It wasn't the taxes as much as it was how they were imposed. Massachusetts has roots in what was essentially the earliest form of communism, the Commonwealth movement active among the puritan sects like the Pilgrims and the Quakers in Pennsylvania. All of the Nw England states were Commonwealth states except for New Hampshire and Vermont. New Hampshire was a Crown colony reserved by the British navy because the hardwoods that grew there were the finest in the world for shipmasts. As a result it was only lightly settled. Vermont at this time was wilderness. In the Commonwealth states each town was built around a common area, and each resident had to donate labor to work the common land exactly in the same manner as the Farm Communes of the Soviets 300 years later. The church acted as the social service, divided produce from the collective, collected taxes and ran the courts, and direct democracy in the form of town meetings made the laws. They were pretty much left alone to live this way for 100 years until around 1760, when the King sends a Royal governor to Massachusetts to collect his taxes, taxes that actually were necessary to pay for the cost of protecting the colonies from the French and their Indian allies. He also sent the Church of England, a move that caused bitter friction and eventually led to the separation of church and state doctrine. It was more resentment over this sudden intrusion into their lives by people who had become foriegn to them that caused the radicalism in Massachusetts.

Colonies in the South were Crown colonies. They produced wealth thru tobacco, indigo and timber, and were divided amongst the English noblemen by the King. This is why there was a large Torry movement in the South that did not exist in North. They had longer standing ties directly with England. Why they were motivate to join the rebellion is still a matter of deabte today, but the movement to outlaw slavery was very advanced in England and that may have had as much to do with it as anyything else.