Abstract
Bostonians are likely to believe that their city is special; so too does historian Mark Peterson. In a sweeping narrative that is well researched, fully documented and finely written (mostly), Peterson traces nearly 250 years of Boston’s history from its founding to the American Civil War. Two and a half centuries are time enough for the history of any place, Boston included, to be confused, contradictory, murky, and perhaps even chaotic. The past is not always sensible. Peterson disagrees. From evidence ‘lurking in the archives’ he proposes a bold thesis that Boston ‘can best be understood as the city-state of Boston, a self-conscious attempt to build an autonomous self-governing republic modelled on biblical and classical republican ideals in a New World environment’ (6). This is Boston a la Athens and Rome.
Although they had hopes of establishing an agricultural community, tilling a thin and rocky soil and confronting long harsh winters persuaded Boston’s puritan founders to turn to the sea. There they found a rich harvest. Codfish filled the holds of local vessels bound to a burgeoning market in the West Indies. The business of sugar, molasses, rum and slaves dominated the Atlantic economy and Boston was at the centre. While she set her face to the sea Boston had also to drive west into a hinterland where native peoples resisted its advance. With ruthlessness these godly people waged genocidal wars against those who stood in their way. In the mid seventeenth century, taking advantage of the mother country’s distress and civil war, puritan Boston, unrestrained by any external authority, grew accustomed to exercising the powers of a sovereign state, coining money, negotiating treaties and generally ignoring any inconvenient instructions from King and Parliament. Boston was set on an ‘independent’ path. The question remains was this a self-conscious attempt to create a city-state?
Peterson relies heavily on biographical sketches to advance his city-state thesis. In the years leading to the Revolution the rise of William Phips, the struggles of Samuel Sewall with slavery and the imperial careers of Paul Mascarene and William Shirley shed considerable light on Boston’s misadventures in the Empire. John Adams appears as the brilliant but grumpy statesman. The inclusion of Phyllis Wheatley, however, in this group seems somewhat out of place. An iconic figure in African American literature Peterson’s attention to her in ‘Boston’s Revolutionary Crisis’ seems a bit exaggerated.
With independence came new trading opportunities. Freed of imperial restraints Boston merchants instructed their captains to ‘try all ports’. Sailing forth they encountered enemies everywhere. At war with one another both France and Great Britain distained claims of neutrality and bedevilled American commerce. In the Mediterranean Barbary corsairs seized American ships and held their crews for ransom. The greater threat to the city’s prosperity, however, came not from abroad but at home. Thanks to constitutional provisions enshrining unequal representation the national government was held firmly in the hands of the slavocracy which enacted measures deeply harmful to Boston’s interests. Enraged by the War of 1812 New Englanders met at Hartford, Connecticut to contemplate secession. The Hartford delegates delivered their ‘report’ to Washington at the same moment as the ‘Good news from Ghent’ arrived. The war was over. America celebrated. New England was in disgrace.
The collapse of foreign trade in the years before the War of 1812 and the war itself pushed Boston merchants to seek alternative investment opportunities. Abundant waterpower and cheap labour beckoned Bostonians towards textiles. It was an industry they embraced, but it was a devil’s bargain. The mills of Lowell and Lawrence had a near insatiable demand for Southern cotton putting their northern owners in thrall to southern slave owners. Led by the rising voices of abolitionism, including William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Black leaders such as David Walker, Boston’s Cotton Whigs found themselves gripped in a Faustian bargain supporting a detestable and ugly system for the sake of enhancing their own power and profit. Boston’s entanglement with the Cotton Kingdom embarrassed the city, generated violent local discord and compromised its influence in national politics. But other factors to which Peterson gives less attention were also tearing at the fabric of the community.
As one of the founding states, and arguably with Virginia the most important, the citizens of Massachusetts and Boston held exaggerated notions of their continuing importance to the nation. Between 1789 and 1861 America moved Southwest and West. In that time 21 new states joined the Union, greatly reducing the state’s influence in both the House and Senate. Politically weakened, Boston also saw its economic influence wane. Geography was Boston’s Achilles’ heel and that sly enemy New York City took full advantage. Thanks to the Erie Canal, the Hudson River, and extensive railroad connections to the West, the port of New York eclipsed Boston. In 1811 the foreign commerce of Massachusetts was roughly equal to New York. By 1859 the state’s foreign trade was barely one seventh of the volume flowing through New York.
As its political and economic status slid downward, Boston experienced a demographic explosion. Between 1840 and 1850 the city’s population increased by nearly 50 per cent, an increase almost entirely due to the arrival of famine Irish. From being densely settled Boston morphed into an overcrowded urban centre from which its elite fled to nearby leafy suburbs. Its infrastructure could barely handle the stress. Boston was hardly exceptional. The city was being swept along by the same urban immigrant tide that was engulfing the nation.
Was there ever a ‘City-State of Boston’? If there was it ended long before Peterson puts it to rest. In 1670 Samuel Danforth preached a sermon reminiscent of Winthrop’s ‘City Upon a Hill’. Danforth lamented the prevailing ‘dead frame of spirit’, and urged his congregation to remember their ‘errand into the wilderness’. Danforth was attempting to rekindle that sense of public virtue and purpose that had fuelled an earlier generation. Even in 1670 it was too late. The sinews of faith and community that characterized Peterson’s City-State were dissolving. From this point on his thesis of a self-conscious city state loses its power. Nonetheless, since Peterson lets his thesis sits lightly on the narrative, the result is a remarkable book that is clearly the most complete and well told story of the early years of Boston.