A Map Of New England...
The name "New England" 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. As the first colonists arrived in Plymouth, they wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact, their first governing document. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, which would come to dominate the area, 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 in as early as 1633. Roger Williams, banished from Massachusetts for heresy, led a group south, and founded Providence, in the area that later became the state 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.
History[]
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. New England is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada (the Canadian Maritimes and Quebec) and the state of New York.
In one of the earliest English settlements in North America, Pilgrims from England first settled in New England in 1620, to form Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, the Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony. Over the next 130 years, New England fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their native allies in North America. In the late 18th century, the New England Colonies initiated the resistance to the British Parliament's efforts to impose new taxes without the consent of the colonists. The Boston Tea Party was a protest that angered Great Britain, which responded with the "Intolerable Acts", stripping the colonies of self-government. The confrontation led to open warfare in 1775, the expulsion of the British from New England in spring 1776, and the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.
Some of the first movements of American literature, philosophy, and education originated in New England. The region played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery, and was the first region of the United States to be transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Today, New England is a major world center of education, high technology, insurance, and medicine. Boston is its cultural, financial, educational, medical and transportation center.
Each state is principally subdivided into small incorporated municipalities known as New England towns, which are often governed by town meeting. The only unincorporated territory in New England exists in the sparse, northern regions of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Since 1970, voters have more often supported liberal candidates at the state and federal level than those of any other region in the United States.
New England is the only one of the United States Census Bureau's nine regional divisions whose name does not derive from its geography, and it is the only multi-state region with clear, consistent boundaries. It maintains a strong sense of cultural identity set apart from the rest of the country, although the terms of this identity are often contested, combining Puritanism with liberalism, agrarian life with industry, and isolation with immigration.
By 1686, 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, and their growing military power. He therefore established the Dominion of New England, an administrative union comprising all of the New England colonies. In 1688, the former Dutch colonies of New York and New Jersey were added to the Dominion. The union, imposed from the outside and contrary to the rooted democratic tradition of the region, 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. After the Glorious Revolution in 1689, Bostonians overthrew the royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros. They seized dominion officials and adherents to the Church of England during a popular and bloodless uprising. These tensions eventually culminated in the American Revolution, boiling over with the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1775. The first battles of the war were fought in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, later leading to the Siege of Boston by continental troops. In March of 1776, British forces were compelled to retreat from Boston.
18th, Century-21st Century[]
New England was key to the industrial revolution in the U.S. In 1787, the first cotton mill in America, the Beverly Cotton Manufactory, was founded in the North Shore seaport of Beverly, Massachusetts. The Manufactory was also considered the largest cotton mill of its time. Technological developments and achievements from the Manufactory led to the development of more advanced cotton mills, including Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The Blackstone Valley, running through Massachusetts and Rhode Island, has been called the birthplace of America's industrial revolution. Towns such as Lawrence and Lowell in Massachusetts, Woonsocket in Rhode Island, and Lewiston in Maine became centers of the textile industry following the innovations at Slater Mill and the Beverly Cotton Manufactory.
The rapid growth of textile manufacturing in New England 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 to work in the mills. Farmers’ daughters left their homes to aid their families financially, save for marriage, and widen their horizons. Stagecoach and railroad services made it easier for large numbers of workers to travel from the country to the city. The majority of female workers came from farming towns in northern New England. As the textile industry grew, immigration also grew. As the number of Irish workers in the mills increased, the number of young women working in the mills decreased. Mill employment of women caused a population boom in urban centers. New England was, as a whole, the most industrialized part of the U.S.; by 1850, it 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 region in the country.
New England and areas settled from New England, like Upstate New York, Ohio's Western Reserve and the upper midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin, proved to be the center of the strongest abolitionist sentiment in the country. Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were New Englanders, and the region was home to anti-slavery politicians like John Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, and John P. Hale. When the anti-slavery Republican Party was formed in the 1850s, all of New England, including areas that had previously been strongholds for both the Whig and the Democratic Parties, became strongly Republican, as it would remain until the early 20th century, when immigration would begin to turn the formerly solidly Republican states of Lower New England towards the Democrats.
The region had problems transitioning from manufacturing to other industries. In 2000, New England had two of the ten poorest cities (by percentage living below the poverty line) in the U.S.: the state capital cities of Providence, Rhode Island and Hartford, Connecticut. They were no longer in the bottom ten by 2010. On April 2nd, of 2010 Secretary of State Hilary Clinton merged New England with the Upper Mid-Atlantic States, making New Jersey and New York a part of New England as well as Pennsylvania that was merged 12 days later. Despite these merging, people of the United States still believed New England to be the way it always has been.
Nazi Invasion[]
New England Under Nazi Occupation With only Upstate New York Left Un Occupied...
- Main article: Occupied New England
After the National Guards forces were engaged with the SS In the North, the SS Initiated their main trap, Operation Swordfish, known to Hitler as Blitzkrieg America. The German Luftwaffe managed to take off from German Aircraft Carriers off the coast and launch a huge air invasion of New England reducing half of the coastal cities, including Boston, Atlantic City, and New York, into a State of solid ruble. The Luftwaffe even managed to attack cities in the South such as Norfolk Virgina, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, and Baltimore Maryland. While the Air strikes were keeping the coast line distracted the Germans launched a full scale Amphibious Invasion on the coastlines, 12 Vehicles in landed In Main, 14 landed in New Jersey, 7 landed in Long Island, another 4 landed in Boston. Within minutes the beach heads fell without a single shot being fired. Civilians close to the shore, evacuated in a state of panic, while the German Invaders entered the cities clearing them out one block at a time, until they got to the action.
The National Guard units now concerned turned toward the coast, but soon were butchered and trapped between the Germans to the East, and Invading German forces to the South. With rarely anymore reserves, the U.S. National guard retreated into the Upstate region of New York, but were hit by the German North Army from the North. The attack cost the United States National guard many lives, also leading to the destruction of their head quarters in Reese New Jersey. The weakening National guards men allowed 2 of the United Sates most industrial states, to become Occupied by the Nazi Invasion including another that was finished off 2 hours later on 8:19Pm, during the fall of November 9th.
New England Under Nazi Rule[]
- Main article: Hiyarm