Massachusetts

Massachusetts

Capital	Boston
Nickname	The Bay State
Official Language	English
Governor	Deval Patrick, D
Senator	John Kerry, D (202) 224-2742 Contact
Senator	[[{{{senator2}}}]], [[{{{s2party}}}]] {{{s2phone}}} [{{{s2email }}}]
Ratification of Constitution/or statehood	February 6, 1788 (6th)
	Motto: "Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem" (By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Its capital city is Boston. The name is derived from the Indian tribe that lived there, the "Massachusett". It is one of four states officially known as "commonwealths"; there are no practical differences between a "commonwealth" and a "state".

History

Massachusetts was first settled by the Pilgrims who emigrated from England on the Mayflower in 1620 and founded a settlement at Plymouth, and soon afterward by the much larger group the Puritans, who founded the "Massachusetts Bay Colony". Both groups came to America seeking religious freedom. It was also a major center of the American Revolution, as events such as the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party helped to create a desire for national independence among the colonists. The first battle of the war was fought mainly in the towns of Lexington and Concord; the first great American victory was the expulsion of the British from Boston on "Evacuation Day," March 17, 1776. Shortly after the war ended, the western part of the state was marked by Shays' Rebellion, a major factor leading to demands for a stronger national government at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783 and ratified the Constitution on February 6, 1788.

During the 1800s, Massachusetts was marked by increasing industrialization, including the founding of textile mills in towns such as Lowell. Important historical figures during this time included Horace Mann, an important educational reformer, and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, two of the main contributors to the Transcendental movement.

In the 1900s, Massachusetts moved from a factory-based economy to a more service-based economy, sparked by growth in its local colleges and universities as well as by a collapse in the textile industry during the 1920s. This encouraged increased suburbanization, leading to the current demographic situation in which the population is concentrated in suburbs around the city of Boston. In 1987, the state received federal highway funding for the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, known colloquially as the Big Dig. The $14.7 billion grant is the largest federal highway project ever approved.

Politics

With the death of Senator Ted Kennedy in August 2009, the Senate seat will remain open until a special election is held in late January, 2010, but state leaders are discussing changing the law to allow the governor to name a replacement. The current law was promoted by Kennedy himself to prevent a Republican from naming a replacecement for Senator Kerry in 2004, in case Kerry was elected president; it has now boomeranged against the Democrats in the Senate, who need a replacement soon to keep their veto-proof 60-seat majority. The prospective candidates most often mentioned include for the Democrats state Attorney General Martha Coakley, Congressman Michael Capuano, Congressman Stephen Lynch, and perhaps Kennedy's nephew Joseph Kennedy II. The only Republican with a chance of winning is former Gov. Mitt Romney, but he is expected to concentrate instead on the 2012 presidential campaign.

Although once a bastion of social conservatism (the term "Banned in Boston" is still in widespread use) Massachusetts is known as one of the most Catholic and most liberal states. It is the most populous state to have all-Democratic congressional representation. It was called "Taxachusetts" because of its high tax rate, which has since been lowered by a series of Republican governors in the 1990s and 2000s (William Weld, Paul Cellucci, Jane Swift and Mitt Romney); they were among the most liberal Republican governors in the country.

Its current senator is John Kerry (who unsuccessfully ran for President in 2004).

The current governor, elected in 2006 over Republican and former Lieutenant Governor Kerry Murphy Healey, is Deval L. Patrick, who was the first Democrat to take the office in 16 years, and the first African American to win the post. A strong liberal in the state that legalized homosexual marriage, Patrick signed a bill which allowed out-of-state gay couples to marry in Massachusetts. In a speech afterward, Patrick was recorded openly mocking conservatives and the Bible by stating, "In five years now, ... the sky has not fallen, the earth has not opened to swallow us all up."

Patrick is faring poorly in polls, as he has been ineffective in getting his own priorities enacted, and in dealing with the recession of 2008.

Massachusetts is the home of Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and John F. Kennedy.