NEW HAMPSHIRE

New Hampshire in 1750 was a tiny British colony with a population of about 28,000, almost all of English descent. More than half of the settlers lived on or near the seacoast, where they farmed, fished, or worked in the shipyards; most of the rest farmed and lumbered in the forests and river valleys of the interior. Great Britain valued the colony because it provided masts and ships for the Royal Navy. Portsmouth, the largest town and colonial capital, was already a cultural and commercial center with a newspaper, public library, and handsome Georgian-style homes, as well as its shipyards and fishing docks.

The government and the society of New Hampshire were dominated by a mercantile, landed aristocracy, headed by Governor Benning Wentworth, who used patronage and the veto power to control the assembly. Wide gaps separated the Wentworths and their friends at the top of society from the artisans and farmers in the middle, and the poor laborers and some four hundred blacks, one-half of them slaves, at the bottom. Only colonists with estates worth at least fifty pounds could vote, and the inhabitants of each town, regardless of their faith, were required to support an established church—in most cases Congregational. On the outside were perhaps five hundred Algonquian Indians, primarily Pennacooks and Abenakis, all that remained of native groups that had once numbered more than four thousand.

By the eve of the Revolution domestic migration had increased the population to 75,000, many of whom had grown restless under British rule. Late in 1774 a mob attacked the royal fort guarding Portsmouth, and in the summer of 1775 the rebels ousted Governor John Wentworth (Benning's nephew) and established an independent government.

Reforms followed the Revolution. The state constitution in 1784 included a lengthy bill of rights. Although property and religious qualifications were retained for officeholders, all adult males were given the right to vote. The constitution did not abolish slavery, but judges interpreted the opening words to mean that anyone born after 1783 was free. Years later the legislature passed the Toleration Act (1819), granting all Christian denominations the right to be supported by taxes.

New Hampshire was also moving toward market capitalism and democratic politics. Until 1805 there were only two banks in the state; then suddenly there were ten. To get goods to market, entrepreneurs dug canals around the falls of the Connecticut

River and set up scores of road and bridge companies. By 1820, 14 percent of workers in New Hampshire were engaged in manufacturing, and a decade later the state had about one-tenth of all cotton spindles in the United States. Many of the workers in the cotton mills were young women, who were paid less than fifty cents a day for twelve hours of work and lived in company boardinghouses. When the cotton mill in Dover cut wages in 1828, more than six hundred women went on strike, but the strike failed.

Soon after New Hampshire ratified the United States Constitution (1788), party politics began to appear. The turnout for elections was high—81 percent in 1814 and 77 percent in 1828. Federalists controlled the state until 1805, when Republican John Langdon defeated perennial Federalist governor John Taylor Gilman. Although the Federalists regained power during the War of 1812, they were badly beaten in 1816. As soon as the Republicans took over, they passed a bill changing Dartmouth College, which was traditionally Federalist, into a state university. The college trustees, however, won back control of the institution, when Chief Justice John Marshall declared the state legislation unconstitutional (Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 1819). By this time the Federalist party had collapsed. In the factional struggle that followed, the newspaper editor Isaac Hill organized a state party that supported Andrew Jackson and won the state election of 1829. The New Hampshire Jacksonians played a major role in the rise of the national Democratic Party.

With its increased democracy, its new industrialization, and its involvement in national politics, New Hampshire was becoming an integral part of the new American nation.

See alsoConstitutionalism: American Colonies; Constitutionalism: State Constitution Making; Democratic Republicans; Federalist Party; Industrial Revolution; Market Revolution; New England; Religion: The Founders and Religion; Work: Women's Work .

bibliography

Cole, Donald B. Jacksonian Democracy in New Hampshire, 1800–1851. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Daniel, Jere R. Experiment in Republicanism: New Hampshire Politics and the American Revolution, 1741–1794. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Turner, Lynn Warren. The Ninth State: New Hampshire's Formative Years. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983.

Donald B. Cole