The premise is that in the wake of the Civil War, the 'new' historians of that era, Parkman et al, smoothed over the reality of the earlier incarnation of Boston as an independent entity, essentially a a city-state, ruled by no one but themselves. The 'end' was begun when the New England states made their Faustian bargain with the Southern states in order to have the might and means to oust British rule. He argues that Boston and New England were not able at that time, to withstand the power of the southern states and the Constitution as first written by allowing slavery and the bizarre and fiendish three-fifths rule which gave the south a population advantage that gave them more power in Congress than the non-slave states.

Peterson examines this earlier independent incarnation of the City that as had roots reaching into the very first moment that the ships bearing the Puritans who would found Boston in 1630-- the Massachusetts Bay Company (not the Plymouth/Mayflower group) dropped anchor. Composed of Puritans, yes, but largely led by hard-headed practical men of the merchant and yeoman class, they had come far better prepared to survive the first hard years and chose the (almost) island they named Boston as their base.

From the beginning these colonists looked across the wide expanse of the Atlantic and inwardly calculated that they could, pretty much, talk nice, then do as they pleased. They also, in order to maintain that independence, would fend for themselves, not asking for help even when times were hard and even though they were oriented economically toward England and Europe (not having a population here to buy their products!).

Peterson builds on this idea, demonstrating the many ways, practical and intellectual, that Boston developed over nearly two hundred and fifty years, in some fundamental way never fully integrating into the United States until after the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery. The period leading up to the Civil War shows a Boston and surround, wracked by the tensions that the conflicting deeply embedded ideas of individual human value and liberty versus the great material wealth and power they had accrued through industrialization (itself dependent on the cotton growing in the south), the influx of Irish famine refugees and the moral agonies of obeying of the federally enacted Fugitive Slave Act.

This is a worthwhile read and a corrective for those interested in US history, especially of New England. ****1/2 ( )