This book explores the complex relationship between anti-Catholicism, or anti-popery to use the contemporary term, and the American Revolution in New England. Anti-Catholicism was among the most common themes in colonial New England culture. Nonetheless, New Englanders entered into an alliance with French Catholics against Protestant Britons during the American Revolution. As New Englanders traditionally associated Catholicism with tyranny and oppression, they were able to extend these feelings to the popish British upon the passage of the Quebec Act. As a consequence, anti-popery helped enable New Englanders to make the intellectual transition that war with Britain required. During the Revolution, anti-popery became less popular as the American rebels relied on Catholic France for aid. By the end of the revolutionary era, Catholics were extended legal toleration in all of the New England states. The book's conclusion explores the change in religious tolerance and the decline of anti-popery with a study of New England's first Catholic parish.

Although commonly regarded as a prejudice against Roman Catholics and their religion, anti-popery is both more complex and far more historically significant than this common conception would suggest. As the essays collected in this volume demonstrate, anti-popery is a powerful lens through which to interpret the culture and politics of the British-American world. In early modern England, opposition to tyranny and corruption associated with the papacy could spark violent conflicts not only between Protestants and Catholics but among Protestants themselves. Yet anti-popery had a capacity for inclusion as well and contributed to the growth and stability of the first British Empire. Combining the religious and political concerns of the Protestant Empire into a powerful (if occasionally unpredictable) ideology, anti-popery affords an effective framework for analyzing and explaining Anglo-American politics, especially since it figured prominently in the American Revolution as well as others. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, written by scholars from both sides of the Atlantic working in history, literature, art history, and political science, the essays in Against Popery cover three centuries of English, Scottish, Irish, early American, and imperial history between the early sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. More comprehensive, inclusive, and far-reaching than earlier studies, this volume represents a major turning point, summing up earlier work and laying a broad foundation for future scholarship across disciplinary lines. Contributors: Craig Gallagher, New England College * Tim Harris, Brown University * Clare Haynes, Independent Researcher * Susan P. Liebell, St. Joseph’s University * Brendan McConville, Boston University * Anthony Milton, University of Sheffield * Andrew R. Murphy, Virginia Commonwealth University * Gregory Smulewicz-Zucker, Rutgers University, New Brunswick * Laura M. Stevens, University of Tulsa * Cynthia J. Van Zandt, University of New Hampshire * Peter W. Walker, University of Wyoming Early American Histories

The fascinating story of Boston's violent past is told for the first time in this history of the city's riots, from the food shortage uprisings in the 18th century to the anti-busing riots of the 20th century.

Colonel Moses Hazen’s 2nd Canadian Regiment was one of the first “national” regiments in the American army. Created by the Continental Congress, it drew members from Canada, eleven states, and foreign forces. “Congress’s Own” was among the most culturally, ethnically, and regionally diverse of the Continental Army’s regiments—a distinction that makes it an apt reflection of the union that was struggling to create a nation. The 2nd Canadian, like the larger army, represented and pushed the transition from a colonial, continental alliance to a national association. The problems the regiment raised and encountered underscored the complications of managing a confederation of states and troops. In this enterprising study of an intriguing and at times “infernal” regiment, Holly A. Mayer marshals personal and official accounts—from the letters and journals of Continentals and congressmen to the pension applications of veterans and their widows—to reveal what the personal passions, hardships, and accommodations of the 2nd Canadian can tell us about the greater military and civil dynamics of the American Revolution. Congress’s Own follows congressmen, commanders, and soldiers through the Revolutionary War as the regiment’s story shifts from tents and trenches to the halls of power and back. Interweaving insights from borderlands and community studies with military history, Mayer tracks key battles and traces debates that raged within the Revolution’s military and political borderlands wherein subjects became rebels, soldiers, and citizens. Her book offers fresh, vivid accounts of the Revolution that disclose how “Congress’s Own” regiment embodied the dreams, diversity, and divisions within and between the Continental Army, Congress, and the emergent union of states during the War for American Independence.