Boston, Massachusetts

Crown and Colony

With a new charter, an enlarged electorate, and an expanding economy, by the start of the 18th century Boston was a bustling seaport town. The new royal governor and his officials built fine houses in the center of town and established an active social life. A number of local Bostonians also established themselves as gentlemen of influence, and their commercial enterprises brought prosperity to the town.

As long as Great Britain was at war with France, Boston was able to continue its independent ways. Once Britain had defeated France in 1763, however, the British took steps to bring the colonies under control. Local patriots like James Otis and Samuel Adams protested strongly against British attempts to tax Americans without going through their colonial legislatures. In 1770, tensions in Boston became so great that British soldiers fired upon a mob of civilians in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Three years later, the passage of the Tea Act led a group of patriots to throw boxes of tea into the harbor in what was called the Boston Tea Party. Britain responded to this indignity with a series of Coercive Acts that closed the port of Boston and established martial law. Boston became an occupied town, with a diminished population and an unproductive economy, until March 1776, when General George Washington fortified Dorchester Heights and forced the British soldiers and loyalist civilians to evacuate the town. Boston then took the opportunity to rebuild itself.

From Town to City

With independence and a new federal Constitution, the town's economy revived. Yankee ships resumed commerce with old markets and discovered new markets in South America and the Far East. The population of the town grew steadily from 25,000 in 1800 to 30,000 in 1810, while new building projects created a new State House as well as a residential area around Beacon Hill. Although a second war with Britain in 1812 seriously endangered the future of shipping, Boston merchants successfully invested their capital in textile manufacturing.

After transforming Boston from a town into a city in 1822, a group of wealthy and publicspirited men took steps to raise the intellectual level of the citizens and make Boston the “Athens of America.” The literary accomplishments of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow led Oliver Wendell Holmes to call Boston “the hub of the solar system.” Josiah Quincy, the second mayor, greatly improved and upgraded the old town, while his associates organized temperance movements, engaged in prison reform, and built hospitals and asylums. Horace Mann created a public school system; Samuel Gridley Howe worked with the blind; Dorothea Dix established facilities for the mentally ill.

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