Robert Gross - The Minute Men and their World Essay

Robert Gross - The Minute Men and their World - Essay ExampleHe boilersuit provides a stirring view of late eighteenth century New England on the cusp of renewal and freedom. In Concord townsfolk politics, though the inhabitants denied it, were as usual. Voting rights were severely restricted and limited the trope of men eligible for town leadership. Wealth and leisure time further diminished the pool. Only those with bounteous of both were able to rise to serve the needs of their fellow men sufficiently. M superstary and position piled on top of place to complicate life. As a thriving center of commerce, Concord hosted both a bustling town business center and a sprawling farmland. Conflicts between urban and homespun inhabitants oer basic infrastructure needs excited the assemblies on a regular basis. Schooling, religion, and roads all served a different constituency and for them all to be centered in town was seen as a disservice to the rural community who had to walk into tow n in everyday stockings and shoes then for the sake of appearances top in a field and change into their go-to-meeting slippers.1 Church itself posed a mighty take exception to the unity of Concords inhabitants. During the peachy Awakening a new sermonizer ignited vehemence among the young and vital in town. His bowing to the interests of youth to fill pews offended the staunch faithful and, somewhat along geographical lines, they broke off to form a second parish. When a new, young preacher exchanged the first, a spendthrift schemer, one of the old timers, sought membership in the original parish. His questionable morals toward his fellow Concordians led to his rejection by the congregation. By extension the outlying parish took this to heart and read into it a refusal to charter reconciliation. Then the same man took his grievances to the political realm and again lost. Concord was indeed a town divided. While the inhabitants of Concord simmered in their own stew of religio us discord the colonies entered a period of contender with mother England. The Stamp Act triggered a wave of protests across the colonies and in Boston, party faithfuls organized a vote to recognize Parliaments actions. When the vote came through it was barely shy of the necessary poem to pass and demonstrate Massachusetts loyalty to the crown. A bitter disappointment to Governor Hutchinson, surely, but one that triggered a wave of political backlash. Much like todays Tea Party, farmers and businessmen who precept their interests hindered by Englands acts of taxation, mounted an ideological revolt. They organized a revolution at the polls and aphorism to it that nineteen of thirty-two representatives to Boston were replaced for their efforts of royalist loyalty. In Concord, little interest sparked at the events plaguing the colony. When the vote came to replace their own man, Charles Prescott, they safely returned him to his role. Their concerns lay more in the sixty-six pound e xpense of burying the Great Awaking pastor, Reverend Daniel Bliss, and in finding his replacement than in subverting Englands fiscal policy toward the colonies. When the Boston shambles rent headlines, Concord barely paused to comment. Of greater import a debate about relocating the Middlesex County seat from Cambridge to Concord. A matter of convenience more important than matters of state. Gradually, however, the people of Concord came around. In 1772 the Boston Committee of agreement wrote seeking a