greatly increased: in 1906 of every 1000 of estimated population 355
were members of the Roman Catholic Church (a proportion exceeded only
in New Mexico and in Rhode Island; 310 was the number per 1000 in
Louisiana), and only 148 were communicants of Protestant bodies; in
1906 there were 1,080,706 Roman Catholics (out of a total of 1,562,621
communicants of all denominations), 119,196 Congregationalists, 80,894
Baptists, 65,498 Methodists and 51,636 Protestant Episcopalians.
Reference has been made to "abandoned farms" in Massachusetts. The
desertion of farms was an inevitable result of the opening of the
great cereal regions of the west, but it is by no means characteristic
of Massachusetts alone. The Berkshire district affords an excellent
example of the interrelations of topography, soil and population. Many
hill towns once thriving have long since become abandoned, desolate
and comparatively inaccessible; though with the development of the
summer resident's interests many will probably eventually regain
prosperity. Almost half of the highland towns reached their maximum
population before the opening of the 19th century, although Berkshire
was scarcely settled till after 1760, and three-fourths of them before
1850. On the other hand three-fourths of the lowland towns reached
their maximum since that date, and half of them since 1880. The
lowland population increased six and a half times in the century, the
upland diminished by an eighth. Socially and educationally the upland
has furnished an interesting example of decadence. Since 1865 (at
least) various parts of Cape Cod have shrunk greatly in population,
agriculture and manufactures, and even in fishing interests; this
reconstruction of industrial and social interests being, apparently,
simply part of the general urban movement--a movement toward better
opportunities. What prosperity or stability remains in various Cape
Cod communities is largely due to foreign immigrants--especially
British-Americans and Portuguese from the Azores; although the
population remains, to a degree exceptional in northern states, of
native stock.
_Government._--Representative government goes back to 1634, and the
bicameral legislature to 1644. The constitution of 1780, which still
endures (the only remaining state constitution of the 18th century), was
framed in the main by Samuel Adams, and as an embodiment of colonial
experience and revolutionary principles, and as a model of
constitution-making in the early years of independence, is of very great
historical interest. It has been amended with considerable freedom (37
amendments up to 1907), but with more conservatism than has often
prevailed in the constitutional reform of other states; so that the
constitution of Massachusetts is not so completely in harmony with
modern democratic sentiment as are the public opinion and statute law of
the state. The commonwealth, for example, is still denominated
"sovereign," and education is not declared a constitutional duty of the
commonwealth. One unique feature is the duty of the supreme court to
give legal advice, on request, to the governor and council. Another
almost equally exceptional feature is the persistence of the colonial
executive council, consisting of members chosen to represent divisions
of the state, who assist the governor in his executive functions.
Massachusetts is also one of the few states in which the legislature
meets in annual session.[11] Townships were represented as such in this
body (called the General Court) until 1856. Religious qualifications for
suffrage and office-holding were somewhat relaxed, except in the case of
Roman Catholics, after 1691.[12] Real toleration in public opinion grew
slowly through the 18th century, removing the religious tests of voters;
and a constitutional amendment in 1821 explicitly forbade such tests in
the case of office-holders. Property qualifications for the suffrage and
for office-holding--universal through colonial times--were abolished in
the main in 1780. From 1821 to 1891 the payment of at least a poll-tax
was a condition precedent to the exercise of the suffrage. An
educational test (dating from 1857) is exacted for the privilege of
voting, every voter being required to be able to read the constitution
of the commonwealth in the English language, and to write his name. The
property qualification of the governor was not abolished until 1892. In
the presidential election of 1896, when an unprecedentedly large vote
was cast, the number of voters registered was nearly 20% of the
population, and of these nearly 82% actually voted. Massachusetts is one
of the only two states in the Union in which elections for state
officers are held annually. In 1888 an act was passed providing for the
use in state elections of a blanket ballot, on which the names of all
candidates for each office are arranged alphabetically under the heading
of that office, and there is no arrangement in party columns. This was
the first state law of the kind in the country. The same method of
voting has been adopted in about two-thirds of the townships of the
state. A limited suffrage was conferred upon women in 1879. Every female
citizen having the qualifications of a male voter may vote in the city
and town elections for members of the school committee.
A householder with a family may, by recording the proper declaration
in a registry of deeds, hold exempt from attachment, levy on
execution, and sale for the payment of debts thereafter contracted an
estate of homestead, not exceeding $800 in value, in a farm or lot
with buildings thereon which he lawfully possesses by lease or
otherwise and occupies as his residence. The exemption does not
extend, however, to the prohibition of sale for taxes, and in case the
householder's buildings are on land which he has leased those
buildings are not exempt from sale or levy for the ground rent. If the
householder has a wife he can mortgage or convey his estate of
homestead only with her consent, and if he dies leaving a widow or
minor children the homestead exemption survives until the youngest
child is twenty-one years of age, or until the death or marriage of
the widow, provided the widow or a child continues to occupy it.
The scope of state activity has become somewhat remarkable. In
addition to the usual state boards of education (1837), agriculture
(1852), railroad commissioners (1869), health (1869), statistics of
labour, fisheries and game, charity (1879), the dairy bureau (1891),
of insanity (1898), prison, highways, insurance and banking
commissions, there are also commissions on ballot-law, voting
machines, civil service (1884), uniformity of legislation, gas and
electric lighting corporations, conciliation and arbitration in labour
disputes (1886), &c. There are efficient state boards of registration
in pharmacy, dentistry and medicine. Foods and drugs have been
inspected since 1882. In general it may be said that the excellence of
administrative results is noteworthy. The work of the Bureau of
Statistics of Labor, of the Bureau of Health, of the Board of Railroad
Commissioners, and of the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, and
the progress of civil service, have been remarkable for value and
efficiency. Almost all state employees are under civil service rules;
the same is true of the city of Boston; and of the clerical,
stenographic, prison, police, civil engineering, fire, labour-foreman,
inspection and bridge tender services of all cities; and under a law
(1894) by which cities and towns may on petition enlarge the
application of their civil service rules. Various other public
services, including even common labourers of the larger towns, are
rapidly passing under civil service regulation. Veterans of the Civil
War have privileges in the administration of the state service. In the
settlement of labour disputes conciliatory methods were successful in
the formative period, when the parties to disputes adopted customary
attitudes of hostility and fought to the end unless they were
reconciled by the Board to a final agreement or to an agreement to
arbitrate.[13] In this earlier period (before 1900), thanks to the
efforts of the board there was an increase in the frequency of appeal
to arbitration, and settlements by compromise were often made.
Afterwards the number of arbitrations by the board increased in
number: from 1900 to 1908 (inclusive), of 568 controversies submitted
to the board, 525 were settled by an award and 43 by an induced
agreement. In the same period the mediation of the Board settled
disputes affecting 5560 establishments; and in the latter half of this
period labour disputes involving hostilities and of the magnitude
contemplated by the statute governing the Board of Conciliation and
Arbitration had almost disappeared. The laws relating to labour are
full, but, as compared with those of other states, present few
features calling for comment.[14] In 1899 eight hours were made to
constitute a day's work for all labourers employed by or for any city
or town adopting the act at an annual election. Acts have been passed
extending the common-law liability of employers, prohibiting the
manufacture and sale of sweat-shop clothing, and authorizing cities
and towns to provide free lectures and to maintain public baths,
gymnasia and playgrounds. Boston has been a leader in the
establishment of municipal baths. The state controls and largely
maintains two beaches magnificently equipped near the city. The
Massachusetts railroad commission, though preceded in point of time by
that of New Hampshire of 1844, was the real beginning of modern state
commissions. Its powers do not extend to direct and mandatory
regulation, being supervisory and advisory only, but it can make
recommendations at its discretion, appealing if necessary to the
General Court; and it has had great influence and excellent results.
The Torrens system of land registration was adopted in 1898, and a
court created for its administration. In the case of all quasi-public
corporations rigid laws exist prohibiting the issue of stock or bonds
unless the par value is first paid in; prohibiting the declaration of
any stock or scrip dividend, and requiring that new stock shall be
offered to stockholders at not less than its market value, to be
determined by the proper state officials, any shares not so subscribed
for to be sold by public auction. These laws are to prevent fictitious
capitalization and "stock-watering." In the twenty years preceding
1880 60% of all sentences for crime were found traceable to liquor. In
1881 a local option law was passed, by which the granting of licences
for the sale of liquor was confined to cities and towns voting at the
annual election to authorize their issue. In 1888 the number of
licences to be granted in municipalities voting in favour of their
issue was limited to one for each 1000 inhabitants, except in Boston,
where one licence may be issued for every 500 inhabitants. The vote
varies from year to year, and it is not unusual for a certain number
of municipalities to change from "licence" to "no licence," and vice
versa. The general result has been that centres of population,
especially where the foreign element is large, usually vote for
licence, while those in which native population predominates, as well
as the smaller towns, usually vote for prohibition. Through a growing
acquiescence in the operation of the local option law, the relative
importance of the vote of the Prohibition Party has diminished. Since
1895 indeterminate sentences have been imposed on all convicts
sentenced to the state prison otherwise than for life or as habitual
criminals; i.e. maximum and minimum terms are established by law and
on the expiration of the latter a revocable permit of liberty may be
issued. Execution by electricity has been the death penalty since
1898. Stringent legislation controls prison labour.
The extension of state activity presents some surprising features in
view of the strength of local self-sufficiency nurtured by the old
system of township government. But this form of pure democracy was in
various cases long since inevitably abandoned: by Boston reluctantly
in 1822, and subsequently by many other townships or cities, as
growing population made action in town meeting unbearably cumbersome.
In modern times state activity has encroached on the cities.
Especially has the commonwealth undertaken certain noteworthy
enterprises as the agent of the several municipalities in the
immediate vicinity of Boston, constituting what is known as the
Metropolitan District; as, for example, in bringing water thither from
the Nashua River at Clinton, 40 m. from Boston, and in the development
of a magnificent park system of woods, fells, river-banks and
seashore, unrivalled elsewhere in the country. The commonwealth joined
the city of Boston in the construction of a subway beneath the most
congested portion of the city for the passage of electric cars. For
the better accommodation of the increasing commerce of the port of
Boston, the commonwealth bought a considerable frontage upon the
harbour lines and constructed a dock capable of receiving the largest
vessels, and has supplemented the work of the United States government
in deepening the approaches to the wharves. It has secured as public
reservations the summit and sides of Greylock (3535 ft.) in the
north-west corner of the state, and of Wachusett (2108 ft.) near the
centre. Since 1885 a large expenditure has been incurred in the
abolition of grade crossings of railways and highways,[15] and in 1894
the commonwealth began the construction and maintenance of state
highways.[16]
Since 1885, in Boston, and since 1894, in Fall River, the
administration of the city police departments, including the granting
of liquor licences, has been in the hands of state commissioners (one
commissioner in Boston, a board in Fall River) appointed by the
governor. But though in each case the result has been an improved
administration, it has been generally conceded that only most
exceptional circumstances can justify such interference with local
self-government, and later attempts to extend the practice have
failed. The referendum has been sparingly used in matters of local
concern. Beginning in 1892 various townships and cities, numbering 18
in 1903, adopted municipal ownership and operation of lighting works.
The gasworks have been notably more successful than the electric
plants.
In Massachusetts, as in New England generally, the word "town" is
used, officially and colloquially, to designate a township, and during
the colonial era the New England town-meeting was a notable school for
education in self-government. The members of the first group of
settlers in these colonies were mostly small farmers, belonged to the
same church, and dwelt in a village for protection from the Indians.
They adapted to these conditions some of the methods for managing
local affairs with which they had been familiar in England, and called
the resultant institution a town. The territorial extent of each town
was determined by its grant or grants from the general court, which
the towns served as agents in the management of land. A settlement or
"plantation" was sometimes incorporated first as a "district" and
later as a town, the difference being that the latter had the right of
corporate representation in the general court, while the former had no
such right. The towns elected (until 1856) the deputies to the general
court, and were the administrative units for the assessment and
collection of taxes, maintaining churches and schools, organizing and
training the militia, preserving the peace, caring for the poor,
building and repairing roads and bridges, and recording deeds, births,
deaths and marriages; and to discuss questions relating to these
matters as well as other matters of peculiarly local concern, to
determine the amount of taxes for town purposes, and to elect
officers. All the citizens were expected to attend the annual
town-meeting, and such male inhabitants as were not citizens were
privileged to attend and to propose and discuss measures, although
they had no right to vote. Generally several villages have grown up in
the same "town," and some of the more populous "towns," usually those
in which manufacturing has become more important than farming, have
been incorporated as "cities"; thus either a town or a city may now
include a farming country and various small villages. Although the
tendency in Massachusetts is towards chartering as cities "towns"
which have a population of 12,000 or more, the democratic institution
of the town-meeting persists in many large municipalities which are
still technically towns.[17] Most "towns" hold their annual meeting in
March, but some hold them in February and others in April. In the
larger "towns" the officers elected at this meeting may consist of
five, seven or nine selectmen, a clerk, a treasurer, three or more
assessors, three or more overseers of the poor, one or more collectors
of taxes, one or more auditors, one or more surveyors of highways, a
road commissioner, a sewer commissioner, a board of health, one or
more constables, two or more field drivers, two or more fence viewers,
and a tree warden; but in the smaller "towns" the number of selectmen
may be limited to three, the selectmen may assess the taxes, be
overseers of the poor, and act as a board of health, and the treasurer
or constable may collect the taxes. The term of all these officers may
be limited to one year, or the selectmen, clerk, assessors and
overseers of the poor may be elected for a term of three years, in
which case a part only of the selectmen, assessors and overseers of
the poor are elected each year. The selectmen have the general
management of a "town's" affairs during the interval between
town-meetings. They may call special town-meetings; they appoint
election officers and may appoint additional constables or public
officers, and such minor officials as inspectors of milk, inspectors
of buildings, gauger of measures, cullers of staves and hoops, fish
warden and forester. A school committee consisting of any number of
members divisible by three is chosen, one-third each year, at the
annual town-meeting or at a special meeting which is held in the same
month. Any "town" having a village or district within its limits that
contains 1000 inhabitants or more may authorize that village or
district to establish a separate organization for lighting its
streets, building and maintaining sidewalks, and employing a watchman
or policeman, the officers of such organization to include at least a
prudential committee and a clerk. All laws relative to "towns" are
applied to "cities" in so far as they are not inconsistent with
general or special laws relative to the latter, and the powers of the
selectmen are vested in the mayor and aldermen.
_Education._--For cities of above 8000 inhabitants (for which alone
comparative statistics are annually available), in 1902-1903 the ratio
of average attendance to school enrolment, the average number of days'
attendance of each pupil enrolled, and the value of school property per
capita of pupils in average attendance were higher than in any other
state; the average length of the school term was slightly exceeded in
eight states; and the total cost of the schools per capita of pupils in
average attendance ($39.05) was exceeded in six other states. In
1905-1906 the percentage of average attendance in the public schools to
the number of children (between 5 and 15 years) in the state was 80; in
Barnstable county it was 95, and in Plymouth 92; and the lowest rate of
any county was 68, that of Bristol. In the same year the amount of the
various school taxes and other contributions was $30.53 for each child
in the average membership of the public schools, and the highest amount
for each child in any county was $35.77 in Suffolk county, and in any
township or city $68.01--in Lincoln. The school system is not one of
marked state centralization--as contrasted, e.g. with New York. A state
board of education has general control, its secretary acting as
superintendent of the state system in conjunction with local
superintendents and committees. Women are eligible for these positions,
and among the teachers in the schools they are greatly in excess over
men (more than 10 to 1), especially in lower grades. No recognition
exists in the schools of race, colour or religion. The proportion of the
child population that attends schools is equalled in but two or three
states east of the Mississippi river. The services of Horace Mann (q.v.)
as secretary of the state board (1837-1848) were productive of almost
revolutionary benefits not only to Massachusetts but to the entire
country. His reforms, which reached every part of the school system,
were fortunately introduced just at the beginning of railway and city
growth. Since 1850 truant and compulsory attendance laws (the first
compulsory education law was passed in 1642) have been enforced in
conjunction with laws against child labour. In 1900 the average period
of schooling per inhabitant for the United States was 4.3 years, for
Massachusetts 7 years. (The same year the ratio of wealth productivity
was as 66 to 37.) Massachusetts stands "foremost in the Union in the
universality of its provision for secondary education."[18] The laws
practically offer such education free to every child of the
commonwealth. Illiterate persons not less than ten years of age
constituted in 1900 5.9% of the population; and 0.8, 14.6, 10.7%
respectively of native whites, foreign-born whites and negroes. More
patents are issued, relatively, to citizens of Massachusetts than to
those of any other state except Connecticut. Post office statistics
indicate a similarly high average of intelligence.
The public school system includes common, high and normal schools, and
various evening, industrial and truant schools. Many townships and
cities maintain free evening schools. In 1894 manual training was made
a part of the curriculum in all municipalities having 20,000
inhabitants. There are also many private business colleges, academic
schools and college-preparatory schools. The high schools enjoy an
exceptional reputation. An unusual proportion of teachers in the
public schools are graduates of the state normal schools, of which the
first were founded in 1839 at Lexington and Barre, the former being
the first normal school of the United States.[19] These two schools
were removed subsequently to Framingham (1853) and Westfield (1844),
where they are still active; while others flourish at Bridgewater
(1840), Salem (1854), Worcester (1874), Fitchburg (1895), North Adams
(1897), Hyannis (1897) and Lowell (1897), that at Framingham being
open to women only. There is also a state normal art school at Boston
(1873) for both sexes.
The commonwealth contributes to the support of textile schools in
cities in which 450,000 spindles are in operation. Such schools exist
(1909) in Lowell, Fall River and New Bedford. The commonwealth also
maintains aboard a national ship a nautical training school (1891) for
instruction in the science and practice of navigation. During the
Spanish-American War of 1898 more than half of the graduates and
cadets of the school enlisted in the United States service.
There are several hundred private schools, whose pupils constituted in
1905-1906 15.7% of the total school-enrolment of the state. Of higher
academies and college-preparatory schools there are scores. Among
those for boys Phillips Academy, at Andover, the Groton school, and
the Mount Hermon school are well-known examples. For girls the largest
school is the Northfield Seminary at East Northfield. In Boston and in
the towns in its environs are various famous schools, among them the
boys' classical school in Boston, founded in 1635, one of the oldest
secondary schools in the country. The leading educational institution
of the state, as it is the oldest and most famous of the country, is
Harvard University (founded 1636) at Cambridge. In the extreme
north-west of the state, at Williamstown, is Williams College (1793),
and in the Connecticut Valley is Amherst College (1821), both of these
unsectarian. Boston University (Methodist Episcopal, 1867); Tufts
College (1852), a few miles from Boston in Medford, originally a
Universalist school; Clark University (1889, devoted wholly to
graduate instruction until 1902, when Clark College was added), at
Worcester, are important institutions. Two Roman Catholic schools are
maintained--Boston College (1863) and the College of the Holy Cross
(1843), at Worcester. Of various institutions for the education of
women, Mount Holyoke (1837) at South Hadley, Smith College (1875) at
Northampton, Wellesley College (1875) at Wellesley near Boston,
Radcliffe College (1879) in connexion with Harvard at Cambridge and
Simmons College (1899) at Boston, are of national repute. The last
emphasizes scientific instruction in domestic economy.
For agricultural students the state supports a school at Amherst
(1867), and Harvard University the Bussey Institution. In
technological science special instruction is given--in addition to the
scientific departments of the schools already mentioned--in the
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (1865), and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (opened in 1865). There are schools of
theology at Cambridge (Protestant Episcopal), Newton (Baptist) and
Waltham (New Church), as well as in connexion with Boston University
(Methodist), Tufts College (Universalist) and Harvard (non-sectarian,
and the affiliated Congregational Andover Theological Seminary at
Cambridge). Law and medical schools are maintained in Boston and
Harvard universities.
_Public Institutions._--Massachusetts was in 1903, in proportion to the
population, more richly provided with public collections of books than
any other state: in that year she had nearly a seventh of all books in
public, society and school libraries in the country, and a much larger
supply of books per capita (2.56) than any other state. The rate for New
York, the only state having a larger number of books in such libraries,
being only 1.19. The Boston public library, exceeded in size in the
United States by the library of Congress at Washington--and probably
first, because of the large number of duplicates in the library of
Congress--and the largest free municipal library in the world; the
library of Harvard, extremely well chosen and valuable for research; the
collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1791); the Boston
Athenaeum (1807); the State Library (1826); the New England Historic
Genealogical Society (1845); the Congregational Library; the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences (1780); and the Boston Society of Natural
History (1830), all in Boston, leave it easily unrivalled, unless by
Washington, as the best research centre of the country. The collections
of the American Antiquarian Society (1812) at Worcester are also
notable. Massachusetts led, about 1850, in the founding of town and city
libraries supported by public taxes, and by 1880 had established more of
such institutions than existed in all other states combined. In 1900 out
of 353 towns and cities only five, representing less than half of 1%,
were without free library facilities, and three of these five had
association libraries charging only a small fee.
The state is very well supplied with charitable and reformatory
institutions, in which noteworthy methods have been employed with
success. The state institutions, each governed by a board of trustees,
and all under the supervision of the state board of charity, include a
state hospital at Tewksbury, for paupers (1866); a state farm at
Bridgewater (1887) for paupers and petty criminals; the Lyman school
for boys at Westboro, a reformatory for male criminals under fifteen
years of age sentenced to imprisonment for terms less than life in
connexion with which a very successful farm is maintained for the
younger boys at Berlin; an industrial school for girls at Lancaster,
also a reformatory school--a third reformatory school for boys was
planned in 1909; a state sanatorium at Rutland for tuberculous
patients (the first public hospital for such in the United States) and
a hospital school at Canton for the care and instruction of crippled
and deformed children. Three more hospitals for consumptives were
planned in 1909. Under the supervision of the state board of insanity,
and each under the government of a board of seven trustees (of whom
two are women) are state hospitals for the insane at Worcester (1833),
Taunton, Northampton, Danvers, Westboro and Medford, a state colony
for the insane at Gardner, a state hospital for epileptics at Palmer,
a state school for the feeble-minded at Waltham (governed by six
trustees), a state school at Wrentham, state "hospital cottages for
children" (1882) at Baldwinville (governed by five trustees), and the
Foxboro state hospital for dipsomaniacs and insane. There are also
semi-state institutions for the insane at Waverley, Barre, Wrentham
and Baldwinville, and nineteen small private institutions, all under
the supervision of the state board of insanity. Under the supervision
of a board of prison commissioners, which appoints the superintendent
and warden of each, are a reformatory prison for women at Sherborn
(1877), a state reformatory for men at Concord (1884), a state prison
at Boston (Charlestown), and a prison camp and hospital at Rutland
(1905). There is a prison department at the state farm which receives
misdemeanants. Other institutions receiving state aid, each governed
by trustees appointed by the governor, are the Massachusetts general
hospital at Boston, the Massachusetts charitable eye and ear infirmary
at Boston, the Massachusetts homoeopathic hospital at Boston, the
Perkins Institution and Massachusetts school for the blind at South
Boston and the soldiers' home in Massachusetts at Boston. The Horace
Mann school in Boston, a public day school for the deaf, the New
England industrial school for deaf mutes at Beverly and the Clarke
school for the deaf at Northampton are maintained in part by the
state. Finally, many private charitable corporations (about 500 in
1905) report to the state board of charity, and town and city
almshouses (205 in 1904) are subject to visitation. The Perkins
Institution is memorable for its association with the fame of S. G.
Howe (g.v.), whose reforms in charity methods were felt through all
the charitable interests of the state. The net yearly cost of support
and relief from 1884 to 1904 averaged $2,136,653, exclusive of
vagrancy cases (average $31,714). The whole number of paupers, besides
vagrants, in 1908 was 23.02 per 1000 of state population, and the cost
of relief ($5,104,255) was $1.699 for each inhabitant of the state.
The number of sane paupers declined steadily and markedly from 1863 to
1904.
_Finance._--Massachusetts is a very rich state, and Boston a very
wealthy city. The debt of the state (especially the contingent debt,
secured by sinking funds) has been steadily rising since 1888, and
especially since 1896, chiefly owing to the erection of important public
buildings, the construction of state highways and metropolitan park
roadways, the improvement of Boston harbour, the abolition of grade
crossings on railways, and the expenses incurred for the
Spanish-American War of 1898.
The net direct funded debt (also secured by accumulating sinking
funds) in December 1908 was $17,669,372 (3.61 millions in 1893). The
average interest on this and the contingent debt ($60,428,223 in
December 1908) combined was only 3.35%. The net debts of towns and
cities rose in the years 1885-1908 from $63,306,213 to $163,558,325.
The county debts in 1908 aggregated $6,076,867. The assessed valuation
of realty in the state in 1908 was $2,799,062,707 and of personalty
$1,775,073,438. No other state has given so vigorous a test of the
ordinary American general-property tax, and the results have been as
discouraging as elsewhere. The "dooming" process (i.e. estimation by
assessors, without relief for overvaluation except for excess more
than 50% above the proper valuation) was introduced in 1868 as a
method of securing returns of personalty. But the most rigorous
application of the doomage law has only proved its complete futility
as an effort to reach unascertained corporate and personal
property.[20] Various special methods are used for the taxation of
banks, insurance companies, railways, tramways, trust companies and
corporations, some of them noteworthy. In the case of corporations
realty and machinery are taxed generally by the local authorities, and
stock values by the commonwealth. The Boston stock exchange is the
second of the country in the extent of the securities in which it
deals. The proportion of holders of U.S. bonds among the total
population is higher than that in any other state.
_History._--It is possible that the coasts of Massachusetts were visited
by the Northmen, and by the earliest navigators who followed Cabot, but
this is only conjecture. In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold landed at and named
Cape Cod and coasted as far south as the present No-Man's Land, which he
named Martin's or Martha's Vineyard, a name later transferred to a
neighbouring larger island. Pring and Champlain at a later date coasted
along what is now Massachusetts, but the map of Champlain is hardly
recognizable. The first sufficient explorations for cartographical
record were made by John Smith in 1614, and his map was long the
basis--particularly in its nomenclature--of later maps. Permanency of
occupation, however, dates from the voyage of the "Mayflower," which
brought about a hundred men, women and children who had mostly belonged
to an English sect of Separatists, originating in Yorkshire, but who had
passed a period of exile for religion's sake in Holland. In the early
winter of 1620 they made the coast of Cape Cod; they had intended to
make their landing farther south, within the jurisdiction of the
Virginia Company, which had granted them a patent; but stress of weather
prevented their doing so. Finding themselves without warrant in a region
beyond their patent, and threatened with the desertion of disaffected
members of their company (probably all servants or men of the "lesser"
sort) unless concessions were made to these, they drew up and signed
before landing a democratic compact of government which is accounted the
earliest written constitution in history.[21] After some exploration of
the coast they made a permanent landing on the 21st of December 1620
(N.S.) at Plymouth, a harbour which had already been so named by John
Smith in his maps of 1614 and 1616. During the first winter nearly
one-half their number died from exposure, and the relations of the
survivors with their partners of the London Company, who had insisted
that for seven years the plantation should be managed as a joint stock
company, were unsatisfactory. However, about thirty-five new colonists
arrived in 1622 and ninety-six more in 1623. The abandonment of the
communal system was begun in the latter year, and with the dissolution
of the partnership with the adventurers of the London Company in 1627
Plymouth became a corporate colony with its chief authority vested in
the whole body of freemen convened in the General Court. Upon the death
of the first governor, John Carver, in the spring of 1621, the General
Court chose William Bradford as his successor, and with him was chosen
one assistant. The subsequent elections were annual, and within a few
years the number of assistants was increased to seven. The General Court
was the legislature and the electorate; the governor and assistants were
the executive and the judiciary. The whole body of freemen composed the
General Court until other towns than Plymouth had been organized, the
first of which were Scituate in 1636 and Duxbury in 1637, and then the
representative form of government was adopted and there was a gradual
differentiation between Plymouth the town and Plymouth the colony. When
it had become known that the colony was within the territory of the New
England Council, John Pierce, in 1621, procured from that body a grant
which made the colonists its tenants. A year later Pierce surrendered
this and procured another, which in effect made him proprietor of the
colony, but he was twice shipwrecked and was forced to assign to the
adventurers his second patent. In 1629 Governor Bradford procured from
the same council a definite grant of the tract which corresponds to the
south-eastern portion of the present state. But all attempts to procure
a royal charter for Plymouth Colony were unsuccessful, and in 1691 it
was annexed to the Colony of Massachusetts Bay under what is termed the
Provincial Charter.
King James having by patent in 1620 created a Council for New England to
whom he made a large grant of territory, the council in 1628 made a
sub-grant, confirmed by a royal charter that passed the seals on the 4th
of March 1629, to the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in
Newe England." There had been various minor expeditions during the few
years since Smith was on the coast before this company, in the Puritan
interests, had sent over John Endecott with a party in 1628 to what is
now Salem. In 1630 the government of the company, with questionable
right (for the charter seems evidently to have contemplated the
residence of the company in England), transferred itself to their
territory, and under the leadership of John Winthrop laid the
foundations anew of the Massachusetts colony, when they first settled
Boston in the autumn of that year. Winthrop served repeatedly, though
not continuously, as governor of the colony till his death in 1649, his
rejection in 1636 being due to a party of theological revolt which chose
Henry Vane (afterwards Sir Henry) to the office. This was an incident in
a famous episode, important rather as a symptom than in itself, namely,
the Antinomian controversy, "New England's earliest protest against
formulas," in which Vane and Ann Hutchinson took the lead in criticizing
the official orthodoxy of the colony.
The magistrates successfully asserted themselves to the discomfiture of
their critics (Ann Hutchinson being banished), and this was
characteristic of the colony's early history. The charter gave the
company control over the admission of "freemen" (co-partners in the
enterprise, and voters), "full and absolute power and authority to
correct, punish and rule" subjects settling in the territory comprised
in their grant, and power to "resist ... by all fitting ways and means
whatever" all persons attempting the "destruction, invasion, detriment
or annoyance" of the plantation. Some writers deny the company's right
under this instrument to rule as they proceeded to do; but at any rate
what they did was to make the suffrage dependent on stringent religious
tests, and to repress with determined zeal all theological "vagaries"
and "whimsies." Criticism of church or magistrates was not tolerated.
Laws were modelled closely on the Bible. The clergy were a ruling class.
The government was frankly theocratic. Said Winthrop (1637): "We see not
that any should have authority to set up any other exercises besides
what authority hath already set up"; and a synod at Cambridge in 1637
catalogued eighty-two "opinions, some blasphemous, others erroneous and
all unsafe," besides nine "unwholesome expressions," all of which were
consigned "to the devil of hell from whence they came." Another synod at
Cambridge in 1647 more formally established the principle of state
control. The legislation against Baptists (about 1644-1678) and the
persecution of the Quakers (especially 1656-1662) partook of the
brutality of the time, including scourging, boring of tongues, cutting
of ears and in rare cases capital punishment. It cannot be denied that
men like Roger Williams and some of the persecuted Quakers, though
undeniably contentious and aggressive in their conscientious dissent,
showed a spirit which to-day seems sweeter in tolerance and humanity
than that of the Puritans. And it seems necessary to emphasize these
facts because until about 1870 it was almost unchallenged tradition to
regard the men of Massachusetts Bay as seekers and champions of
"religious liberty." They left England, indeed, for liberty to discard
the "poperies" of the English Church, and once in Massachusetts they
even discarded far more than those "poperies." But religious liberty in
our modern sense they did not seek for themselves, nor accord to others;
they abhorred it, they trampled on it, and their own lives they
subjected to all the rigid restrictions to which they subjected others.
They were narrow but strong; no better example can be imagined of what
the French call "the defects of one's qualities." Their failures were
small compared with those of their contemporaries in England and
elsewhere in Europe, and public opinion did not long sustain violent
persecution of opinion. More than once mobs freed Quaker prisoners. Also
it is to be said that with the single exception of religious toleration
the record of the state in devotion to human rights has been from the
first a splendid one, whether in human principles of criminal law, or in
the defence of the civil rights commonly declared in American
constitutions. It was once generally assumed that the repression
practised attained its end of securing harmony of opinion. The fact
seems to be that intellectual speculation was as strong in America as in
Puritan England; the assumption that the inhibition of its expression
was good seems wholly gratuitous, and contrary to general convictions
underlying modern freedom of speech. A safer opinion is probably that
"the spiritual growth of Massachusetts withered under the shadow of
dominant orthodoxy; the colony was only saved from mental atrophy by its
vigorous political life" (J. A. Doyle). In literature the second half of
the 17th century is a sterile waste of forbidding theology; and its
life, judged by the present day, singularly sombre.
In addition to the few persons banished to Rhode Island, theological and
political differences led many to emigrate thither. Others, discontented
with Massachusetts autocracy and wishing, too, "to secure more room,"
went to Connecticut (q.v.) where they established a bulwark against the
Dutch of New York.
A witchcraft scare (at its worst in 1691-1697, though the earliest
Connecticut case was in 1646-1647 and the earliest in Boston in 1648)
led to another tragedy of ignorance. In all thirty-two persons were
executed (according to W. F. Poole, about a thousandth part of those
executed for witchcraft in the British Isles in the 16th and 17th
centuries). Salem was the scene of the greatest excitement in 1691-1692.
Exceptionally honourable to the early colonists was their devotion to
education (see HARVARD UNIVERSITY and BOSTON). Massachusetts Bay had a
large learned element; it is supposed that about 1640 there was an
Oxford or Cambridge graduate to every 250 persons in the colony. The
earliest printing in the British-American colonies was done at Cambridge
in 1639; it was not until 1674 that the authorities of the colony
permitted printing, except at Cambridge. Boston and Cambridge remain
leading publishing centres to-day. The first regular newspaper of
Boston, the _Boston Newsletter_, was the pioneer of the American
newspaper press.
The early history was rendered unquiet at times by wars with the
Indians, the chief of which were the Pequot War in 1637, and King
Philip's War in 1675-76; and for better combining against these enemies,
Massachusetts, with Connecticut, New Haven and New Plymouth, formed a
confederacy in 1643, considered the prototype of the larger union of the
colonies which conducted the War of American Independence (1775-83). The
struggle with the Crown, which ended in independence, began at the
foundation of the colony, with assumptions of power under the charter
which the colonial government was always trying to maintain, and the
crown was as assiduously endeavouring to counteract. After more than
half a century of struggle, the crown finally annulled the charter of
the colony in 1684, though not until 1686 was the old government
actually supplanted on the arrival of Joseph Dudley, a native of the
colony, as president of a provisional council; later, Sir Edmund Andros
was sent over with a commission to unite New York and New England under
his rule. The colonists had been for many years almost independent; they
made their own laws, the Crown appointed natives as officials, and the
colonial interpretation of the old charter had in general been allowed
to stand. Massachusetts had excluded the English Book of Common Prayer,
she had restricted the franchise, laid the death penalty on religious
opinions, and passed various other laws repugnant to the Crown, notably
to Charles II. and James II.; she had caused laws and writs to run in
her own name, she had neglected to exact the oath of allegiance to the
sovereign, though carefully exacting an oath of fidelity to her own
government, she had protected the regicides, she had coined money with
her own seal, she had blocked legal appeals to the English courts, she
had not compelled the observance of the navigation acts. The revocation
of the charter aroused the strongest fears of the colonists Andros
speedily met determined opposition by measures undertaken relative to
taxation and land titles, by efforts to secure a church for Episcopal
service, and an attempt to curb the town meetings. His government was
supported by a small party (largely an Anglican Church party), but was
intensely unpopular with the bulk of the people; and--it is a disputed
question, whether before or after news arrived of the landing in England
of William of Orange--in April 1689 the citizens of Boston rose in
revolution, deposed Andros, imprisoned him and re-established their old
colonial form of government. Then came a struggle, carried on in England
by Increase Mather as agent (1688-1692) of the colony, to secure such a
form of government under a new charter as would preserve as many as
possible of their old liberties. Plymouth Colony, acting through its
agent in London, endeavoured to secure a separate existence by royal
charter, but accepted finally union with Massachusetts when association
with New York became the probable alternative. The province of Maine was
also united in the new provincial charter of 1691, and Sir William Phips
came over with it, commissioned as the first royal governor. As has been
mentioned already, the new charter softened religious tests for office
and the suffrage, and accorded "liberty of conscience" except to Roman
Catholics. The old religious exclusiveness had already been greatly
lessened: the clergy were less powerful, heresy had thrived under
repression, Anglican churchmen had come to the colony and were borne
with perforce, devotion to trade and commerce had weakened theological
tests in favour of ideals of mere good order and prosperity, and a
spirit of toleration had grown.
Throughout the continuance of the government under the provincial
charter, there was a constant struggle between a prerogative party,
headed by the royal governor, and a popular party who cherished
recollections of their practical independence under the colonial
charter, and who were nursing the sentiments which finally took the form
of resistance in 1775. The inter-charter period, 1686-1691, is of great
importance in this connexion. The popular majority kept up the feeling
of hostility to the royal authority in recurrent combats in the
legislative assembly over the salary to be voted to the governor; though
these antagonisms were from time to time forgotten in the wars with the
French and Indians. During the earl of Bellomont's administration, New
York was again united with Massachusetts under the same executive
(1697-1701). The scenes of the recurrent wars were mostly distant from
Massachusetts proper, either in Maine or on Canadian or Acadian
territory, although some savage inroads of the Indians were now and then
made on the exposed frontier towns, as, for instance, upon Deerfield in
1704 and upon Haverhill in 1708. Phips, who had succeeded in an attack
on Port Royal, had ignominiously failed when he led the Massachusetts
fleet against Quebec in 1690; and the later expedition of 1711 was no
less a failure. The most noteworthy administration was that of William
Shirley (1741-1749 and 1753-1756), who at one time was the commanding
officer of the British forces in North America. He made a brilliant
success of the expedition against Louisburg in 1745, William Pepperell,
a Maine officer, being in immediate command. Shirley with Massachusetts
troops also took part in the Oswego expedition of 1755; and
Massachusetts proposed, and lent the chief assistance in the expedition
of Nova Scotia in 1755 which ended in the removal of the Acadians. Her
officers and troops also played an important part in the Crown Point and
second Louisburg expedition (1758).
The first decided protests against the exercise of sovereign power by
the crown, the first general moral and political revolt that marked the
approach of the American War of Independence, took place in
Massachusetts; so that the most striking events in the general history
of the colonies as a whole from 1760 to 1775 are an intimate part of her
annals. The beginning of the active opposition to the crown may be
placed in the resistance, led by James Otis, to the issuing of writs
(after 1752, Otis's famous argument against them being made in
1760-1761) to compel citizens to assist the revenue officers; followed
later by the outburst of feeling at the imposition of the Stamp Act
(1765), when Massachusetts took the lead in confronting the royal power.
The governors put in office at this time by the crown were not of
conciliatory temperaments, and the measures instituted in parliament
(see UNITED STATES) served to increase bitterness of feeling. Royal
troops sent to Boston (several regiments, 1768) irritated the populace,
who were highly excited at the time, until in an outbreak on the 5th of
March 1770 a file of garrison troops shot down in self-defence a few
citizens in a crowd which assailed them. This is known as the "Boston
Massacre." The merchants combined to prevent the importation of goods
which by law would yield the crown a revenue; and the patriots--as the
anti-prerogative party called themselves--under the lead of Samuel
Adams, instituted regular communication between the different towns, and
afterwards, following the initiative of Virginia, with the other
colonies, through "committees of correspondence"; a method of the utmost
advantage thereafter in forcing on the revolution by intensifying and
unifying the resistance of the colony, and by inducing the co-operation
of other colonies. In 1773 (Dec. 16) a party of citizens, disguised as
Indians and instigated by popular meetings, boarded some tea-ships in
the harbour of Boston, and to prevent the landing of their taxable
cargoes threw them into the sea; this incident is known in history as
the "Boston tea-party." Parliament in retaliation closed the port of
Boston (1774), a proceeding which only aroused more bitter feeling in
the country towns and enlisted the sympathy of the other colonies. The
governorship was now given to General Thomas Gage, who commanded the
troops which had been sent to Boston. Everything foreboded an outbreak.
Most of the families of the highest social position were averse to
extreme measures; a large number were not won over and became
expatriated loyalists. The popular agitators, headed by Samuel
Adams--with whom John Hancock, an opulent merchant and one of the few of
the richer people who deserted the crown, leagued himself--forced on the
movement, which became war in April 1775, when Gage sent an expedition
to Concord and Lexington to destroy military stores accumulated by the
patriots and to capture Adams and Hancock, temporarily staying at
Lexington. This detachment, commanded by Lord Percy, was assaulted, and
returned with heavy loss. The country towns now poured their militia
into Cambridge, opposite Boston; troops came from neighbouring colonies,
and Artemas Ward, a Massachusetts general, was placed in command of the
irregular force, which with superior numbers at once shut the royal army
up in Boston. An attempt of the provincials to seize and hold a
commanding hill in Charlestown brought on the battle of Bunker Hill
(June 17, 1775), in which the provincials were driven from the ground,
although they lost much less heavily than the royal troops. Washington,
chosen by the Continental Congress to command the army, arrived in
Cambridge in July 1775, and stretching his lines around Boston, forced
its evacuation in March 1776. The state was not again the scene of any
conflict during the war. Generals Henry Knox and Benjamin Lincoln were
the most distinguished officers contributed by the state to the
revolutionary army. Out of an assessment at one time upon the states of
$5,000,000 for the expenses of the war, Massachusetts was charged with
$820,000, the next highest being $800,000 for Virginia. Of the 231,791
troops sent by all the colonies into the field, reckoning by annual
terms, Massachusetts sent 67,907, the next highest being 31,939 from
Connecticut, Virginia furnishing only 26,678; and her proportion of
sailors was very much greater still. In every campaign in every colony
save in 1770-80 her soldiery were in absolute, and still more in
relative, number greater than those of any other colony.
After the outbreak of the war a somewhat indefinite, heterogeneous
provisional government was in power till a constitution was adopted in
1780, when John Hancock became the first governor. Governor James
Bowdoin in 1786-1787 put down with clemency an almost bloodless
insurrection in the western counties (there was strong disaffection,
however, as far east as Middlesex), known as the Shays Rebellion,
significant of the rife ideas of popular power, the economic distress,
and the unsettled political conditions of the years of the
Confederation. Daniel Shays (1747-1825), the leader, was a brave
Revolutionary captain of no special personal importance. The state debt
was large, taxation was heavy, and industry was unsettled; worthless
paper money was in circulation, yet some men demanded more; debtors were
made desperate by prosecution; the state government seemed weak, the
Federal government contemptibly so; the local courts would not, or from
intimidation feared to, punish the turbulent, and demagogues encouraged
ideas of popular power. A convention of delegates representing the
malcontents of numerous towns in Worcester county met at Worcester on
the 15th of August 1786 to consider grievances, and a week later a
similar convention assembled at Hatfield, Hampshire county. Encouraged
by these and other conventions in order to obstruct the collection of
debts and taxes, a mob prevented a session of the Court of Common Pleas
and General Sessions of the Peace at Northampton on the 29th of August,
and in September other mobs prevented the same court from sitting in
Worcester, Middlesex and Berkshire counties. About 1000 insurgents under
Shays assembled at Springfield on the 26th of September to prevent the
sitting there of the Supreme Court, from which they feared indictments.
To protect the court and the national arsenal at Springfield, for which
the Federal government was powerless to provide a guard, Major-General
William Shepard (1737-1817) ordered out the militia, called for
volunteers, and supplied them with arms from the arsenal, and the court
sat for three days. The Federal government now attempted to enlist
recruits, ostensibly to protect the western frontier from the Indians,
but actually for the suppression of the insurrection; but the plan
failed from lack of funds, and the insurgents continued to interrupt the
procedure of the courts. In January 1787, however, Governor Bowdoin
raised an army of 4400 men and placed it under the command of
Major-General Benjamin Lincoln (1733-1810). While Lincoln was at
Worcester Shays planned to capture the arsenal at Springfield, but on
the 25th of January Shepard's men fired upon Shays's followers, killing
four and putting the rest to flight. Lincoln pursued them to Petersham,
Worcester county, where on the 4th of February he routed them and took
150 prisoners. Subsequently the insurgents gathered in small bands in
Berkshire county; but here, a league having been formed to assist the
government, 84 insurgents were captured at West Stockbridge, and the
insurrection practically terminated in an action at Sheffield on the
27th of February, in which the insurgents lost 2 killed and 30 wounded
and the militia 2 killed and 1 wounded. Two of the insurgent leaders,
Daniel Shays and Eli Parsons, escaped to Vermont soon after the rout at
Petersham. Fourteen other insurgents who were tried by the Supreme Court
in the spring of 1787 were found guilty of treason and sentenced to
death. They were, however, held rather as hostages for the good
behaviour of worse offenders who had escaped, and were pardoned in
September. In February 1788 Shays and Parsons petitioned for pardon, and
this was granted by the legislature in the following June. The outcome
of the uprising was an encouraging test of loyalty to the commonwealth;
and the insurrection is regarded as having been very potent in preparing
public opinion throughout the country for the adoption of a stronger
national government. The Federal Constitution was ratified by
Massachusetts by only a small majority on the 6th of February 1788,
after its rejection had been at one time imminent; but Massachusetts
became a strong Federalist state. Indeed, the general interest of her
history in the quarter-century after the adoption of the Constitution
lies mainly in her connexion with the fortunes of that great political
party. Her leading politicians were out of sympathy with the conduct of
national affairs (in the conduct of foreign relations, the distribution
of political patronage, naval policy, the question of public debt) from
1804--when Jefferson's party showed its complete supremacy--onward; and
particularly after the passage of the Embargo Act of 1807, which caused
great losses to Massachusetts commerce, and, so far from being accepted
by her leaders as a proper diplomatic weapon, seemed to them designed in
the interests of the Democratic party. The Federalist preference for
England over France was strong in Massachusetts, and her sentiment was
against the war with England of 1812-15. New England's discontent
culminated in the Hartford Convention (Dec. 1814), in which
Massachusetts men predominated. The state, however, bore her full part
in the war, and much of its naval success was due to her sailors.
During the interval till the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861,
Massachusetts held a distinguished place in national life and politics.
As a state she may justly be said to have been foremost in the struggle
against slavery.[22] She opposed the policy that led to the Mexican War
in 1846, although a regiment was raised in Massachusetts by the personal
exertions of Caleb Cushing. The leaders of the ultra non-political
abolitionists (who opposed the formation of the Liberty party) were
mainly Massachusetts men, notably W. L. Garrison and Wendell Phillips.
The Federalist domination had been succeeded by Whig rule in the state;
but after the death of the great Whig, Daniel Webster, in 1852, all
parties disintegrated, re-aligning themselves gradually in an aggressive
anti-slavery party and the temporizing Democratic party. First, for many
years the Free-Soilers gained strength; then in 1855 in an extraordinary
party upheaval the Know-Nothings quite broke up Democratic, Free-Soil
and Whig organizations; the Free-Soilers however captured the
Know-Nothing organization and directed it to their own ends; and by
their junction with the anti-slavery Whigs there was formed the
Republican party. To this the original Free-Soilers contributed as
leaders Charles Sumner and C. F. Adams; the Know-Nothings, Henry Wilson
and N. P. Banks; and later, the War Democrats, B. F. Butler--all men of
mark in the history of the state. Charles Sumner, the most eminent
exponent of the new party, was the state's senator in Congress
(1851-1874). The feelings which grew up, and the movements that were
fostered till they rendered the Civil War inevitable, received something
of the same impulse from Massachusetts which she had given a century
before to the feelings and movements forerunning the War of American
Independence. When the war broke out it was her troops who first
received hostile fire in Baltimore, and turning their mechanical
training to account opened the obstructed railroad to Washington. In the
war thus begun she built, equipped and manned many vessels for the
Federal navy, and furnished from 1861 to 1865 26,163 (or, including
final credits, probably more than 30,000) men for the navy. During the
war all but twelve small townships raised troops in excess of every
call, the excess throughout the state amounting in all to more than
15,000 men; while the total recruits to the Federal army (including
re-enlistments) numbered, according to the adjutant-general of the
state, 159,165 men, of which less than 7000 were raised by draft.[23]
The state, as such, and the townships spent $42,605,517.19 in the war;
and private contributions of citizens are reckoned in addition at about
$9,000,000, exclusive of the aid to families of soldiers, paid then and
later by the state.
Since the close of the war Massachusetts has remained generally
steadfast in adherence to the principles of the Republican party, and
has continued to develop its resources. Navigation, which was formerly
the distinctive feature of its business prosperity, has under the
pressure of laws and circumstances given place to manufactures, and the
development of carrying facilities on the land rather than on the sea.
In the Spanish-American War of 1898 Massachusetts furnished 11,780
soldiers and sailors, though her quota was but 7388; supplementing from
her own treasury the pay accorded them by the national government.
No statement of the influence which Massachusetts has exerted upon the
American people, through intellectual activity, and even through vagary,
is complete without an enumeration of the names which, to Americans at
least, are the signs of this influence and activity. In science the
state can boast of John Winthrop, the most eminent of colonial
scientists; Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford); Nathaniel Bowditch, the
translator of Laplace; Benjamin Peirce and Morse the electrician; not to
include an adopted citizen in Louis Agassiz. In history, Winthrop and
Bradford laid the foundations of her story in the very beginning; but
the best example of the colonial period is Thomas Hutchinson, and in
later days Bancroft, Sparks, Palfrey, Prescott, Motley and Parkman. In
poetry, a pioneer of the modern spirit in American verse was Richard
Henry Dana; and later came Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell and
Holmes. In philosophy and the science of living, Jonathan Edwards,
Franklin, Channing, Emerson and Theodore Parker. In education, Horace
Mann; in philanthropy, S. G. Howe. In oratory, James Otis, Fisher Ames,
Josiah Quincy, junr., Webster, Choate, Everett, Sumner, Winthrop and
Wendell Phillips; and, in addition, in statesmanship, Samuel Adams, John
Adams and John Quincy Adams. In fiction, Hawthorne and Mrs Stowe. In
law, Story, Parsons and Shaw. In scholarship, Ticknor, William M. Hunt,
Horatio Greenough, W. W. Story and Thomas Ball. The "transcendental
movement," which sprang out of German affiliations and produced as one
of its results the well-known community of Brook Farm (1841-1847), under
the leadership of Dr George Ripley, was a Massachusetts growth, and in
passing away it left, instead of traces of an organization, a sentiment
and an aspiration for higher thinking which gave Emerson his following.
When Massachusetts was called upon to select for Statuary Hall in the
capitol at Washington two figures from the long line of her worthies,
she chose as her fittest representatives John Winthrop, the type of
Puritanism and state-builder, and Samuel Adams (though here the choice
was difficult between Samuel Adams and John Adams) as her greatest
leader in the heroic period of the War of Independence.