The committee sent a similar address to the citizens of Maine urging them to support separation.[7] A third meeting was held in September of 1786 to evaluate the response. Unfortunately for separationists, gathering support was difficult for their movement, which some thought unpatriotic and embarrassing, in light of the shockwaves caused by Shays' Rebellion and other rural uprisings throughout New England. The September meeting ended with a decree that Mainers would vote on the question of separation, and then submit their votes to the Massachusetts General Court.
Perhaps in reaction to the "Shaysite" movement, fewer than 1,000 of Maine's nearly 75,000 inhabitants cast an initial vote regarding the state's separation. Accordingly, leaders of the separation movement decided against sending the petition to the General Court before their January 1787 meeting.[8]
Other meetings over the next several years proved unsuccessful, and this first significant push for independence for the District of Maine teetered out. Not all hope was lost, however. The General Assembly responded to some of the grievances published by the assembly, notably alleviating the post-Revolution tax burden for residents; setting up courts in towns in Maine; and providing cheaper property to frustrated squatters living on the lands of wealthy proprietors. Additionally, as the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia completed its rewriting of the U.S. Constitution, local papers dedicated its commentary to national matters and suspended talk of Maine separation.[9]
Despite all of this, the movement did not die out entirely, and Mainers would again begin to question the practicality of their status into the next decade.
[4] Hatch, Louis C. Maine: A History (Somersworth, NH: New Hampshire Publishing Company, 1973), 107.
[5] Falmouth Gazette, 4/30/1785. For more on the different Gazette contributors and their pseudonyms see Hatch, Maine: A History, 181.
[6] Banks, Ronald F., Maine Becomes a State: The Movement to Separate Maine from Massachusetts, (Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press), 13. Maine only had three incorporated counties before 1790—York, Cumberland and Lincoln. Summarized list of grievances (in sidebar): Hatch, Maine, 108-109. An original list of grievances can be found printed in the The Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, Jan 7, 1786 (no. 54 vol. 2).
[7] Banks, Maine Becomes a State, 16.
[8] Banks, Maine Becomes a State, 22-23.
[9] Banks, Maine Becomes a State, 24-25.