Otis and Robinson Continue Their Fight in the Newspapers

The earliest public comment I’ve seen from James Otis, Jr., about his altercation with John Robinson on 5 Sept 1769 was an “Advertisement” that appeared in the 11 September Boston Gazette.

It’s remarkable for the amount of emphasis Otis asked of the printers:

From a regard to truth, and to the character of a true soldier, whose honor, is ever, justly dearer to him than life: It is with pleasure I take this first opportunity voluntarily and freely to DECLARE, in the most open and unreserved as well as public manner, that in the premeditated, cowardly and villainous attempt of John Robinson, Commissioner, and his confederates, last week, to assassinate me, I have not the least reason to think, or even suspect, that any officer or officers, either of the army or navy, were directly or indirectly concerned in so foul a deed, except a well known petty commander of an armed schooner, of about 4 swivels, who if fame for once tells truth, swore last year that the whole Continent was in open Rebellion.

Because of the styling of this blog template, in long quotations I boldface words originally set in italics. That makes Otis’s writing style even more blatant. I imagine him furiously scratching lines under one word after another. To me this paragraph seems like more evidence that Otis might have been in the middle of a manic episode that month.

Customs Commissioner Robinson responded to that and other newspaper items in a long letter to the Boston Chronicle dated 18 September. The second half of that letter addressed Otis directly, saying among other things:

On Tuesday [the 5th] you went to a shop, and asked, if I did not buy a stick there, and being told I had, you desired to have the fellow of it which you bought accordingly.—

In the evening we met at the Coffee-house, when I immediately laid aside my sword.—Did that look like assassination?—

Your insult was public, and I determined to give you a public chastisement; but I did not attack you abruptly:—We had a parley together, and I attempted to take you by the nose, which, one would think, was a sufficient warning of what was to follow. What ensued served to balance our accompts.

I do enjoy that “one would think.”

Robinson then addressed Otis’s insinuation in his “Advertisement”:

You have thought proper to acquit the officers of the navy and army, (one excepted,) for which I give you due credit.—You charge the officer so excepted, whom you are pleased to call a petty Commander, &c. with being my Confederate.––To set your right in this particular, I must inform you, that that Gentleman, if you mean Captain Dundas was not in the Coffee-house during the engagement between us, and you may have proof of it, if you desire it.—

Before I conclude, I would remind you, that the man who appeals to the public, should confine himself within the verge of truth, and for his own sake within the bounds of credibility.

In his reply Robinson demonstrated the more restrained, rational deportment of an Enlightenment gentleman—albeit one who had tried to grab his nemesis’s nose.

TOMORROW: Who was “Captain Dundas”?