Boston

capital of and largest city in Massachusetts founded in 1630, it is a major financial, government and educational center. A focus of opposition to the British, it was the scene of several actions in the American Revolution. It was an early center of American Puritanism. In the 1920s, the phrase banned in Boston became famous because the Watch and Ward Society was forever getting the city to ban books. Publishers tried to get their books banned in Boston because they knew that the books would sell more copies elsewhere if they were banned in Boston. Boston became a center of active opposition to the institution of slavery and continued to be so through the Civil War

See also Watch and Ward Society and American Civil War in this glossary.