New England: Encyclopedia II - New England - Politics

New England - Politics

The early European settlers of New England were English Protestants fleeing religious persecution. This, however, did not prevent them from establishing colonies where religion was legislated to an extreme, and where those who deviated from the established doctrine were persecuted greatly.

New England - Town meetings in New England

A derivative of meetings held by church elders, town meetings were an integral part of governance and remain so today in towns across New England. At such meetings, any citizen of the town may discuss issues of the day with other members of the community, and vote on them. This is the most direct democracy in the United States today, and the form of dialogue has been adopted under certain circumstances elsewhere, most strongly in the states closest to the region, such as New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Such a strong democratic tradition was even apparent in the early 19th century, when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that:

In New England, where education and liberty are the daughters of morality and religion, where society has acquired age and stability enough to enable it to form principles and hold fixed habits, the common people are accustomed to respect intellectual and moral superiority and to submit to it without complaint, although they set at naught all those privileges which wealth and birth have introduced among mankind. In New England, consequently, the democracy makes a more judicious choice than it does elsewhere.

New England - New England and political thought

In the colonial period and the early time of the republic, New England leaders like John Hancock, John Adams, and Samuel Adams joined those in Philadelphia and Virginia to direct the country. At the time of the American Civil War, New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest combined against slavery, eventually ending the practice in the United States. Henry David Thoreau, one of New England's most iconic thinkers, made the case for civil disobedience, libertarianism, and even had some anarchist tendencies; this spirit is still alive in the Free State Project and occasional discussions of secession. New England led the rest of the country in abolishing the death penalty for crimes like robbery and burglary in the 19th century. In the 20th century, the region remained a source of political thought and intellectual ferment in the nation, eventually becoming the forefront of the civil rights issue of same sex marriage, with Vermont being the first state to allow civil unions between same sex couples, and Massachusetts being the first state to allow marriage between same sex couples. In 2005, Connecticut also began to allow civil unions.

While well known for its liberal tendencies, the region still has a history similar to the rest of the country. Puritan New England was highly intolerant of any deviation from the strict social norms. Arguments against slavery, at first, were not moral, but economic, since owning slaves was expensive and not very useful in the northern climate. During the civil rights era, Boston brewed with tension over school busing to end de facto segregation of its public schools. Despite these examples, the region is still known as one of the more liberal regions of the United States.

New England - Contemporary New England politics

Today, the dominant party in New England is the Democratic Party, though most states have a significant Republican electorate, especially New Hampshire and Maine which are both represented in the U.S. Senate by two Republicans. As of the 2004 state elections, Maine is the only state that has its executive and legislative branches controlled by the same party (the Democrats). In the 2000 presidential election, Democratic candidate Al Gore carried all of the New England states except for New Hampshire, and in 2004, John Kerry, a New Englander himself, won all six New England states.

New Hampshire and Connecticut are the only New England states that allow capital punishment, although New Hampshire currently has no death row inmates and has not held an execution since 1939. Connecticut held an execution in 2005, the first in New England in forty-five years.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Politics", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki