Duxbury, Massachusetts

“ Worcester, nestling among the hills along the Blackstone River, the second city in Massachusetts, the heart of the Commonwealth, has a population of about 85,000.
Shut in by its wall of hills, it seemed, as I first came into it, something like a little miniature world in itself. It possesses some share of all the good we know. Nature, that "comely mother," has laid her caressing hand upon it. Art has made many a beautiful structure to adorn its streets. Commerce smiles upon it. While its wonderful manufactures seem to form a great living, throbbing heart for the city. ”

“ Not for a full century had the old Puritan prejudice shown itself in a form so unreasoning and unreasonable; but although nearly one half the people held aloof and wondered at the madness of their own society, the whole history of Massachusetts, a succession of half-forgotten disputes and rebellions, seemed to concentrate itself for the last time in a burst of expiring passions, mingled with hatred of Virginia and loathing for Jefferson, until the rest of America, perplexed at paroxysms so eccentric, wondered whether the spirit of Massachusetts liberty could ever have been sane. ”

“ Whatever multiplies pleasant historical reminiscences and bonds of association between different States, ought to be gathered up and kept fresh in the minds of all. The fact that when Massachusetts was suffering from a fiery and bloody, but brief, persecution by its own Government, New York opened so kind and secure a shelter for those fortunate enough to escape to it, ought to be forever held in grateful remembrance by the people of the old Bay State, and constitutes a part of the history of the Empire State, of which she may well be proud. ”

“ Johnson told me that there was nothing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts that would prevent a colored man from being governor of the State, if the people should see fit to elect him. There, too, the black man’s children attended the public schools with the white man’s children, and apparently without objection from any quarter. To impress me with my security from recapture and return to slavery, Mr. Johnson assured me that no slave-holder could take a slave out of New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their lives to save me from such a fate. ”

“ The history of the institution we here celebrate reaches back more than one third of the way to the landing of the Mayflower—back to the day of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, who saw Prescott, Pomeroy, Stark, and Warren at Bunker Hill, who followed Washington and his generals from Dochester Heights to Yorktown, and saw the old Bay Colony become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. They had seen a nation in the making. They founded their government on the rights of the individual. ”

“ The gentleman from Alabama (Judge Hopkins) , has hinted to us that the Southern States may find it necessary to protect themselves against this action of Massachusetts, by legislation that shall touch her material interests. Threats of that kind, sir, have no terrors for Massachusetts. Her people will laugh to scorn all such idle threats, by whomsoever made. Massachusetts, with one million of intelligent people, with free schools, free churches, free labor, is competent to take care of her own material interests. ”

“ In 1630 the “Colony of Massachusetts Bay” was augmented by the arrival of a large number of settlers, many of them being people of education and refinement. The towns of Boston, Watertown, Roxbury, and Dorchester were founded. In August the first Court of Assistants met since the arrival of the colonists, and voted to build houses and to raise salaries for ministers. This year was made a bold step toward the establishment of civil liberty in the removing of the governing council from England to Massachusetts. In 1633 the settlement of Connecticut was begun. ”

“ Scarce a town is there—from Boston, with its magnificent column crowned with the statue of America at the dedication of which even the conquered Southron came to pay honor, to the humblest stone in rural villages—in which these monuments do not rise summer and winter, in snow and sun, day and night, to tell how universal was the response of Massachusetts to the call of the patriots' duty, whether it rang above the city's din or broke the quiet of the farm. ”

“ In intellectual tastes, as in all else, the Union showed well-marked divisions between New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the Southern States. New England was itself divided between two intel­lectual centres,—Boston and New Haven. The Mas­sachusetts and Connecticut schools were as old as the colonial existence; and in 1800 both were still alive, if not flourishing.
Society in Massachusetts was sharply divided by politics. In 1800 one half the population, repre­sented under property qualifications by only some twenty thousand voters, was Republican. ”

“ Let us dedicate it to the sacrifice that is required in these present days. Let us dedicate it to the hope of the future. Let us dedicate it to New England ideals—those ideals that have made Massachusetts one of the strong States of the Nation; strong enough so that in Revolutionary days we contributed far in excess of our portion of men and money to that great struggle; strong enough so that the whole Nation has looked to Massachusetts in days of stress for comfort and support. ”

“ Owing to the death of Mason, and the failure of Gorges's plans for Maine, the settlements north of Massachusetts were without a settled government, and the inhabitants do not seem to have had the ability to create a stable one for themselves, which was so marked a characteristic of those in Massachusetts and Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven. ”

“ Most of them were city-bred artisans, unfit for frontier life, who suffered greatly in the wilderness.
[12] The land was included in the limits laid down in the charter of Massachusetts; but that charter was granted after the Dutch were in actual possession of the upper Hudson. In 1786 a north and south line was drawn 82 miles west of the Delaware. Ownership of the land west of that line went to Massachusetts; but jurisdiction over the land, the right to govern, was given to New York. ”

“ Boston, in 1830 had but the poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Massachusetts were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport, centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life.
Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents, and did not tyrannize them. ”

“ The nation is so accustomed to admire her glorious deeds for freedom, that with this expectation their eyes are turned upon her. Massachusetts can do nothing in secret; Massachusetts can do nothing for herself alone; every one of her acts involves a hundred-fold responsibility. What Massachusetts does is felt from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But Massachusetts need only be herself, in order to be great. ”

“ Maine and even Nova Scotia, lately won from the French, were for the meantime also joined to Massachusetts.
Massachusetts was now a great colony and received a new charter. But things were not the same. The colony was now a royal province, and the Governor was no longer appointed by the people, but by the King. This chafed the people greatly, for they felt that their old freedom was gone. So for a time the history of Massachusetts was hardly more than a dreary chronicle of quarrels and misunderstandings between Governor and people. ”

“ Whereas, upon some reasons and grounds, there are to remove from this our Commonwealth and body of the Massachusetts in America divers of our loving friends and neighbors, freemen and members of Newtown, Dorchester, Watertown, and other places, who are resolved to transport themselves and their estates unto the river of Connecticut, there to reside and inhabit ”

“ George Allen, who in the same year offered to a meeting in Worcester, the most famous resolution of the whole ante-bellum period. Catching the spirit of his brother's words, he said: "Resolved, That Massachusetts wears no chains and spurns all bribes; that Massachusetts now, and will ever go, for free soil and free men, for free lips and a free press, for a free land and a free world." This was a good key-note, and when, six years later, in 1854 a slave-catcher came to this same city of Worcester, the citizens proved that they could raise the tune most readily ”

“ She must efface Lexington and Bunker Hill from her memory, and tear the old rock of Plymouth out from her bosom. These are prejudices which Massachusetts will not conquer, till the ocean ceases to wash her shore, and granite to harden her hills. Massachusetts has conquered a good many things, as Mr. Webster tells us. I think there are several other things we shall try our hand upon, before we conquer our prejudice in favor of the unalienable rights of man. ”

“ In particular I should have desired to point out the great pride Massachusetts has in her war record and the abundant way she has shown her gratitude for her service men and women, surpassing every other State. All this is a record not of promises, but of achievement. It is one in which the voters of the Commonwealth may well take a deep satisfaction. It is there, it stands, it cannot be argued away. No deception can pervert it. It endures. ”

“ Whenever human rights needed an advocate, the voice of Massachusetts resounded through the land. Whenever the cause education, enlightment, progress and virtue wanted a champion, Massachusetts pressed to the front. Everywhere within the vast bounderies of this great republic Massachusetts has planted colonies of her intelligence and learning. Whatever there can be in the past achievements to inspire a noble ambition, your State possesses it all. No people can have better reason to respect themselves than the people of this Commonwealth. ”

“ The foundation of Boston was succeeded by that of many other now famous towns of Massachusetts, and, ten years after the arrival of Conant at Salem, 21,000 emigrants are said to have settled in New England, one and all being Puritans, most of whom had been driven from their homes in their native land by the intolerance of the Government. Among those Puritans, however, were many who were unable to conform to the rigid practices or subscribe to the stern tenets of the Massachusetts churches, and to this fact was due the foundation of the first settlement in the neighboring state of Rhode Island. ”

“ Education was fostered from the beginning. Harvard College was founded in 1630, and in 1642 a system of public schools was organized. Having no charter to occasion disputes, Plymouth Colony prospered peacefully and monotonously, and its history is unmarred by records of religious narrowness; but Massachusetts Bay was in turmoil from the first, owing to its theocratic government and the stern and arbitrary conduct of the magistrates. It was the desire to escape from the yoke of the Massachusetts theocracy that led to the settlement of Rhode Island and Connecticut. ”

“ With the rise of Danby a more regular administration opened, and, as usual, the attention of the government was fixed upon Massachusetts by the clamors of those who demanded redress for injuries alleged to have been received at her hands. In 1674 the heirs of Mason and Gorges, in despair at the reoccupation of Maine, proposed to surrender their claim to the king, reserving one third of the product of the customs for themselves. The London merchants also had become restive under the systematic violation of the Navigation Acts. ”

“ At Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner, at Chickamauga, Knoxville, and Chattanooga,—under Hooker, and Meade, and Banks, and Gillmore, and Rosecrans, Burnside, and Grant; in every scene of danger and of duty, along the Atlantic and the Gulf, on the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Mississippi and the Rio Grande,—under Dupont and Dahlgren, and Foote, and Farragut and Porter,—the sons of Massachusetts have borne their part, and paid the debt of patriotism and valor. ”

“ We are reaching and maintaining the position in this Commonwealth where the property class and the employed class are not separate, but identical. There is a relationship of interdependence which makes their interests the same in the long run. Most of us earn our livelihood through some form of employment. More and more of our people are in possession of some part of the wages of yesterday, and so are investors. This is the ideal economic condition.
The great aim of our Government is to protect the weak—to aid them to become strong. Massachusetts is an industrial State. ”

“ The first government of Plymouth Colony was practically a town meeting. The first town to set up a local government in Massachusetts was Dorchester (1633) . Thus started, the system spread over all New England. Nothing was too petty to be acted on by the town meeting. For example, "It is ordered that all dogs, for the space of three weeks after the publishing hereof, shall have one leg tied up.... If a man refuse to tye up his dogs leg and he be found scraping up fish [used for fertilizer] in the corn field, the owner shall pay l2_s._, besides whatever damage the dog doth." ”