I | INTRODUCTION |
Massachusetts, officially the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, one of the states of New England. It is bounded by the Atlantic
Ocean on the east and southeast, Rhode Island and Connecticut on the south, and
New York on the west. North of Massachusetts lie Vermont and New Hampshire.
Boston is the capital and largest city of Massachusetts.
Massachusetts entered the Union on February 6,
1788, as the sixth of the original 13 states. When still a colony, it had become
an important intellectual center, known for Harvard College and the cultural
institutions of Boston. Many events in Massachusetts, including the Stamp Act
riots (1765), the Boston Massacre (1770), and the Boston Tea Party (1773), were
precursors to the American Revolution (1775-1783). The first battles of the
revolution were fought in Massachusetts, and its role in colonial history can be
seen in the many well-preserved landmarks in such historic places as Plymouth,
Boston, Lexington, and Concord. Once the nation’s fishing and commercial
capital, Massachusetts later pioneered in the fields of education, medicine, and
social welfare. By the 19th century the state developed into an important
manufacturing center, producing textiles and footwear; in the mid-20th century,
electronic components and other high-technology items became leading
manufactures. Massachusetts is famous for its summer resorts, such as the sand
beaches of Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, and from
its long irregular shoreline to the rolling Berkshire Hills the state offers a
variety of opportunities to those seeking recreation.
The name of the state is probably derived from
that of an Algonquin village. Massachusetts is called the Bay State after
Massachusetts Bay, the site of the Puritans’ colony. Those early settlers from
Europe provide the state with other nicknames, including the Pilgrim State and
the Puritan State.
II | PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY |
Massachusetts, the sixth smallest state in
the nation, covers 27,337 sq km (10,555 sq mi), including 1,096 sq km (423 sq
mi) of inland water and 2,530 sq km (977 sq mi) of coastal water over which it
has jurisdiction. It is roughly rectangular in shape, except for the peninsula
of Cape Cod, which extends from the southeast. The state has a maximum dimension
east-to-west of 295 km (183 mi). Including the offshore island of Nantucket, the
maximum distance north-to-south in the east is 182 km (113 mi), while at the
western border the distance is only 77 km (48 mi). The approximate mean
elevation is 150 m (500 ft).
A | Natural Regions |
Nearly all of Massachusetts was once
covered by glaciers. These glaciers rounded off mountains, changed the course of
streams, and left hundreds of ponds and lakes. Glacial deposits in the form of
clay, stones, and boulders cover most of the state.
Within Massachusetts are two distinct
physiographic provinces. Most of the state is dominated by the New England
Appalachians, an ancient mountain system that runs on a north-south axis. In
Massachusetts the New England region is subdivided into the Taconic section, the
Berkshire Massif, the New England Upland, the Connecticut Valley Lowland, and
the Coastal Lowland. Massachusetts’s other natural region is the Atlantic
Coastal Plain, and it is divided into two coastal ecologies. Jagged, forested
coastlines with coves and bays shaped by glaciers define the Northeast Coast.
Meanwhile, the Middle Atlantic Coast of sandy beaches, grass-covered dunes, and
marshes reaches as far north as Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard
and Nantucket.
The Taconic section, sometimes called the
Taconic Hills or Taconic Range, occupies the extreme western part of the state
and is one of its most rugged sections. The Taconics have an average height of
about 600 m (about 2,000 ft). The mountains extend generally from northeast to
southwest, with narrow valleys between. The Taconic section also includes the
Berkshire Valley, a narrow, generally level valley just east of the highlands.
Mount Greylock, at 1,065 m (3,495 ft), is the highest peak in the state.
The Berkshire Massif extends through
Massachusetts into Connecticut, and it is most commonly referred to as the
Berkshire Hills. These highlands make up a small region that is about 40 km
(about 25 mi) wide in the northwestern part of the state, east of the Taconic
section. The mountains are heavily forested and reach a height of about 760 m
(about 2,500 ft).
The New England Upland lies to the east of
the Taconic section and the Berkshire Hills. The region is mostly hilly, with an
average elevation of about 300 m (about 1,000 ft). The upland generally slopes
downward very gradually to the east. Throughout the upland are occasional
monadnocks, or isolated mountains. The Connecticut Valley Lowland cuts north and
south across the west central part of the region. This river valley ranges from
about 8 to 30 km (about 5 to 20 mi) wide, and in Massachusetts it is generally
level. Alluvial deposits from the Connecticut River and clays from an ancient
glacial lake help make this a fertile agricultural region. Occasional ridges,
such as Mount Tom (366 m/1,202 ft), near Holyoke, are ancient lava flows that
have been tilted and then eroded.
The Coastal Plain makes up most of the
eastern third of the state. This region is a level or gently rolling section
that rises gradually to a height of about 150 m (about 500 ft) in the east
central part of the state. The Coastal Plain has many ponds, swamps, and small
rivers. There are a few rather low monadnocks throughout this region. In
addition, small hills, called drumlins, which were formed by the glaciers, are
found throughout the region. Perhaps the most famous of these drumlins are
Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill, where an early battle of the American Revolution
took place.
The embayed section of the Coastal Plain
in Massachusetts includes Cape Cod, the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and
Nantucket, the Elizabeth Islands, and other smaller islands. This section is
mostly level or rolling, although some hills formed by the glaciers rise to
about 90 m (about 300 ft). Sand dunes, ponds, and marshes are common in this
region.
B | Rivers and Lakes |
The largest river in Massachusetts is the
Connecticut, which flows for 106 km (66 mi) from north to south across the west
central part of the state. The main tributaries of the Connecticut in the state
are the Deerfield, Westfield, Millers, and Chicopee rivers.
The Charles River is the longest river
wholly within Massachusetts. Rising near the state border with Rhode Island, the
river follows a winding northeastern course of 76 km (47 mi), flowing into
Boston Bay between downtown Boston and the Charlestown section. The Charles
River joins the Mystic River, flowing from the north, to form inner Boston
Harbor.
The Merrimack River, in the northeast, is
the second largest river, crossing at least part of the state. It enters the
state from New Hampshire northwest of Lowell and flows through Massachusetts
before emptying into the Atlantic at Newburyport. The main tributary of the
Merrimack in Massachusetts is the Concord. Other smaller but important rivers in
the state are the Housatonic, Blackstone, Nashua, Ipswich, and Taunton.
There are more than 1,100 lakes and ponds
in Massachusetts. By far the largest is Quabbin Reservoir, in the central part
of the state, with an area of 101 sq km (39 sq mi). Other large artificial lakes
include Wachusett Reservoir, East Brimfield Reservoir, and Cobble Mountain
Reservoir. Assawompsett Pond, covering about 10 sq km (about 4 sq mi), is the
largest natural lake. North Watuppa Pond and Long Pond are other large natural
lakes. Lake Chaubunagungamaug, near Webster, is usually called Webster Lake,
because the Algonquian name is difficult to pronounce and spell. The full
version of the Native American name is said to be the longest place-name in
North America.
C | Coastline |
The state’s coast is 309 km (192 mi) long.
The coastline is very irregular, however, and if all the small bays and islands
are taken into account, its total length is 2,445 km (1,519 mi). The largest
bays are Massachusetts Bay, north of Boston; Cape Cod Bay; and Buzzards Bay, an
inlet west of Cape Cod that is connected to Cape Cod Bay by a canal.
Many islands lie off the Massachusetts
coast. The largest are Martha’s Vineyard, a triangular-shaped island 8 km (5 mi)
southwest of Cape Cod and covering 280 sq km (108 sq mi), and Nantucket Island,
30 km (20 mi) south of Cape Cod and measuring 148 sq km (57 sq mi). Other
islands belong to the Elizabeth Islands, also southwest of Cape Cod. Many small
islands are found in Boston Bay. The coast has many fine harbors. The largest is
Boston Harbor, the inner-most part of Boston Bay. Other harbors include New
Bedford, Fall River, Provincetown, Salem, Gloucester, and Plymouth.
D | Climate |
Massachusetts has a humid continental
climate, with long hot summers and cold winters. Cape Cod and the islands of
Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, however, usually have cooler summer
temperatures because of the moderating effects of the ocean, which also give the
region somewhat warmer temperatures in winter. Most of Massachusetts has average
summer temperatures from 20° to 22°C (68° to 72°F), although daytime
temperatures may sometimes enter the lower 30°s C (lower 90°s F). Average
January temperatures vary from about -6°C (about 22°F) in the Berkshires to
about 0°C (about 32°F) along the southeastern coast.
D1 | Precipitation |
Precipitation is evenly distributed
throughout the year. Most parts of Massachusetts receive from 1,020 to 1,170 mm
(40 to 46 in) a year, and severe droughts are uncommon. Heavy snowfalls are
common throughout most of the state, especially in the western highlands.
However, the snowfall is relatively light on Cape Cod and the offshore
islands.
The coastal areas are prone to severe
storms. Hurricanes come from the south frequently between June and November.
“Northeasters,” coming from the polar regions of the Atlantic Ocean, occur year
round but are the most severe in the winter. Snowstorms, blizzards, and ice
storms also cause major damage each winter. Every few years a strong tornado
will touch down in Massachusetts.
D2 | Growing Season |
The growing season, or period from the
last killing frost in the spring to the first killing frost in fall, is about
160 days in the eastern and central parts of the state. The longest growing
season is on the coast, and just north of Boston it is about 200 days.
E | Soils |
The soils of Massachusetts are mostly
brown inceptisols. They tend to be infertile, although many of them can be made
productive by the use of fertilizers. Some river valleys, especially the
Connecticut River valley, have rich alluvial soils. Much of Cape Cod has sandy
soils that support extensive cranberry cultivation in bogs but are otherwise
poor for farming. Most of the soils in the state are generally stony because of
glacial deposits.
F | Plant Life |
Originally almost all of Massachusetts was
covered with forests. Early colonists began clearing the land for farms and
pasture as soon as they arrived. By the 1830s and 1840s only about one-fifth of
the state was forested. Currently the share of the state once again covered by
forest has climbed to 62 percent. Most of the forestland is privately owned. The
forests of Massachusetts are in a transition zone. Broadleaf deciduous forests
predominate to the south and at lower elevations, but they gradually shift into
mixed forests with more coniferous evergreens as latitude or elevation
increases. The most dominant trees of the deciduous forests are beech, birch,
and maple, but cherry, hickory, red cedar, and oak are also common. Coniferous
trees such as white pine and hemlocks are found throughout the state, and spruce
are found mainly to the north and at higher elevations, but some conifers may be
found scattered throughout the deciduous forest. Pitch pines and scrub oaks are
found in the southeast. The American elm, which is the state tree, was formerly
a common shade tree in many towns but has been decimated by Dutch elm
disease.
The forest floor in Massachusetts contains
ferns, such as asmundas and maidenhair spleenworts. Areas near the sea have
marsh grasses, sedges, and rushes. Marshy areas have such plants as the skunk
cabbage, marsh marigold, white violet, and blue violet. Flowering shrubs on the
forest floor or in open areas include the dogwood, azalea, rhodora, sweet fern,
mountain laurel, wild cherry, and trailing arbutus, or mayflower, which is the
state flower. Wildflowers include the violet, bloodroot, troutlilly, and
goldenrod.
G | Animal Life |
The most common large animals found in
Massachusetts are whitetail deer. Black bears are occasionally seen in the
western part of the state. Foxes, beavers, raccoons, weasels, skunks,
woodchucks, muskrats, mice, squirrels, chipmunks, and rabbits are fairly
common.
The black-capped chickadee, the state
bird, and the robin are among the most common birds in Massachusetts, and
overall more than 400 species of birds can be seen in Massachusetts. Of these
species, 185 annually nest in the state. Massachusetts’s diverse ecologies
provide sanctuary to a variety of birds. The great black-backed gull, herring
gull, purple martin, night-heron, horned lark, piping plover, sparrow, four
species of terns, and marsh hawks are found in the coastal dunes and marshes.
Protected by federal endangered species regulations in the mid-1980s, the piping
plover has recovered from 138 breeding pairs to more than 400 in the mid-1990s.
Birds found in deciduous forests are the pileated woodpecker, warblers, hawks,
and owls. The wild turkey is also common throughout Massachusetts after efforts
since the 1970s to reintroduce the bird. The bobwhite, killdeer, bobolink,
eastern meadowlark, and field sparrow live in the farmland and meadows. Loon,
grebe, and duck are particularly numerous in the winter.
Fishes commonly found in the rivers and
ponds of Massachusetts include such native species as brook trout, pickerel,
shad, sunfish, and perch. Popular introduced species include rainbow, brown, and
lake trout, smallmouth and largemouth bass, black crappie, carp, pike, and tiger
muskie. Saltwater fish and shellfish include pollock, flounder, haddock, cod,
smelt, striped bass, bluefish, clams, scallops, and lobsters.
H | Conservation |
The various state agencies with
environmental responsibilities were reorganized in 1990 into the Department of
Environmental Protection. This department is responsible for water quality and
resources, air quality, and solid and hazardous waste management. In 2006
Massachusetts had 31 hazardous waste sites on a national priority list for
cleanup due to their severity or proximity to people. Progress was being made in
efforts to reduce pollution; during the period 1995–2000 the state reduced the
amount of toxic chemicals discharged into the environment by 46 percent.
H1 | Air Quality |
Air quality in Massachusetts was once
poor. Prior to the late 1980s, none of the state’s counties consistently met
federal air quality standards. A motor-vehicle emission inspection program was
begun in 1983, but by 1986 no area met the standard for ozone, and most urban
areas failed to meet the standards for particulate matter (dust and soot) and
carbon monoxide.
Control of toxic air pollutants has been
a priority since 1986. Massachusetts has a long list of controlled pollutants,
such as dioxin. In 1989 further reductions in industrial emissions of these
chemicals were ordered. In the early 1990s about 6,500 metric tons of toxic
material was released into the air in the state, a reduction by one-half from
the amount released four years earlier. The Springfield, Lowell, and Boston
metropolitan regions stand out as having the worst problems. In the mid-1990s
the Boston metropolitan area had two days a year in which air pollution levels
were considered unhealthy; as many as 12 days were so recorded annually in the
late 1980s.
H2 | Waste Management |
Most of the state regulations for the
handling, treatment, and disposal of hazardous waste are stricter than the
federal standards. In 1984 the state enacted a “right to know” law, one of the
first in the nation. The law requires industries to provide lists and amounts of
certain toxic chemicals that are released each year. Massachusetts is also one
of the first states to address the problem of disposing of household hazardous
waste, such as paint thinner and old medicines.
Massachusetts developed serious solid
waste (trash) management problems in the late 1980s. By 1988, 60 percent of the
state’s available landfill capacity had been used, with few new landfills being
created. There was little public support for incineration, so in the late 1980s
the state set recycling goals and planned reductions in the amount of solid
waste generated. By the mid-1990s a majority of the state’s communities had some
form of recycling program.
H3 | Water Quality |
The state’s most notorious water problem
was Boston Harbor, into which hundreds of old sewer systems spilled untreated
sewage during heavy rains. Water quality improved dramatically when the state
began shipping sludge that once was dumped into the harbor to its new
sludge-to-fertilizer processing plant. In 1994 the first phase of the new
treatment plant began operation. In addition to more treatment, the completion
of an outfall tunnel for the discharge of treated effluent 14 km (9 mi) out to
sea will improve the health of Boston Harbor.
Although regular water testing indicates
that toxic pollutants are not a major pollution source in rivers, contaminated
sediments in riverbeds warrant advisories against consumption of fish from
dozens of rivers, lakes, and ponds. The number of times the state closed
saltwater beaches because of coliform bacteria contamination was cut in half
during the early 1990s.
Largely because of large investments in
wastewater treatment, the impact of municipal and industrial discharges has been
dramatically reduced. More than 99 percent of the public drinking water supplies
meet the quality standards set by the federal government.
III | ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES |
Massachusetts, which more than any other
state began the Industrial Revolution in the United States, continues to be an
important manufacturing state. The primary economic activities that were the
underpinnings of the colonial economy are no longer of major importance to
Massachusetts. Like workers elsewhere, those in Massachusetts have turned in
growing numbers to jobs in the service industries, in wholesale and retail
trade, in finance and insurance, and in government. A major reason for the
growth in service jobs has been the increased importance of tourism.
A special feature of the state’s labor
force is its high proportion of professionally trained people, including
engineers, scientists, doctors, educators, and technicians. Its labor force has
helped Massachusetts turn to highly technical kinds of manufacturing and
computer-related technology, thereby compensating for its severe losses in
textile employment. Such economic change has occurred before in the state, and
the citizens of Massachusetts have traditionally adapted well, relying on their
skills of innovation, the state’s extensive resources, and well-established
institutions to develop new economic opportunities.
While manufacturing continued to be an
important aspect of Massachusetts’s economy in the late 1990s, services were the
primary contributors to both personal income and the gross state product.
Services, including the important finance, insurance, and real estate sector,
produced four-fifths of the gross state product in 1996, whereas manufacturing
provided just one-sixth of the total.
Massachusetts had a labor force of
3,404,000 people in 2006. Some 42 percent of the workers were employed in
services, performing such jobs as working in restaurants or data processing.
Another 19 percent worked in wholesale or retail trade; 9 percent in
manufacturing; 13 percent in federal, state, or local government, including
those in the military; 22 percent in finance, insurance, or real estate; 17
percent in transportation or public utilities; 4 percent in construction; 1
percent in farming (including agricultural services), forestry, or fishing.
Employment in mining was insignificant. In 2005, 14 percent of Massachusetts
workers were members of a labor union.
A | Agriculture |
Specialty crops are the hallmark of
Massachusetts agriculture: horticultural products, cranberries, dairy products,
apples, corn, potatoes, butternut squash, cabbage, pumpkins, beans, and tobacco.
Oats and hay are widely grown in conjunction with dairying. Although dairying is
found throughout the state, the highest concentrations of dairy farms are in
southeastern and northwestern Massachusetts and in Worcester County. Cranberries
are grown in Plymouth and Bristol counties and on Cape Cod. Horticulture—the
growing of plants and shrubs for landscaping and of flowers for the wholesale
market—and cranberry growing are the state’s most valuable agricultural
activities.
In 2005 there were 6,100 farms in the
state, although many of these farms were sidelines for operators who held other
jobs. Farmland occupied 210,437 hectares (520,000 acres); 40 percent of farms
were devoted to crops.
B | Fisheries |
Massachusetts is a leading state in the
processing of frozen fish, and its commercial fish catch was worth $327 million
in 2004. Fishing crews work both the nearby coastal waters and more distant
fishing banks, including the Grand Banks off the island of Newfoundland and
Georges Bank off Cape Cod. In recent years federal regulations have greatly
restricted the catch of cod, flounder, and haddock—traditional mainstays of the
fishing industry—but sea herring and whiting are still harvested in large
quantities. New Bedford, which leads the state in the quantity and value of its
catch, is one of the leading ports in the nation for flounder and sea
scallops.
C | Forestry |
Massachusetts has one-tenth of the
commercial forestland in New England and harvests less timber than Maine, New
Hampshire, or Vermont. Its modest forest industry cuts mainly white pines,
spruces, oaks, maples, and birches. The wood is used for pulp, posts, piling,
toys, furniture, and boxes.
D | Mining |
Most of the mineral production in
Massachusetts consists of sand, gravel, and crushed stone, which are extracted
in most parts of the state. Some limestone and marble is quarried in the
Berkshires. Clay, used mainly for brick and tile, is found in Bristol, Hampden,
and Plymouth counties. Fine pottery clays exist on Martha’s Vineyard and around
Andover. Peat, used largely to improve soil quality, is also found in the state,
although only in Worcester County.
E | Manufacturing |
The state’s manufactures have been
greatly diversified since the early 19th century, when shoes and textiles were
dominant in the economy. During the 20th century the producers of these goods
moved most of their operations to states where laborers could be recruited for
lower wages. Durable goods, especially communications equipment, medical
instruments, monitoring devices, industrial machinery, and electrical equipment,
now occupy the place vacated by these soft goods. Defense and the space age
increased research and manufacturing in the areas of electronics, instruments,
and nuclear energy.
The high-technology industries became
very important to the economy in the mid-1970s. By the late 1980s about
two-fifths of the state’s total manufacturing labor force, or 245,000 people,
were working for firms specializing in high-technology items, such as word
processors and computer parts. In contrast, only about 100,000 people worked in
high-technology companies in 1975. The largest concentrations of high-technology
firms are found in Boston, Cambridge, and the cities of Newton, Waltham,
Lincoln, Lexington, Burlington, and Woburn, which lie to the west or north of
Boston along roads ringing the city.
The instrument industry is the leading
source of personal income from manufacturing in the state. Its products include
surgical appliances, photographic equipment and supplies, optical instruments,
industrial controls, and measurement instruments. Another leading source for
personal income is the manufacture of electric and electronic equipment,
including semiconductors, telephones, radios, televisions, and printed circuit
boards. The manufacture of industrial machinery and equipment, such as
computers, rolling mill machinery, special tools and dies, turbines, generators,
and specialized machinery for the printing industry, also contributes
significantly to personal income in the state.
Among the older industries of the state
that have continued to prosper are printing and publishing and paper
manufacturing. In 1639 the first printing press in the colonies was brought by
Stephen Daye to Cambridge, where he founded the Cambridge Press. Publishing is
one of the leading industries in the Boston area. There is substantial
commercial printing and specialty work such as bookbinding. The state also
produces greeting cards and high-quality special papers. For example, the paper
used in U.S. currency is manufactured in the town of Dalton. The fabricated
metal industry continues to play an important role in the economy, with firms
producing cutlery, a variety of hand tools, industrial valves, and small arms
and ammunition.
Another major industry in the state is
food processing, including candy making and the processing of fish, cranberries,
gelatin, and sugar. The pharmaceuticals industry contributes significantly to
the state’s economy as well. The transportation equipment industry is also
important, particularly firms making aircraft engines and parts for guided
missiles and space-exploration vehicles.
Although manufacturing is scattered
throughout the state, it is especially prominent in certain areas. One is the
large Greater Boston area, which takes in such communities as Cambridge, Quincy,
Needham, Newton, Framingham, Lynn, Waltham, Norwood, Somerville, Peabody, and
Salem. It has a sizable proportion of the state’s printing and publishing.
Boston is also the center for food processing, shipbuilding, and the manufacture
of transportation equipment and nonelectrical machinery. The area accounts for
much of New England’s electronics manufacturing, which is especially
concentrated along Route 128, a highway that arcs around Boston.
Inland, industry has traditionally
located in the river valleys to take advantage of both waterpower and natural
transportation routes. The Connecticut Valley cities of Springfield, Holyoke,
and Chicopee make up the second most important manufacturing region.
Springfield’s products include firearms, precision instruments, chemicals,
hardware, and plastics. Holyoke has remained a textile and paper town but the
production of electronic equipment and fabricated steel have become important.
Nearby Chicopee makes sporting goods and inflatable rubber products. The
industrial cities of Pittsfield and North Adams, on the Housatonic River in the
northwestern part of the state, have attracted several manufacturers of
electrical components and equipment.
Until the late 1970s, the Merrimack
Valley cities of Lawrence and Lowell were almost exclusively engaged in
manufacturing cotton and wool textiles. As the textile industry contracted,
electronics and communications plants moved in. Also part of the Merrimack
Valley complex is Haverhill, which has specialized in shoe manufacturing and is
known for high-technology components.
The manufacturing region that ranks
third in income generated by industry is Worcester. It processes metals and
manufactures industrial machinery, machine tools, abrasives, and plastics. In
the same vicinity are Gardner, which manufactures furniture, and Leominster, a
leading plastics center.
Industrial concentration is also
prominent in the southeastern part of the state in the formerly great textile
manufacturing cities of Fall River and New Bedford. Among Massachusetts’s oldest
cities, these textile centers experienced heavy unemployment and population
losses as the textile industry declined. Labor-intensive mills lost their
competitive edge and production moved south or overseas throughout the 1970s.
However, the apparel industry in Fall River helped somewhat to bridge the
employment gap caused by the exodus of textiles. In the late 1970s and early
1980s local textiles changed their focus to specialty niches, thereby turning
around the decline in the last 15 years. Textile production is now the largest
industry in the Fall River/New Bedford area, followed by needle trades, apparel,
and fish processing.
F | Electricity |
Of the electricity generated in
Massachusetts in 2005, 83 percent came from steam-driven power plants fueled by
coal, petroleum, or natural gas. Another 12 percent came from nuclear power. The
state has 1 nuclear power plant, at Plymouth.
G | Transportation |
Massachusetts has a rich history in
transportation. No other state in the country can list such an array of
inventions in the field of transportation, including firsts in bridge
construction, steam-driven and two-cylinder engines, and subways. The unique
physical terrain and shape of the state have influenced the routes of its
transportation links. Roads generally curve along the coast, follow river
valleys, and skirt the more gentle landforms, unlike the gridlike road patterns
found in many parts of the nation. Intercity transit was developed because of
suburban growth. In 1889 the first large street railway to use electricity
connected Boston with Cambridge, Brookline, and other towns. Boston was also the
site of the nation’s first subway system, opened on September 1, 1897. After the
1920s electric streetcars were mostly replaced with bus systems.
Today passenger rail service unites many
Massachusetts cities, as well as providing connections to major urban centers in
other states. The state is also served by an extensive freight line
infrastructure. In 2004 there were 1,765 km (1,097 mi) of operated railroad
track.
The state has a fine network of roads
and highways. By 2005 the state had 57,775 km (35,900 mi) of public roads,
including 922 km (573 mi) of national interstate highways.
Massachusetts had 8 airports, some of
which were private airfields, in 2007. Logan International Airport in Boston is
one of the leading U.S. airports. There is also commercial air service to
Worcester, New Bedford, Hyannis and Provincetown on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard,
and Nantucket Island.
Nantucket Island and Martha’s Vineyard
are also served by ferries, which carry cars as well as passengers to and from
Woods Hole. The Cape Cod Canal, a federally owned sea-level waterway, traverses
the neck of Cape Cod from Sandwich to Bourne, a distance of about 13 km (about 8
mi). Part of the Intracoastal Waterway, the canal handles oceangoing ships and
considerably shortens the water route between New England and the Middle
Atlantic States.
H | Trade |
Although several coastal cities are
important fishing ports, Boston’s harbor is by far the most commercially
important in the state and ranks as a leading Atlantic port. The city’s commerce
consists mainly of inbound cargo. Major inbound cargoes are petroleum, sugar,
salt, gypsum, and automobiles.
IV | THE PEOPLE OF MASSACHUSETTS |
Massachusetts had 6,349,097 inhabitants in
2000, according to the national census, placing it 13th among the states. The
census showed population had increased by 5.5 percent from that of 1990. Between
1970 and 1980 the state’s population grew by only 0.8 percent, while in the
decade from 1960 to 1970 it had increased by 10.5 percent.
A | Population Patterns |
Massachusetts lies on the northern end of
a continuous urban belt that begins in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.
The state’s population density of 317 persons per sq km (821 per sq mi) in 2006
was higher than that of any other state except New Jersey and Rhode Island.
Urban dwellers accounted for 91 percent of its inhabitants in 2000.
Massachusetts had more urban than rural
inhabitants as far back as 1850 and had become overwhelmingly urban by 1930. In
the second half of the 20th century the movement from urban to suburban areas
has blurred the distinction between rural and urban areas, since most of the
people classified as rural dwellers do not live on farms. Such central cities as
Boston, Worcester, and Springfield, once losing residents to their outlying
areas, are again growing, as are such former textile cities as Fall River and
New Bedford.
B | Principal Cities |
Massachusetts’s capital and largest city
is Boston, with a population of 559,034 in 2005. The Boston metropolitan area,
including parts of seven counties in Massachusetts and one in New Hampshire, had
5,819,100 inhabitants in 2000.
Worcester had 175,898 residents in 2005.
Springfield is another populous city, with 151,732 people. Brockton, Lowell, New
Bedford, Cambridge, Fall River, and Quincy are other large urban centers in
Massachusetts.
The state is noted for a rich diversity
in the national background of its residents. Although the earliest settlers were
English, people of many countries subsequently made their home in Massachusetts.
In the 1840s the potato famine drove many Irish to Massachusetts, and they have
since passed the English in numbers to become the state’s largest ethnic group.
In the second half of the 19th century the mills and factory towns in central
and western Massachusetts attracted many French Canadians, and around the turn
of the century, Italians became a third major influx. The descendants of the
English (Yankees), the Irish, the Greeks, and the Italians have dominated state
politics in recent years. Many descendants of immigrants from Poland, Germany,
Scotland, Sweden, Lithuania, and other countries have also retained their ethnic
identities. Numerous communities in the state are strongly identified with one
ethnic group or another. Although blacks have lived in the state since colonial
times, the major black migration into Massachusetts took place in the second
half of the 20th century.
Whites comprise the largest share of the
population, representing 84.5 percent of the people. Blacks are 5.4 percent,
Asians are 3.8 percent, Native Americans are 0.2 percent, and those of mixed
heritage or not reporting race are 6 percent. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific
Islanders numbered 2,489 at the time of the census. Hispanics, who may be of any
race, are 6.8 percent of the people.
C | Religion |
In religious affiliation the Roman
Catholics represent the largest church, with more than one-half of the state’s
church members. No single Protestant church predominates; of the largest
denominations the Baptists, the Episcopalians, and the Methodists each claim
less than 5 percent of churchgoers. Some 3.5 percent of the people are
Jews.
V | EDUCATION AND CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS |
Massachusetts has long been a leader in
education. America’s first secondary school, Boston Latin School, was founded
there in 1635. Harvard University, the oldest college in the United States, was
chartered in 1636. After 1647 towns with at least 50 families had to support a
schoolmaster and towns of at least 100 families had to have a school. In 1834,
Mary Lyon, an advocate of higher education for women, helped organize Wheaton
Female Seminary; it later became Wheaton College, in Norton. In 1837 she helped
found Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which became Mount Holyoke College, in
South Hadley.
One of Massachusetts’s foremost educators
was Horace Mann. In 1837 he persuaded the state to organize the Massachusetts
board of education and became its first secretary. Under his leadership, teacher
training was started two years later at the nation’s first state normal school,
at Lexington. In 1852 Massachusetts became the first state to pass legislation
making school attendance mandatory.
A | Education |
Much of the control of public education is
vested in elected town and city school committees, but the state board of
education has extensive powers. The ten-member board of education, appointed by
the governor, determines policy. The board sets guidelines, and may, at its
discretion, withhold state funds. The board appoints a commissioner of education
to execute its policies. Education is compulsory for children ages 6 to 16. Of
Massachusetts’s children, 14 percent attend private schools.
In the 2002–2003 school year Massachusetts
spent $11,045 on each student’s education, compared to a national average of
$9,299. There were 13.6 students for every teacher, compared to a national
average of 15.9. Of those older than 25 years of age in the state, 88 percent
had a high school diploma, compared to the national norm of 84 percent.
A1 | Higher Education |
In 2004–2005 Massachusetts had 31 public
and 91 private institutions of higher education. Several of the most highly
respected institutions of higher education in the United States are found in
Massachusetts, including Harvard University, in Cambridge. Among other important
schools are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge; Tufts
University, in Medford; Boston University, in Boston; Boston College, in
Chestnut Hill; Clark University and the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester;
Brandeis University, in Waltham; Smith College, in Northampton; Wellesley
College, in Wellesley; Amherst College and Hampshire College, in Amherst;
Williams College, in Williamstown; and the University of Massachusetts, with
campuses in Amherst, Boston, Lowell, and Dartmouth, as well as a medical school
in Worcester.
B | Libraries |
Every Massachusetts community has free
public library service. Each year the libraries circulate an average of 7.6
books for every resident. There are important collections in the Boston Public
Library and the Boston Athenaeum, and at the Phillips Library of the Peabody
Essex Museum, in Salem. The Harvard University Library, in Cambridge, is the
largest university library in the world.
C | Museums |
Massachusetts’s leading museum is the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where an outstanding collection of Asian, Egyptian,
Greek, Roman, European, and American art is housed. The Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum, in Boston, houses famous paintings. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art
Institute, in Williamstown, has an important collection of European paintings,
including Impressionists and Old Masters. The Worcester Art Museum and the
Harvard University Art Museums are also well known.
Of particular interest to young people are
the Boston Museum of Science; the maritime collections at the Peabody Essex
Museum and the historical Salem Witch Museum, both in Salem; and the whaling
museums in New Bedford and on Nantucket. The Boston-based Society for the
Preservation of New England Antiquities maintains historic homes throughout the
state.
D | Communications |
The first one-page newspaper, called a
broadside, published in the English colonies was printed in Cambridge in 1689.
The first multi-page newspaper, Public Occurrences Both Forreign and
Domestick, was published in Boston by Benjamin Harris in 1690, but was
suppressed after the first issue. The nation’s first regularly printed
newspaper, the Boston News-Letter, was published in 1704 by John
Campbell. It was followed by the Boston Gazette in 1719 and later by the
New-England Courant, which was published by James Franklin, who employed
his brother Benjamin as an apprentice. The Christian Science Monitor,
which has an international circulation, was founded at Boston in 1908 by Mary
Baker Eddy. In 2002 Massachusetts had 43 daily newspapers. The leading dailies
were the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Worcester
Telegram & Gazette, the Springfield Union-News, the Quincy
Patriot Ledger, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, the Brockton
Enterprise, the Lowell Sun, and the Cape Cod Times.
Among the most distinguished periodicals
associated with Massachusetts are the Atlantic Monthly, the New
England Journal of Medicine, and the Harvard Law Review.
The nation’s first radio program was sent
by Reginald Fessenden, broadcast from an antenna in Marshfield in 1906. The
first radio station licensed in the state was WBZ in Springfield, which went on
the air in 1921 and was the second licensed commercial station in the country to
begin broadcasting. WBZ-TV in Boston, which was Massachusetts’s first full-time
commercial television station, commenced operations in 1948. The state had 49 AM
and 102 FM radio stations and 17 television stations in 2002.
A number of firsts in telegraph and
telephone technologies took place in Massachusetts, including the first
telegraph system, invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell, and the
advent of Morse Code.
E | Music and Theater |
The Handel and Haydn Society, one of the
nation’s oldest continually performing musical groups, was formed in Boston in
1815 by Gottlieb Graupner. In 1867 the noted New England Conservatory of Music
opened in Boston. The philanthropist Henry Lee Higginson founded the Boston
Symphony Orchestra 14 years later and remained its sole benefactor for many
years. It gives summer concerts at Tanglewood in the Berkshires. In the spring a
division of the orchestra, the Boston Pops, presents concerts of popular and
light classical music. The Boston Lyric Opera has a fall-spring season and
performs in the Shubert Theatre. The Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival is held every
summer in Becket, in the Berkshires.
The Puritan traditions of Massachusetts
retarded the development of the theater, and from 1750 to about 1790 all plays
were banned. Boston’s few theaters were not very successful, but fortunately the
little-theater movement caught on. In 1915 the Provincetown Players was
organized by a group of actors, authors, and artists. They gave the first
performance of many of the plays of Eugene O’Neill, and their success was
followed by the birth of little theaters throughout the state. Shakespeare and
Company performs a summer series in Lenox, and there are summer theaters in
leading resorts, among them the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater; the Cape
Playhouse, in Dennis; the Berkshire Theatre Festival, in Stockbridge; and the
Williamstown Theatre Festival.
F | Architecture |
The distinguished architectural heritage
of Massachusetts ranges across virtually all architectural eras and styles.
Bostonian Charles Bulfinch, who developed the Federal style, is famous for the
State House building completed in 1798. Landscape designer Frederick Law
Olmsted, credited with helping to create the landscape architecture profession,
designed more than 250 parks in Massachusetts in the second half of the 19th
century, including the greenbelt known as the Emerald Necklace in Boston.
Typical of some of Massachusetts’s
earliest homes are the John Whipple House, in Ipswich; the Parson Barnard House,
in North Andover; the Fairbanks House, in Dedham; and the Reverend Lothrop house
in Barnstable, where the Sturgis Library is located. Boston’s Harrison Gray Otis
House and Salem’s Peirce-Nichols House reflect the affluence of the late 18th
century. The standards of the period were set by Samuel McIntire, a Salem
architect and woodcarver. A famous architect of 19th-century Boston was Henry
Hobson Richardson; Trinity Church is considered his masterpiece. The noted
architect Walter Gropius headed Harvard’s school of architecture for 15 years
before his retirement in 1952.
VI | RECREATION AND PLACES OF INTEREST |
Massachusetts offers a wide variety of
attractions for tourists. The Berkshire Hills provide good skiing and hiking.
The Mohawk Trail, originally traveled by Native Americans and connecting the
people in the Connecticut River valley with those in the west, today is the
popular name for Route 2 as it winds along the Deerfield River and over the
Berkshire Mountains between Greenfield and North Adams. On its way it passes
through some of the most beautiful sections of northwestern Massachusetts.
Deerfield, in the Connecticut River valley, was the site of a Native American
raid during Queen Anne’s War in the early 18th century.
The main attraction in central
Massachusetts is Old Sturbridge Village. A representation of a farming
settlement of the early 19th century, the village contains homes and craftsmen’s
shops. Massachusetts’s North Shore presents a panorama of its maritime history
in the picturesque old fishing town of Gloucester. Another old port is Salem,
where tourists visit a number of historic buildings, including the House of the
Seven Gables, built in 1688 and made famous in a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The country’s first ironworks has been restored at Saugus Iron Works National
Historic Site.
North of Boston are Lexington and Concord,
famous for their role at the outset of the American Revolution. Among the many
attractions of Boston is the Freedom Trail, which includes Faneuil Hall, the Old
South Meeting House, and the Old North Church, where lanterns were hung to
signal the beginning of the ride of Paul Revere. The Bunker Hill Monument
(see Bunker Hill, Battle of) and the U.S.S. Constitution are
across the Charles River in Charlestown.
Plymouth, on Massachusetts’s South Shore,
is the site of the Pilgrim’s Plymouth Colony. A reconstruction of the original
Mayflower can be seen there, as well as Plymouth Rock, where the Pilgrims
are supposed to have landed. Also there is Plimoth Plantation, a reconstruction
of the early village. All along Cape Cod fine sandy beaches and sheltered coves
invite swimming, fishing, and sailing. At the tip of the cape is Provincetown,
long an artist’s colony. The resort island of Martha’s Vineyard is known for the
beautifully colored clay cliffs found at Gay Head. Farther offshore lies
Nantucket Island, once a whaling center and now a summer colony and resort of
much charm.
A | National Parks |
The National Park Service maintains 13
sites in Massachusetts, most of which preserve fine structures related to the
nation’s history. Among them is the Boston African-American National Historic
Site in the heart of Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. The site includes 15
pre-Civil War structures relating to the history of Boston’s 19th-century black
community, including the African Meeting House, the oldest standing black church
in the United States. Boston National Historical Park contains 16 sites
connected by the Freedom Trail, which runs through downtown Boston and
Charlestown. The trail is marked by a line in the pavement either in red paint
or brick.
The John Fitzgerald Kennedy National
Historic Site, in Brookline, is the birthplace and early boyhood home of the
35th president. The Adams National Historical Park, in Quincy, commemorates the
American family that includes two United States presidents, John Adams and John
Quincy Adams. Two more parks explore the lives of other noted Massachusetts
residents. Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, also in Brookline,
commemorates the great conservationist, landscape architect, and founder of city
planning. An archival collection of drawings and plans is housed at the site.
Likewise, the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow National Historic Site, in Cambridge,
celebrates the poet’s work created while teaching at Harvard from 1837 to 1882.
George Washington used the house at the Longfellow site as his headquarters
during the siege of Boston (1775-1776).
The history of America’s Industrial
Revolution is preserved at Lowell National Historical Park, which includes the
Boott Cotton Mills Museum with a weave room with 88 operating looms, “mill girl”
boarding houses, the Suffolk Mill turbine, and 19th-century commercial
buildings. The Springfield Armory National Historic Site contains a weapons
museum in the building that for 175 years was the center of manufacturing for
United States military small arms.
Structures preserved at the Salem
Maritime National Historic Site date from the era when Salem ships opened trade
with ports of East Asia. Buildings of maritime significance include the Custom
House where Nathaniel Hawthorne worked, Derby Wharf, the Bonded Warehouse, the
West India Goods Store, and the 17th-century Narbonne-Hale house.
The Minute Man National Historical Park,
in Lexington and Concord, preserves the scene of the fighting between the
colonial militia and British troops on April 19, 1775, the day that launched the
American War of Independence. At the North Bridge, the first ordered firing upon
British troops resulted in “the shot heard ‘round the world.” Along the Battle
Road, colonials fired at the retreating British (see Concord, Battle
of).
Cape Cod National Seashore comprises
17,628 hectares (43,557 acres) of shoreline and upland landscapes. A variety of
historic structures are within the boundary of the seashore, including
lighthouses and houses in the Cape Cod architectural style. A portion of the
Appalachian National Scenic Trail also passes through the state.
B | State Forests and Parks |
While Massachusetts is often thought of
as an urban state, forests in the 1990s covered almost triple the area they did
in the early 1800s. The largest area under state control is October Mountain
State Forest, near Lee, with more than 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres). State
regions of particular interest are Mount Greylock, the state’s tallest mountain,
with panoramic views of the Berkshire Hills; Purgatory Chasm State Reservation,
with geologic formations that offer rugged rock walls and hiking paths along the
floor of the chasm; and Holyoke Heritage State Park, where visitors can learn
about the first “planned” industrial city. The state boasts 97 state parks,
including Nickerson State Park, on Cape Cod; Skinner State Park, in Hadley,
famous for painter Thomas Cole’s 1836 “The Oxbow,” which fixed the public’s
image of New England landscape for decades; and Walden Pond, near Concord, which
attracts admirers of writer Henry David Thoreau.
The nation’s oldest public park is the
20-hectare (50-acre) Boston Common, located in the center of Boston. It was set
aside in 1634 as a cow pasture and parade ground.
C | Annual Events |
The evacuation of Boston by the British
is commemorated each year in the city with a parade on March 17. Patriot’s Day,
the third Monday in April, is marked by a reenactment of Paul Revere’s ride and
by ceremonies at Lexington and Concord. On the same day athletes from around the
world compete in the Boston Marathon. On June 17, the anniversary of the Battle
of Bunker Hill, a parade is held in Charlestown. During August, the Gloucester
Waterfront Festival is celebrated with entertainment and whale-watching. More
than 100 events are part of the September Harwich Cranberry Harvest Festival.
One of the largest single-day rowing events in the world is the Head of the
Charles Regatta in October, including championship and youth events. Patriots
gather at a town meeting in Boston each December, then march to the harbor to
dump tea into the sea to reenact the Boston Tea Party. The Pilgrim landing is
recalled every year during the Forefathers’ Day ceremonies on December 21 in
Plymouth. Numerous horticultural and agricultural fairs are held throughout the
state every year, including the Eastern States Exposition, in Springfield during
September. Many cities and towns celebrate their diverse ethnic heritage by
holding special events throughout the year. Saint Patrick’s Day parades in
Boston and Holyoke are among the largest in the nation for that celebration.
Other major festivals include the Italian Street festivals in Boston’s North
End, on weekends in July and August; the Polish Kielbasa Festival in Chicopee,
in September; and the Portuguese Blessing of the Fleet in New Bedford, in
August.
D | Sports |
Massachusetts has a rich history in the
development of sports. Invented in the state were basketball, in Springfield in
1891, and volleyball, in Holyoke in 1895. American football developed in a large
part on the playing fields of the state’s universities. Many sporting firsts
were recorded in Massachusetts, including the first professional golf tournament
(at Hamilton in 1901), first World Series baseball game (in Boston in 1903), and
the first National Basketball Association All-Star game (in Boston in
1951).
Professional sports teams in
Massachusetts include the Boston Red Sox baseball team, the Boston Celtics
basketball team, the Boston Bruins ice-hockey team, and the New England Patriots
football team, which plays in Foxboro.
VII | GOVERNMENT |
Massachusetts still operates under its
original constitution, although this document has frequently been amended. It
was drawn up for the new state by John Adams and was ratified in 1780. The
document bears many similarities to the federal Constitution, providing for
individual liberties and a definite separation of powers among the different
divisions of government.
A | Executive |
The governor, lieutenant governor,
secretary of the commonwealth, treasurer, auditor, and attorney general are each
elected for a four-year term. An unusual feature of the state’s government is
the governor’s executive council, which consists of the lieutenant governor and
eight elected councilors. It must give its consent to judicial appointments made
by the governor. It also considers pardons for criminals.
B | Legislative |
The Massachusetts legislature, known as
the General Court, consists of a 40-member Senate and a 160-member House of
Representatives. All members of the General Court are elected every two years.
The General Court meets every year.
C | Judiciary |
The state’s highest court is the supreme
judicial court, consisting of a chief justice and six associate justices. It
handles appeals from lower courts and has original jurisdiction in some equity
matters. Other tribunals are the appeals courts, with 14 judges, and the trial
courts. Lower courts include municipal and probate courts. The land court of
Massachusetts rules on all real estate matters. Judges of the three courts are
appointed by the governor with the consent of the executive council and serve
until the age of 70.
D | Local Government |
Massachusetts has 14 counties. Some have
county governments that are administered by elected commissioners, while the
remainder rely on state and local or regional agencies to provide the functions
of a county government. The counties cannot levy taxes.
Of the 351 municipalities in
Massachusetts, 39 are cities and 312 are towns. The freedom to choose to be
either a city or a town has led to some anomalies. Two cities with populations
under 20,000 inhabitants in 1990 are North Adams and Newbury Port, while the two
largest towns are Framingham (64,989) and Weymouth (54,063).
Cities are administered by mayors and
councils, councils and city managers, or commissions. Many small towns use the
town meeting form of government. In the town meeting, every voter may express
his or her views and vote on town matters. Some larger towns use the
representative town meeting. Under this procedure, 200 to 300 citizens elected
to represent precincts within the town meet and vote in town meeting fashion.
Most towns are administered by elected selectmen.
E | National Representation |
Massachusetts elects two U.S. senators
and ten members of the House of Representatives. The state casts 12 electoral
votes.
VIII | HISTORY |
A | Early Inhabitants |
The earliest human inhabitants of the
Massachusetts area lived about 10,000 bc, after the glaciers had retreated.
Archaeological sites indicate several other cultures developed in the millennia
that followed. For centuries before Europeans arrived in the area it was
inhabited by Algonquian-speaking groups of Native Americans. When European
colonization began in the early 1600s, seven major groups lived in the area. The
Wampanoag and the Nauset were on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket
Island; the Massachuset had settlements along Massachusetts Bay; the Nipmuc were
in central Massachusetts; the Pocomtuck lived in the northwest; the Pennacook
were near the New Hampshire border; and the Mahican were in the Berkshire area.
The native peoples lived largely by hunting deer, catching fish and shellfish,
and growing corn, beans, and squash, migrating from forest to coastal areas to
take advantage of seasonal resources. Approximately 30,000 native people
inhabited Massachusetts in 1614, but epidemics of disease brought by whites soon
greatly reduced the population.
B | European Exploration |
Norsemen may have visited Massachusetts
about the year 1000. However, the first recorded exploration took place nearly
500 years later, when Italian navigator and explorer John Cabot sailed along the
Massachusetts coast in 1498 while searching for a route to Asia. Italian
explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing under the French flag in 1524, also
traced the Massachusetts coast. In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold, an English captain,
named Cape Cod for the schools of codfish he found there. Later explorers
included Martin Pring in 1603, George Waymouth in 1605, Samuel de Champlain in
1605 and 1606, Henry Hudson in 1609, and Adriaen Block and John Smith in 1614.
Smith, one of the founders of Jamestown, Virginia, the first English settlement
in America, mapped Massachusetts Bay and gave the area many of its names.
C | Plymouth Colony |
In 1606 the territory of present-day
Massachusetts was included in the vast North American coastal tract granted by
the English king to the Plymouth Company, which was reorganized in 1620 as the
Council for New England. The company had trade and colonization rights but was
unable to promote settlement within its domain. This task fell by chance to a
group of religious dissenters, known as Pilgrims, who had faced persecution in
England after breaking from the Church of England, the official church there.
With the hope of starting a new life, the Pilgrims turned to North America in
1620, sailing on the ship Mayflower, destined for Virginia. They were
blown off course, landed instead at Provincetown Bay in November, and finally
settled at Plymouth in mid-December. Because they were outside the jurisdiction
of Virginia and had no grant to settle in the region controlled by the Plymouth
Company, the Pilgrims drew up the Mayflower Compact. Under this informal
agreement or covenant, government was based on consent of the governed, an
important precedent for the development of American democracy. John Carver was
elected governor of the settlement, the Plymouth Colony.
The Pilgrims’ first winter was
difficult, and almost half the colonists perished. In the spring some friendly
Native Americans taught the settlers about their new land, showing them how to
raise corn and catch fish. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit and the colonists
signed a peace treaty, each promising to live in peace and to support the other
if attacked by an aggressor. In the fall of 1621 the bountiful harvest of corn
and beans, along with fish and game, was shared between the settlers and Native
Americans in the first American Thanksgiving celebration. From then the Plymouth
Colony prospered on its own until it merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in
1691.
D | Massachusetts Bay Colony |
In 1623 the Council for New England
issued a patent to the Dorchester Company, a group of English businessmen
interested in trade. The company founded a settlement at Cape Ann, but it failed
in 1625, and the survivors, under Roger Conant, founded Naumkeag (later Salem)
in 1626. Also in the mid-1620s English business interests set up other colonies
in Massachusetts, including those at Mount Wollaston (now Quincy), Wessagusset
(now Weymouth), and Nantasket.
In 1628 a major colonization effort
began. A group of men led by John Endecott received a patent from the Council
for New England that entitled them to a territory from just north of the
Merrimack River to just south of the Charles River and extending from sea to
sea. This group, interested in establishing a trading business in North America,
soon became dominated by Puritans, who were also dissenters from the Church of
England. These businessmen hoped to establish a religious colony as a refuge
from persecution. The company sent Endecott to take over the settlement at Salem
and pressed for a royal charter. In 1629 the king granted the charter of the
Massachusetts Bay Company.
Under this charter the company was
self-governing. Its stockholders, called freemen, met as an assembly called the
General Court. The assembly then chose a governor, a deputy governor, and 18
assistants to administer the colony. The first government was established in
England. In 1629 the company decided to move the government to Massachusetts,
and chose John Winthrop as governor of the colony. Winthrop arrived the
following year, bringing more than 700 settlers and the royal charter with him.
Several hundred more colonists arrived soon after.
The government of the trading company
then became that of the colony. Absolute control was exercised by Winthrop,
clergyman John Cotton, and other Puritan leaders, reflecting the religious
purpose for which the colony was founded. Religious leaders soon solidified
their power by ruling that only members of the Puritan church could be freemen
and have a vote in the colony’s government.
D1 | Religious Purity |
The purpose of the Puritans in
Massachusetts Bay was to establish a “Godly” society as a model for all
Christians, based on a church purified in membership, worship, and structure
from what they considered corruption in the Church of England. Free of the
church hierarchy in England, they built their colony around independent church
congregations, and their religion became known as Congregationalism.
Life in the colony was demanding. The
necessities of life as well as the Puritans’ belief in hard work required
everyone to labor from sunrise to sunset. Attendance at Sunday religious
services was compulsory, and there was little leisure time. Amusements and
dancing were frowned upon, and there was no theater. There were laws against
stylish dress, but fashions changed as the colony became more prosperous.
Wedding celebrations and such events as house-raisings, town meetings, and
militia training sessions provided occasions for gathering with friends and
enjoying refreshments. Punishments for crimes were very harsh. When the Society
of Friends, or Quakers, attempted to preach against this way of life in the
mid-1650s, the General Court persecuted them unmercifully. Quakers were banished
from the colony and threatened with death if they returned. One Quaker who did
so, Mary Dyer, was hanged in 1660.
This strict control of life and
religious beliefs led some people to leave the colony. In 1635 clergyman Thomas
Hooker and his congregation migrated for economic reasons to found Hartford and
other towns of what later became Connecticut. Others, such as Roger Williams and
Anne Hutchinson, questioned the religious purity of the colony. Williams
preached the separation of church and government and questioned the colony’s
right to take Native American lands without compensation. In 1636 Williams was
exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and, after taking refuge among the
Wampanoag, established Providence, the first permanent white settlement in what
would become Rhode Island. Two years later Hutchinson was banished for her
religious dissent, and she and some followers also went south to found
Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Her brother-in-law John Wheelwright fled Massachusetts
to found Exeter, New Hampshire. While these and other people emigrated from the
colony to escape the restrictions of church government, immigration to
Massachusetts Bay brought rapid growth.
D2 | Town Meeting |
The Puritan belief that communities
were formed by covenants produced America’s first democratic institution, the
town meeting. At the town meeting every church member had the right to speak,
and decisions were made by majority rule. In some towns, property-holding men
who were not church members also had voting rights. At first the meetings dealt
only with local problems, but in 1634 representatives of the towns forced the
Puritan leaders to allow each town to send two deputies to the General Court.
These deputies were chosen at the town meeting and represented its interests. In
1644 the General Court was divided into a bicameral assembly, with the governor
and the assistants sitting in one chamber and the deputies in the other. The
democratic atmosphere of the town meeting influenced the deputies, who over the
ensuing decades sought to influence the assistants to lessen restrictions on
religious and personal freedoms in the colony.
D3 | Struggle Against English Control |
From 1629 to 1660, Massachusetts Bay
was virtually independent of control from England, which was caught up in a
struggle between Parliament and the king that culminated in the English
Revolution (1640-1660). During the 1630s, most of the Puritans who fled from
religious persecution in England settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The
colony’s elders used its large population and financial strength to influence
adjacent settlements, attempting to extend control over areas claimed by the
Plymouth Colony and Connecticut in the early 1640s. Massachusetts also began to
claim southern New Hampshire, whose towns joined the colony after failing to
establish a strong central government of their own. In 1643 the colony joined
Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth to form a military alliance called the New
England Confederation, to help meet threatened attacks by Native Americans and
Dutch settlers. During the 40 years of the confederation, the Massachusetts Bay
Colony dominated its proceedings. In the early 1650s, Massachusetts incorrectly
interpreted its charter as granting it the existing settlements in Maine, and by
1658 the entire Maine region had been annexed.
After the English monarchy was
restored in 1660, King Charles II tried to reestablish royal control over the
American colonies, especially Massachusetts Bay, which claimed it had sovereign
powers and was not responsible to the king. In 1664 and 1665 the king’s agents
attempted to separate Maine and New Hampshire from Massachusetts, but within
three years these regions were again dominated by the colony. For 15 years the
General Court steadfastly resisted any royal attempts to subjugate the
colony.
As the colonies expanded, whites came
to outnumber the Native Americans and encroach further onto native lands.
Cultural differences and land disputes created conflicts that resulted in King
Philip’s War, an uprising led by the Wampanoag chief Philip. The son of
Massasoit, who had befriended the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Philip formed an
alliance of native groups to drive out the settlers in 1675. Many settlements in
central Massachusetts and the Connecticut River valley were destroyed. In
retaliation for attacks by Philip’s forces, Massachusetts and its partners in
the New England Confederation also declared war on the neutral Narragansett
people, killing hundreds of Narragansett in an attack on their main village in
Rhode Island. The Narragansett then joined Philip, but the Native Americans were
defeated in 1676. Philip was killed, many of his followers were executed or sold
into slavery, and their lands were taken over by the colonies. The defeat ended
the resistance of southern New England native peoples to white settlement
there.
D4 | 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.
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.
I | State Government |
In 1778, under pressure from farmers
and towns in western Massachusetts, the provincial assembly submitted a
constitution to the people. But the document was rejected because the
legislature, rather than a special convention, drew up the document, and a
popularly elected constitutional convention was called. John Adams dominated the
gathering, and the finished document was largely his creation. It included a
bill of rights, a system of checks and balances, and other provisions that would
later be incorporated into the Constitution of the United States. The state
constitution was accepted by the people in June 1780.
J | Shays’ Rebellion and Federal Government |
After the war, Massachusetts shared in
the general economic depression that settled over the country. Merchant
interests controlled the state legislature at the outset, and they passed high
land taxes in an effort to pay off the war debts. The depression and the taxes
hit the state’s western farmers hardest. In 1786 a war veteran named Daniel
Shays led an unsuccessful armed rebellion, mainly of poor farmers who faced the
possibility of losing their property and being imprisoned for debt. The rebels
were defeated by the state militia, and most were eventually pardoned.
Shays’ Rebellion prompted tax reforms
within the state, and along with other similar protests it stimulated support
throughout the United States for a federal government strong enough to deal with
such unrest. In 1787 a convention drafted the Constitution of the United States.
Massachusetts initially refused to ratify the Constitution unless a bill of
rights similar to the state constitution’s was added, protecting the rights of
individuals against government interference. But on February 6, 1788,
Massachusetts ratified the constitution and became the sixth state to join the
Union. The Bill of Rights was added to the U.S. Constitution in 1791.
During the early years of the United
States, Massachusetts supported the Federalist Party, which advocated a strong
central government. Federalist John Adams was the nation’s first vice president
and in 1797 became the second president of the United States. From 1807 to 1834
the governorship was split between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republican
Party of Thomas Jefferson. Adams’s son, John Quincy Adams, served in the
Massachusetts Senate and the U.S. Senate before becoming the nation’s sixth
president in 1825.
K | Maritime Prosperity |
Despite the postwar depression,
Massachusetts’s maritime activities recovered rapidly. Boston became the
nation’s leading overseas trader, and by 1784, Boston ships had opened trade
with China. Salem, New Bedford, and Newburyport also developed strong commercial
interests, while Nantucket, New Bedford, Marblehead, and Provincetown expanded
their whaling and shipping operations.
Commerce was sharply curtailed,
however, when war between France and Britain led Congress to pass the Embargo
Act of 1807, forbidding U.S. vessels from trading with European nations. The
purpose of the measure was to force the warring nations, particularly Britain
and France, to recognize the rights of neutral countries. It failed to achieve
that goal, but it damaged the American economy, especially in New England states
such as Massachusetts that relied heavily on trade. Continued conflict over
British aggression against neutral U.S. ships led to the War of 1812
(1812-1815), which angry Massachusetts merchants bitterly opposed. At the
Hartford Convention, held late in 1814, Massachusetts and other New England
states sought to address their declining role in national affairs, proposing
limits on the presidency and on federal power to impose embargoes or regulate
foreign commerce. Despite opposition to the war, the state took pride in the
naval victories of the frigate Constitution, which had been launched in
Boston in 1797. After the war, Massachusetts regained its position of maritime
supremacy and maintained it until after the middle of the century.
L | Growth of Manufacturing |
In the period after the revolution, the
United States began to produce its own manufactured goods when the British
market was periodically closed because of European wars, the embargo, and the
War of 1812. Many of the new industries were established in Massachusetts. The
state had many streams for waterpower and a ready labor market drawn from its
farmers and artisans. In 1816 the U.S. government passed a protective tariff to
aid the nation’s young industries. Massachusetts’s manufacturing flourished, and
many merchants channeled capital into the state’s expanding textile
industry.
After New York’s Erie Canal was opened
in 1825, allowing quick transportation of goods between the eastern and western
parts of the country, Massachusetts’s agriculture declined. Competition from the
fertile western farms drove many of the small Massachusetts farmers to abandon
their land. Many of them sought land in the West or moved to the state’s rapidly
growing industrial centers.
M | Social and Cultural Climate |
In the first half of the 19th century,
Massachusetts underwent a period of internal reform and cultural achievement. In
1820, as a part of the Missouri Compromise, Maine was separated from
Massachusetts and became a state. A year later several important amendments to
the state constitution were adopted, including those that abolished property
qualifications for voting and religious tests for officeholders. In 1833 a
constitutional amendment separated the Congregational Church from state
government, ending its privileged position. At the same time Unitarianism, a
liberal religion quite different from early Congregationalism, took strong hold
in the state under the guidance of clergyman William Ellery Channing.
In the early 1830s the antislavery
movement won many followers in the state, and abolitionist William Lloyd
Garrison first published his influential weekly The Liberator in Boston
in 1831. In 1843 Dorothea Lynde Dix presented her “Memorial to the Legislature
of Massachusetts,” an account of conditions in the state’s prisons and asylums.
The report led to immediate reforms in Massachusetts and initiated a national
crusade for the humane treatment of prisoners and the mentally ill. Educational
reforms were introduced by such leaders as Horace Mann, who helped create the
first state board of education in the United States, and Bronson Alcott, who in
1834 established a school in Boston that used Alcott’s then-revolutionary method
of teaching young children by means of conversation. As secretary of
Massachusetts’s board of education, Mann influenced the educational system of
the entire United States, working to improve the pay and training of
teachers.
Massachusetts also became the center
of an American cultural renaissance, especially in literature. Writers such as
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow gained international fame.
The Whig Party dominated Massachusetts
politics from the 1830s until the 1850s. In 1855 the American Party, also known
as Know-Nothings, secured the governor’s seat for one term, as well as control
of the legislature. This party was an anti-Catholic and antiforeign group that
arose in response to massive immigration of the 1840s and 1850s, especially of
Irish Catholics trying to escape a devastating potato famine in their homeland.
The Know-Nothings, given the name because of their secrecy, discriminated
against foreign-born citizens, trying to prevent them from holding political
office or gaining influence. But the Know-Nothings collapsed when the national
controversy over slavery in the 1850s led to the rise of the Republican Party,
which then dominated the governor’s office in Massachusetts until 1931.
N | Civil War |
Massachusetts was a center of
abolitionist sentiment in the years before the Civil War (1861-1865). The
Underground Railroad, a network of antislavery northerners, brought many
fugitive slaves through Massachusetts on their way to Canada. In 1854
Massachusetts business leaders formed the New England Emigrant Aid Society to
help men from the antislavery Northeast travel to the Kansas Territory, which
was at the center of controversy over extending slavery beyond the South.
Antislavery advocates hoped that the votes of these settlers would keep Kansas
from becoming a slave state.
When the Civil War began,
Massachusetts was the first state to send troops to support the federal
government, and when secessionists in Maryland killed several of these men in
riots, Massachusetts soldiers became the first to die for the Union.
Massachusetts also was the first Northern state to establish a black regiment,
the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. More than 146,000 Massachusetts men served in
the Union Army during the war.
O | Growth of Industry |
The war completed Massachusetts’s
transition from an agricultural and maritime economy to one based on industry.
Shipping declined after the war, as did whaling when substitutes such as
kerosene were found for whale products. By the end of the century, the leading
industries were leather and textile manufacturing.
Industrial labor was supplied by
masses of immigrants. The Irish, who had begun arriving in large numbers in the
1840s, were joined by French Canadians, Italians, Portuguese, Greeks, and Poles.
With these new residents, the Roman Catholic church came to have the largest
membership in the state founded as a refuge for Puritans. The Irish began to
gain the economic and political power that would make them a major force in the
state’s later development.
P | Labor Unions |
Industrial growth led to the formation
of labor unions as workers struggled to change the long hours, low wages, and
unsafe working conditions of the factories. Business owners refused to accept
the unions, and from 1881 to 1900 there were more than 1,800 strikes. State
legislation forced management to make some reforms, but labor unrest increased
in the early 20th century. In 1912 textile workers in Lawrence went on strike
when mill owners lowered wages and increased the speed of looms in the
factories. The strike, organized by the radical Industrial Workers of the World
union, involved 23,000 workers, including many women and children. When some of
them were assaulted by state troops and police sent in to keep order, the public
was outraged, and mill owners gave in, giving wage increases to thousands of New
England workers.
Q | World War I and Ensuing Decades |
Massachusetts played an important role
in World War I (1914-1918). Its 26th, or Yankee, Division fought in major
battles in Europe. The Boston and Quincy shipyards worked at full capacity, and
state industries manufactured a wide variety of war supplies. The economic boom
produced by the war continued into the 1920s, although wages for many workers
remained low and strikes were still common. However, the mill cities suffered as
the textile industry began to relocate to the South.
Q1 | Labor Unrest |
In 1919 the Boston police force went
on strike for higher wages and the right to form a union. Governor Calvin
Coolidge gained national fame when he suppressed the strike, calling out 5,000
militia to patrol the city and refusing to reinstate the strikers. The attention
led to his nomination for vice president of the United States in 1920. Elected
on a ticket with President Warren G. Harding, Coolidge became president when
Harding died in 1923.
Q2 | Sacco-Vanzetti Case |
By 1920 the state’s population had
grown to 3.8 million. Two-thirds of Massachusetts’s residents were foreign-born
or the children of immigrant parents.
During the 1920s, international
controversy resulted when two anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
were tried and executed for murder in Massachusetts (see Sacco-Vanzetti
Case). The two Italian immigrants were accused of killing two men during the
robbery of a shoe factory. They were convicted on what many people regarded as
inadequate evidence and contradictory testimony. Supporters of the two men
argued they had been condemned because of political and ethnic prejudice. In
1977, 50 years after their execution, Governor Michael Dukakis signed a
proclamation that in effect cleared Sacco and Vanzetti.
R | World War II |
After the economic hardships of the
Great Depression during the 1930s, Massachusetts’s economy recovered during
World War II (1939-1945). The state’s outstanding contribution to the war effort
was in research and technological development. Numerous university and private
scientific research centers opened in the 1940s. This trend continued after the
war and helped make Massachusetts a leader in the electronics and aerospace
industries, as its traditional textile and leather industries continued to
decline.
S | Political Change |
The Republican Party, born out of
opposition to slavery before the Civil War, dominated Massachusetts politics
until 1931. The economic Depression of the 1930s brought Democrats into power
nationally, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945), and in
Massachusetts. Democratic governors were elected until 1939, and after that the
governor’s office alternated between the two major parties. The Republicans
controlled the state legislature from the Civil War until 1958, when for the
first time the state elected both a Democratic governor and legislature.
T | Kennedy Family |
The 1950s saw the rise of one of
America’s most famous and influential political families, the Kennedys of
Massachusetts. This rise was engineered by the patriarch of the family,
businessman Joseph P. Kennedy. In 1960 his son John F. Kennedy, a Democratic
senator and former representative from Massachusetts, was elected president of
the United States and was assassinated three years later. His brother Robert F.
Kennedy served as U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator from New York before he
was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for the presidency. In 1962 their
younger brother, Edward M. Kennedy, was elected a Democratic senator from
Massachusetts. A leader among liberal Democrats, Edward Kennedy unsuccessfully
sought the party’s nomination for the presidency in 1976 but continued to serve
in the Senate. In the 1980s and 1990s a second generation of Kennedys entered
Congress, including Joseph P. Kennedy II from Massachusetts, and Patrick J.
Kennedy from Rhode Island.
U | Racial Relations |
Massachusetts was a leader in civil
rights beginning with the abolition movement in the 1830s. It produced such
leaders as W. E. B. Du Bois, a native of Great Barrington, who helped to found
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910.
Senator Edward Brooke, a liberal Republican, was elected to the U.S. Senate in
1966, becoming the first black senator since the Civil War era.
In the 1970s interracial conflict
broke out in Massachusetts, centered around school desegregation in Boston. In
1974 a federal court ruled that Boston school officials had deliberately kept
public schools segregated, and it ordered busing of students to achieve more
racial balance. Many whites violently opposed the busing program, and racial
incidents, including beatings and firebombings, brought Boston national
attention.
V | The Massachusetts Miracle |
For most of the 1980s, the
Massachusetts economy enjoyed a major boom, fueled by the continued growth of
the high-technology industry and defense spending. Unemployment remained well
below the national average, and the number of people on public welfare declined
sharply. Governor Dukakis termed this boom the “Massachusetts Miracle” in his
presidential campaign of 1988. By the end of the decade, however, economic
growth began to slow, partly as a result of federal cuts in defense spending.
W | Gay Marriage |
Massachusetts became the first U.S.
state to legalize gay marriage after the state’s highest court ruled that
same-sex marriages were permitted under the state constitution. On May 17, 2004,
authorities in Massachusetts performed the first legal same-sex marriages in the
United States. However, opponents of gay marriage promised to try to amend the
state constitution to ban such marriages.
X | First Black Governor |
In 2006 Massachusetts elected its
first black governor, Deval Patrick, a Democrat and former civil rights
attorney. Patrick’s election ended a 20-year stretch in which Republicans
dominated the Massachusetts statehouse.
The history section of this article
was contributed by John William Ifkovic. The remainder of the article was
contributed by Richard W. Wilkie.
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