All politics is local — even the Declaration of Independence

by Thomas A. Barnico, CommonWealth Beacon
July 1, 2026

AS THE 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, the revered document and its principal author have taken center stage in its celebration. Less known is the role of cities and towns throughout the colonies who “declared” their “independence” shortly before July 4, 1776, and encouraged their delegates in the Continental Congress to do the same. Their role as a chorus, if not catalysts, for the Declaration of July 4^th should be celebrated this month as well.

The late MIT historian Pauline Maier, in her 1997 book American Scripture: The Making of the Declaration of Independence, details the role of towns as the storm gathered in 1776. She describes the events of 1776 as a “complex political war, fought on many local fronts . . . over the instructions that critical colonies issued to their Congressional delegations.”

In a 1998 interview with CommonWealth editor Dave Denison, Maier described her discovery of the role played by towns. “The Declaration of Independence is always treated like a unique and wonderful document, like nothing in human history — and I knew that couldn’t be true,” she said. “So I went out looking for things like it, and what I found to my surprise was this mass of local ‘declarations of independence,’ the greater part of which come from Massachusetts.”

She says her book that local action was first encouraged by congressional delegates and colonial assemblymen who supported independence. For example, she writes that on May 10, 1776, “the Massachusetts assembly asked the inhabitants of each town in the colony to debate, ‘in full Meeting warned for that Purpose,’ an extraordinary topic: if the honorable Continental Congress should decide that, for the safety of the United Colonies, it was necessary to declare them independent of Great Britain, would ‘they the said Inhabitants solemnly engage with their Lives and Fortunes to Support the Congress in the Measure’?”

Maier adds, ominously, that the Massachusetts “assembly put the question in an unusually personal way, and chose its words carefully. In British law, death and the forfeiture of estate were the punishment for treason.”

Many, but not all, towns formally responded by July 4. Maier’s appendix includes a list of 58 “declarations” (with sources) adopted from May 13 to July 4, 1776, from what she estimates to be roughly 200 town seats in Massachusetts at the time.

She lists only one town, Barnstable, that voted against endorsing independence. While admitting the roughness of her calculations, she ventures that “a majority of Essex’s town seats appear on the list.” She adds that the “absence of any return from Duke’s County, or from Nantucket Island, which was known as a Loyalist enclave, and the relative lack of resolutions from Barnstable County, which covered Cape Cod, is also striking.”

Maier’s helpful appendix also includes the text of the declarations issued by the towns of Natick, Topsfield, and Ashby. Topsfield’s declaration of June 21, 1776, considered the issue “the greatest and most important question that ever came before this town,” one that required the performance of a “duty, both to the great Governour of the Universe, to themselves, and posterity.”

The townsmen of Natick, in Maier’s words, “confidently asserted what was, it seems, a quite recent discovery, that Americans were better qualified to govern America than were the British.”

Indeed, in terms that previewed current concerns about a distant (yet omnipresent) government in Washington, DC, the townsmen decried the “glaring impropriety, incapacity, and fatal tendency, of any State whatever, at the distance of three thousand miles, to legislate for these Colonies, which at the same time are so numerous, so knowing, and capable of legislating.”

Maier expertly mines local declarations from other Colonies and from the colonial assemblies themselves. All informed the ultimate votes of the congressional delegates on July 3, the decisive day in Philadelphia.

But Maier’s focus on the local and colonial declarations is not intended merely to argue that these represented a notable chorus or even catalysts. Rather, she argues that our study of the Declaration should not focus on one individual—Thomas Jefferson—or even one document to the exclusion of the social and political forces at work throughout the colonies in 1776.

In his review of Maier’s book, historian Alan Taylor writes: “Maier is a social historian of politics, and she exercises her skills to de-emphasize the lone great hero and reassert the collective influence of the ‘words and thoughts of many people.’” “By recovering the influence of the earlier local declarations,” Taylor continues, Maier ends the “splendid isolation” of the Declaration, placing it “in a thick social context, as the culmination of a great popular political movement involving thousands of common Americans, as well as the Founding Fathers.”

“All politics is local,” according to the old political saw credited to Tip O’Neill, the House Speaker and son of Cambridge. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the national Declaration of Independence, Maier’s work reminds us that the politics of our independence also had their own local roots.

Thomas A. Barnico teaches at Boston College Law School. From 1981 to 2010, he was an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts. He is the author of a novel, War College, set in the Vietnam War era.

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All politics is local — even the Declaration of Independence</p> <p>Thomas A. Barnico, CommonWealth Beacon<br /> July 1, 2026</p> <p>AS THE 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, the revered document and its principal author have taken center stage in its celebration. Less known is the role of cities and towns throughout the colonies who “declared” their “independence” shortly before July 4, 1776, and encouraged their delegates in the Continental Congress to do the same. Their role as a chorus, if not catalysts, for the Declaration of July 4th should be celebrated this month as well. </p> <p>The late MIT historian Pauline Maier, in her 1997 book American Scripture: The Making of the Declaration of Independence, details the role of towns as the storm gathered in 1776. She describes the events of 1776 as a “complex political war, fought on many local fronts . . . over the instructions that critical colonies issued to their Congressional delegations.” </p> <p>In a 1998 interview with CommonWealth editor Dave Denison, Maier described her discovery of the role played by towns. “The Declaration of Independence is always treated like a unique and wonderful document, like nothing in human history — and I knew that couldn’t be true,” she said. “So I went out looking for things like it, and what I found to my surprise was this mass of local ‘declarations of independence,’ the greater part of which come from Massachusetts.”</p> <p>She says her book that local action was first encouraged by congressional delegates and colonial assemblymen who supported independence. For example, she writes that on May 10, 1776, “the Massachusetts assembly asked the inhabitants of each town in the colony to debate, ‘in full Meeting warned for that Purpose,’ an extraordinary topic: if the honorable Continental Congress should decide that, for the safety of the United Colonies, it was necessary to declare them independent of Great Britain, would ‘they the said Inhabitants solemnly engage with their Lives and Fortunes to Support the Congress in the Measure’?” </p> <p>Maier adds, ominously, that the Massachusetts “assembly put the question in an unusually personal way, and chose its words carefully. In British law, death and the forfeiture of estate were the punishment for treason.” </p> <p>Many, but not all, towns formally responded by July 4. Maier’s appendix includes a list of 58 “declarations” (with sources) adopted from May 13 to July 4, 1776, from what she estimates to be roughly 200 town seats in Massachusetts at the time. </p> <p>She lists only one town, Barnstable, that voted against endorsing independence. While admitting the roughness of her calculations, she ventures that “a majority of Essex’s town seats appear on the list.” She adds that the “absence of any return from Duke’s County, or from Nantucket Island, which was known as a Loyalist enclave, and the relative lack of resolutions from Barnstable County, which covered Cape Cod, is also striking.” </p> <p>Maier’s helpful appendix also includes the text of the declarations issued by the towns of Natick, Topsfield, and Ashby. Topsfield’s declaration of June 21, 1776, considered the issue “the greatest and most important question that ever came before this town,” one that required the performance of a “duty, both to the great Governour of the Universe, to themselves, and posterity.” </p> <p>The townsmen of Natick, in Maier’s words, “confidently asserted what was, it seems, a quite recent discovery, that Americans were better qualified to govern America than were the British.” </p> <p>Indeed, in terms that previewed current concerns about a distant (yet omnipresent) government in Washington, DC, the townsmen decried the “glaring impropriety, incapacity, and fatal tendency, of any State whatever, at the distance of three thousand miles, to legislate for these Colonies, which at the same time are so numerous, so knowing, and capable of legislating.” </p> <p>Maier expertly mines local declarations from other Colonies and from the colonial assemblies themselves. All informed the ultimate votes of the congressional delegates on July 3, the decisive day in Philadelphia. </p> <p>But Maier’s focus on the local and colonial declarations is not intended merely to argue that these represented a notable chorus or even catalysts. Rather, she argues that our study of the Declaration should not focus on one individual—Thomas Jefferson—or even one document to the exclusion of the social and political forces at work throughout the colonies in 1776. </p> <p>In his review of Maier’s book, historian Alan Taylor writes: “Maier is a social historian of politics, and she exercises her skills to de-emphasize the lone great hero and reassert the collective influence of the ‘words and thoughts of many people.’” “By recovering the influence of the earlier local declarations,” Taylor continues, Maier ends the “splendid isolation” of the Declaration, placing it “in a thick social context, as the culmination of a great popular political movement involving thousands of common Americans, as well as the Founding Fathers.” </p> <p>“All politics is local,” according to the old political saw credited to Tip O’Neill, the House Speaker and son of Cambridge. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the national Declaration of Independence, Maier’s work reminds us that the politics of our independence also had their own local roots. </p> <p>Thomas A. Barnico teaches at Boston College Law School. From 1981 to 2010, he was an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts. He is the author of a novel, War College, set in the Vietnam War era.</p> <p>This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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