“If the burning the Gaspee schooner was a matter of serious importance…”

Benjamin Galloway was indeed at Mount Vernon on 1–5 January 1773, much as he described decades later. The evidence for that is George Washington’s own diary.

The anecdote Galloway told about Washington hinged on him reading an article from a recent newspaper, one of several fetched by William Lee from Alexandria, which described the destruction of H.M.S. Gaspee in Rhode Island.

The Gaspee was burned in June 1772, however. Would it have still been hot news in Virginia early the next year?

As I discussed back here, the initial news stories on the Gaspee affair were quite low-key, considering it was an armed attack on a Royal Navy schooner. The American Whig press didn’t make a big deal out of it, as if the event was an embarrassment.

Only one issue of the three Virginia Gazette newspapers—Purdie and Dixon’s for 9 July—carried a report of the burning. Through the end of the year, the rare follow-up items were short dispatches reporting on government actions, such as offering rewards for information and setting up an investigatory commission.

However, in December Rhode Island politicians began to write to local newspapers and to colleagues in other colonies, like Samuel Adams in Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee in Virginia. They highlighted how that commission might send defendants and witnesses to Britain for treason trials. That would violate sacred British rights, they declared.

The 30 Dec 1772 Pennsylvania Journal joined that campaign by reprinting three separate items about the Gaspee affair from New England newspapers. Under the dateline of Boston, 17 December, printer William Bradford (shown above) combined an angry report on the commission from the 17 December Massachusetts Spy and this commentary from the 21 December Boston Gazette:

If the burning the Gaspee schooner was a matter of serious importance, much more so are the methods pursued by the British administration in consequence of it. This affair was transacted within the body of a county, in a free English government; one would think therefore it should be the subject of the inquiry of the grand jury of inquest for the same county: Instead of which we are told, that five gentlemen, four of whom are of superior rank in different colonies, the other indeed a judge of the admiralty, are appointed by commission to make the enquiry.

By a gentleman lately from Rhode-Island, we are informed, that three of these commissioners are empowered to act, at whose call the army and navy are to attend; that any persons accused, against whom the commissioners shall judge there is evidence sufficient to convict them, are to be apprehended, and together with the evidences [i.e., witnesses] sent to England for trial. And that Capt. [Robert] Keeler, of the Mercury, has notified Gov. [Joseph] Wanton, in consequence of orders, that his ship is ready to receive such persons for the purpose aforesaid.

[Boston News-Letter printer Richard] Draper tells us, that “Admiral [John] Montagu is ordered to hoist his flag in Newport harbour.” The purport of this parade is obvious to common sense. The Admiral will no doubt acquit himself to the satisfaction of his masters upon this occasion. It is said that he has recommended that those who, it is supposed, can give evidence of this matter, and refuse to do it, be put on board the men of war, and there kept until they do; which perhaps may be rather more eligible of the two, than the torture of the RACK.

The indignity offered to all the Colonies, and particularly Rhode-Island, says a gentleman of a neighbouring town in a letter to his friend in this, is not to be equalled. To have a set of crown officers commissioned by the ministry, and supported by ships and troops to enquire into offences against the crown, instead of the ordinary and constitutional method of a grand jury carries an implication that the people of that colony are all so deeply tinctured with rebellious principles, as that they are not to be trusted by the crown.

The inhabitants of this town and province can feel for their brethren of Rhode-Island, having themselves tasted of the cup of ministerial vengeance; when to aid and protect the commissioners of the customs, in carrying into execution a revenue act of the British parliament, Hillsborough’s troops were stationed in the capital, and the city turned into a garrison!—And though these troops, after slaughtering some of our innocent inhabitants, were obliged to retire from the town, they are yet posted in the principal fortress and key of the province.

What shall hinder the like scene of blood, rapine and slaughter in the capitol of Rhode-Island, if the commissions of enquiry there, should so readily call for the military aid as the commissioners of the customs did here? Such treatment of the colonies calls for the most serious attention; and however prophane it may be called by Mr. Draper’s writer the Yeoman, or his canting neighbour, we have reason with firm affiance in HIM who hateth oppression and tyranny, devoutly to acclaim, How Long!—O LORD!—How Long!

That was immediately followed by similar news from the 19 December Providence Gazette, which concluded:

The idea of seizing a number of persons, under the points of bayonets, and transporting them three thousand miles for trial, where, whether guilty or innocent, they must unavoidably fall victims alike to revenge or prejudice, is shocking to humanity, repugnant to every dictate of reason, liberty and Justice, and in which Americans and Freeman ought never to acquiesce.

And then material from the 21 December Newport Mercury, including a letter from a Bostonian warning that three army regiments were soon to march into Rhode Island and another from a Londoner saying:

Our tyrants in administration are greatly exasperated with the late manoeuvre of the brave Rhode-Islanders. . . . We believe that the ancient British spirit of independence which once blest this island, has improved by transportation, and preserves its vigour in the breasts of Americans; cherish it my dear friends! And by relieving yourselves save the small remnant of the virtuous in Britain.

Washington could have received this newspaper among others in early 1773. Living on Virginia’s northern border, he was almost as close to Philadelphia as to Williamsburg, and Philadelphia was a dynamic port with a freer press.

Thus, a newspaper delivered to Mount Vernon in the first days of 1773 could have ignited a dinner-table discussion about the Gaspee affair, British rights, and the use of the military to put down protests and tax resistance, as Galloway described. Those topics were all over the Pennsylvania Journal.

On the other hand, that newspaper did not include the details about how the Gaspee ran aground chasing a smuggling ship, details that Galloway explicitly recalled reading out to the company. He must have picked up that part of the story from other sources.

TOMORROW: George Washington’s other diary.