46 pages • 1 hour read
The Minutemen and Their World
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Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Do Not Be Divided for So Small Matters”
Chapter 1 covers the pre-Revolutionary period of the town’s history, focusing on the most important determining factors in local politics. The chapter unfolds the town’s social and administrative structure, and the balance of power that both kept the town together and sometimes threatened to pull it apart. Concord’s politics were fractious before the War, even unusually so in comparison to other towns in the region: “While Bostonians fulminated against British policies in the 1760s and early 1770s, the yeomen of Concord were squabbling among themselves in a series of increasingly bitter quarrels that threatened ultimately to divide the town into two warring factions” (10).
This chapter introduces the theme of leadership, and specifically what made a good leader in the eyes of eighteenth-century Concordians. By these standards, the ideal leader was a paragon of virtue; good leadership was paternal, and the best leader would be “patient and gentle in guiding his subjects, but he could also be stern when necessary” (11). Good leadership was essential if the ideals of community life were to be upheld, which called for individuals to take it upon themselves to minimize disagreement and outsize ambitions for the sake of harmony.
Conflicts between the center and the outskirts were another guiding tension in the life of the town. Those who lived in the center of town struggled to prevent those who lived on the outskirts from seceding and forming their own towns, and efforts to make town services more accessible to those whose children had to walk miles to the town school were most often shut down, since the central population also had more access to the organs of town governance.
Beginning in the 1730s, the Great Awakening (or the First Great Awakening) came to the town in the form of its new minister, Daniel Bliss. The Great Awakening was a wave of spiritual enthusiasm that overtook the Protestant communities of the colonies in this period, when a new emphasis was placed on the personal, emotional experience of God as the only route to spiritual salvation. Concord experienced a boom in church membership under Bliss’ watch. However, there was significant resistance to Bliss’ approach from the “Old Lights,” who saw his approach as going dangerously against the established moral authority of the church. The disagreement caused a split, and a new parish was formed in the southeast of the town that later joined the neighboring town of Lincoln.
The chapter also tells the story of Joseph Lee, a rich landowner, and his unsuccessful efforts to join the town church, as a way of illustrating all of these themes. (For more details on Lee, please refer to his entry in the “Character Analysis” section of this study guide.) The chapter’s title comes from a 1772 ruling by a council of churches called to resolve the dispute over his attempt to join the church. Lee’s story is a testament to the power of religion in 18th-century New England not only to unite but to divide.
Chapter 1 Analysis
Through the story of Joseph Lee and the town’s arguments over secession of its outlying areas, we learn how central religion was to the life of Concord. The religious overtones of this definition of good leadership quoted above are obvious, and religion too was an important element of town politics, one that at times posed an even more serious threat to town unity than did the sectionalism described in the previous paragraph. Membership in the church was a coveted marker of social status, and the economic burden of paying the salary of the town minister was often the cause of disputes. However, it is important to remember that religious life in Concord was, by modern standards, remarkable in its lack of diversity: The Great Awakening was a movement within American Protestantism, and it was understood that the religious community at the core of the town, as well as the town itself, had no room for Papists, or members of any other faith.
In this chapter, the author attempts to define the basic dynamics of Concord social life, while at the same time emphasizing that, at least in this, Concord was relatively typical for a town of its size in the area. The value placed on harmony and the respect for authority as a natural consequence of age, wealth, social status, and experience can be generalized to a broader understanding of 18th-century New England. However, this does not necessarily undermine the book’s argument that local events were of primary importance to Concordians. The culture of Concord was by no means unique, but because it was a small town, the behavior of its citizens (and especially its most prominent citizens) was especially important in shaping the course of town affairs. The importance of local elites is an interesting aspect of the book. Though the values of the “new social history” called for an analysis of the lives of ordinary people, the fact that the book takes on an event of global importance means that local elites’ actions were instrumental. Thus, to some degree, traditional history writing’s emphasis on decisions made by the most powerful is somewhat replicated here.
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