Indeed, a Northampton man had once been governor of the state; Caleb Strong, who had read law in Northampton and become one of the Constitution’s framers, had served for a total of eleven years at the beginning of the 1800s. As governor, Strong had proved feisty; deeming foreign policy to be the province of the states, not Washington, he had refused to send the Massachusetts militia against the British in the controversial War of 1812.
