Unlike Virginia, New York or Pennsylvania, in 1790, most of the residents of Massachusetts were of English descent. They were also Protestant. Most were Congregationalists. Others were Quakers, Baptists or Methodists. A few Catholics lived in Boston or other ports.[1] Massachusetts Federalists led the party in New England.
Despite homogeneity of descent and religion, farmers in western Massachusetts disliked the overwhelming influence Federalists from the east had in national affairs. Mathew Carey appealed to this group in the Olive Branch. Nevertheless, farmers supported the Federalists opposition to Jefferson’s Embargo and the War of 1812.[2]
By 1790, Massachusetts was losing population and national influence. The land was barely arable and difficult to farm. Mathew Carey called the state the “nursery of men” noting emigration of well-educated citizens to New York and the west.[3] The state did not welcome immigrants. Its population failed to increase at the rate of states in the mid-Atlantic and South. Massachusetts lost representation in the House of Representatives, and with that, political power.
By the first decade of the nineteenth century, Massachusetts Federalists favored limits on immigration and restrictions on expansion in the West. Most important, they promoted repealing the three-fifths clause of the Constitution.[4]
Constitutional Convention delegates James Wilson and Roger Sherman proposed the three-fifths clause. It was a compromise between Northern and Southern states. Three-fifths of the slaves from the South were counted as part of the population. This census data affected representation in the House, the Electoral College and taxation.
A group of prominent Massachusetts Federalists became known the “Essex Junto.” John Hancock first used the term when a group of Federalists, most from Essex County near Boston, opposed the adoption of a proposed Massachusetts state constitution in 1778. John Adams also used the term. The name was eventually applied to New England’s prominent Federalists.
The leaders of the Essex Junto were born between 1743 and 1758. They were natives of eastern Massachusetts: Essex County, Boston, and its environs. Their families, prominent and prosperous, came from the ruling class of Massachusetts, which was comprised of merchants, judges, Congregational clergymen and lawyers.[5]
Timothy Pickering, George Cabot, Fisher Ames and Theophilus Parsons were the Junto’s leaders.
Next:
Who were these New England Federalists ? (continued)
Look for it Monday, July 22.
[1] James M. Banner, Jr. To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts 1789-1815, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970) 6-7.
[2] Banner, Hartford Convention, 8.
[3] Mathew Carey, Carey’s American Pocket Atlas (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1796) 14-15.
[4] Banner, Hartford Convention, 13.
[5] David H. Fischer, “The Myth of the Essex Junto” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series V. 21, N. 2 (April, 1964) 196.
