It also shared more in the larger life of the empire. Several times, notably in the unfortunate expeditions against Jamaica (1702), against Canada (1709-11) and Cartagena (1740), Massa chusetts troops played an honourable part, and to that colony must be given the main credit for the capture of Louisburg from the French in 1745. In the French and Indian war her soldiers also took part in the expedition against Oswego, took the chief part in the capture of Acadia, and also shared in the Crown Point and second Louisburg attacks. Meanwhile, the colony had been making rapid strides in wealth and was becoming markedly self conscious politically. There had been serious trouble with the currency earlier in the century, owing to the colonists' insistence, perhaps necessary, upon the use of too large amounts of paper money, in which it was opposed by the English government. This trouble culminated in a crisis, including rioting, under Governor Belcher in 174o but the repayment to the colony by England of about £183,000 in sterling to cover its expenses in the capture of Louisburg (1745) enabled it to retire about L2,000,000 of its depreciated bills and establish itself on a firm money basis, a fact of great importance in its subsequent commercial development. Fortunes were accumulating, business operations were growing much larger in scale, Harvard had become liberal in thought, and Connecticut, not Massachusetts, had now become the last stand of the old religious ideas.
During the war there had been much smuggling and trading with the enemy, and the British government became more strin gent in trying to enforce trade regulations. In 1756 it introduced a system of general search warrants, such as Massachusetts itself had had in force for eight years. Merchants who saw their profits endangered protested, and in 1761 James Otis made his famous and impassioned attack in court upon these Writs of Assistance, the strict legality of which was hardly open to question. Follow ing the peace of 1763 and the need for readjusting the cost of maintaining and defending the empire, came the fatal attempts to solve the problem. In 1765 Massachusetts was prominent among the colonies which resisted the Stamp Act. Samuel Adams of Boston, one of the ablest agitators and propagandists whom any country has produced, set himself to keep alive the flames of dis content, having made up his mind that, the colonies should be wholly independent of England. In his skilful manipulation of public opinion and emotion, and in his organization of the Com mittees of Correspondence, he probably did more than any other man to arouse the opposition of certain elements against England and to prevent the possibility of any reconciliation. In 1768 royal troops were stationed in Boston and on March 5, 177o, a clash occurred between them and some citizens of whom five were killed. The soldiers had been constantly subjected to taunts and abuse and on the whole had behaved well. In this incident a small mob, led by a half-breed negro, had been the aggressors. Officers and men at once surrendered to the civil authorities and upon trial by the local court were acquitted, except two who received slight penalties for technical homicide. Samuel Adams and his party made the most possible of the "atrocity" and dubbed it "the Bos ton massacre." In 1773 occurred the "Boston tea party" in which a band of citizens disguised as Indians boarded the ships carry ing the tea and threw it overboard. In retaliation for this wanton destruction of private property (not considered necessary in any other colony), Parliament passed the Boston Port bill, closing the port to commerce. The increasing agitation and violence of the mobs during this decade presaged more serious armed conflict. Gen. Gage was made governor and in April 1775 sent an armed force to Lexington and Concord to destroy military stores gath ered at those places by the Opposition. The force was attacked and completely routed by the country people, and Gage was practically besieged in Boston. In an effort to release himself the battle of Bunker Hill was fought June 17, resulting in a costly but psychologically complete victory for the Americans. The British loss was exceedingly heavy. In July Washington arrived
at Cambridge to take command of all the troops, and soon after the scene of war shifted from Massachusetts and no important military action occurred within it for the rest of the struggle. During the whole of it Massachusetts contributed more liberally than any other colony in men and money though military leader ship, except for Generals Henry Knox and Benjamin Lincoln, passed to other hands.
Two years of prosperity following the signing of peace in 1783 soon gave place to serious financial difficulty, particularly among the poor and heavily taxed farming class. Violence occurred in most counties and became especially serious in the western ones. Owing largely to the failure of the legislature either to suppress the insurrection or to redress grievances, the revolt gained head way. Many ex-Revolutionary soldiers and officers took part in it, among others Capt. Daniel Shays, and owing to his leadership the movement became known as Shays's rebellion. It was finally put down by aid of heavy forces under Gen. Lincoln. The inci dent was important as frightening the moneyed classes into accepting more readily the new Federal constitution. This was ratified by only a very small majority in Massachusetts which was considered a "pivotal state." After its adoption the State became strongly Federalist in politics. A group of its leading politicians, known as the "Essex Junto" and including such men as Fisher Ames, George Cabot, Timothy Pickering, John Lowell and others (all opponents of democracy and strongly reactionary) long dominated the politics of the State. They were utterly out of sympathy with the principles of the party in national power after 180o and with the policy of war against England in 1812. On the whole, the part played by the State in that war was in glorious. As a commercial community it had suffered heavily from the embargo measures preceding it, but it is difficult to justify the extreme sectionalism and anti-nationalism displayed when the nation was actually at war. Although New England held most of the specie of the country it refused, in the main, to subscribe to the war loans and Boston took only $75,000 of that of 1813 as compared with $7,000,000 subscribed in Pennsylvania. Although great numbers of its citizens supported the Govern ment, the policy of the State as a whole was distinctly obstruc tionist and disloyal. Rumours of secession, which had been heard at intervals from 180o, seemed to find confirmation with the con vening of the Hartford Convention, mainly dominated by Massa chusetts, in 1814. The more sober element prevailed, however, and the convention adjourned doing but little harm except to the reputations of those who had attended. The State also opposed the Mexican War as it had the policy leading to it. The period 1830-40 witnessed great social changes, among others the rise of the factory system and the substitution to a great extent of im ported foreign for native American labour. It was a period of intellectual ferment and of social experiment. Utopian com munities, such as Brook Farm, were undertaken, and although they all ended in failure, they left their mark on the thought and idealism of the times. Under the lead of Wm. Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, Massachusetts was in the van of the Aboli tionist movement. Such citizens as C. F. Adams and Charles Sumner took leading parts in the formation of the Free Soil Party, and when at last the Civil War came, the State entered the contest wholeheartedly, rallying to the support of the Fed eral Government in a spirit utterly different from that which had marked the two preceding ones. It has been stated that of the 159,165 men (including re-enlistments) whom the State sent to the war less than 7,000 were drafted. After the war the Repub licans maintained a fairly continuous control until 1911. The in dustrialization of the State and the increasing domination of the cities by newer immigrant peoples has strengthened the Demo crats, and, except for the post World War era (1916-1929), they have since dominated the State. In 1928 Massachusetts was among the few supporters of Alfred E. Smith, and in 1932 and 1936 she voted decisively for Roosevelt.