launched the military phase of the Revolution, but had given the patriot cause its first major victory. For the remainder of the war, the State was free of hostile troops.

Independence was inevitable after this first clash of rival arms, and with the separation of colonies from mother country Massachusetts was faced with the problem of erecting a new governmental structure that would perpetuate ideals of liberty and freedom. The last General Court held under the old provincial charter convened in 1774, and from that time on Massachusetts was governed by a Provincial Congress that had no legal basis for existence and was not representative. Objections naturally arose, particularly in Berkshire County, where the independent farmers refused to allow courts to sit until they had been given a govern- ment in which they had a voice. A constitution to meet this demand was drafted by the Provincial Congress in 1777-79 and submitted to the people for ratification - the first state constitution to be tested by pop- ular vote - but that constitution contained few provisions for separation of powers and no Bill of Rights, and was promptly rejected. Finally in September, 1778, a popularly elected Constitutional Convention met in Cambridge, and after due consideration accepted a frame of government drawn up largely by John Adams. This was submitted to the people on March 2, 1780, and ratified on June 7. Massachusetts was the last of the States to adopt a written constitution, yet so wisely had its framers labored that today the same instrument still governs the Commonwealth, a record of which no other state can boast. Moreover, that constitution of 1780, drawn up by a popularly elected convention and submitted to the people for ratification, set a pattern that was to be followed in the framing of the Federal Constitution.

In Massachusetts, as in the other States, the Revolutionary period was one of social and economic as well as political upheaval. Many of the great commercial and governmental leaders of the past became Tories and followed the retreating British armies to Canada or England. In their place a new aristocracy arose which drew its wealth, as in Colonial days, from the sea. More and more, as their operations increased, were the financial resources of the Commonwealth concentrated along the coast, leaving the dissatisfied farmers of the interior struggling vainly against the stubborn soil. This dissatisfaction was fanned to open rebellion by the economic depression which swept over the newly created United States after the war. In the hilly country around Worcester and

Massachusetts: The General Background

in the Berkshires the farmers began to demand legislative relief in the form of paper money and stay laws which would prevent mortgage fore- closures. These discontented elements united under the leadership of Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary war veteran. In 1786 he and his dis- heveled followers closed the courts of Worcester and threatened to cap- ture Boston until an army, hastily formed by Governor Bowdoin and financed by Boston merchants, quelled the uprising.

This show of popular discontent alarmed the propertied classes of Massachusetts. They were now more disposed to support the growing movement for a new constitution to displace the Articles of Confedera- tion, which had proved so useless in fostering trade, stabilizing finance, and protecting the interests of property. Actually, Massachusetts became the sixth State to ratify the Federal Constitution, but this was accom- plished only after much adroit manipulation. A majority of the ratifying convention which assembled in Boston was opposed to the new form of government, with the farmers of the interior hilly region, the Berkshires and Maine, then still a part of Massachusetts, most outspoken in their opposition. Conservative leaders finally won over John Hancock, who, as was usual when he had an important decision to make, had retired to his home with an attack of gout until he determined the direction of popular sentiment. This was accomplished only by offering him the governorship of the State and, if Virginia did not ratify and make Washington eligible, their support for the presidency ; but it was effective, for Hancock was the idol of the lower classes, and his support made ratification possible. In taking this step, however, Massachusetts sub- mitted a series of proposed amendments to the Constitution; this practice was followed by the remaining States, and from them grew the first ten amendments to our national Constitution, the so-called Bill of Rights.

With the inauguration of the new government under Washington, Massachusetts entered on a period of prosperity and peace. While her old trade routes within the British Empire were now closed to her, new , ones were soon discovered, particularly that immensely profitable trade with China which thrived unchecked until iron steamships supplanted American sailing vessels. In every other corner of the world, too, ships of daring Yankee masters began to appear, seeking cargoes and fortunes for themselves and their State. After 1793, with England and France locked in the first of the series of wars that followed the French Revolu- tion, Massachusetts took over a large share of the carrying trade formerly monopolized by those powers. From every quarter new wealth was

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

flowing into the Commonwealth; the depression that had given birth to Shays' Rebellion was now only a fast dimming memory.

This prosperity naturally shaped the political bent of the people, and when the shuffle of political fortunes which had gone on through Wash- ington's two administrations finally ended, Massachusetts was firmly wedded to the principles of the Federalist Party. This conviction was strengthened while John Adams, one of the Commonwealth's own sons, was Chief Executive. Many in the State even supported the Alien and Sedition Acts through which the Federalists sought to solidify national power during the French Naval War of 1798. Jefferson's election in 1800 was looked upon as a major calamity; pious Massachusetts ladies con- cealed their Bibles lest that Francophile atheist burn them, and conserva- tive merchants and shipowners prepared for a disaster which they thought certain. Instead, the State's prosperity continued to increase, and by 1804 Massachusetts was ready to desert the Federalist column for the · first time and support Jefferson's re-election.

Those who had taken this step soon were ready to admit their mistake, for the tangled foreign policy of Jefferson's second administration bore harder on Massachusetts than on any other State. The Embargo with which the President attempted to combat French and English inter- ference with American shipping led the Commonwealth once more into the slough of depression. The wealth of Massachusetts still came from the sea, and its people still protested against interference with their trade, as they had when burdened by English Navigation Acts. Those protests, voiced first by newspaper editors who spelled Embargo backward as 'O Grab Me,' swelled to a final chorus of rebellion when Jefferson's successor, Madison, responded to demands of the expansionist West and carried the United States into the War of 1812 against England. For the three years of that war the trade of the Commonwealth was at a standstill, driven from the seas by the superior British navy; and for those three years the people gave vent to their resentment in every conceivable manner. Massachusetts refused to allow her militia to be used outside the state borders, she gave only lukewarm financial support to the na- tional cause, she held celebrations to cheer English victories over Napo- leon, and she was instrumental in calling the Hartford Convention of 1814, where delegates from the several New England States talked vaguely of secession from the Union and nullification of the Constitution.

With the close of the war in 1815, Massachusetts entered a new phase of her history. It was during this period that the basis for her later industrial development was laid, and the commercial aristocracy which

Massachusetts: The General Background

had shaped her destinies for so long was successfully challenged for the first time. American manufacturing began with Jefferson's Embargo, which stopped the importation of manufactured goods from England; it grew steadily during the war that followed, when the United States, cut off from European sources, was forced to become self-supporting; and it was given a permanent basis by the protective tariff of 1816, designed to insure the infant industries which had developed between 1807 and 1815. At first this manufacturing was scattered through the Eastern States, but as time passed it concentrated more and more in New England and particularly in Massachusetts. There the Yankee farmers, long ac- customed to the production of household goods, had a training in handi- craft that equipped them to organize and manage the mills that dotted the countryside. The many streams that coursed the State's valleys furnished a plentiful supply of water-power. Labor could be secured as in no other section of the Union, for thousands of Massachusetts farmers were ready to abandon their unequal struggle with a stubborn soil and drift into industrial employment. Hence the Commonwealth was able to take full advantage of Francis Cabot Lowell's perfection of the first power loom which, originally installed at a mill in Waltham in 1814, revolutionized the textile industry and turned Lowell, Lawrence, Fall River, and other towns into manufacturing centers. By the time of the Civil War, Irish immigrants were flocking in to perform the labor in these factories and Massachusetts was fast assuming the appearance of a modern industrial state.

The rise of manufacturing coincided with a decline in agriculture. This was partly due to the greater opportunity for profit available in the infant industries; more responsible, however, was the growth of Western agri- culture, with which the farmers of Massachusetts could not compete. Western farm products penetrated Eastern markets as soon as the Ohio Valley frontier was established, but it was only after 1825, when the opening of the Erie Canal allowed the cheap and rapid movement of Western products to the East, that the full impact of this new competition was felt. Grain from the Ohio Valley could now undersell grain from the Berkshires in the Boston markets, and Massachusetts' farmers were faced with the alternative of going to the cities to become workers in the growing factories or of migrating westward themselves. Many of them chose the latter course, moving in a constant stream across New York to settle the northern tier of the Old Northwest States. Rural decay in Massachusetts began. Cultivated fields were allowed to return to a state of nature, and abandoned farms alone remained as dreary reminders of former prosperity.

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

The flow of Massachusetts population to the West was not without its effect on the Commonwealth. Leaders of the State, alarmed at the exodus of their sons, engaged in a bit of Puritan self-scrutiny to discover the cause. They agreed that one expelling force was the antiquated govern- mental and religious system still in use, and that only a reform in that system could stem the exodus. Politically, this reforming spirit found expression in the release of Maine and in a Constitutional Convention of 1820. This convention yielded to the demand of the people for a greater voice in their own government by drafting ten amendments to the Con- stitution providing for the incorporation of cities, the abolition of property qualifications for voting, the removal of religious tests for office-holders, and other much needed reforms. The religious expression of this social change reached its culmination in 1833, when another constitutional amendment was adopted completely separating the Church and State and placing Congregationalism, hitherto favored by governmental sup- port, on the same plane as other sects. The last vestiges of aristocratic Puritanism were swept from the statute books, and the ideals of demo- cracy were brought nearer reality.

The reforming spirit in Massachusetts was not stilled by these concrete gains. Unitarianism, begun in America at King's Chapel (Boston) just after Independence, was sweeping through the Commonwealth under the fostering guidance of William Ellery Channing. Its refreshingly lib- eral doctrines threatened to bury the Congregational Church under an avalanche of popular disapproval, and only the valiant efforts of the Reverend Horace Bushnell, who sought to reconcile the old Calvinistic theology with the gentle humanitarianism of the new era, saved Con- gregational power and influence. In Concord, Emerson, Thoreau, and a whole school of disciples began to feel the first vague resentment against the machine, and preached the cult of individualism and the doctrine of the nobility of man in immortal verse and prose. Dorothea L. Dix shocked the state of Massachusetts into providing the first decent care for the insane before beginning her country-wide crusade in behalf of these little understood unfortunates. Horace Mann agitated valiantly and successfully in behalf of the revolutionary doctrine of universal education, and through his efforts elevated Massachusetts to a position of leadership in this important sphere. Total abstinence societies, formed first in Boston in 1826, were spreading like wildfire through the State and nation, beginning that organized movement that was to end in the Eighteenth (and Twenty-First) Amendments. At Brook Farm, near Boston, at Fruitlands, near Harvard, and elsewhere bewildered idealists

Massachusetts: The General Background

like Hawthorne, Alcott, and Margaret Fuller sought refuge from a chang- ing world in the simple life and communism - an experiment gently but effectively satirized by Hawthorne in 'The Blithedale Romance.'

From this mad, shifting world emanated the crusade against slavery, centered in Boston and New York State, where the revivalism of the Reverend Charles G. Finney whipped his disciples into action against 'the peculiar institution' of the South. It was in Boston that William Lloyd Garrison established his newspaper The Liberator in 1831, com- mitted to the immediate emancipation of all humans held in bondage and vitriolic in the abuse which it heaped on slaveholders. It was in Boston that the New England Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1832, which within a year became the American Anti-Slavery Society and spread over the North, stirring sentiment everywhere in favor of uncom- pensated emancipation. The movement that was to plunge the nation into a civil war within two decades was launched in Massachusetts.

Garrison and his fellow reformers did not have an easy path to follow. They were opposed by many milder men, led by William Ellery Chan- ning, who favored legal and peaceful methods of freeing the slaves, and by most of the respectable elements of society, who soon became alarmed lest the agitation check the flow of cotton from the South, on which the Massachusetts textile industry depended. Although Garrison's followers were initially of little importance, the movement soon attracted such men as John Quincy Adams, Wendell Phillips, and John Greenleaf Whittier, and later included a large group of outstanding Massachusetts men and women. These abolitionists strongly opposed the Fugitive Slave Act, established 'Underground Railroad' stations to hurry escaping slaves to freedom in Canada, and organized the New England Emigrant Aid Company, through which Eli Thayer of Worcester vainly tried to win Kansas for the North by peopling it with freedom-loving individuals who would bar slavery from that territory.

The turbulence of those trying days was soon translated into Massa- chusetts politics, where the reforming spirit was as clearly discernible as in the idealism of Brook Farm or the fanaticism of Garrison. The Fed- eralist Party had passed from existence by 1824, engulfed in a tide of disapproval which followed its opposition to the War of 1812, and from that time Massachusetts steadfastly supported either the Whig Party or an independent candidate of its own. The reforming zeal of its people was expressed first not against the slaveholders but against the foreigners, for the 1840's and 1850's saw a steady stream of Irish immigrants pouring into the Commonwealth until many of the larger cities were predomi-

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

nantly Celtic in composition. Alarmed by this alien invasion, Massa- chusetts gave its vote in the state elections of 1854 and 1855 almost solidly to the American or Know Nothing Party, which was pledged to check immigration and combat the growing power of the Catholic Church. By 1856, however, the Republican Party with its anti-slavery principles invaded the Commonwealth, and the votes of Massachusetts went for its candidate, John C. Frémont, and helped elect Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860.

Thus did Massachusetts, the birthplace of abolitionism, remain true to its genius. Nor did this loyalty lessen when a panic of fear swept the Southern States toward secession and plunged the nation into civil war. When President Lincoln called the North to arms on April 15, 1861, the first state to respond was Massachusetts, which within four days sent fifteen hundred men to Fort Monroe. Massachusetts blood was also the first to be shed in the Civil War when on April 19, 1861, just eighty-six years to the day after the battles of Lexington and Concord, a mob attacked the Sixth Regiment in Baltimore. The State was aroused, a wave of patriotism in which factional differences were forgotten swept Massachusetts, and support of the Union became the major issue. For the four trying years of this sectional struggle the Bay State contributed freely in men, money, and effort that the Union might be preserved.

Appomattox closed a chapter in American life, and the next scene in the drama of American history was sketched against the background of industrialism. With the acceleration of industry and the revolutions which took place simultaneously in agriculture and mining, the medieval period of America drew to a close.

The sea, upon which the fortunes of Massachusetts had been built, was a factor of decreasing significance. Exports declined with monotonous regularity, but imports continued to be a consideration of consequence; for although Massachusetts did not serve as a distributor beyond the confines of New England, her own industries required a growing volume of raw materials. The great white sails which once cleared out of Salem and New Bedford were never succeeded by the funnels of the steamship, and only Boston remained a vital point in Massachusetts commerce. Fishing alone continued to thrive, and although riches were still sought in the traffic lanes of the Atlantic, a new economy had begun. Improved methods of steel production and the development of the petroleum in- dustry assured the success of the new industrialism, but it marked the end, among other things, of the whalers. In 1869 the last whaler was fitted out in New Bedford. The glamor of whaling boats like clipper

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Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 7

Author: Publication date: 1937 Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company Number of Pages: 802

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802