Too often we remember the American Revolution--- or, more narrowly, the “American founding”--- through a handful of men. We need not list their names; their justified fame has brought familiarity and, in recent years, an entire shelf of readable new biographies. It is easy to forget that American Independence and the establishment of republican governments’ underwritten constitutions was not the work of a few talented men. Under the basic principles of the time, both ending an oppressive regime and establishing a new one required the support of “the Body of the People.” As the Declaration of Independence said, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive” of the rights they were founded to secure, “it is the right of the people”---the people at large --- “to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.”
But how could “the people” be more than a rhetorical reference? How could they be active players not just in tearing down the old regime but, more difficult, in creating a new one? One group of Americans played a better-than-average role in answering those questions: the people of Massachusetts. They also left a wonderful paper trail that shows with great vividness how ordinary people--- farmers, grist mill owners and the like, not just lawyers and college graduates--- made unique contributions of enduring significance to the American Revolution and the institutions it created.