Yankee Rebels of Inland Massachusetts
Citations Over Time
Abstract
HE REVOLUTIONARY WAR in Massachusetts was not fought from the State House in Boston but from the meetinghouses in the various towns. Historical writers have devoted much attention to the commercial and political leaders of Boston and the seaboard, but little has ever been said about the farmers and shopkeepers who guided affairs in Worcester, Hampshire and Berkshire counties, the western hilly half of Massachusetts. That these rural Whigs were of considerable importance is attested by the political organization of province and state. Many powers which in most governments today are delegated to the central authority were then exercised by the towns. Until the formation of the state constitution in I780, the towns were in fact the several sovereigns of Massachusetts, and their relation to the General Court approximated the relation of the state to the Continental Congress.1 Since responsibility for the war effort in central and western Massachusetts rested so heavily on local officials and committee members, the background and qualifications of these men assume considerable importance. Among the ties that bound them together, kinship frequently loomed large. As with the Tories, it was often decisive in determining which side of the political fence an individual would choose. Worcester offered a good illustration of family groupings. There the Whiggish Allens, Bigelows, and Lincolns were interlocked by marriages, but very few links existed between them and the leading Tories of the neighbor-
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