The New Hampshire State House in Concord is a school of the state’s 19th-century history. Completed in 1819, the granite capitol became the center of a government that oversaw industrial growth and the rise of new cities. With the exception of two, the statues surrounding its grounds reflect this era: Daniel Webster, a champion of national unity; Franklin Pierce, whose presidency coincided with (and perhaps fed) rising sectional tensions; abolitionist Senator John P. Hale of Dover, a town whose industrial might made it the state’s first city; and Commodore George H. Perkins, a Civil War naval officer. At the outbreak of the war, volunteers gathered at the State House, and their battle flags remain preserved inside.

The state’s nickname “The Granite State” was first used by Philip Carrigain on the State House grounds during the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1825 visit to Concord and quickly spread through regional newspapers. Often linked to the Old Man of the Mountain, discovered two decades earlier in Franconia Notch, the phrase captured both the state’s landscape and identity. As Daniel Webster famously suggested, the formation stood as a “sign” that in New Hampshire, “there [God] makes men.” Nathaniel Hawthorne added “Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so complete it,” in his 1850 work The Great Stone Face. These reflections encapsulate the emergence of New Hampshire as The Granite State throughout the 19th Century.

The period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War saw incredible changes for the country, particularly in the industrial North, and New Hampshire was not an exception. Textile mills sprang up across the southern tier of the state, pulling young women and girls from throughout the region and beyond to places like Manchester and Dover to work the power looms. Infrastructure improvements within the state reflected those across the country as new roads, canals, and eventually railroads connected growing communities and supported the ongoing Industrial and Market Revolutions. Social issues such as temperance, women’s rights and abolition manifested themselves in New Hampshire culture as well as politics. These two features contributed heavily to the state’s role in the 1861-1865 conflict as New Hampshire sent rugged farmers and sturdy sailors to fight, supported by a principled and intellectual home front of manufacturing, agriculture, and morality.

The years following the Civil War witnessed the a decline in population but an increase in cultural output as well as leisure and recreation. Still the Granite State with the Old Man of the Mountain as its emblem, New Hampshire’s identity was transitioning away from being completely a manufacturing zone to an offeror of nature and its inspirational beauty. The White Mountains were painted extensively to attract visitors to come see their grandeur for themselves, and Civil War veterans were integral in engineering and building a railway to the top of the White’s highest peak, Mount Washington. By the end of the century, palatial hotels catering to the wealthy could be found from the mountains to the sea, while amusement parks and boardwalks were built to provide working people respite on the newly-created “weekend.”

The granite State House stood, as it still does, as the seat of government throughout this era of incredible change, both managing and reflecting the ebb and flow of the 19th Century. The people of the era, their values and achievements, are written on its walls and placed ornamentally across its campus. And while the lasting impressions of the period can be seen in the gigantic mills and grand hotels throughout the state, it is the capitol that serves as a central classroom devoted to it.