In the fall of 1774, Massachusetts farmers won a revolution months before the war broke out at Lexington and Concord. While every American fifth-grader knows about the shot heard ’round the
world, almost no one knows the story of the nearly bloodless uprising that freed the colony from British control outside of Boston. This is the story of the Forgotten Revolution — an organized and decisive overthrow of the Crown’s authority. American history, however, has nearly forgotten it.
The British Parliament lit the spark in London. Furious over the Boston Tea Party, the lawmakers passed the Coercive Acts to punish and isolate Massachusetts. The most devastating of these was the Massachusetts Government Act. It decreed that the people would no longer elect judges, sheriffs and Governor’s Councilors. Instead, the royal governor — Gen. Thomas Gage — would appoint them. The law also banned Town Meeting except for once a year. The patriot propaganda machine called it an attempt to impose “abject slavery” on the people of Massachusetts.
For the plain folk of the colonial countryside, this was an existential threat. The courts of Common Pleas met four times a year, and they mostly adjudicated unpaid debts. They also had the power to seize property as a remedy for indebtedness.…