New Hampshire stood out earlier this summer as the only New England state to send a display to Washington D.C. for the Great American State Fair, the product of Trump-backed public-private partnership Freedom 250.
It was far from the only occasion where the Granite State behaved like a regional black sheep.
Long before the first-in-the-nation primary, New Hampshire was first in the nation to lower Britain’s flag in 1774. During a raid of provincial gunpowder at Fort William and Mary, New Hampshire rebels cheered as they pulled the British flag from its place overlooking Portsmouth Harbor — months before the Revolutionary War’s actual start.
In 1776, the colony adopted a constitution, making it the first American colony with an independent government. Other colonies followed soon after.
Even well after the Revolutionary War was won, New Hampshire continued to set precedents. The town of Peterborough established the English-speaking world’s first public library in 1883, free to all community members and supported by state funds.
“New Hampshire is an information-literate population. They want to have access to shared information — they want to read and learn,” said Sarah Galligan, the New Hampshire Historical Society’s director of archival and library collections.
In Galligan’s eyes, New Hampshire has always strived for the “democratization of information,” from its series of proud firsts to “equal access” for voters in the presidential primary.
But the state lagged behind on other fronts.
‘South Carolina of New England’
In August of 1835, anti-abolitionists from the Canaan area hauled Noyes Academy — a racially integrated school founded the year prior — clean off its foundation and into the town common. The townspeople threatened to forcibly expel the teacher and students from Canaan if they did not leave.
Just a month later, a mob of townspeople drove away abolitionist preacher George Thompson and poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who were slated to speak against slavery at Concord’s Merrimack County courthouse. The crowd jeered and threw stones at the men until they canceled their plans to speak, then celebrated by tarring, feathering and burning a dummy replica of Thompson.
“Before the Civil War, they used to call us the ‘South Carolina of New England’ because we were considered soft on slavery,” said Elizabeth Dubrulle, director of education at the New Hampshire Historical Society.
Despite this anti-abolitionist fervor, New Hampshire only hosted three slaves at the time of the 1830 census. By 1850, that dropped to zero.
So, why the fuss?
“Personal autonomy,” Galligan said. Granite Staters firmly opposed the principle of government intervention. “It was that federalist feel of, ‘We want to own what we own, and we don’t want the government to have anything to do with it.’”
Similar anti-abolitionist movements occurred elsewhere in New England, and other states in the region had higher slave populations.
New Hampshire went on to have the nation’s first openly abolitionist senator, John Parker Hale. Still, it was the last New England state to officially outlaw the institution of slavery in 1857.
New Hampshire likely dragged its feet at least in part because of the state government’s reluctance to infringe on personal liberty and provoke outrage, Galligan said. It also boils down to the size of the legislature: New Hampshire has the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world. Coordinating such a decisive effort was no easy task.
“People didn’t — I don’t want to say they didn’t care, but they had other issues,” Galligan said. “There was no slavery in New Hampshire, so there were more pressing issues than voting on … something that didn’t necessarily exist.”
Franklin Pierce, who would later become the 14th president, was an influential Democrat in the state in the mid-19th century and a “Southern sympathizer,” Dubrulle said. To preserve national unity, he advocated for states’ rights and personal autonomy, firmly cementing New Hampshire’s ties to the Democratic platform at the time.
In more recent memory, New Hampshire was the last state in the country to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2000, after seven years of celebrating ‘Civil Rights Day’ on the same day.
Leading women
Though Black individuals struggled to obtain equal rights in New Hampshire, Granite Staters largely welcomed the women’s suffrage movement.
In 1878, New Hampshire became the only state east of the Mississippi River that allowed women to vote in school elections. It was joined by New York and Vermont two years later.
“The idea was that women have this stake in raising their children, and they should be able to make decisions about who’s guiding their education,” Dubrulle said.
Ahead of the adoption of the 19th Amendment, New Hampshire hosted the nation’s first Citizenship School for women in 1919, intended to inform women about their newfound enfranchisement.
But despite what these triumphs suggest, New Hampshire didn’t present a united effort to decisively win suffrage for women.
“I don’t think New Hampshire was particularly exceptional from what other states were doing to advance women’s suffrage in the early 20th century,” Galligan said. “I think there are always strong individual characters who are doing the work.”
Still, New Hampshire has set records for female representation in government. U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen became the first woman to serve as both a governor and a senator in 2009, and since then, only two others have followed and served in the same two capacities nationwide: Maggie Hassan and Kelly Ayotte, both of whom are from New Hampshire. Elsewhere in the country, 17 states have never had a female U.S. senator, and 18 have never had a female governor.
In 2013, New Hampshire became the first and only state to have an all-female congressional delegation in both chambers of Congress at once.
21st-century developments
Even today, New Hampshire stands alone on a number of issues.
As the New England state in which Donald Trump came closest to victory in the past three elections, New Hampshire tends to lean more conservative in certain policies as compared to its neighbors. It remains the only state in New England not to legalize marijuana for recreational use, with Gov. Kelly Ayotte vowing to veto any bill that would change that.
Furthermore, New Hampshire’s constitution and state law do not explicitly protect abortion, unlike other New England states. Though abortions are permitted until 24 weeks of gestation, the state’s reproductive rights are the most restrictive in the region.
The Granite State has no state-specific minimum wage, instead deferring to the federally mandated $7.25 per hour — nearly half of the next-closest, Vermont’s, $14.42 per hour. The Granite State also lacks a statewide sales tax.
It is also the only New England state with a universal school voucher program that allows families to delegate grant funds towards their children’s education at their own discretion.
“That was a libertarian, Free State goal that has kind of hit the mainstream,” said Galligan.
