Massachusetts

D

4

Revocation of Charter

After 1674 England began new attempts to subdue the rebellious Massachusetts Bay Colony. The principal charges leveled against the colony were continuing violations of the trade restrictions of the Navigation Acts; severe religious intolerance, specifically against Anglicans, which led to English citizens being persecuted and even killed; and the colony’s assumption of virtual independence. In 1677 the Puritan leaders sent agents to England to answer these charges, but they did little to satisfy the royal government, and added to past offenses by purchasing the grant governing Maine from the heirs of the original owner, Ferdinando Gorges. In the face of this defiance England separated New Hampshire from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1677, and in 1684 England revoked the latter’s charter.

E

Dominion of New England

After taking the English throne in 1685, James II decided to consolidate the New England colonies as the Dominion of New England. In December 1686 Sir Edmund Andros arrived in Boston as royal governor of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. By 1688 the dominion included all of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Nova Scotia.

The dominion government made Andros a virtual dictator. Under his harsh rule the colonists were not allowed to have a representative assembly, town meetings were permitted only once a year, and taxation was imposed by the provincial governments without the consent of the colonists. The governor also supported the Church of England against the interests of the Puritans. All these moves greatly angered the people of Massachusetts. In 1689, when it was learned that James II had been overthrown and fled England, Andros was seized in Boston and the dominion collapsed. For the next two years the colony was governed under a temporary government of Puritan leaders with a popular assembly.

F

Royal Colony

In 1691 a new royal charter was granted for the colony of Massachusetts, which incorporated the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket Island, Maine, and Nova Scotia. Under the charter a popular assembly was established to aid the royal governor, and the right to elect representatives to the assembly was based on property qualifications, rather than on church membership. The royal charter ended control of Massachusetts government by Puritan religious leaders. Their influence was further weakened after an outbreak of hysteria in 1692 in Salem, in which hundreds of people were accused of witchcraft (see Salem Witch Trials). The accusations, mostly made by young girls, came at a time of religious, political, and social divisions. After a series of trials, 19 people were executed as witches, and one man who refused to enter a plea to the charge was also put to death, before leading ministers helped end the scare. Although Puritan influence declined, the Congregational Church retained a privileged position in Massachusetts until the 19th century.

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The relationship between the colonists and the royal governor was strained from the outset, simply because the governor represented the king and had veto power over the General Court. However, the court was able to exercise some control over the governor because it paid his salary.

During this period, Massachusetts was extensively involved in Britain’s wars with France over domination of North America and Europe (see King George’s War, King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, French and Indian War). The fighting in North America took place intermittently between 1689 and 1760, with each side using Native American allies and attacking each other’s settlements. In Massachusetts many towns were destroyed, such as Deerfield, where 40 people were killed and many more taken captive in 1704. Many merchant ships were captured or sunk by the French, and Massachusetts raised taxes and mustered thousands of soldiers to support the war effort. French forces were finally defeated in 1760, and a treaty in 1763 left Britain in control of North America.

G

Colonial Economy

The early Puritan economy was primarily agricultural, although some manufacturing was done by the farmers, who produced most of the goods and tools they needed. In the second half of the 17th century a class of merchants gradually developed, supported by the steady growth of Massachusetts shipping. Good harbors and the long coastline, together with abundant timber and fish, fostered the shipbuilding industry.

During the wars with France, Massachusetts enjoyed a period of general prosperity. Great Britain, preoccupied with the French, was again unable to exercise its authority. Massachusetts merchants engaged in a highly profitable but illegal trade with the French West Indies and with other foreign ports. A triangular trade developed, in which Massachusetts merchants brought in sugar and molasses from the West Indies, converted it into rum, sent the rum to Africa in exchange for slaves, and sold the slaves to West Indian sugar plantations.

In addition to the prosperity from sea commerce, the colony developed manufacturing industries, such as ironworks, brickyards, stone quarries, leather tanneries, and distilleries. Town life spread into central and western Massachusetts. Boston grew steadily and by the 1770s was one of America’s few large cities.

H

American Revolution

In 1763, after Great Britain had made peace with France, Parliament made a new attempt to reorganize the governing structure of the empire. To pay Britain’s war debts and the cost of maintaining troops in America, Parliament sought to tax the colonies and enforce trade regulations that had been ignored. Massachusetts became the center for agitation against Parliament’s efforts, and most of the events leading to the American Revolution (1775-1783) took place there. The Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, and the Townshend Acts of 1767 created widespread opposition. Boston rioted, and its merchants initiated a boycott among the colonies against British goods. The royal governor dissolved the General Court, and for eight months British troops occupied Boston. In 1770 British soldiers fired into a crowd of 60 jeering citizens, killing five and wounding six of them, in an incident called the Boston Massacre.

Repeal of the Townshend Acts that year brought a period of relative calm, although Parliament retained a tax on tea to assert its right to tax the colonies. In 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, allowing the financially troubled East India Company a monopoly on selling tea in America. The colonists, however, refused to accept the tea, rejecting Parliament’s authority to tax them and fearing the East India Company would hurt colonial merchants’ business. On December 16, 1773, a group of Boston residents, many of them disguised as Native Americans, dumped the first shipment of British tea into Boston Harbor in the Boston Tea Party. To punish Boston for its defiance, Parliament passed laws closing Boston Harbor, requiring residents to provide quarters for British troops, and revoking Massachusetts’s charter. These measures, which colonists labeled the Intolerable Acts, united American colonies in support of Massachusetts and led to the meeting of the First Continental Congress in the fall of 1774, which organized a trade boycott and sent a declaration of grievances to the king.

The royal governor of Massachusetts dissolved the General Court while it was electing delegates to the Continental Congress. Led by the radical independence advocate, Samuel Adams, the General Court refused to disband. Instead, it elected radical delegates to the congress, reconstituted itself as the government of Massachusetts, and moved into the countryside. This provincial assembly governed Massachusetts through most of the revolutionary period.

The first battles of the American Revolution took place outside of Boston in 1775. On April 18 General Thomas Gage, the governor of Massachusetts, sent troops to seize ammunition and military supplies at Concord, some 29 km (about 18 mi) from Boston. Local patriots, including Paul Revere, set out to warn colonial militia that the troops were coming, and a group of militia met the British forces the next morning in Lexington. Shots were fired, and eight Americans were killed. The British went on to Concord, where they met more militiamen and turned back to Boston. Thousands of colonists rallied from the countryside to attack the British, who suffered nearly 300 casualties before reaching safety in Boston (see Lexington, Battle of, and Concord, Battle of). The war for American independence had begun.

The militia that followed British troops from Concord laid siege to Boston. The next battle occurred June 17 for control of Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill, the heights that dominated Boston Harbor. American forces occupied Breed’s Hill and held off two British assaults in the Battle of Bunker Hill, but they then ran out of ammunition and were forced to withdraw. Although the Americans failed to force the British to evacuate Boston, their performance against trained British troops strengthened the colonies’ resolve to fight.

Boston remained in British hands until March 1776, when General George Washington, leading the Continental Army, fortified Dorchester Heights and forced the British to evacuate the city. The only other battle of the revolution that took place in Massachusetts occurred in September 1778, when the British burned New Bedford, a port from which American ships attacked British vessels. Massachusetts residents, especially lawyer and statesman John Adams, continued to play major roles in the national movement to form an independent nation.

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