WI Maine was always independent of Massachusetts?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Maine probably had more settlement earlier than any area west of the Appalachians, even if not so much as the other Atlantic seaboard colonies.

The simplest one here is just to have Maine be its own chartered colony pre-revolution.

Possibly it never gets absorbed into Mass. Or, an early dissident group from Mass sets up its own colony.


Or there is simply a decision in the 18th century to spin Maine back off from Mass.


Perhaps as late as the early 1770s


Post Utrecht or post-Dominion of New England might be the best times to do this. A lot depends on if there was ever local demand.


But, however it occurs, as long as Maine matches the sentiments of all the other colonies with regard to independence, 14 colonies is plausible from the start. The “free vs slave state” balance, when it becomes relevant in the nineteenth century, starts with one more free state. This might diminish southern influence in the Senate, or cause division of territories in the southwest into an additional state.


The knock on what-if here is what if there was an additional southern state carved out of the transappalachian south? How would it be shaped? What would its demographics be? And what consequences would this have for later sectional conflict?
 
The Puritans got one of their own to get the region re-charted by Parliament post-Civil War as "Lygonia", to Proprietor Fernando Gorges' lament for his own royalist-chartered Province of Maine - although these "Maine" residents de-facto accepted Lygonian rule as a couple "Maine" court decisions of the time accepted Lygonian-based ones. THEN Massachusetts swallowed it anyway based on its charter claims with forces to back it up and no local militia to dispute it. Simply have Lygonia - IE, a friendly, fully Puritan-dominated colony like the other New Englander provinces - survive and Massachusetts not absorb it. Boom.

You might see West Virginia admitted much earlier in a fit of irony as southerners seek to find a better balance in the Senate and they wanted to be their own government since the Revolution.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Monthly Donor
Very interesting-thanks. One question though, could the name and Puritan charter of Lygonia survive the restoration? I suspect it would be absorbed into the Dominionof New England. When that breaks up I wonder if the area would come out as Maine or Lygonia.
 
Fair question, maybe 50-50 depending on what you want. Maine was the all-encompassing name for the area, but a surviving Lygonia obviously means....well, Lygonia continues to exist. Maybe a formal annexation of the remainder of Maine sees that name taken over since now the whole chartered region is legally one and no longer a potential legal mess (if under Lygonian than Mainer government, obviously).
 
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