Vermont in the context of "County seat"

The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, the Atlantic Coast, and the Atlantic Seaboard, is the region encompassing the coastline where the Eastern United States meets the Atlantic Ocean; it has always played a major socioeconomic role in the development of the United States.

The region is generally understood to include the U.S. states that border the Atlantic Ocean: Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia, as well as some landlocked states (Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, and the district of Washington, D.C.).

In the United States before 1865, a free state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were prohibited, while a slave state was one in which they were legal. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states, so new states were admitted in slave–free pairs. There were, nonetheless, some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to their owner. Enforcement of these laws became one of the controversies that arose between slave and free states.

By the 18th century, slavery was legal throughout the Thirteen Colonies, but at the time of the American Revolution, rebel colonies started to abolish the practice. Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780, and about half the states had abolished slavery by the end of the Revolutionary War or in the first decades of the new country's existence, although, depending on the jurisdiction, this did not mean that all slaves became immediately free due to gradual abolition. Vermont — having declared its independence from Britain in 1777 and thus not being one of the Thirteen Colonies — banned slavery in the same year, before being admitted as a state in 1791.

Massachusetts (/ˌmæsəˈtʃuːsɪts/ /-zɪts/ MASS-ə-CHOO-sits, -⁠zits; Massachusett: Muhsachuweesut [məhswatʃəwiːsət]), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to its south, New Hampshire and Vermont to its north, and New York to its west. Massachusetts is the seventh-smallest state by land area. With an estimated population of over 7.1 million, it is the most populous state in New England, the 16th-most-populous in the United States, and the third-most densely populated U.S. state, after New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Massachusetts was a site of early English colonization. The Plymouth Colony was founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims of Mayflower. In 1630, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, taking its name from the Indigenous Massachusett people, also established settlements in Boston and Salem. In 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of America's most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials. The American Revolution originated in Massachusetts, with Boston becoming known as the "Cradle of Liberty" for its political agitation. In 1786, Shays' Rebellion, a populist revolt, influenced the United States Constitutional Convention. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing, and trade, Massachusetts transformed into a manufacturing hub during the Industrial Revolution. Before the American Civil War, the state was a center for the abolitionist, temperance, and transcendentalist movements. During the 20th century, the state's economy shifted from manufacturing to services; in the 21st century, Massachusetts has become the global leader in biotechnology, and also excels in artificial intelligence, engineering, higher education, finance, and maritime trade.

New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Gulf of Maine and Atlantic Ocean are to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England's largest city and the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston, comprising the Boston–Worcester–Providence Combined Statistical Area, houses more than half of New England's population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts, the second-largest city in New England; Manchester, New Hampshire, the largest city in New Hampshire; and Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island. In 1620, the Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony, the second successful settlement in British America after the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, founded in 1607. Ten years later, Puritans established Massachusetts Bay Colony north of Plymouth Colony. Over the next 126 years, people in the region fought in four French and Indian Wars until the English colonists and their Iroquois allies defeated the French and their Algonquian allies.

In the late 18th century, political leaders from the New England colonies initiated resistance to Britain's taxes without the consent of the colonists. Residents of Rhode Island captured and burned a British Royal Navy ship which was enforcing unpopular trade restrictions, and residents of Boston threw British tea into the harbor. Britain responded with a series of punitive laws stripping Massachusetts of self-government which the colonists called the "Intolerable Acts". These confrontations led to the first battles of the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and the expulsion of the British authorities from the region in spring 1776. The region played a prominent role in the movement to abolish slavery in the United States, and it was the first region of the U.S. transformed by the Industrial Revolution, initially centered on the Blackstone and Merrimack river valleys.

The Northeastern United States (also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast) is one of the four census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. Located on the Atlantic coast of North America, the region borders Canada to its north, the Southern United States to its south, the Midwestern United States to its west, and the Atlantic Ocean to its east.

The Northeast is one of the four regions defined by the U.S. Census Bureau for the collection and analysis of statistics. The Census Bureau defines the region as including the six New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and three lower North-Eastern states of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Some expanded definitions of the region include Mid-Atlantic locations such as Delaware, Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

New Hampshire (/ˈhæmpʃər/ HAMP-shər) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Of the 50 U.S. states, New Hampshire is the seventh-smallest by land area and the tenth-least populous, with a population of 1,377,529 residents as of the 2020 census. Concord is the state capital and Manchester is the most populous city. New Hampshire's motto, "Live Free or Die", reflects its role in the American Revolutionary War; its nickname, "The Granite State", refers to its extensive granite formations and quarries. It is well known for holding the first primary in the U.S. presidential election cycle, and its resulting influence on American electoral politics.

New Hampshire was inhabited for thousands of years by Algonquian-speaking peoples such as the Abenaki. Europeans arrived in the 17th century, with the English establishing some of the earliest non-indigenous settlements. The Province of New Hampshire was established in 1629, named after the English county of Hampshire. Following tensions between the British colonies and the crown in the 1760s, New Hampshire saw one of the earliest acts of rebellion, with the seizing of Fort William and Mary from the British in 1774. In 1776, it became the first of the British North American colonies to establish an independent government and state constitution. It signed the United States Declaration of Independence and contributed troops, ships, and supplies in the war against Britain. In 1788, it was the 9th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, bringing it into effect. Through the mid-19th century, New Hampshire was an active center of abolitionism, and fielded close to 32,000 Union soldiers during the U.S. Civil War. Afterwards the state saw rapid industrialization and population growth, becoming a center of textile manufacturing, shoemaking, and papermaking; the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company in Manchester was the largest cotton textile plant in the world. French Canadians formed the most significant influx of immigrants, and a quarter of New Hampshire residents have French American ancestry.

Montpelier is the capital city of the U.S. state of Vermont and the county seat of Washington County. The site of Vermont's state government, it is the least populous state capital in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 8,074, with a daytime population growth of about 21,000 due to the large number of jobs within city limits. The Vermont College of Fine Arts is located in the municipality. It was named after Montpellier, a city in the south of France.

Montpelier was chartered as a town by proprietors from Massachusetts and western Vermont on August 14, 1781, and the Town of Montpelier was granted municipal powers by the "Governor, Council and General Assembly of the Freemen of the State of Vermont". The first permanent settlement began in May 1787, and a town meeting was established in 1791. The city received a French name because the Franco-American alliance during the Revolutionary War had inspired widespread Francophilia. Montpelier was selected as state capital in 1805, and citizens of the town donated funds to build the first state house. The legislature chartered the City of Montpelier in 1894, and it was organized at a town meeting the next year.

The Abenaki (Abenaki: W8banaki) are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was predominantly spoken in Maine, while the Western Abenaki language was spoken in Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

While Abenaki peoples share cultural traits, they historically did not have a centralized government. They came together as a post-contact community after their original tribes were decimated by colonization, disease, and warfare.