“Like a torrent are rushing upon it with increasing violence”

As I wrote yesterday, the text of the Solemn League and Covenant that towns like Westford and Attleboro approved was not the first version of that document printed in an American newspaper.

On 22 June 1774, one day before Margaret Draper published the agreement in Boston, William Bradford’s Pennsylvania Journal issued a “Postscript” or supplement that included an article datelined “Philadelphia.” It began:

The following is a Circular Letter, written by the Committee of the Town of BOSTON, to the neighbouring towns with a copy of an agreement, which was to begin signing in every town in that government nearly at the same time.

The newspaper then printed William Cooper’s 8 June letter followed by a text that started the same way as what would appear in Draper’s Boston News-Letter.

But at the end of the second point, this text added the phrase “and never to renew any commerce or trade with them.”

Then it went on in a different direction. This text didn’t include an oath for retailers to swear. It included language not seen in the News-Letter version:

And, Whereas the promoting of industry, œconomy, arts and manufactures among ourselves is of the last importance to the civil and religious welfare of a community; we engage,

3dly, That from and after the first day of October next ensuing, we will, not by ourselves, or any for, by, or under us, purchase or use any goods, wares, manufactures or merchandize, whensoever or howsoever imported from Great Britain, until the harbour of Boston shall be opened, and our charter rights restored. And,

Lastly, As a refusal to come into any agreement which promises the deliverance of our country from the calamities it now feels, and which, like a torrent are rushing upon it with increasing violence, must evidence a disposition enimical to, or criminally negligent of, the common safety…

Both versions conclude with similar promises to shun doing business with any “contumacious importers.” The News-Letter text said signers wouldn’t buy “any article whatever” from those people. The Pennsylvania Journal text said they would be shunned “forever.” Both absolutes, but in different dimensions.

In comparing these two texts in 1915, Albert Matthews called the version that first surfaced in Philadelphia “Form B.” He didn’t cite that newspaper article but rather drew on a broadside at the American Antiquarian Society.

Matthews concluded that Form A was Boston’s proposed text and Form B originated in Worcester, created because Boston’s was “too drastic.” More recent scholars disagree.

COMING UP: The Worcester connection.