Scars of Revolt: The Revolution’s First Year in Massachusetts

Join Dr. Len Travers, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth for this installment of Understanding Our History: A Lifelong Learner series.  This series is a reading and lecture series that explores little-known or often misunderstood topics in United States History. Participants can obtain the reading material here or at the Library’s circulation desk.

1775 was a bad year for Massachusetts. Boston was an occupied town, the port closed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were put out of work. Poverty skyrocketed. Outside Boston, the countryside was in open revolt against British authority, and in some places civil war loomed as armed partisans squared off. That was before the shooting began. By the end of the year, two Massachusetts seacoast towns were in ashes, many others threatened. More than 1,000 Massachusetts men had been killed or wounded in battles from Lexington to Quebec. Men, women, and children suffered and succumbed to exposure, smallpox, dysentery, and other diseases. Thousands were displaced. Families were shattered, the normal economy of the colony all but wrecked. 

This is not the traditional story one usually hears of the Revolution’s opening year. For all its transformative and positive effects, the first year of the war for independence brought real destruction, suffering, fear, and injustice to the people of Massachusetts, more than for the rest of the war. While we celebrate Patriots Day, we should also seek to understand how ordinary people experienced the trauma of revolt.

Len Travers is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. He is the author of Hodges’ Scout: A Lost Patrol of the French and Indian War, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press; “Casualty of Revolution: The Sad Case of Elizabeth Smith of Boston” for the online Journal of the American Revolution; and a chapter for Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad edited by Dr. Timothy Walker, published by The University of Massachusetts Press. He has a new book coming out this spring: The Notorious Edward Low: Pursuing the Last Great Villain of Piracy’s Golden Age.