Published by The History Press
Charleston, SC
www.historypress.com
Copyright 2021 by Dave Kovaleski
All rights reserved
Front cover: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
First published 2021
E-Book year 2021
ISBN 978.1.4396.7383.6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021943540
Print Edition ISBN 978.1.4671.4900.6
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Worcester Common with the Soldiers Monument at center and City Hall in the background. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
From the American Revolution to the emancipation of slaves to the fight for womens rights, the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, and its people have been a catalyst for the seismic cultural and political shifts that shaped this nation in its first one hundred years. Simply put, the history of Worcester is the history of our nation.
Its narrative is told through patriots like Timothy Bigelow, who spearheaded a revolution to take back Worcester from British rule almost two years before the Declaration of Independence, and Isaiah Thomas, the founder of the groundbreaking newspaper the Massachusetts Spy, who was one of the first people to read the Declaration of Independence to a public audiencein Worcester.
There may be no one more influential in the Worcester story than Abby Kelley Foster, a reformer and pioneering voice against slavery and for womens rights who opened her home as a stop on the Underground Railroad and helped establish the first in a series of National Womens Rights Conventions in Worcester. Another central figure in the story of Worcester is Charles Allen, a Worcester congressman who helped form the anti-slavery Free Soil Party over the objections of a young congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln, who visited Worcester to stump for Whig presidential candidate Zachary Taylor. Lincoln went back home to Illinois from his Worcester trip with his resolve more steeled than ever to end slavery.
And one of the most radical voices during the tumultuous years leading up to the Civil War was Pastor Thomas Wentworth Higginson, one of John Browns Secret Six, who was one of the leaders of a raid on Boston to free a Black man who had been unjustly arrested. Higginson later commanded an all-Black brigade in the Civil War and fought alongside Colonel George Hull Ward, who died at Gettysburg, fighting for the Union with only one leg. Ward was just one of the Worcester-area heroes of the Civil War, along with the angel of the battlefield, Clara Barton, who went on to form the American Red Cross. Worcester was also a pioneer in the world of sports, with one of the first professional baseball teamsthe Worcester Brown Stockings, also known as the Worcesters and sometimes referred to as the Ruby Legs.
These stories seek to illuminate the people and events that laid the foundation on which the nation is built. Some of the nation-altering changes that sprang from Worcester in the first one hundred years of the republic may get lost in the shuffle of time, particularly outside of Worcester, but they should never be minimized or forgotten. A great deal of thanks goes to William Wallace, executive director of the Worcester Historical Museum, for his help and guidance with this book.
Here are the stories of the revolutionaries, reformers, pioneers and voices of change from Worcester who helped shape a nation.
THE WORCESTER REVOLUTION
The chain of events that led to the American Revolution is well documented, but one key conflict is often overlooked: the Worcester Revolution. Some seven months before Paul Reveres midnight ride to Lexington and almost two years before the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, the people of Worcester County gained their independence from the British. It culminated with a peaceful show of force on Worcester Common on the morning of September 6, 1774, when the British surrendered the courts after being deposed at every level of local government. It was a battle for liberty, freedom and the soul of the fledgling nation, but it was not fought with guns or weapons, and not a drop of blood was shed, as Ray Raphael detailed in his groundbreaking book The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord. It was fought with steely resolve and an unbending belief in what was right and justand it inspired others to take up the fight.
To understand how the seeds of revolution were planted, it is necessary to go back some ten years earlier to the end of the French and Indian War. French and British settlers, each aided by Native American tribes, fought over territories throughout the New World. The war lasted from 1754 to 1763 and ended with a British victory, as France agreed to surrender its territories east of the Mississippi River to the English. The decade-long war had not only been brutal and bloody, but it had also been expensive. Fighting this war while managing the thirteen colonies left England cash-strapped and in debt.
As a result, the British Parliament imposed several new taxes on the colonists, including the Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765. The former put a tax on sugar imports, while the latter taxed colonists on all manner of printed paper, whether it was for newspapers, legal documents, playing cards or anything else. This inflamed the colonists, particularly those in Massachusetts, as William Sweetzer Heywood documented in The History of Westminster, Massachusetts, published in 1893.
Violent hostility to the measure was manifested in various parts of the country. The stamp distributor in Boston, Andrew Oliver, was hung in effigy. A building supposed to be his office was torn to pieces. The house of his brother-in-law, Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson, afterwards governor, a strong supporter of kingly prerogative, was ransacked and stripped of its contents, while he and his family, hurrying out of town, barely escaped with their lives.
To circumvent the taxes, the colonists informed the British that they would start manufacturing their own goods. This angered the British, who responded with more taxes via the Townshend Acts of 1767. These acts taxed items like glass, lead, paint, paper and tea imported to the coloniesitems that the colonists would need in order to manufacture some of their own products. And the revenue, in part, would be used to pay the salaries of colonial governors and other leaders to ensure their loyalty to the Crowna payoff, if you will. But the scheme backfired and sparked widespread protests and boycotts of British goods throughout the colonies. In Worcester, a selectman named Joshua Bigelow brought to the March 1768 town meeting a proposal to boycott goods manufactured by the British. The same thing was happening in Boston. Heywood called it the unconquerable rage of the people.
