Boston, Massachusetts
The area surrounding current day Boston, MA, originally known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was founded in 1630 by the Massachusetts Bay Co., a group of investors hoping to capitalize on the area's fishing & fur trading industries. One Puritan John Winthrop, required that if he was to settle the area he would answer only to the King & not to any corporate board. To this end the Cambridge Agreement was signed establishing Winthrop as the region's first governor. Winthrop envisioned a Puritan society & delivered his "City Upon a Hill" sermon known as "The Model of Christian Charity." In it he extols the virtue of being "knit together as one man, to do justly, to love mercy & to walk humbly with our God." Over the years the people's loyalty to the King would evaporate under the weight of burdensome taxes like the Sugar Act of 1764 & the Stamp Act of 1765, and oppressive policies like the Intolerable Acts of 1767 & the Townshend Acts of 1773. Tensions were boiling & after the Boston Massacre in 1770 & the Boston Tea Party in 1773, the area was a powder keg ready to blow. Local militias known as minutemen were forming & an underground group of patriots were reading the works of John Locke who rejected the idea that kings had a divine right to govern others. The stage was set for a revolution that would usher in a world changing idea; the idea of a limited government, deriving its power from the consent of the people, & that human rights are not given at the pleasure of a benevolent king, but are a gift of God bestowed on all men as the birthright of their humanity.