Bowdoin College, Brunswick, 1862Maine Historical Society
As on all frontiers, Maine farmers were coarse and independent-minded, and proprietors hoped to guide these restless inhabitants by limiting freehold farms to the deserving: those who could pay for them. To encourage this well maintained society, Kennebeck Proprietor Charles Vaughan supervised the construction of an academy, an agricultural society, a model farm, a Congregational church, a courthouse, and a jail, while James Bowdoin III bestowed 1,000 acres to endow Bowdoin College.
Newly arriving farmers saw the frontier in different terms. They frequently took up farms wherever the land appealed to them, convinced that they had fought the Revolution to secure just such rights. Their experiences were similar to those of people who moved to frontiers across the country.
Despite miserable prospects, the Maine frontier was their best hope of achieving liberty and security through land ownership. They survived by "changing works" – sharing labor or swapping produce with neighbors – and this neighborly support reinforced the republican notion that one man was as good as another.
These conflicting social visions – hierarchy versus democracy – exacerbated tensions over land titles, poll taxes, and a deflationary currency policy that favored money-lenders and proprietors over the indebted and land-hungry settlers on the frontier.
Fryeburg Academy, ca. 1777Fryeburg Academy Archives
Religion further separated frontier people from coastal elites. Seacoast towns remained largely Congregational, guided by Harvard educated ministers trained in Puritan theocracy and transmitting a vision of society as a well ordered hierarchy predicated on deference to God and the social elite.
On the frontier in Maine and across the new country, revivals and religious awakenings, often spearheaded by young women or radical itinerant preachers, moved like wildfire, clearing the way for evangelical Methodist or Baptist ministers, particularly in areas cut off from the established church by poverty and isolation. Religious controversy helped forge a new democratic constituency that disposed the inland towns to separation in the years after the Revolution.
Maine Bids for Separation
Once the military confrontation with the Abenaki, French, and English had passed, Maine's subjugation to Massachusetts might have seemed unnecessary, since it shared no common border with the Commonwealth.
But for the next 40 years two obstacles stood in the path to independence. First, separationists were distracted by national events like Shays's Rebellion, the debate over the federal Constitution, and the politics of sectionalism and slavery. Second, separationists failed to agree on a common vision of Maine as a separate state.
Falmouth Gazette, 1785Maine Historical Society
As in the Revolution, the idea of independence spawned a debate over what the new government would look like. Seacoast elites aspired to conservative social, economic, and religious principles, while backwoods settlements, chafing under an onerous tax and monetary policy and frustrated by official bias toward land speculators, looked forward to a more radical form of democracy.
The question of separation first arose during the Revolution. When Massachusetts appeared unable or unwilling to protect the eastern frontier from British occupation, towns petitioned for aid, pointing out that all governments existed to secure life, liberty, and property, and if Massachusetts failed to achieve this, eastern Maine was within its rights to secede.
After the war, a new separationist movement developed in Portland among merchants, wealthy farmers, ministers, and speculators hoping to lead a new independent state. Thomas Wait, editor of the Falmouth Gazette, argued that Maine's distance from Massachusetts complicated its legal proceedings; that Maine would receive greater representation in Washington as a separate state, and Maine's government would be smaller and therefore less expensive. A September 1786 convention outlined similar arguments for separation.
Given Portland's close commercial connection to Massachusetts, separationists mustered little support locally. Interior towns appeared ready to raise banner of separation, but for very different reasons. Tensions over land claims and debts were beginning to escalate into violence, as when the General Court sent militia eastward to enforce proprietors' claims or when settlers resorted to mob action.
Somerset County voting record, 1816Maine Historical Society
Reluctant to join hands with delegates from these restive frontier towns, Portland's leaders were also taken aback by the reaction from Massachusetts. Although they had worded their petition in deferential tones, Governor James Bowdoin condemned it as a "design against the Commonwealth of very evil tendency," a rebuff that suggested separation might prove commercially damaging to the eastern ports. But instead of punitive action, the Commonwealth took steps to address the grievances outlined in the petition.
