the land; for although he succeeded in procuring the appointment
of officers who supported his claims, and although decrees
were issued in his favour, the tenants, who contended that they
had profited nothing from what his grandfather had done or
that they were on lands which Wheelwright had bought from
the Indians, resisted the enforcement of those decrees. The
contest, however, especially for the waste lands, was continued
by Mason, his heirs and assigns until near the close of the 18th
century.
From 1686 to 1689 New Hampshire formed a part of the Dominion of New England, which, after the first few months, was under Sir Edmund Andros as governor-general. There being no provincial authority in New Hampshire at the close of this period, a convention of the leading citizens of its four towns attempted to establish one. Upon the failure of this attempt, a temporary nominal union with Massachusetts was formed, but in 1692 Samuel Allen, the assign of Mason, caused a royal government to be established with his son-in-law, John Usher, as lieutenant-governor, and during the remainder of the colonial era New Hampshire was separate from Massachusetts except that from 1699 to 1741 the two had the same governor. The boundary between the two provinces was yet to be determined. Massachusetts proposed to confine New Hampshire to less than one-fourth its present area; that is, on the west to a line drawn 3 m. east of the south course of the Merrimac and on the north-east to a line drawn north-west from the source of the Salmon Falls river. New Hampshire claimed for its southern boundary a line drawn west from a point 3 m. north of the mouth of the Merrimac and for its upper eastern boundary a line running north by slightly west from the source of the Salmon Falls river. Both provinces granted townships within the disputed territory; Massachusetts arrested men there who refused to pay taxes to its officers, and sought to defer the settlement of the dispute. New Hampshire, being on the more friendly terms with the home government, finally petitioned the king to decide the matter, and in 1737 a royal order referred it to a commission to be composed of councillors from New York, Nova Scotia and Rhode Island. This body agreed upon the present eastern boundary but evaded deciding the southern one. Both parties then appealed to the king, and in 1741 the king in council confirmed the decision of the commission in regard to the eastern boundary and decided that the southern boundary should be a line corresponding to the course of the Merrimac from 3 m. north of its mouth to 3 m. north of Pawtucket Falls, at its most southerly bend, and thence due west to the next English province. This gave New Hampshire much more territory on the south than it had claimed. But the western boundary was not yet defined, and as early as 1749 a controversy over that arose with New York. New Hampshire asked for the territory west to within 20 m. of the Hudson river, or as far as the western boundaries of Massachusetts and Connecticut, while New York claimed east to the Connecticut river. Within a few years the governor of New Hampshire granted in the disputed territory 138 townships which were rapidly settled by those whom it was the duty of the province to protect. But there was a reluctance to incur the expense of a contest with so powerful a neighbour as New York, and in 1764 that province procured from the king in council a royal order declaring the western boundary of New Hampshire to be the western bank of the Connecticut river. The controversy, however, continued for some years thereafter (see Vermont).
From 1676 to 1759 New Hampshire suffered greatly from the Indians, and the fear of them, together with the boundary disputes and Mason’s claims, retarded settlement. But where these troubles were removed the population increased rapidly, and at the outbreak of the War of Independence the province had about 80,000 inhabitants, the great majority of whom were with the patriot or Whig party during that struggle. By June 1775 the once popular governor, Sir John Wentworth, was a refugee; on the 5th of January 1776 the fifth Provincial Congress established a provisional government; on the 15th of the following June the first Assembly elected under that government declared for independence; and on the 16th of August 1777 the important victory at Bennington was won by New Hampshire and Vermont troops under the command of General John Stark, who had a commission from New Hampshire. Six states had ratified the Federal constitution when the New Hampshire convention met at Exeter on the 13th of February 1788, to accept or reject that instrument, and so great was the opposition to it among the delegates from the central part of the state that after a discussion of ten days the leaders in favour of ratification dared not risk a decisive vote, but procured an adjournment in order that certain delegates who had been instructed to vote against it might consult their constituents. Eight states had ratified when the convention reassembled at Concord on the 17th of June, and four days later, when a motion to ratify was carried by a vote of 57 to 47, adoption by the necessary nine states was assured. The War of Independence left the state heavily burdened with debt and many of its citizens threatened with a debtor’s prison. As a means of relief a number of citizens demanded of the legislature the issue of paper money equal in amount to the state’s debt, and as this was refused, an armed mob numbering about 200 surrounded the meeting-house in Exeter in which the legislature was in session, towards evening on the 20th of September 1786. But General John Sullivan (1740–1795) was at that time president of the state, and on the next day he, with 2000 or more militia and volunteers, captured 39 of the leaders and suppressed the revolt without bloodshed.
National elections in New Hampshire were carried by the Federalists until 1816, except in 1804 when President Thomas Jefferson won by a small majority; but within this period of Federalist supremacy in national politics the Democrat-Republicans elected the governor from 1805 to 1812 inclusive except in 1809. In 1816 the Democrats won both state and national elections; and out of the transition from Federalist to Democratic control, which was effected under the leadership of William Plumer (1759–1850), a prominent politician in New Hampshire for half a century, a United States senator from 1802 to 1807 and governor of the state in 1812–1813 and 1816–1819, arose the famous Dartmouth College Case. As the trustees of this institution were Federalists with the right to fill vacancies in their number, the Democrats attempted to gain control by converting it into a state university and increasing the number of trustees, but when the case reached the Supreme Court of the United States that body pronounced (1819) the charter a contract which the Federal constitution forbade the state to violate. Heretofore the Federalist régime had taxed the people to support the Congregational Church, but now the Baptists, Methodists and Universalists joined the Democrats, and in 1819 this state support was abolished by the “Toleration Act.” Because of Daniel Webster’s arguments in the Dartmouth College Case, and because his party had favoured the support of the Congregational Church by public taxation, he became very unpopular in this his native state. Accordingly, his denunciation of President Andrew Jackson’s bank policy added strength to the Jacksonian Democracy, and, later, his Whig connexions were the greatest source of the Whig party’s weakness in New Hampshire. John Quincy Adams was an intimate friend of William Plumer, the Democratic leader, and carried the state both in 1824 and 1828, but a Jackson man was elected governor in 1827, 1829, 1830 and 1831. The Whigs never won a national or state election, and often their vote was only about one-half that of the Democrats. But the Democrats broke into two factions in 1846 over the question of slavery (see Hale, John Parker); the American or “Know-Nothing” party elected a governor in 1855 and 1856; and then control of the state passed to the Republican party which has held it to the present. After 1890 the railway corporations were charged with a corrupt domination of the legislature and the courts, and in 1906 a “Lincoln Republican” movement was organized under the leadership of the well-known novelist Winston Churchill (b. 1871), with the object of freeing the state from this influence.
