# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boston (Massachusetts)/History

See also our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
BOSTON
​History.—John Smith visited Boston Harbour in 1614, and it was explored in 1621 by a party from Plymouth. There were various attempts to settle about its borders in the following years before John Endecott in 1628 landed at Salem as governor of the colony of Massachusetts bay, within which Boston was included. In June 1630 John Winthrop’s company reached Charlestown. At that time a “bookish recluse,” William Blaxton (Blackstone), one of the several “old planters” scattered about the bay, had for several years been living on Boston peninsula. The location seemed one suitable for commerce and defence, and the Winthrop party chose it for their settlement. The triple summit of Beacon Hill, of which no trace remains to-day (or possibly a reference to the three hills of the then peninsula, Beacon, Copp’s and Fort) led to the adoption of the name Trimountaine for the peninsula,—a name perpetuated variously in present municipal nomenclature as in Tremont; but on the 17th of September 1630, the date adopted for anniversary celebrations, it was ordered that “Trimountaine shall be called Boston,” after the borough of that name in Lincolnshire, England, of which several of the leading settlers had formerly been prominent citizens.
For several years it was uncertain whether Cambridge, Charlestown or Boston should be the capital of the colony, but in 1632 the General Court agreed “by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay.” It rapidly became the wealthiest and most populous. Throughout the 17th century its history is so largely that of Massachusetts generally that they are inseparable. Theological systems were largely concerned. The chief features of this epoch —the Antinomian dissensions, the Quaker and Baptist persecutions, the witchcraft delusion (four witches were executed in Boston, in 1648, 1651, 1656, 1688) &c.—are referred to in the article Massachusetts (q.v.). In 1692 the first permanent and successful printing press was established; in 1704 the first newspaper in America, the Boston News-Letter, which was published weekly until 1776. Puritanism steadily mellowed under many influences. By the turn of the first century bigotry was distinctly weakened. Among the marks of the second half of the 17th century was growing material prosperity, and there were those who thought their fellows unduly willing to relax church tests of fellowship when good trade was in question. There was an unpleasant Englishman who declared in 1699 that he found “Money Their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they Covet.” Prices were low, foreign commerce was already large, business thriving; wealth gave social status; the official British class lent a lustre to society; and Boston “town” was drawing society from the “country.” Of the two-score or so of families most prominent in the first century hardly one retained place in the similar list for the early years of the second. Boston was a prosperous, thrifty, English country town, one traveller thought. Another, Daniel Neal, in 1720, found Boston conversation “as polite as in most of the cities and towns in England, many of their merchants having the advantage of a free conversation with travellers; so that a gentleman from London would almost think himself at home at Boston, when he observes the number of people, their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and showy as that of the most considerable tradesmen in London.”
The population, which was almost stationary through much of the century, was about 20,000 in the years immediately before the War of Independence. At this time Boston was the most flourishing town of North America. It built ships as cheaply as any place in the world, it carried goods for other colonies, it traded—often evading British laws—with Europe, Guinea, Madagascar and above all with the West Indies. The merchant princes and social leaders of the time are painted with elaborate show of luxury in the canvases of Copley. The great English writers of Queen Anne’s reign seem to have been but little known in the colony, and the local literature, though changed somewhat in character, showed but scant improvement. About the middle of the century restrictions upon the press began to disappear. At the same time questions of trade, of local politics, finally of colonial autonomy, of imperial policy, had gradually, but already long since, replaced theology in leading interest. In the years 1760–1776 Boston was the most frequently recurring and most important name in British colonial history. Sentiments of limited independence of the British government had been developing since the very beginning of the settlement (see Massachusetts), and their strength in 1689 had been strikingly exhibited in the local revolution of that year, when the royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros, and other high officials, were frightened into surrender and were imprisoned. This movement, it should be noted, was a popular rising, and not the work of a few leaders.
The incidents that marked the approach of the War of Independence need barely be adverted to. Opposition to the measures of the British government for taxing and oppressing the colonies began in Boston. The argument of Otis on the writs of assistance ​was in 1760–1761. The Stamp Act, passed in 1765, was repealed in 1766; it was opposed in Boston by a surprising show of determined and unified public sentiment. Troops were first quartered in the town in 1768. In 1770, on the 5th of March, in a street brawl, a number of citizens were killed or wounded by the soldiers, who fired into a crowd that were baiting a sentry. This incident is known as the “Boston Massacre.” The Tea Act of 1773 was defied by the emptying into the harbour of three cargoes of tea on the 16th of December 1773, by a party of citizens disguised as Indians, after the people in town-meeting had exhausted every effort, through a period of weeks, to procure the return of the tea-ships to England. To this act Great Britain replied by various penal regulations and reconstructive acts of government. She quartered troops in Boston; she made the juries, sheriffs and judges of the colony dependent on the royal officers; she ordered capital offenders to be tried in Nova Scotia or England; she endeavoured completely to control or to abolish town-meetings; and finally, by the so-called “Boston Port Bill,” she closed the port of Boston on the 1st of June 1774. Not even a ferry, a scow or other boat could move in the harbour. Marblehead and Salem were made ports of entry, and Salem was made the capital. But they would not profit by Boston’s misfortune. The people covenanted not to use British goods and to suspend trade with Great Britain. From near neighbours and from distant colonies came provisions and encouragement. In October 1774, when General Gage refused recognition to the Massachusetts general court at Salem, the members adjourned to Concord as the first provincial congress. Finally came war, with Lexington and Bunker Hill, and beleaguerment by the colonial army; until on the 17th of March 1776 the British were compelled by Washington to evacuate the city. With them went about 1100 Tory refugees, many of them of the finest families of the city and province. The evacuation closed the heroic period of Boston’s history. War did not again approach the city.
The years from 1776 to the end of “town” government in 1822 were marked by slow growth and prosperity. Commerce and manufactures alike took great impetus. Direct trade with the East Indies began about 1785, with Russia in 1787. A Boston vessel, the “Columbia” (Captain Robert Gray), opened trade with the north-west coast of America, and was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe (1787–1790). In 1805 Boston began the export of ice to Jamaica, a trade which was gradually extended to Cuba, to ports of the southern states, and finally to Rio de Janeiro and Calcutta (1833), declining only after the Civil War; it enabled Boston to control the American trade of Calcutta against New York throughout the entire period. But of course it was far less important than various other articles of trade in the aggregate values of commerce. It was Boston commerce that was most sorely hurt by the embargo and non-importation policy of President Jefferson. In manufactures the foundation was laid of the city’s wealth. In politics the period is characterized by Boston’s connexion with the fortunes of the Federalist party. The city was warmly in favour of the adoption of the federal constitution of 1787; even Samuel Adams was rejected for Congress because he was backward in its support. It was the losses entailed upon her commerce by the commercial policy of Jefferson’s administration that embittered Boston against the Democratic-Republican party and put her public men in the forefront of the opposition to its policies that culminated in lukewarmness toward the War of 1812, and in the Hartford Convention of 1814.
Some mention must be made of the Unitarian movement. Unitarian tendencies away from the Calvinism of the old Congregational churches were plainly evident about 1750, and it is said by Andrew P. Peabody (1811–1893) that by 1780 nearly all the Congregational pulpits around Boston were filled by Unitarians. Organized Unitarianism in Boston dates from 1785. In 1782 King’s chapel (Episcopal) became Unitarian, and in 1805 one of that faith was made professor of divinity in Harvard. But the Unitarianism of those times, even the Unitarianism of Channing, was very different from that of to-day. Theodore Parker and Channing have been the greatest leaders. The American Unitarian Association, organized in 1825, has always retained its headquarters in Boston. The theological and philosophical developments of the second quarter of the 19th century were characterized by the transcendental movement (see Massachusetts).
In the period from 1822 to the Civil War anti-slavery is the most striking feature of Boston’s annals. Garrison established the Liberator in 1831; W. E. Channing became active in the cause of abolition in 1835, and Wendell Phillips a little later. In 1835 a mob, composed in part of wealthy and high-standing citizens, attacked a city-building, and dragged Garrison through the streets until the mayor secured his safety by putting him in gaol. But times changed. In 1850 a reception was given in Faneuil Hall in honour of the English anti-slavery leader, George Thompson, whose reported intention to address Bostonians in 1835 precipitated the riot of that year. In 1851 the Court House was surrounded with chains to prevent the “rescue” of a slave (Sims) held for rendition under the Fugitive Slave Law; another slave (Shadrach) was released this same year, and in 1854 there was a riot and intense excitement over the rendition of Anthony Burns. Boston had long since taken her place in the very front of anti-slavery ranks, and with the rest of Massachusetts was playing somewhat the same part as in the years before the War of Independence.
Later events of importance have already been indicated in essentials. On the 9th–10th of November 1872 a terrible fire swept the business part of the city, destroying hundreds of buildings of brick and granite, and inflicting a loss of some $75,000,000. Within two years the whole area, solidly rebuilt and with widened and straightened streets, showed no traces of the ruin except an appearance superior in all respects to that presented before the fire. The expense of this re-creation probably duplicated, at least, the loss from the conflagration. Since this time there has been no set-back to the prosperity of the city. But it is not upon material prosperity that Boston rests its claims for consideration. It prides itself on its schools, its libraries, its literary traditions, its splendid public works and its reputation as the chief centre of American culture.