HISTORY16 - New England

New England is composed of six states in the northeastern United States:  Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.  It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. 

The six New England states are shown here, along with principle cities.

Geography and Natural Landscape

The states of New England have a combined area of almost 72 thousand square miles, slightly larger than the state of Washington.  Maine alone constitutes nearly one-half of the total area of New England, yet is only the 39th-largest state, slightly smaller than Indiana. The remaining states are among the smallest in the U.S., including the smallest state - Rhode Island.

New England's long rolling hills, mountains, and jagged coastline are glacial land-forms resulting from the retreat of ice sheets during the last glacial period.

New England topography consists of the Appalachian Mountains, the New England highlands, and the seaboard lowlands. The Appalachian Mountains roughly follow the border between New England and New York.  They extend northwards through western Connecticut and Massachusetts as the Berkshire Mountains, into western Vermont as the Green Mountains, into New Hampshire as the White Mountains, and then into Maine and Canada as the Mahoosuc Mountains, forming a spine of Precambrian rock.

Mount Washington, in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, is the highest peak in the Northeast at 6,288.2 feet, although it is not among the ten highest peaks in the eastern United States.  It is the site of the second highest recorded wind speed on Earth (232 mph), and has the reputation of having the world's most severe weather.

Mount Washington is the highest mountain in New England at 6,288.2 feet.

New England’s seacoast, extending from southwestern Connecticut to northeastern Maine, is dotted with lakes, hills, marshes and wetlands, and sandy beaches.  Important valleys include the Connecticut River Valley and the Merrimack Valley.  The longest river is the Connecticut River, which flows 407 miles south from northeastern New Hampshire, through New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, before emptying into Long Island Sound, roughly bisecting the region.  Lake Champlain, which forms part of the border between Vermont and New York, is the largest lake, followed by Moosehead Lake in Maine and Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.

Climate

The climate of New England varies greatly across its 500 miles span from northern Maine to southern Connecticut:

Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and western Massachusetts have a humid climate.  The winters are long, cold, and heavy snow is common (most locations receive 60 to 120 inches of snow annually). The summer months are moderately warm, though summer is rather short and rainfall is spread through the year.

In central and eastern Massachusetts, northern Rhode Island, and northern Connecticut, the same humid conditions prevail, though summers are warm to hot, winters are shorter, and there is less snowfall (especially in the coastal areas where it is often warmer).

Southern and coastal Connecticut is the broad transition zone from the cold climates of the north to the milder subtropical climates to the south. The frost-free season is greater than 180 days across far southern/coastal Connecticut, coastal Rhode Island, and the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Winters also tend to be much sunnier in southern Connecticut and southern Rhode Island compared to the rest of New England.

Earliest People

The last great ice age began 60,000 to 70,000 years ago and grew to cover most of Canada and the northern U.S., including all of New England, peaking about 20,000 years ago.  A warming trend started about 18,000 years ago; as the climate warmed and the glaciers slowly melted, tundra began to cover much of the exposed land, followed by shrubs, trees, and vegetation.  Mammoths, mastodons, musk-oxen (?), large beaver, and caribou followed the retreating glaciers northward. 

About 12,000 years ago, early human hunters began following migrating herds of large animals into the New England area.  These people were probably descendants of people who migrated from Siberia across a land bridge in the Bering Strait into Alaska between about 47,000 years and 14,000 years ago and gradually spread southward to populate the Americas.

Over the eons, the climate, terrain, flora, and fauna evolved to provide more life-sustaining resources for humans.  Generation after generation of native New Englanders gradually progressed to a foraging life that included the hunting and trapping of small game, fishing, and gathering of edible wild plants.  The next step was agriculture that allowed natives to harvest their own food, including corn, beans and squash.  By the time of first European contact, the Native Americans were fundamentally stationary, but shifted dwellings several times a year based on seasonal weather.

Prominent Native American tribes in New England in the year 1600 included the Abenakis, Mi’kmaq, Penobscot, Pequots, Mohegans, Narragansetts, Pocumtucks, and Wampanoag.  They spoke a variety of Eastern Algonquian languages.

The Western Abenakis inhabited New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, as well as parts of Quebec and western Maine.  The Penobscot lived along the Penobscot River in Maine.  The Narragansetts and smaller tribes under their sovereignty lived in Rhode Island, west of Narragansett Bay, including Block Island. The Wampanoag occupied southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.  The Pocumtucks lived in Western Massachusetts, and the Mohegan and Pequot tribes lived in Connecticut.  The Connecticut River Valley linked numerous tribes culturally, linguistically, and politically.  

Wampanoag village before European contact.  Natives are preparing fish to dry.  Note spiral form housing.

Colonial Period

On April 10, 1606, King James I of England issued a charter for the Virginia Company, which comprised the London Company and the Plymouth Company.  These two privately funded ventures were intended to claim land in America for England, to conduct trade, and to return a profit.  

English explorer John Smith completed a thorough survey of America’s northeast coast in 1616 and named the land "New England.”  The name was officially sanctioned on November 3, 1620 when the charter of the Virginia Company of Plymouth was replaced by a royal charter for the “Plymouth Council for New England,” a joint-stock company established to colonize and govern the region. Remarkably, on November 11, 1620, the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower and established Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, beginning the history of permanent European settlement in New England.

Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock on November 11, 1620.  Lithograph by Currier and Ives, 1876.

The Pilgrims wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact before leaving the ship, and it became their first governing document.  The Massachusetts Bay Colony came to dominate the area and was established by royal charter in 1629, with its major town and port of Boston established in 1630.

Massachusetts Puritans began to settle in Connecticut as early as 1633 - organizing the Connecticut Colony in 1636. Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for heresy, led a group south, and founded the Colony of Rhode Island in 1636.  At this time, Vermont was yet unsettled, and the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were claimed and governed by Massachusetts.  New Hampshire would become an independent British colony in 1691.

Interactions with Native Americans

Even before the colonists arrived in 1620, disease had drastically reduced the number of Native Americans in New England.  It is estimated that by 1500, the Indian population of New England was in excess of 100,000. 

In 1498 the Italian explorer John Cabot, leading an English-sponsored expedition, first reported the Grand Banks, a series of underwater plateaus off Newfoundland and Novia Scotia, and one of the richest and largest fishing grounds in the world.

Note:  There is evidence of brief Viking explorations to the New World, perhaps New England, during the years 1000-1015.

In the early 1500s, Europeans began regular voyages to fish in the Grand Banks.  The frequency of these visits steadily increased and eventually included voyages along the coast of New England.  The European visitors brought with them diseases to which the Indians had no immunity, including smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, cholera, and bubonic plague.

Maine’s Indians, among the first to make contact with Europeans, were devasted by a typhus epidemic in 1586.  Between 1616 and 1619 a plague or “Great Dying” wiped out almost three quarters of the New England Native American population, with the devastation worse in coastal areas where mortality was as high as 95%.  When white settlers began arriving in 1620, they encountered very little of the indigenous population.  The Native Americans’ ability to resist the Europeans was very weak.

Relationships between the English colonists and surviving local Indian tribes alternated between peace and armed skirmishes, the bloodiest of which was the Pequot War in 1637.  On May 19, 1643, the New England British colonies joined together in a loose compact called "The United Colonies of New England.”  This confederation was designed largely to coordinate mutual defense, and it gained some importance during King Philip's War  which pitted the English colonists and their Indian allies against a widespread Indian uprising from June 1675 through April 1678, resulting in killings and massacres on both sides.

Dominion of New England

By 1686, English King James II had become concerned about the increasingly independent ways of the colonies, including their self-governing charters, their open flouting of the Navigation Acts, an English attempt to constrain trade and commerce with New England, and their growing military power.  James therefore established the “Dominion of New England,” an administrative union comprising all of the New England colonies.  The Union was imposed from England and was contrary to the rooted democratic tradition of the colonials, and it was highly unpopular among the colonists.

The Dominion significantly modified the charters of the colonies, including the appointment of Royal Governors to nearly all of them.  There was an uneasy tension between the Royal Governors, their officers, and the elected governing bodies of the colonies.  The governors wanted unlimited authority, and the different layers of locally elected officials would often resist them. In most cases, the local town governments continued operating as self-governing bodies, just as they had before the appointment of the governors.

In 1689, Bostonians overthrew Royal Governor Sir Edmund Andros. They seized Dominion officials and adherents to the Church of England during a popular and bloodless uprising.  This action ended the authority of the Dominion and local colony governments were restored, but tensions with England continued.

Intercolonial Wars

Between 1688 and 1763 New England was involved in four intercolonial wars  with New France (the French colonies in America - to the north and west of New England) during which New England was allied with the Iroquois Confederacy and New France was allied with the Wabanaki Confederacy.  A major cause of the wars was the desire of both England and France to take control of the interior territories of America.   Mainland Nova Scotia came under the control of New England, but both New Brunswick and most of Maine remained contested territory between New England and New France.  

In the last of these wars, the French and Indian War, the British finally decisively defeated the French in 1759 in the Battle at Quebec.  The war ended with the Treaty of 1763, securing Maine for the British and opening the Connecticut River Valley for British settlement into western New Hampshire and Vermont.  France surrendered virtually all of its colonial possessions in America.

In the Battle of Quebec, the opposing generals were killed:  Marquis de Montcalm of France and British Major General James Wolfe.  This painting by Benjamin West rather fancifully depicts the death of General Wolfe.

American War of Independence

In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act (a tax on printed materials) to finance the defense of their colonies.  Massachusetts colonists were the first to object and Boston emerged as the center of the conflict.  Local businessman Sam Adams formed the Sons of Liberty which incited a mob to ransack the royal stamp office.  Sam’s cousin John Adams, a local lawyer, defended the protest, under the principle of “no taxation without representation.”  Connecticut and Rhode Island joined the protest and when New England merchants threatened a boycott of British imports, the measure was repealed.

Growing constitutional and political differences strained the relationship between Great Britain and its American colonies.  Patriot protests against taxation without representation followed the Stamp Act and escalated into boycotts, which culminated in 1773 with the Sons of Liberty destroying a shipment of tea in Boston Harbor.  Britain responded by closing Boston Harbor and passing a series of punitive measures against Massachusetts.  In response, the American colonies formed a Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance.

British attempts to disarm the Massachusetts militia in Lexington and Concord led to open combat and a British defeat on April 19, 1775.  Colonial militia forces then besieged Boston, forcing a British evacuation in March 1776, and Congress appointed George Washington to command the Continental Army, representing all 13 American colonies, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.  Concurrently, the Americans failed decisively in an attempt to invade Quebec and raise insurrection against the British.  

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress voted for independence, issuing its declaration on July 4.  Sir William Howe launched a British counter-offensive, capturing New York City and leaving American morale at a low ebb. However, victories in New Jersey at Trenton and Princeton restored American confidence.  In 1777, the British launched an invasion from Quebec under John Burgoyne, intending to isolate the New England colonies. Instead of assisting this effort, Howe took his army on a separate campaign against Philadelphia, and Burgoyne was decisively defeated at Saratoga, New York in October 1777.

America's War of Independence began on April 19, 1775 at Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts with a skirmish between British troops and a Colonial militia - "the shot heard round the world."

Burgoyne's defeat had dramatic consequences.  France formally allied with the Americans and entered the war in 1778.  The British mounted a "Southern strategy" led by Charles Cornwallis which hinged upon a Loyalist uprising, but too few came forward. Cornwallis suffered reversals in South Carolina at King's Mountain and Cowpens. He retreated to Yorktown, Virginia, intending an evacuation, but a decisive French naval victory deprived him of an escape.  A Franco-American army led by the Comte de Rochambeau and George Washington then besieged Cornwallis' army and, with no sign of relief, he surrendered in October 1781.

In early 1782, the English Parliament voted to end all offensive operations in America, but the war against France continued overseas.  On September 3, 1783, the belligerent parties signed the Treaty of Paris in which Great Britain agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the United States of America and formally end the war.

New England in the New Nation

With the ratification of the new American constitution, the 13 colonies became states of the United States of America.  This included Connecticut (1788), Massachusetts (1788), New Hampshire (1788), and Rhode Island (1790).

Vermont was admitted to statehood in 1791 after settling long-standing land grant disputes with New York.  The territory of Maine had been a part of Massachusetts, but it was granted statehood in 1820 as part of the Missouri Compromise, the new U.S. government’s attempt to balance slave and free states.  

Maine (free state) and Missouri (slave state) were admitted to the U.S. together under the Missouri Compromise f 1820.

New Englander John Adams, a leader of the American Revolution that achieved independence from Great Britain, became America’s first Vice President, under George Washington, and the new nation’s second President.

After the Revolutionary War, the colonies of New England ceased to function as a unified political unit but remained a defined cultural region.  By 1784, all of the states had taken steps towards the abolition of slavery, with Vermont and Massachusetts introducing total abolition in 1777 and 1783, respectively.  The nickname "Yankeeland" was sometimes used to denote the New England area, especially among Southerners and the British.

Important personages from this period hailed from New England.  Leading statesmen included Daniel Webster.  Notable literary and intellectual figures included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, George Bancroft, and William H. Prescott.

Industrial Revolution

New England was key to the industrial revolution in the United States. The Blackstone Valley, running through Massachusetts and Rhode Island, has been called the birthplace of America's industrial revolution.   In 1787, the first cotton mill in America was founded in the North Shore seaport of Beverly, Massachusetts as the Beverly Cotton Manufactory.  Technological developments and achievements from the Manufactory led to the development of more advanced cotton mills, including Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.  Towns such as Lawrence, Massachusetts; Lowell, Massachusetts; Woonsocket, Rhode Island; and Lewiston, Maine became centers of the textile industry following the innovations at Slater Mill and the Beverly Cotton Manufactory.

Sketch of the Beverly Cotton Manufactory, the first cotton mill in America.

The Connecticut River Valley became a crucible for industrial innovation, particularly the Springfield Armory, the primary manufacturer of U.S. firearms, pioneering such advances as interchangeable parts and the assembly line which influenced manufacturing processes all around the world.  From early in the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth, the region surrounding Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut served as the United States' epicenter for advanced manufacturing, drawing skilled workers from all over the world.

The rapid growth of textile manufacturing in New England between 1815 and 1860 caused a shortage of workers.  Recruiters were hired by mill agents to bring young women and children from the countryside to work in the factories.  Between 1830 and 1860, thousands of farm girls moved from rural areas where there was no paid employment to work in the nearby mills, such as the famous Lowell Mill Girls.  As the textile industry grew, immigration, especially Irish and French Canadians, also grew. By the 1850s, immigrants began working in the mills.

New England then was the most industrialized part of the U.S.  By 1850, New England accounted for well over a quarter of all manufacturing value in the country and over a third of its industrial workforce.  It was also the most literate and most educated section of the country.

During the same period, New England and areas settled by New Englanders (upstate New York, Ohio's Western Reserve, and the upper midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin) were the center of the strongest abolitionist and anti-slavery movements in the United States, coinciding with the religious revival called the “Protestant Great Awakening.”  When the anti-slavery Republican Party was formed in the 1850s, all of New England, became strongly Republican.  New England remained solidly Republican until Catholics began to mobilize behind the Democrats, especially in 1928, and up until the 1950s and 1960s when the Republican party realigned its policy towards a Southern strategy. This led to the end of "Yankee Republicanism" and began New England's relatively swift transition into a consistently Democratic stronghold.

20th Century and Beyond

The flow of immigrants continued at a steady pace from the 1840s, until cut off by World War I.  The largest numbers came from Ireland and Britain before 1890, and after that from Quebec, Italy, and Southern Europe.  Immigrants filled the ranks of factory workers, craftsmen, and unskilled laborers. The Irish assumed a larger and larger role in the Democratic Party in the cities and statewide, while the rural areas remained Republican.  Yankees left the farms, which never were highly productive; many headed west, while others became professionals and businessmen in the New England cities.

The Great Depression in the United States of the 1930s hit New England hard, with high unemployment in the industrial cities. The Democrats appealed to factory workers and especially Catholics, pulling them into the New Deal coalition and making the once-Republican region into one that was closely divided. However, the enormous spending on munitions, ships, electronics, and uniforms during World War II caused a burst of prosperity in every sector.

New England lost most of its factories, starting with the loss of textiles in the 1930s, and getting worse after 1960. The economy was radically transformed after World War II.  The factory economy practically disappeared.  Once-bustling New England communities fell into economic decay following the flight of the industrial base.  The textile mills one by one went out of business from the 1920s to the 1970s.  For example, the Crompton Company, after 178 years in business, went bankrupt in 1984, costing the jobs of 2,450 workers in five states.  The major reasons were cheap imports, the strong dollar, declining exports, and a failure to diversify.  The shoe industry subsequently left New England as well.

What remains is very high technology manufacturing, such as jet engines, nuclear submarines, pharmaceuticals, robotics, scientific instruments, and medical devices.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology invented the format for university-industry relations in high tech fields and spawned many software and hardware firms, some of which grew rapidly.  By the 21st century, New England had become famous for its leadership roles in the fields of education, medicine, medical research, high-technology, finance, and tourism.

New England is a supplier of natural resource products such as granite, lobster, and codfish.  Other food product exports include cranberries, potatoes, and maple syrup.  About half of New England’s exports consist of industrial and commercial machinery, such as computers and electrical equipment.  The service industry is important, including financial and insurance services; and architecture, building, and construction services.  In 2018 the GDP of New England was $1.1 trillion.

New England is home to four of the eight Ivy League universities:  Harvard (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Yale (Saybrook, Connecticut), Brown (Providence, Rhode Island), and Dartmouth (Hanover, New Hampshire); and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts).

Eight former presidents of the United States were born in New England, however only five are usually affiliated with the area. They are, in chronological order:  John Adams (Massachusetts), John Quincy Adams (Massachusetts), Franklin Pierce (New Hampshire), Chester A. Arthur (born in Vermont, affiliated with New York), Calvin Coolidge (born in Vermont, affiliated with Massachusetts), John F. Kennedy (Massachusetts), George H. W. Bush (born in Massachusetts, affiliated with Texas) and George W. Bush (born in Connecticut, affiliated with Texas).

New England’s population was about 15 million people in 2018 (total U.S. was 327 million).  Massachusetts is the most populous state at almost 7 million and Vermont is the least populous at only about 630 thousand.  New England’s racial constituency is white, 83.4%, and Hispanic/Latino, 10.2%.  Boston is New England's largest city with a 2018 population of 695,000.  Greater Boston is the largest metropolitan area, with nearly a third of New England's population, over 4.6 million people.

Skyline of the city of Boston, the largest city in New England.