In 1679, King Charles II separated New Hampshire from Massachusetts, issuing a charter for the royal Province of New Hampshire, with John Cutt as governor. New Hampshire was absorbed into the Dominion of New England in 1686, which collapsed in 1689. After a brief period without formal government (the settlements were de facto ruled by Massachusetts) William III and Mary II issued a new provincial charter in 1691. From 1699 to 1741, the governors of Massachusetts were also commissioned as governors of New Hampshire.
The province's geography placed it on the frontier between British and French colonies in North America, and it was for many years subjected to native claims, especially in the central and northern portions of its territory. Because of these factors, it was on the front lines of many military conflicts, including King William's War, Queen Anne's War, Father Rale's War, Dummer's War, and King George's War. By the 1740s, most of the native population had either been killed or driven out of the province's territory.
Partly because New Hampshire's governorship was shared with that of Massachusetts, border issues between the two colonies were not completely settled for many years. As New Hampshire settlements expanded northward, the boundary with York County, Massachusetts (now Maine) became more important to delineate. King George II sent commissioners to perform a survey. They declared the eastern boundary of New Hampshire extended to the headwaters of the Salmon Falls River where it exits Great East Lake, and extends 120 miles north of the mouth of the Piscataqua River, along a line two degrees west of due north.[4] This deviation from north approximately prevents curvature of the line on maps drawn to a different center meridian (such as the center of the colony).[4] The Treaty of Paris of 1783, ending the Revolutionary War, declared the border with Canada as beginning at "the northwestern head of the Connecticut River", but the lack of precision in the terminology left the exact border unresolved until 1842.[5][6]
Territory west of the Merrimack River was highly disputed. Issuers of the Massachusetts and New Hampshire charters had incorrectly believed the river to flow primarily from west to east. In the 1730s New Hampshire political interest led by Lieutenant Governor John Wentworth were able to raise the profile of these issues to colonial officials and the crown in London, even while Governor and Massachusetts native Jonathan Belcher preferentially granted land to Massachusetts interests in the disputed area. In 1741, King George II ruled that the border with southern Massachusetts (Maine was then also part of Massachusetts) was approximately what it is today, and also separated the governorships of the two provinces. Benning Wentworth in 1741 became the first non-Massachusetts governor since Edward Cranfield succeeded John Cutt in the 1680s.
Wentworth promptly complicated New Hampshire's territorial claims by interpreting the provincial charter to include territory west of the Connecticut River and began issuing land grants in this territory, which was also claimed by the Province of New York. The so-called New Hampshire Grants area became a subject of contention from the 1740s until the 1790s when it was admitted to the United States as the state of Vermont.
The only battle fought in New Hampshire was the raid on Fort William and Mary, December 14, 1774, in Portsmouth Harbor, which netted the rebellion sizable quantities of gunpowder, small arms, and cannon over the course of two nights. (General Sullivan, leader of the raid, described it as "remainder of the powder, the small arms, bayonets, and cartouche-boxes, together with the cannon and ordnance stores".) This raid was preceded by a warning to local patriots the previous day, by Paul Revere on December 13, 1774, that the fort was to be reinforced by troops sailing from Boston. According to unverified accounts, the gunpowder was later used at the Battle of Bunker Hill, transported there by Major Demerit, who was one of several New Hampshire patriots who stored the powder in their homes until it was transported elsewhere for use in revolutionary activities. During the raid, the fort's garrison fired upon the rebels with cannon and muskets. Although there were apparently no casualties, these were among the first shots in the American Revolutionary period, occurring approximately five months before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. On January 5, 1776, New Hampshire became the first colony to declare independence from Great Britain, almost six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed by the Continental Congress.[12]
New Hampshire was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule during the American Revolution.
New Hampshire ratified the U.S. Constitution on June 21, 1788, becoming the ninth state to do so and officially putting the Constitution into effect.
New Hampshire’s ratification was a pivotal moment in American history because Article VII of the Constitution required the approval of nine states for the document to become legally operative. By becoming the ninth state, New Hampshire’s approval ensured that the Constitution could take effect and establish the new federal government
Slavery in New Hampshire
As in the other Thirteen Colonies and elsewhere in the colonial Americas, racially conditioned slavery was a firmly established institution in New Hampshire. The New Hampshire Assembly in 1714 passed "An Act To Prevent Disorders In The Night":[7][8]
Whereas great disorders, insolencies and burglaries, are ofttimes raised and committed in the night time, by Indian, Negro, and Molatto servants and slaves, to the Disquiet and hurt of her Majesty's good subjects: No Indian, Negro, or Molatto servant or slave, may presume to absent from the families where they respectively belong, or be found abroad in the night time after nine o'clock; unless it is upon errand for their respective masters or owners.
Notices emphasizing and re-affirming the curfew were published in The New Hampshire Gazette in 1764 and 1771.[7]
"Furthermore, as one of the few colonies that did not impose a tariff on slaves, New Hampshire became a base for slaves to be imported into America and then smuggled into other colonies. Every census up to the Revolution showed an increase in the black population, though they remained proportionally fewer than in most other New England colonies."[9]
Following the Revolution, a powerfully-written petition of 1779 sent by 20 slaves in Portsmouth—members of what historian Ira Berlin identified as the revolutionary generations [de] of enslaved people in his pivotal work Many Thousands Gone[10]—unsuccessfully requested freedom for the enslaved. The New Hampshire legislature would not officially eliminate slavery in the state until 1857, long after the death of many of the signatories. The 1840 United States census was the last to enumerate any slaves in the households of the state.[7]
While the number of slaves resident in New Hampshire itself dwindled during the 19th century, the state's economy remained closely interlinked with, and dependent upon, the economies of the slave states. Slave-produced raw materials, such as cotton for textiles, and slave-manufactured goods were imported. The ship Nightingale of Boston, built in Eliot, Maine in 1851 and outfitted in Portsmouth, would serve as a slave ship before its capture by the African Slave Trade Patrol in 1861, indicating the region's further economic connection to the ongoing Atlantic slave trade.[7][11]
