26. Forming New Governments: New Hampshire

After Lexington and Concord the separate provincial bodies faced two broad sets of decisions. One was external—whether or not to push for American independence from Great Britain. The other was internal— whether to keep the highly democratic nature of the new revolutionary bodies or to revert to an oligarchic regime resembling the colonial era. The problem of adopting a formal constitution was both internal and highly relevant to the question of American independence.

New England, in the forefront of American radical sentiment, pioneered the first self-made provincial constitution. Massachusetts asked the Continental Congress’ advice on what sort of governmental form to adopt, and on June 9, 1775, Congress simply told Massachusetts to aim at preserving the old pre-Coercive Act Massachusetts Charter.

A few months later, in mid-October, New Hampshire asked for advice on a new government. The powerful Governor Wentworth and other royally favored oligarchs had fled, and New Hampshire was being ruled by a makeshift committee of safety and by local town committees. While New Hampshire was asking for advice, the British burning of Falmouth, Maine, on October 16, enraged the colonists, and Congress advised New Hampshire on November 3 to establish a new government to operate for the duration of the conflict. This change of advice was the reflection of a change in composition of the congressional committee answering the request; archconservatives Thomas Johnson, John Jay, and James Wilson had been replaced by radicals John Adams, Samuel Ward, and Roger Sherman. (Despite the radical advice to New Hampshire to form a new government, however, reconciliation with Britain and resumption of the precrisis status quo were still held up as the ultimate ideal.)

In eager response, New Hampshire called a constitutional convention, which met at Exeter in December to form a new government. Violently objecting to this revolutionary step were freeholders from the ports of Dover and Portsmouth, who denounced the new constitution as a virtual declaration of independence from Britain. The Exeter convention followed on the heels of November elections that had swept away all freehold qualifications for voting and decreed that all resident taxpayers might vote. This important step toward democracy was not gained without a struggle, however, as at first the New Hampshire Provincial Congress had decided only to lower freehold qualifications for voting from ownership of property valued at fifty pounds to ownership of property worth twenty. It was forced to reconsider and abandon freehold restrictions by strong public pressure. Thus New Hampshire became the first province to put into practice one of the leading suffrage goals of the radical forces: voting rights for all taxpayers with no property restrictions, and admission of all militiamen and soldiers into the ranks of eligible voters.

A somewhat more important step taken by the Provincial Congress was to reform representation in its lower house, the assembly. New Hampshire apportionment was plagued not only by the inherent obsolescence of democratic representation; it had been further hobbled by the deliberate policy of the crown and the royal governor to repress the voice of the western frontier towns. Only 36 of the 155 towns in New Hampshire had been allowed to send delegates to the assembly; and even among these larger towns, delegate allocation was way out of balance. Thus, such of the larger westerly towns as Concord, Ispping, and Londonderry had no representation. In calling the late 1775 elections, the provincial congress rearranged the representation, but amidst the corrections were numerous new inequities and over representations of the new towns in the century-old manner of Massachusetts.

The new New Hampshire constitution was adopted by the congress on January 5, making it the first constitution enacted in and by an American colony. The major political power in the colony was thenceforth to be wielded by the elected House of Representatives; there was also to be an upper house, or Council, which was to be elected in such proportions as to weight it in favor of the eastern seaboard towns. The constitution was vague, but implied no property qualifications for voting, although there were property requirements for election to the legislature.

The new constitution fully satisfied few New Hampshiremen. It was attacked from the right by those who objected to any form of government that made reconciliation with Britain unlikely. It was attacked from the left by those who complained of the patently insufficient degree of democracy. Thus, sixteen far-western towns protested to the House, demanding better representation and the abolition of property qualifications for holding political office and the Council’s veto on actions of the House of Representatives. They also urged a bill of rights to guarantee the rights of the individual. The powers of the upper house did have a sinister aspect, since they resembled all too closely the powers of the old royal executive. Thus the town of Chesterfield, in extreme western New Hampshire, charged that the new government threatened “to settle down upon the dregs of monarchical and aristocratical tyranny, in imitation of their late British oppressor.” Or, as the sixteen far-western towns trenchantly put it: “It is a thousand pities, that when we are engaged in a bloody contest, merely to oppose arbitrary power without us, we should have occasion to contend against the same within ourselves.... We are determined not to spend our blood and treasure, in defending against the chains and fetters... abroad, in order to purchase... the like kind of our own manufacturing....” The western towns repeatedly stressed the revolutionary fact that they were at that point in a state of nature, and that by their natural right, they should form a constitutional convention.

Leading the popular agitation in the west was Hanover, in extreme northwest Grafton County, the seat of newly established Dartmouth College, the only institution of higher learning in the province. Dartmouth had been founded and Grafton County settled by New Light Congregationalists from revolutionary eastern Connecticut. Fresh from “separatist” struggles against established churches, the men from Connecticut were acutely alive to infringements upon their liberties or rights. Dartmouth College and its president, the Reverend Eleazer Wheelock, led the protest movement, which was popularly dubbed the “College Party.” In fact, the protest of the far-western towns had been adopted at Dartmouth College Hall, and authorship of the protest was attributed to the son-in-law of Wheelock, Dartmouth’s Professor Bezaleel Woodward.

The town of Hanover and other far western towns soon determined to make their protests effective by refusing to send delegates to the legislature and by refusing to vote for candidates for seats in such an abhorrent institution as the Council. Several of the towns pressed on and refused to pay taxes to New Hampshire altogether, preferring to conduct their affairs on their own.