The events of 19 April 1775 — the warning ride of Paul Revere, the escape of John Han cock and Samuel Adams, the fights at Concord, Lexington and along the road between the two towns — are the commonplaces of American history. They belong to Boston in so far as the Boston revolutionary leaders were concerned in them, and as the British troops set forth from the town and returned to it defeated. The bat tle of Bunker Hill in Charlestown, 17 June 1775, bears much the same relation to history. On 3 July Washington arrived in Cambridge and took command of the American army, which from that time until the following March kept the British closely within the lines of the siege of Boston. Many of the inhabitants were permitted early to depart. Those who remained suffered hardships and privations besides wit nessing the destruction of much American prop erty, and such scenes of destruction as the use of the Old South meeting-house as a riding school. On the night of 4 March 1776 Wash ington made his memorable seizure of Dorches ter Heights (now South Boston), and on the 17th Howe with all his army and a large fol lowing of American Tories sailed for Halifax. Thereupon Washington entered the city, and even before the signing of the Declaration of Independence Boston ceased to be a scene of active warfare in the long conflict. Yet John Adams, Hancock and other Boston men bore an important part in the counsels of the young nation, in whose army and navy the town was fully represented.
The recovery from the effects of the siege was slow. To take the place of the departed Tories, and to occupy their spacious houses, there was in the remaining years of the 18th century a gradual immigration from the neigh bonn? country (where Tories were few) of families possessing wealth, energy and qualities of leadership. Local government by town-meet ing was resumed. In 1780 a State government for Massachusetts was formed, and John Han cock was chosen the first governor. In the gen eral readjustment maritime affairs took their previous place of importance. Cut off by Brit ish legislation from the West India trade, the Boston merchants looked farther abroad. The prospects of the fur trade on the northwest coast of America became known through Cap tain Cook's journals, published in 1784. In 1787 two small vessels, the Columbia and the Wash ington sailed from Boston to attempt this trade. Before her return in 1790 the Columbia had cir cumnavigated the globe— the first of American vessels to accomplish this feat. The furs col lected in the Northwest had been sold in China, and the example thus set led the way to an important trade with the East in which Boston long maintained the American supremacy. In such a seaport as Boston, Jefferson's Embargo and the War of 1812 were naturally unpopular. The Federalist party, moreover, had much of its best strength in Boston. The powerful mercantile class saw its best interests in a strongly centralized government and conditions of general stability. The opinions of this class
colored the influential feeling of the community to an extent which laid Boston open to charges of something very near disloyalty to the na tional government. The crippling of com merce, however, had the good effect of turning capital and energy toward manufacturing. In 1814 Francis C. Lowell, of Boston, made the first American use of the power-loom in his mill at Waltham at almost the same time with its introduction into England. The growth of the great cotton industry at Lowell followed rapidly upon this invention. With the spread of manufactures Boston itself was growing. In 1820 its population was over 43,000. The old form of town government had become un wieldly. For some years efforts had been mak ing toward the adoption of a city charter. In 1822 this was finally achieved.
From the time of this change in local gov ernment to the present, the outward growth of the city, as figures can speak for it, has been unbroken. In matters not computed in this way, the development has been in several im portant respects unique. With Boston, for ex ample, the Unitarian movement in America is especially associated. Before the town became a city there were divisions among the clergy of Congregationalism — practically the established order in New England — on various doctrinal points, notably that of the Trinity. Under the leadership of William Ellery Channing the aliberaP clergy and most of the older and more influential religious societies turned from Cal vinism to the new theology. Especially between 1820 and 1830, an acute controversy took place. Between 1840 and 1850 the Unitarian body it self was disturbed by differences between the more conservative element and the radicals, of whom Theodore Parker was a type. The result of the successive controversies has been a lib eralizing of religious beliefs not only in what came to be Unitarian Boston, but in the many Protestant bodies which now acknowledge an important debt to Unitarianism. Another far reaching movement which had its headquarters in •Boston was that of anti-slavery. Here in 1831 William Lloyd Garrison established his journal, the Liberator. A year later the first anti-slavery society in America was established in Boston. The agitation of the Abolitionists was for a long time opposed to the conservative class, which resorted even to mob violence in the hope of suppressing the reformers. But to Garrison and his associates it was due, as Mr. J. F. Rhodes has said, °that slavery became a topic of discussion at every northern fireside." When the Civil War broke out, the cause of the Union, perhaps even more than that of ab olition, enlisted the enthusiastic support of .the Boston community ; yet, as if in fulfilment of the work which Garrison began, it was from Boston that Governor Andrew sent forth the first regiment of colored troops raised in the North.