The Ninth State

New Hampshire's Formative Years

Lynn Warren Turner

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781469648163
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Turner's work documents New Hampshire's transition from colony to state, including the development of the state constitution, the contests between constantly mutating political parties, and the conquering of the New England wilderness. He details the painful evolution of relations between the state government and the equally inexperienced federal government and takes note of the formidable accomplishments of the state's citizens during this period. Originally published in 1983. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

CHAPTER I

REVOLUTIONARY NEW HAMPSHIRE

Before the Revolution, the people of the different parts of New-Hampshire, had but little connexion with each other.—Jeremy Belknap

“On the 30th of November [1782],” wrote a young New Hampshire farmer, “the provisional treaty was signed, in which Great Britain explicitly acknowledged the independence of the United States…. The evils & privations occasioned by a war of eight years, made the tidings of an honorable peace a joyful event to the nation.”¹ News of the treaty did not actually reach the people of New Hampshire generally until March 29, 1783, when the New Hampshire Gazette published the announcement in a letter which had been received from John Taylor Gilman, delegate to the Continental Congress. With becoming gravity, President Meshech Weare and the committee of safety postponed formal celebration of this event until the twenty-eighth day of the following April, after Congress had proclaimed the end of hostilities.² Then, from daybreak until midnight, the assembled magistrates, lawmakers, aristocrats, clergymen, and townspeople in Portsmouth, the old social capital of the state, made merry over the return of peace with bells, guns, sublime anthems, prayers of grateful eloquence, an elegant dinner, a splendid ball, illuminations, and fireworks.³ The humble people of the state, who probably disapproved of Portsmouth’s extravagance, were equally and dutifully thankful for England’s capitulation. Matthew Patten of Bedford paused at the end of his customary round of duties to record in his diary, “10th was a day of Rejoicing in this town on acct of the peace and I Recd a dollar from William Duncan toward his note…. and in the afternoon and Evening several thunder showers which produced a great deal of Rain.”⁴ Thus, in their various ways, did the people of New Hampshire celebrate the major turning point in our national history.

New Hampshire’s participation in the struggle for independence had perhaps been as wholehearted as that of any of the thirteen original states. Although some of the oldest English “plantations” in the New World lay within its borders, the royal colony of New Hampshire ranked only tenth among the original thirteen in population and contained less than 4 percent of the total number of inhabitants living between Maine and Georgia in 1775. Nevertheless, it had been one of the earliest to expel a royal governor and to attack the royal arsenals on its soil. It had sent delegates to the First and Second Continental Congresses and had been the first colony to request from the latter body its advice in the construction of a new state government. New Hampshire minutemen had marched swiftly to the aid of Massachusetts after hearing the news of Lexington and Concord. Thereafter, until 1781, the Granite State had kept three regiments in the Continental Line and its soldiers had fought courageously at Bunker Hill, Trenton, Saratoga, Monmouth, and York-town.⁵

By 1780, however, it could well have been said that New Hampshire had almost lost interest in the war. Alone among the thirteen revolting colonies, it had escaped British invasion (G. B. Shaw, in “The Devil’s Disciple,” to the contrary notwithstanding). Less than a tenth of its men of fighting age had seen active service, either with the regulars or the militia. The black clouds of war had, for New Hampshire, a silver lining. Privateers and naval contracts brought wealth to Portsmouth’s merchants and employment to its artisans. The gross inflation of the currency aided the shrewd farmer who kept his prices in proportion. Taxes were high, but as long as they could be paid in paper money, the state was more likely than the taxpayer to suffer. Readers of the dull weekly gazettes found a great deal more space devoted to advertisements of lands for sale on the northern frontier than to accounts of campaigns in Virginia, or even to debates in the New Hampshire legislature. Nine-tenths of the people went about their daily business of plowing, shopkeeping, lumbering, and pioneering in much the same way that they always had, oblivious to the world war into which they had been drawn.

That is not to say that the war, and the events of the preceding twenty years, was not to have profound effects upon the northern province. Population had increased from 52,700 in 1767 to 103,179 in 1780,⁶ and the number of incorporated towns had nearly doubled. The French and Indian menace had been removed, allowing a burst of expansion toward the north and west. The Revolution produced political and social stress that, even among a conservative people, inevitably loosened the bonds of authority. The Tory aristocracy was banished and dispersed. Democratic ideas were propagated, and found a degree of acceptance in the provisional government. The Congregational clergy lost its firm grip on the religious establishment. Into every crevice and cranny of society, as Jeremy Belknap, the contemporary historian, ruefully admitted, the hidden roots of revolution penetrated, to nourish new growth by slowly demolishing the old.

New Hampshire, though so small a state, was perhaps the least homogeneous one in New England. Belknap noted that “before the Revolution, the people of the different parts of New-Hampshire, had but little connexion with each other.”⁷ Twenty-five years later, Timothy Dwight found little change in this respect. “One of the chief evils, under which New-Hampshire labours,” he wrote, “is the want of union and concert in the management of public affairs. The sense of a common interest appears to be loosely felt by the inhabitants. Those in the eastern counties are apparently little connected with those in the western; and those in the middle of the state still less perhaps with either.”⁸ This tripartite division, noted by a keen outside observer, was partly due to geography, which, until the railroad era, presented difficult barriers to communication between the seaboard and the valleys of the two great rivers, the Merrimack and the Connecticut. Almost equally effective in promoting division, however, was the fact that much of the population had emigrated from other colonies and retained older loyalties after settling upon lands that happened to belong to New Hampshire. The geographical, economic, and sentimental barriers between the distinct regions in the state produced conflicts that troubled its history throughout the four decades following 1780. It would be impossible to draw precise lines between each of these areas, but for descriptive purposes such boundaries may be assigned. The state might be divided into four regions, arbitrarily named (1) the Old Colony, (2) the Merrimack Valley, (3) the Connecticut Valley, and (4) the Frontier. Within each of these areas appeared lines of cleavage, denoting economic, racial, religious, and social differences.

The Old Colony was the original New Hampshire, containing some of the earliest English settlements in America. It comprised the eighteen-mile strip of coastline between the Massachusetts border and Old Kittery in Maine, together with the tidewater reaches of the Piscataqua River and its tributaries. Here the four ancient towns of Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter, and Hampton had existed through three-quarters of the seventeenth century almost as tiny independent republics. By subdivisions, by accretions, and by adjustment of the boundary with Massachusetts, these four towns had become thirty-seven in 1780, long established, settled largely by “first families,” and tributary to Portsmouth. Here, in colonial days and to some degree until 1820, was the political, economic, and social focus of the state.⁹ In this southeastern corner 28 percent of the population and 58 percent of the wealth of the state was concentrated.¹⁰ In colonial times this area had governed the province. It had two capitals: Portsmouth, where the Wentworths, well beloved by their Hanoverian monarchs, had held their little courts until 1775, and Exeter, where the sober God-fearing Weares and Bartletts and Gilmans had established the power of the succession.

During the colonial times New Hampshire had been virtually synonymous with Portsmouth. In the little port and capital, closer by ship to London than by land to Georgia, a Tory aristocracy of merchant princes and civil servants had aped Beacon Hill splendor with creditable success. John Adams, in his own more plebeian days, wrote of “the pomps and vanities and ceremonies of that little world, Portsmouth.”¹¹ When the Revolution scattered this earliest ruling class, its place was promptly taken by self-made rebels from a lower social stratum: sea captains, smuggling merchants, and ambitious physicians. This new aristocracy, combined with remnants of the old, soon restored to Portsmouth its air of distinction. Trade with the West Indies, Halifax, and Europe was ruined by the war, but privateering kept sailors at work and merchants in profits until the peace brought a partial resumption of normal commerce. Portsmouth in 1780 was not relatively so important as it had been in 1700, yet it looked forward confidently to continued prominence in the new republic. Its five thousand merchants, seamen, tradesmen, artisans, shopkeepers, farmers, and dependents kept it in the list of the twelve largest cities in the United States, while French dancing-masters, Scotch admirals, and Negro slaves gave it a cosmopolitan air.

In 1780, however, Portsmouth was no longer the political capital of New Hampshire. That position had been usurped by Exeter. Men in rebellion against their king had first transferred the government to this less exposed spot, but the move had been symbolic as well as strategic. Somber homespun replaced crimson silk; the landed gentry ousted the merchant princes. The Portsmouth ruling class had been mercantile, Anglican, closely allied with England; the Exeter people were landowners, Congregationalists, and descendants of Massachusetts emigrants. It was the “country party”, led by Meshech Weare of Hampton, Matthew Thornton of Londonderry, the Bartletts of Kingston, and the Gilmans of Exeter which seized power from the nerveless grasp of the king’s servants in 1775 and maintained its powerful grip until the end of the war. Thus, even within the narrow limits of the Old Colony, there was an economic, social, and religious conflict, symbolized by a shift in the political center of gravity.

The region, however, was an economic unit, with Portsmouth as its trading center. The inland towns brought lumber, cattle, and, in some years, grain to Portsmouth and there exchanged them for English merchandise. Shipbuilding was carried on all along the shores of Piscataqua Bay and up its tributary rivers. The coastal towns maintained fishing fleets. Rudimentary manufactories grew up at the falls of the rivers when the English supply of better and cheaper goods was shut off. But the great majority of people, even in this region so near the sea, were farmers who depended reluctantly upon the Portsmouth merchants to buy their surplus produce and sell them imported necessities. Shifting price levels or disturbed external conditions frequently aroused bitter antagonism between these classes. To that was added religious animosity when the merchants turned from the prevailing Congregationalism to the Anglican church. Finally, it may be noted that the government had introduced further confusion by dividing this economic unit between two counties, the larger part of it being in Rockingham with shire towns at Portsmouth and Exeter, but the northern part being in Strafford County with its capital at Dover.

Beyond the farthest limits to which the four original towns had pushed themselves lay the second New Hampshire, which was the growth entirely of the eighteenth century. Under a strained interpretation of its royal charter the Massachusetts Bay Colony had claimed the entire Merrimack Valley and proceeded, after 1690, to grant it to its citizens. There had sprung up, in consequence, a host of vigorous new settlements along the river, with Rumford (now Concord) at their center. They were divorced from Portsmouth not only by incompatibility but by geography, since roads from the coast to the interior were only nominal, whereas the Merrimack provided easy access to the older settlements in Massachusetts. More than once during the confusion of the Revolutionary War the towns of the upper Merrimack were made acutely conscious of their dependence on Newburyport and Boston, and they were inclined to seek economic union with Massachusetts in spite of their political connection with Portsmouth.

Other factors, however, tended to divide this region within itself. Although Massachusetts had made nearly all the original town grants, both the New Hampshire government and the Masonian proprietors had maintained their original claims to the area and had frequently made grants of previously settled townships to second or even third parties. There resulted an uncertainty of title which led to bitter quarrels and almost to pitched battles. The most notorious example was that in which the Rumford patentees, under the title of Massachusetts, and the Bow settlers, under a New Hampshire grant, fought through all the courts to the throne itself before a settlement, symbolized by the new name Concord, was determined.¹² Massachusetts also contributed an ethnic diversity to New Hampshire by granting Londonderry to a body of Scotch-Irish emigrants. These tough Gaelic Presbyterians prospered by combining linen manufacture with husbandry. They soon made Londonderry the second most populous town in the colony and spread abroad until some fifteen towns in the Merrimack Valley had a large admixture of Scotch-Irish people.¹³ There was economic divergence as well in this area, for the towns that included rich intervale land in the valleys of the Merrimack and its tributaries were far more prosperous than the hilly, rock-strewn upland towns.

The Merrimack Valley was still of secondary importance in 1780. The falls at Amoskeag and Dunstable provided good fishing places but were nuisances to navigation. The harnessing of water power and the transfer of wealth and population to the industrial cities that arose at these sites lay far in the future. Nevertheless, the valley was on the threshold of greater things. Along the banks of the river lay twenty flourishing farming towns, and within the limits of Mason’s patent were thirty-five more corporations, although many were still but sparsely settled. These towns contained 37 percent of the population of New Hampshire in 1780, but not nearly so large a proportion of the wealth. The region had outstripped the Old Colony in numbers and was growing fast. When the general court met at Concord for the first time in 1782, it was tacit recognition of the increasing importance of the central area. United against the Old Colony, the Merrimack Valley could have controlled New Hampshire, but it was too much divided against itself to do this consistently. Scotch-Irish Presbyterian regarded Massachusetts Puritan with distrust, the barren upland farms of Hillsborough County bred discontent against the rich intervale lands of the valley, and the isolated, self-sufficient areas had little in common with the towns that floated their logs to Newburyport and bought their luxuries from Boston. To add to the confusion, government had divided the area among three counties, with Strafford being given a few towns in the north and the line between Rockingham and Hillsborough snaking back and forth across the Merrimack with no regard for geography but with, perhaps, a tender solicitude for political expediency. This situation was particularly galling to Concord and Londonderry; both these large towns had aspirations for leadership, but both remained in Rockingham County under the shadows of Exeter and Portsmouth.

Across the range of hills which separates the Connecticut and the Merrimack valleys lay the third New Hampshire. Massachusetts had pushed her claim to this region also and had established fortified border settlements as far north as Charlestown (Old No. 4) before 1741, when the king fixed the present boundary line between the two provinces. From that point northward, on both sides of the Connecticut River, Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire had erected tier upon tier of regular townships and granted them wholesale after the Peace of Paris. Because nearly all the actual settlers were from Connecticut, a New Connecticut grew up in the northern valley of the river, closely associated with the mother colony in trade, religion, and sentiment. If the Merrimack settlements had originally been remote from Portsmouth, those on the Connecticut were practically in another world, separated by a hundred miles of trackless forest from the seacoast and shut off even more effectually from the political capital by a mutual lack of sympathy. On the other hand, the broad Connecticut flowed southward to the parent colony, carrying the produce of the upper settlements and encouraging the return of supplies, Yale schoolmasters and ministers, and new recruits for the labor of reducing the forest.

Two unusual and important characteristics of this frontier region in the decade before 1780 had powerfully affected its development. One was the presence of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire’s only seat of higher learning, yet situated on its farthest frontier. Dartmouth provided a leadership and a cultural cohesion of which few frontiers could boast. The other characteristic was the simple fact that the Connecticut River did not definitely become the western boundary of New Hampshire until 1782. Before that time, there was not even an artificial political line to separate the neighbors on either side of the stream. The population in the upper valley of the Connecticut was one of the most homogeneous groups in New England, except for the fact that the settlers below Plainfield had come from Massachusetts, while those above had originated in Connecticut. The assembly at Portsmouth probably had this distinction in mind when it set the bound...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Revolutionary New Hampshire
• Chapter 2: Constitution Making
• Chapter 3: Peace and Depression
• Chapter 4: Personal Politics
• Chapter 5: A Fragment of Social History
• Chapter 6: In the Federal Union
• Chapter 7: Constitutional Revision
• Chapter 8: The Rise of Parties
• Chapter 9: Federalists and Republicans
• Chapter 10: Federalist Decline
• Chapter 11: The Old Order Yieldeth
• Chapter 12: Democracy Triumphant
• Chapter 13: Federalist Collapse
• Chapter 14: Blockade and Embargo
• Chapter 15: Drifting toward War
• Chapter 16: In the War with England
• Chapter 17: The Indian Summer of Federalism
• Chapter 18: Peace Abroad: War at Home
• Chapter 19: Tribulations
• Chapter 20: The Demise of Federalism
• Chapter 21: Reform and Freedom
• Appendix Maps and Explanations
• Notes
• Index