Rhode Island’s “vote for raising men”

As soon as he heard about the shooting at Lexington, James Warren, delegate from Plymouth to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, passed the news on to Patriots in Rhode Island.

On 20 April the elite militia company called the Kentish Guards mustered and marched toward Massachusetts.

Before those men reached the border, a message arrived from Gov. Joseph Wanton (shown here), ordering the unit to stand down.

Four members continued on horseback, three of them being Nathanael Greene and his brothers. But once those men heard that the British troops were back inside Boston and the emergency had passed, they went home to Rhode Island to sort things out.

The colony’s first step came quickly. On 22 April the assembly passed an act to raise 1,500 men

properly armed and disciplined, to continue in this colony, as an army of observation, to repel any insult or violence that may be offered to the inhabitants. And also, if it be necessary for the safety and preservation of any of the colonies, to march out of this colony and join and co-operate with the forces of the neighboring colonies.

The Massachusetts Provincial Congress had also used the phrase “army of observation” in early April, implying a purely defensive force. Once the fighting began, however, it dropped that phrase entirely. Even as the Rhode Island assembly called its new troops an “army of observation,” it was clearly opening the door to sending those men off to help Massachusetts in its war.

Top officials in the colony resisted. Though Gov. Wanton had been crucial to stymieing the Crown’s Gaspee inquiry a couple of years before, he filed a protest against the legislature’s vote. Deputy Governor Darius Sessions joined him along with two members of the Council of Assistants (the upper house), Thomas Wickes and William Potter. On 25 April they declared their opposition to the new army

Because we are of opinion that such a measure will be attended with the most fatal consequences to our charter privileges, involve the Colony in all the horrors of a civil war, and, as we conceive, is an open violation of the oath of allegiance, which we have severally taken upon our admission into the respective offices we now hold in the Colony.

Coincidentally, Rhode Island’s charter called for a new legislative session to start on the first Wednesday of each May. In that spring’s annual election, Sessions, Wickes, and Potter all lost their seats. (Potter would recant and apologize in June, and then return to the Council of Assistants.) Nicholas Cooke became the new deputy governor.

Rhode Island’s freemen reelected Joseph Wanton as governor, but on 2 May he sent a letter to the assembly saying, “indisposition prevents me from meeting you.” Instead he enclosed what Lord Dartmouth, the British Secretary of State, considered a conciliatory offer. Wanton thought that was a more promising route to resolving the crisis. He told the legislators:

The prosperity and happiness of this colony, is founded in its connexion with Great Britain; “for if once we are separated, where shall we find another Britain to supply our loss? Torn from the body to which we are united by religion, liberty, laws and commerce, we must bleed at every vein.”

That passage quoted from John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania. (Some authors miss the quote marks and attribute those words to Wanton himself.)

On 5 May the legislative speaker, Metcalf Bowler, tried to force the governor’s hand. He sent a blank commission for an officer in the new army and asked Wanton whether he would sign such a form. The governor replied:

I cannot comply with it; having heretofore protested against the vote for raising men, as a measure inconsistent with my duty to the King, and repugnant to the true and real interest of this government.

At that point the assembly bypassed Gov. Wanton and started treating Nicholas Cooke as the colony’s chief executive. Wanton wouldn’t be officially replaced until November, but he could no longer stand in the way of Rhode Island’s army.

TOMORROW: Finding a general.

“Some Vin de Champagne produced the desired effect”

I’ve been quoting from the report of a British secret agent on his—or possibly her—conversations with Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir and the Chevalier d’Amboise at their hotel in London in the summer of 1775.

Those were aristocratic Frenchmen who had spent a few weeks in New England. Based on that deep knowledge, they told their acquaintance that all the fighting in Massachusetts could be settled:

Lastly, that it appears to them both, the Americans had no settled, regular, well digested plan, that there exists among their Chiefs more Jealousy than unanimity: that many of the Settlers, and mostly all the Commercial people of Substance, begun to be tired of the present situation, and that they (the two french Officers) thought it probable Government would fall on Methods to disunite them, which if employed with success, would necessarily facilitate a reconciliation.

The agent thought there was more to find out, though. These two Frenchmen were happy to talk about the British colonists in New England, but what about their own secrets? What were they really up to?

The agent used a time-honored method: “stimulating the pride of Monsieur Le Comte de Beauvouloir in the moment that some Vin de Champagne produced the desired effect on his prudence.” The powerful combination of alcohol and flattery.

Bonvouloir then divulged that “he had had two Audiences of Le Comte de Guines,” the French ambassador to the British government (shown above). He boasted “that his Excellency had made him great offers of Service and had asked him twice to dinner.” As the younger son of a French nobleman, disabled enough that his military appointments were basically honorary, Bonvouloir yearned for recognition from such an important official.

The agent told whichever British Secretary of State he or she worked for (probably the Earl of Rochford though the report survives in the papers of the Earl of Dartmoouth):

My Opinion is that the two french Officers are at this Instant in the Service of the Rebel Americans, and are paid by them; that they came over either with proposals to the Courts of France and Spain, or some other Commission in the American Interests, and that they intend to return to their Employers by means of some English Ship.

In fact, there’s no surviving evidence that anyone in New England had even noticed Bonvouloir and D’Amboise, much less sent them to Europe with “proposals to the Courts of France and Spain.”

The situation was quite the reverse. Bonvouloir was trying to become an emissary of his own government.

TOMORROW: Diplomatic missions.

“Employing every art and all the Address I am Master of”

Here’s another glimpse of espionage in 1775.

That summer, Julien-Alexandre Achard de Bonvouloir, younger son of a French nobleman, and the Chevalier d’Amboise arrived in London on a ship from New England.

They aroused the suspicions of the British government. On 5 August John Pownall, Secretary to the Board of Trade, wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the colonies:

The Lodgers at the Hotel in Watling Street have been watched & pumped by a discreet & proper person employed by Lord Rochford, they proved to be as stated in the Letter you left with me, French officers from the West Indies, by the way of North America; they do not conceal that they have been in [Israel] Putnams Camp, but they speak of him and his troops in a most despicable Light, and say that but for their advice they would have made an Attempt that would have ruined them—if this is true I don’t think we are much obliged to the Gentlemen—

they further say that there is at least 200 able Officers & Engineers of all countrys now here endeavouring to get passages to North America—

a few days ago the Society at the Hotel was increased by the addition of a french officer from France, who got out of his Chaise at Westminster Bridge took a Hackney Coach, and went both to the Spanish and French Embassadours—in a few days we shall probably know more and be able to judge what is fit to be done.

The Earl of Rochford (shown above) was Britain’s other Secretary of State, with responsibility for continental Europe.

This document seems less valuable for its secondhand content about America than for its hints about intelligence methods in London. The Frenchmen were “watched,” “pumped,” and trailed. The new arrival switched vehicles before visiting embassies but didn’t manage to shake his trackers.

Lord Dartmouth’s files also contain a unsigned report headed “Intelligence.” which states:

What I have been able to collect from the two French Officers by employing every art and all the Address I am Master of, amounts to what follows:—

1st. That they have been over great part of the American Continent, particularly at Philadelphia, at New York, Rhode Island, and New England, which with their stay in and about Boston, would have required more time to perform than the three Months they say they remained in America.

2d. That they are particularly acquainted with Putnam and [Artemas] Ward,—the first they represent to be a good natured Civil and brave old Soldier—but a head strong, ignorant and stupid General—Ward they hold indeed very cheap.

[3d.] That they were both in person at the Affair of Lexington, and from circumstances they cited, I am induced to think that they were present at the Affair of the 17th [i.e., Bunker Hill].

4. That they were courted by the Rebels to stay amongst them, and were offered forty Pounds / Month each, of pay—they say they did not think such Offers solid, nor did they like the paper Currency. . . .

I suspect the claim to have been “in person at the Affair of Lexington” meant Bonvouloir and D’Amboise were present in eastern Massachusetts during the militia alarm on 19 April, not that they were in Lexington itself on that early morning. Still, adding two aristocratic Frenchmen to the mix of people in New England at the outbreak of war is intriguing.

TOMORROW: Pumping M. Bonvouloir.

“With Geat diffickalty We Exaped With our Lives”

Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot evidently met with Gen. Thomas Gage in Salem in the middle of September 1774.

The royal governor moved back to Boston in the last week of that month after an unsuccessful confrontation with the local committee of safety.

Richardson and Wilmot went to the Stoneham home of Kezia and Daniel Bryant, Richardson’s sister and brother-in-law, as I recounted yesterday. They were there on 3 September.

When I first wrote about Wilmot’s story for what was then New England Ancestors magazine, I didn’t realize the significance of that date. That was the day after the “Powder Alarm.”

That event showed how powerless Gov. Gage was outside of Boston. Up to five thousand militiamen had marched into Cambridge, demanded that royal appointees resign, chased Customs Commissioner Benjamin Hallowell for miles, and surrounded Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver’s mansion until he signed a resignation. And there was no response from the royal government.

If Gage couldn’t protect high officials in Cambridge, right across the Charles River, he certainly couldn’t protect an infamous child-killer up in Stoneham. And on 3 September, a rural mob came for Richardson.

According to Wilmot’s petition to Secretary of State Dartmouth:

about Eleven a Clock at Night thee came forty men armed with Goons and Suronded the house of Mr. Brayant—and broke his Windows Strocke out on of his Wife Eyes, and swore they would distroy us for we Ware Toary and Enemys to there Countery—and With Geat diffickalty We Exaped With our Lives and Came to Boston under the protection of the fourth Rigment of foot Quartred there.

His Majesty’s 4th Regiment of Foot was camped on Boston Common.

Richardson and Wilmot must eventually have gotten on board H.M.S. St. Lawrence as planned. They were in London on 19 January when they signed their petitions to Lord Dartmouth. Judging by the handwriting (and spelling), Wilmot wrote both petitions, and Richardson added his signature.

On January, undersecretary John Pownall sent those papers to his counterpart at the Treasury Office, Grey Cooper. He wrote:

As the inclosed Petitions relate to Services performed and Hardships sustained by the Petitioners as Officers of the Revenue, I am directed by the Lord of Dartmouth to transmit them to you and to desire that you will communicate them to Lord North.

In other words, this is a Customs service problem, so it’s up to your department to deal with it.

Treasury officials read the papers on 26 January, and a note on the outside of the bundle states that the two men were paid £10 each.

And with that, “the rank, bloody, and as yet unhanged Ebenezer Richardson” departed from the historical record.

“The Inhabitants of Boston are on the move”

Among the items in the London newspapers that arrived in Marblehead in the first week of April 1775 was this:

Yesterday a messenger was sent to Falmouth, with dispatches for General [Thomas] Gage at Boston, to be forwarded by a packet boat detained there for that purpose.

It didn’t take long for the Massachusetts Patriots to figure out that if this report had gone into the newspapers, and those newspapers had traveled to New England, then those dispatches could have made it to New England, too. And in that case, the royal governor might already be preparing to act on them.

Decades later, Mercy Warren wrote of the royal authorities in Massachusetts: “from their deportment, there was the highest reason to expect they would extend their researches, and endeavour to seize and secure, as they termed them, the factious leaders of rebellion.”

I can’t actually find those italicized words in the writings of royal officials, and “deportment” is a lousy basis for such a conclusion. But the Patriots may have had a more solid basis for expecting arrests, possibly from sympathetic people in Britain.

On behalf of the imperial government, the Earl of Dartmouth had written to Gage: “the first & essential step to be taken towards re-establishing Government, would be to arrest and imprison the principal actors & abettors in the Provincial Congress.” That letter didn’t arrive in Massachusetts until 14 April, but it looks like Patriots anticipated it after those Marblehead arrivals.

Most of the rest of the letter from James Warren to his wife Mercy that I’ve been discussing is about that worry—that Gage’s government would start arresting resistance leaders. On 6 April, James wrote from Concord:

The Inhabitants of Boston begin to move. The Selectmen and Committee of Correspondence are to be with us, I mean our Committee, this day. The Snow Storm yesterday and Business prevented them then. From this Conference some vigorous resolutions may grow. . . .

I am with regards to all Friends and the greatest Expressions of Love and regard to you, your very affect. Husband, JAS. WARREN

Love to my Boys. I feel disposed to add to this long letter but neither time nor place will permit it.

Then on 7 April James went back to his letter with more information and a warning:

I am up this morning to add. Mr. [Isaac] Lothrop [another Plymouth delegate] is the bearer of this and can give you an Acct. of us.

The Inhabitants of Boston are on the move. [John] H[ancock] and [Samuel] A[dams] go no more into that Garrison, the female Connections of the first [Lydia Hancock and Dorothy Quincy] come out early this morning and measures are taken relative to those of the last [Elizabeth Adams, who didn’t make it out before the siege]. The moving of the Inhabitants of Boston if effected will be one grand Move. I hope one thing will follow another till America shall appear Grand to all the world.

I begin to think of the Trunks which may be ready against I come home, we perhaps may be forced to move: if we are let us strive to submit to the dispensations of Providence with Christian resignation and phylosophick Dignity.

God has given you great abilities; you have improved them in great Acquirements. You are possessd of eminent Virtues and distinguished Piety. For all these I esteem I love you in a degree that I can't express. They are all now to be called into action for the good of Mankind, for the good of your friends, for the promotion of Virtue and Patriotism. Don’t let the fluttering of your Heart interrupt your Health or disturb your repose. Believe me I am continually Anxious about you. Ride when the weather is good and don’t work or read too much at other times. I must bid you adieu. God Almighty bless you. No letter yet. What can it mean? Is she not well? She can't forget me or have any Objections to writing.

James Warren appears to have gone home to Plymouth a few days later and then immediately gone on to Rhode Island to try to convince that elected government to help prepare a New England army. He was in that colony when word came of shooting at Lexington.

“A Recess that I may attend to that Preparation for my Voyage”

On 24 Feb 1774, the day that the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court voted to impeach Chief Justice Peter Oliver, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson shared some news of his own.

Hutchinson sent this message written at his country home in Milton:

Having received discretionary Leave from the King to go to England, I think it proper to acquaint you with this Instance of His Majesty’s most gracious Condescension, and that I intend to avail myself of it as soon as his Service will admit.

I must desire you to give all Dispatch possible to such necessary public Business as may yet lie before you, for I must soon, by an Adjournment or Prorogation, give the Court a Recess that I may attend to that Preparation for my Voyage which His Majesty’s Service and my personal Affairs require.

The house received that news on 25 February. The legislators immediately sent a committee to ask the governor to preside over Oliver’s trial in the Council before he left.

Of course, Hutchinson had no desire to do that. The chief justice was his ally, in-law, and friend. He didn’t think the Massachusetts charter even allowed for impeachment.

Hutchinson had been asking the imperial government for permission to visit Britain for months, so his planned trip wasn’t just a ploy. At the same time, he was glad to have a reason to pressure the legislature to stick to “necessary public Business.”

Under the charter, while the governor would be out of the province, the lieutenant governor would take on his duties. At this time, that man was Andrew Oliver (shown above), the chief justice’s brother—even less welcoming to impeachment!

Also on 24 February, John Adams wrote home to his wife Abigail in Braintree: “General Court is preparing an Impeachment vs. the C. Justice. I must not add, but the Name of yr / John Adams.” That coyness might reflect his behind-the-scenes role in the impeachment.

Adams’s remark about “preparing an Impeachment” also shows how that process was still ongoing. At best, the house’s 24 February vote simply led the way to the real confrontation in the Council, and ultimately the Council’s vote.

Perhaps because of that drawn-out timeline, we can find authorities giving different anniversary dates for when the Massachusetts assembly impeached Chief Justice Oliver. The official vote came on 24 February, but there were months of actions leading up to that vote, and lots of work still to do.

TOMORROW: The final formalities.

Call for Essays on “Wheatley in London”

Speaking of Phillis Wheatley, Studies in Romanticism has issued a call for articles for a special issue of the journal with the theme “Wheatley in London.”

The call says:

Phillis Wheatley traveled to London in the summer of 1773, prior to the September publication of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. The literary-historical implications of this fact are far reaching, touching on Wheatley’s place in the canons of African-American, Black Diasporic, American, and British literature. The aim of this forum is to situate Wheatley’s career in relation to British studies, shoring up the significance of London, and of Britain more generally, as one of the multiple contexts she negotiated during her short and remarkable life.

Wheatley’s writing addressed audiences in the metropole as well as the American colonies, but she is still largely taught as a founding figure for African-American literature. “Wheatley in London” asks what happens when we return her to a context in which she also flourished: transatlantic evangelical English-language print culture of the 1770s. . . .

Attention to the British context reminds us that there were Black intellectuals in 1770s London; that there was a thriving abolitionist movement and an array of evangelical Christian sects that intersected with that movement in complicated ways. Thanks to the publication of laboring-class poets, “natural genius” was in vogue. Still, no matter how skillful and innovative Wheatley’s use of conventions like the heroic couplet, those conventions retain their association with white British poets, sometimes posing a dilemma for readers and critics.

Adding to the flood of publications about Wheatley as we approach the sestercentennial of her book, this project aims to “focus on the view from London in 1773.”

The editors of this issue of the journal will be Bakary Diaby of Skidmore College and Abigail Zitin of Rutgers University. They’re seeking essays between 3,000 and 6,000 words long, and the submission deadline is 1 Feb 2024.

(The picture above shows the Earl of Dartmouth, the British government’s secretary of state for the colonies in 1773. Wheatley met with him in London. A hereditary earl, one of the most powerful individuals in the British Empire, conversing with an enslaved woman probably only twenty years old. That wide disparity of legal power and stature shows what an extraordinary event Wheatley’s trip to London was.)

“General Gage and the Guns” Tonight

Tonight, April 12, I’ll deliver an online talk for the Army Heritage Center Foundation in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on “General Gage and the Guns of the Boston Train.”

This is one of several talks I’ve developed from The Road to Concord. This one looks at events through Gen. Thomas Gage’s eyes, examining how he tried to stymie the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s effort to build a military force.

Here’s Gage reporting to Viscount Barrington, the longtime British secretary of war, on 25 Sept 1774:

I write to your Lordship by a private Ship fearing the Post to New York which must convey my Letters from hence for the Packet not quite safe, tho’ it has not yet been stopped; but People have been so questioned, and impeded on the Road, there is no knowing how soon the Post may be examined, for there seems no Respect for any Thing.

Affairs here are worse that even in the Time of the Stamp-Act, I don’t mean in Boston, for throughout the Country. The New England Provinces, except part of New Hampshire, are I may say in Arms, and the Question is now not whether you shall quell Disturbances in Boston, but whether those Provinces shall be conquered, and I find it is the General Resolution of all the Continent to support the Massachusett’s Bay in their Opposition to the late Acts. From Appearances no People are more determined for a Civil War, the whole Country from hence to New York armed, training and providing Military Stores.

Every Man supposed averse to their Measures so molest’d & oppressed, that if he can get out of the Country, which is not an easy Matter, he takes Shelter in Boston.

Clearly, Gen. Gage warned his superiors that in Massachusetts the Crown government was facing opposition that was widespread, armed, and militant. He didn’t even trust the royal mail. Neighboring colonies were joining the rebels. He was losing potential allies in the countryside as they sought safety in Boston.

When Gage’s messages reached London, however, Lord North and his ministers viewed them as alarmist. They didn’t accept his reports as factual. They lost faith in him.

Ironically, some later historians have judged Gage to be too cautious. He was indeed reluctant to act until the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, told him he had to—but that was in large part because he knew how strong his opponents could be. In the fall of 1774 and winter of 1775, Gage was cautious because the situation warranted it.

“To support the Authority we have claimed over America”

Yesterday I wrote about how Josiah Quincy, Jr., was so rooted in his position in November 1774 that he couldn’t hear what some of the top ministers in the British government were telling him.

He wasn’t the only man in those meetings with that problem, though. Lord North, Lord Dartmouth, and other royal officials were equally committed to what they believed.

Former Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson kept track of Quincy’s activities in London. He wrote of the visiting attorney:

It seems his chief business was, to represent the Massachusets people to be engaged almost to a man, and so determined as that they would sooner die than submit, and particularly the two counties of Hampshire and Berkshire, which heretofore were the most loyal in the Province, to be now the most zealous and unanimous in opposition; and this, not from compulsion, but from conviction: and he added that the people were more enraged than otherwise they would have been, by the appointment of the most obnoxious persons for Members of the Council…

In other words, the constitutional changes of the Massachusetts Government Act had prompted an uprising in the province, pushed not by mercantile malcontents in Boston but by ordinary farmers in the western counties driven by “conviction.”

That development had come as a pleasant surprise to the Boston Whigs. For once they weren’t trying to drag along the rest of the colony. Though the news Quincy brought gratified his political outlook, it was also accurate.

Indeed, Gen. Thomas Gage reported much the same situation to London after the first week of September. He warned of new appointees driven out of communities they had long dominated, of preparations for a military uprising, of virtually all of New England slipping out of Crown control.

And Lord North, Lord Dartmouth, and their colleagues didn’t believe it. They were certain their government had the legal and military resources to quell any problems. Dartmouth talked to Hutchinson about “an Act of Parlt. to suspend all the Militia laws of Mass. Bay.” By that time, Massachusetts towns had already started to reorganize their militia companies independent of royal authority. (And of course to collect cannon.) No “suspension” would have had any worthwhile effect.

In his polite, self-deprecating style, Lord North warned Quincy that his government was not going to back down:

His Lordship more than thrice spoke of the powers of Great Britain, of the determination to exert to the utmost in order to effect the submission of the Colonies. He said repeatedly We must try what we can do to support the Authority we have claimed over America, if we are defective in power we must set down contented and make the best terms we can, and nobody then can blame us after we have done our utmost; but till we have tryed what we can do we can never be justified in acceding; and we ought and shall be very carefull, not to judge a thing impossible, because it may be difficult, nay we ought to try what we can affect, before we determine upon its impracticability.

Quincy had sailed to Britain hoping to effect a political reconciliation. All his mission accomplished was to show how the two sides were on a collision course. 

“Your Countrymen must fail in a contest with this great and powerfull people”

Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s mission to London in 1774 was a failure after its first week, and he didn’t know it.

Quincy met with the prime minister on 19 November. Four days later the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, told Thomas Hutchinson that Lord North had concluded Josiah Quincy, Jr., was “a bad, insidious man, designing to be artful without abilities to conceal his design.”

Hutchinson wrote back to Robert Auchmuty in Massachusetts, “If the remarks which Ld. North made upon the first visit are truly reported, there will probably be no second visit to cause a dispute.” You think?

Dartmouth went into his own meeting with Quincy the next day. It didn’t go any better. The earl had also heard “Quincy intended to go to Holland,” seeking military supplies or other support from one of Britain’s rivals, which provided another reason to mistrust the young attorney from Massachusetts.

In that same week John Williams set up one other meeting for Quincy with a royal official: Corbyn Morris, a long-time Commissioner of His Majesty’s Customs. On 22 November, Quincy recorded in his journal:

Dined with Corbin Morris Esqr., one of the Commissioners of the Customs, (supposed framer of the annual ministerial budget, being a choice friend of the Ministry) in company with one of the officers of the Treasury and Jonathan [sic] Williams Esqr. Mr. Morris was sensible, intelligent and very conversible. The who[le] conversation was on American affairs. He enter[ed] largely into the claims, the rights and the duty of Parliament. He spoke as might be expected. I observed a remarkable conformity of sentiments between him and Lord North, and an equally observable similarity of language. Mr. Morris expatiated largely upon the infinite resources of Commerce[,] wealth and power of the English nation. I heard him.

The following address to me was a little singular, not to say laughable—but I never smiled. “Mr. Quincy you are a man &c. (flummery). You have seen some of the ministry and have heard more of the disposition of [the] administration. You find that they have no inclination to injure, much less to oppress the Colonies. They have no wish, but that of seeing the Americans free and happy. You must be sensible of the right of Parliament to legislate for the Colonies, and of the power of the nation to enforce their laws. No power in Europe ever provoke[d] the resentment or bid defiance to the Powers of this Island, but they were made to repent of it. You must know your Countrymen must fail in a contest with this great and powerfull people. Now as you find how inclined Administration are to lenity and mildness, you should, you ought to write to your friends this intelligence, and endeavour to influence them to their duty. I don’t doubt your influence would be very great with them, and you would by this means be doing a lasting service to the Country.” ! ! !

Morris was apparently trying to give Quincy straight talk: the Crown government was constitutionally sound, beneficent, powerful, determined, and—for a limited time—willing to be lenient. But Quincy found the warning “laughable.” He even appears to have been suspicious that Lord North had said much the same thing.

Quincy might also have felt that Morris’s suggestion he use his “influence” to win over other Massachusetts Whigs might be followed by a financial reward for his “lasting service.” Quincy was already “upon my guard against the temptations and bribery of Administration.” One man in Massachusetts even told his sister that he ”loved money too much, to be trusted at a Court where every thing is bought and sold.” So he was determined not to bend his position.

Quincy remained in London, talking to local supporters of the American cause. But he had no more access to people who were actually in power. In early December Lord Chief Justice Mansfield told another official “Quincy had desired to see him, but he would not admit him.”

In early March 1775, Josiah Quincy, Jr., sailed home. By the time his ship arrived off the coast of Massachusetts, the province was at war and he was dying.

TOMORROW: More failure of communication.

“They understood he was not the person intended”

One of the minor but telling disagreements between Josiah Quincy, Jr., and the government ministers he met in London in November 1774 involved the new lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Oliver.

After meeting with Quincy, the secretary of state, Lord Dartmouth, described their conversation to former governor Thomas Hutchinson.

Among other things Quincy warned that the people of Massachusetts were strongly opposed to the new Council, appointed by writs of mandamus from London rather than elected. Specifically, he said:

the new Counsellors were in general persons the most exceptionable to the Province, of any which could have been pitched upon, and only one whom the people were satisfied with, which was the Lt. Governor, and he by chance, for they understood he was not the person intended, but that the name of the Ch. Justice was mistaken.

That new appointee, Thomas Oliver, was only in his forties and had not been active in politics before. Massachusetts Whigs suspected that the government in London really meant to name Chief Justice Peter Oliver to succeed his late brother, Andrew Oliver (shown above). Or at least that bureaucrats believed Thomas Oliver was a member of the same family.

I thought the same thing, and said so, in presentations about the “Powder Alarm,” in which Thomas Oliver played a central role. There just didn’t seem to be any other explanation for how the man attracted any attention in London.

But then John W. Tyler, who’s busy editing the Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, alerted me to a 29 Mar 1774 letter, to be published in an upcoming volume. In that dispatch to Lord Dartmouth, Gov. Hutchinson discussed candidates to replace Andrew Oliver. William Browne of Salem preferred a seat on the bench. Hutchinson’s next choice was Customs Commissioner William Burch. The provincial secretary, Thomas Flucker, might be persuaded to exchange his hard job for an easier one with a slightly smaller compensation.

And then:

There is a gentleman of the same name with the late Lieut. Governor but of another family Thomas Oliver Esq. of Cambridge, now Judge of the Provincial Court of Admiralty which he must quit in case of his appointment. He has a handsome Estate, is a very sensible man & very generally esteemed. He is Cousin German to Mr. [Richard] Oliver the Alderman and City Member [of Parliament]. I know not how the Alderman stands affected to Government but this Gentleman has been steady in his opposition to all the late measures and I think the Administration in case of the absence of the Governor may be safely trusted with him.

Thus, when the secretary of state appointed Thomas Oliver to be Massachusetts’s new lieutenant governor, he had heard about the man and knew he wasn’t part of the same family.

How did Lord Dartmouth respond to Josiah Quincy suggesting the new lieutenant governor was nothing but a big mistake? According to Hutchinson, “Ld. D. interrupted him here and said it was strange the people of N.E. should suppose the Ministry so inattentive as not to ascertain the names of the persons they appointed.”

Quincy doesn’t seem to have recognized that that was a polite aristocratic way of telling him he was talking through his hat.

As with so many of these conversations, Quincy’s outlook was so far away from how the ministers saw things, and all the men were so certain about their beliefs, that they were speaking past each other.

TOMORROW: A failure of communication.

“His Ldship. did not suppose he would say this was a misrepresentation”

I’ve quoted Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s descriptions of his meetings in November 1774 with Lord North, the prime minister, and the Earl of Dartmouth, the secretary of state for North America.

So far as I know, we don’t have accounts of those discussions directly from those ministers or their aides. But we do have what former governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote after hearing from Lord Dartmouth and others, and it presents a very different picture of the conversations.

Of course Hutchinson was an interested party, in that one of Quincy’s main talking-points in London was that the former governor had been lying about Massachusetts and Boston. So Hutchinson was probably pleased to hear that the ministers showed no sympathy for that complaint. On the other hand, he would have recorded any hint that the ministers were sympathetic, so I think we can take Hutchinson’s reports as accurate.

From the start, it appears, Lord North and Lord Dartmouth listened to things Quincy said and oh-so-politely tried to correct him. For example, Dartmouth gave Hutchinson this account of Quincy’s meeting with Lord North:

[Quincy said] the people of the Massachusetts must have been much wronged by the misrepresentations which had been made from time to time to the Ministry, and which had occasioned the late measures: that there was a general desire of reconciliation, and that he thought three or four persons on the part of the Kingdom, and as many on the part of the Colonies, might easily settle the matter.

Lord North said to him, he had been moved by no informations nor representations: it was their own Acts and Doings, (of which he had been furnished with attested authentic copies,) denying the authority of Parliament over them. His Ldship. did not suppose he would say this was a misrepresentation.

But of course that’s what Quincy was saying, and would say again.

Quincy wrote: “We spoke considerably upon the sentiments of Americans of the rights claimed by Parliament to tax.” Lord North’s position on that was, in modern terms, Parliament’s sovereignty under the British constitution doesn’t care about your sentiments.

(In this same week Lord North was reading Gov. Thomas Gage’s suggestion that the ministry suspend some of the Coercive Acts as a pragmatic measure. The prime minister told Hutchinson, “He did not know what General Gage meant by suspending the Acts: there was no suspending an Act of Parliament.”)

To Lord Dartmouth, Quincy suggested that the Lord Chief Justice (shown above, as painted by John Singleton Copley) could help to mediate the dispute; “he had the highest opinion of Lord Mansfield, and he did not doubt his Lordship was capable of projecting a way to reconcile the Kingdom and the Colonies.”

The secretary of state replied that “he believed Lord M. was fully of opinion that the proceedings in Massachusetts Bay were treasonable.” There had been serious discussions about that in the wake of the Boston Tea Party. 

Rather than take the hint that a legal authority he’d just praised didn’t approve of his party’s actions, Quincy responded that “he knew the people in N.E. had no idea that they were guilty of Treason.”

Once again, the government minister might have replied that what the people in New England thought they were doing did not carry the legal weight of what the Lord Chief Justice thought.

TOMORROW: Invoking the lieutenant governor’s name.

“I wished his Lordship to urge him to go into particulars”

On the evening of 23 Nov 1774, Josiah Quincy, Jr., recorded in his London diary, “Mr. Inspector [John] Williams waited on me with the Compliments of Lord Dartmouth and requested my visting on tomorrow 10 oClock.”

The Earl of Dartmouth was the British government’s secretary of state for North America from 1772 to 1775. He was thus the supervisor of all the royally appointed governors and the chief architect of the London government’s imperial policies.

In his diary Quincy added, “Mr. Williams gave me a curious account of a Conversation with his Lordship relative to my Observations.”

That referred to Quincy’s longest political work, published in Boston in May: Observations on the Act of Parliament, Commonly Called “The Boston Port Bill,” with Thoughts on Civil Society and Standing Armies. You can read the published text here, and a transcription of Quincy’s manuscript here. While he was in London, the Dilly brothers printed their own edition.

Unfortunately, we don’t know what “curious” things Lord Dartmouth had said to Williams about Quincy’s little book. Earlier that same day Lord Dartmouth consulted with former governor Thomas Hutchinson, who wrote:

Lord Dartmouth…had just received Quincy's book, and another pamphlet, which somebody, he said, had just sent him in. He asked me the character of the book, and of the man, which, when I had given, he said he had seen letters from persons in Boston to persons of respectable characters here, recommending him as a person well disposed to bring about a reconciliation between the Kingdom and the Colonies.

The earl had also consulted with the prime minister, Lord North, about his own meeting with Quincy a couple of days before. Dartmouth told Hutchinson:

Lord North looked upon his [Quincy’s] design to be to represent the Colonies in the most formidable view; and at the same time supposed the measures taken in England to be caused by misrepresentation.

Hutchinson replied, “I wished his Lordship to urge him to go into particulars.” In other words, if he’s blaming me, he should come out and say it.

On 24 November, the young Massachusetts lawyer arrived for his meeting with the secretary of state. Quincy recorded in his diary:

Waited upon Lord Dartmouth and had about an hour and a half’s conversation with him. I was convinced, that the American and British controversy would be much sooner and much more equitable settled, if it was not for the malevolent influence of a certain Northern personage now in Great Britain.

Still not naming names, but Hutchinson was behind all the trouble.

Quincy didn’t record how the earl responded to that hint, but he did record this exchange:

Lord Dartmouth being called out for a few minutes to attend the physicians of his Lady, made his apology, and taking up a pamphlet that lay on his table, said “I would entertain you with a pamphlet during my absence, but I fancy you have seen this—I think you know the author of it—Do’n’t you?” His Lordship bowed with a smile, which I returned, and he retired for a few minutes.

Once again, Quincy was flattered by the amount of time a government minister devoted to talking with him and the politeness of those British aristocrats.

But he wasn’t hearing what Lord North and Lord Dartmouth were really saying.

TOMORROW: How the ministers thought of Quincy.

Who Asked for the Meeting between Quincy and Lord North?

You may have noticed a conflict in the last two postings about Josiah Quincy, Jr.’s 1774 visit to London.

On 18 November, Quincy told Jonathan Williams John Williams, a Customs officer born in from Boston, that he was willing to meet with government ministers Lord North and Lord Dartmouth but only if they asked: “as it was not at their Lordships’ desire…, I declined going for the present.”

Yet in his diary former governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote that Lord North “let me know Quincy had desired to see him, and that he was determined to allow it.”

So did Quincy seek to converse with Lord North or not? And when on the morning of 19 November Williams, as Quincy wrote, “waited upon me with the Compliments of Lord North, and his request to see me this morning,” had the prime minister made that request? Which man had asked the other’s people for the meeting?

A couple of weeks later Hutchinson noted the contradiction: “Ld. North told me that Quincy desired to be admitted to speak with him. Quincy tells his friends that Ld. North desired to speak with him. It seems Mr. Williams, the Inspector, was the messenger between them.”

Without spelling it out, Hutchinson focused on Williams as the person who’d probably told each man that the other wanted to talk. Williams was part of the British Customs bureaucracy, to be sure; in particular, he appears to have worked closely with Commissioner Corbyn Morris. But Williams was also a great-nephew of Benjamin Franklin, and he felt loyalty to his home town of Boston. If he could facilitate a solution to the conflict between Massachusetts and the ministry in London, Williams was ready to bend some protocols.

It’s also possible that Lord North changed his mind about being ”determined” to meet Quincy after hearing what Hutchinson had to say about him and was ready to keep the visitor from Massachusetts waiting. In mid-December, Hutchinson heard this story from Israel Mauduit, an unofficial lobbyist for the province and the former governor:

Lord North…said he not send for him [Quincy]. Williams wrote him a letter that such a person was arrived from Boston, and if it would be agreeable, he would bring him to wait on his Lordship. The morning Wms. went himself to Lord North’s, who supposed to be come for an answer. Upon his being admitted, he brought Quincy in with him.

However it happened, the meeting was on.

(Another contradiction in the records: Both Hutchinson’s diary and Quincy’s diary recorded a long morning meeting between that man and the prime minister on 19 November. I suspect the date in the Hutchinson book was wrong, and he actually talked with Lord North the previous day. An alternate possibility is that Lord North went from his conversation with Quincy into a discussion between Hutchinson and John Pownall, asked Hutchinson about Quincy, and never let on that he had just met the man.)

TOMORROW: The prime minister and the attorney from Massachusetts.

(The picture above shows Wroxton Abbey in Oxfordshire, Lord North’s country seat. This was not where he met with Hutchinson or Quincy, but it shows the style to which he was accustomed.)

“All should be ready to yield Assistance to Rhode Island”

We can see the logic of the London government’s decision to try people suspected of attacking H.M.S. Gaspee on 10 June 1772 in Britain, not Rhode Island.

For one thing, the colony hadn’t convicted anyone for the similar torching of the Customs ship Liberty in 1769. Or for earlier assaults on government vessels.

For another, a couple of the men accused of helping to storm the Gaspee were county sheriffs, and others were highly influential merchants and office-holders. The Crown controlled none of the branches of the Rhode Island government.

But by deciding on that plan, to be backed up by the army and navy, secretary of state Dartmouth gave Rhode Island’s Whigs a threat they used to rally other colonial leaders to their cause.

At first, American politicians and printers had been reluctant about supporting a bunch of smugglers who’d attacked a naval vessel enforcing the law. But once the issue became every British citizen’s right to be tried in the county where the alleged crime took place, not three thousand miles away, then Whigs found their voice.

Around Christmas, four Rhode Island politicians wrote to “several gentlemen in North America” about what Lord Dartmouth had told their governor. Those four politicians were:

• Darius Sessions, deputy governor, who months before had initiated official complaints about the Gaspee’s patrols.
• Stephen Hopkins, chief justice and possibly author of the “Americanus” essay on the case published days before.
• John Cole, attorney and former chief justice who would be called as a witness in the inquiry.
• Moses Brown, wealthy merchant and brother of the alleged leader of the attack.

One recipient of the men’s letters was Samuel Adams, leader of the Massachusetts resistance. He wrote three letters in return, saying such thing as:

It should awaken the American Colonies, which have been too long dozing upon the Brink of Ruin. It should again unite them in one Band. . . . It has ever been my Opinion, that an Attack upon the Liberties of one Colony is an Attack upon the Liberties of all; and therefore in this Instance all should be ready to yield Assistance to Rhode Island.

And:

I beg just to propose for Consideration whether a circular Letr from your Assembly on this Occasion, to those of the other Colonies might not tend to the Advantage of the General Cause & of R Island in particular

Adams had helped to guide the Massachusetts legislature through its 1768 circular letter dispute. In November 1772 he had led the Boston town meeting to set up a standing committee of correspondence to exchange political letters with other Massachusetts towns. He saw the Crown’s reaction to the Gaspee affair as a cue to do the same with other colonies.

Richard Henry Lee might have been another of the men who received the Rhode Islanders’ letter. At any event, on 4 February he wrote to Adams, introducing himself and asking about details of the Gaspee matter; “this military parade appears extraordinary, unless the intention be to violate all law and legal forms, in order to establish the…fatal precedent of removing Americans beyond the water, to be tried for supposed offences committed here.” Adams wrote back, assuring Lee that the stories out of Rhode Island were true.

Meanwhile, no American was actually removed to Britain. The royal commission never collected enough strong evidence against anyone to bring charges. The investigation petered out in the spring of 1773. But by then it had helped to inspire a wider network of correspondence and a little more paranoia among the American Whigs.

TOMORROW: Remembering Gov. Wanton.

“A genuine extract of the letter from Lord Dartmouth”

On 31 Dec 1772, the printer of the Massachusetts Spy, Isaiah Thomas, had a scoop.

Setting type so hastily that he datelined the item “TURSDAY” instead of “THURSDAY,” Thomas presented to the world “a genuine extract of the letter from Lord Dartmouth, to the Governor of Rhode Island, dated Whitehall, September 4, 1772”:

The particulars of that atrocious proceeding (referring to the burning the Gaspee schooner) have by the King’s command been examined and considered with the greatest attention; and although there are some circumstances attending it, in regard to the robbery and plunder of the vessel, which seperately considered, might bring it within the description of an act of piracy; yet in the obvious view of the whole transaction, and taking all the circumstances together, the offence is in the opinion of the law servants of the crown, who have been consulted upon that question, of a much deeper dye, and is considered in no other light, than as an act of high treason, viz. levying war against the King.

And in order that you may have all proper advice and assistance in a matter of so great importance; his Majesty has thought fit, with the advice of his privy council, to issue his royal commission, under the great seal of Great-Britain, nominating yourself and the Chief Justices of New-York, New-Jersey, and the Massachusetts-Bay, together with the Judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court established at Boston, to be his Majesty’s commissioners for enquiring into and making report to his Majesty, of all the circumstances relative to the attacking, plundering and burning the Gaspee schooner.

The King trusts, that all persons in the colony will pay a due respect to his royal commission, and that the business of it will be carried on without molestation; at the same time the nature of this offence, and the great number of persons who appear to have been concerned in it make every precaution necessary. His Majesty has therefore for the further support in the execution of this duty, thought fit to direct me to signify his pleasure to Lieutenant-General [Thomas] Gage, that he do hold himself in readiness to send troops into Rhode Island, whenever he shall be called upon by the commissioners for that purpose, in order to aid and assist the civil magistrate in the suppression of any riot or disturbances, and in the preservation of the public peace.

I have only to add upon that head, that his Majesty depends on the care and vigilance of the civil magistrates of the colony, to take the proper measures for the arresting and committing to custody, in order to their being brought to justice, such persons, as shall, upon proper information made before them, or before His Majesty’s commissioners, appear to have been concerned in the plundering and destroying the Gaspee schooner.

It is his Majesty’s intention, in consequence of the advice of his privy council, that the persons concerned in the burning the Gaspee schooner, and in the other violences which attended that daring insult, should be brought to England to be tried; and I am therefore to signify to you his Majesty’s pleasure, that such of the said offenders as may have been or shall be arrested and committed within the colony of Rhode-Island, be delivered to the care and custody of Rear Admiral [John] Montagu, or the commander in chief of his Majesty’s ships in North-America for the time being, or to such officers as he shall appoint to receive them; taking care that you do give notice to the persons accused, in order that they may procure such witnesses on their behalf as they shall judge necessary; which witnesses together with all such as may be proper, to support the charge against them, will be received and sent hither with the prisoners.

In the same issue, Thomas reprinted the “Americanus” essay I quoted yesterday.

Lord Dartmouth’s instructions to Gov. Joseph Wanton—and no one seems to have doubted this long quotation was genuine—validated some of the warnings from Whigs like “Americanus.” The Crown was planning to transport people accused of attacking H.M.S. Gaspee to Britain for trial. The army and navy had orders to help.

At the same time, the secretary of state also reminded Wanton that those defendants should be able to bring along witnesses on their behalf. Not that a long sea voyage and an indeterminate time in London would be convenient for such witnesses. But the ministers in London still wanted to stick to British standards for fair trials—they just didn’t think that would happen with Rhode Island jurors.

Notably, whatever official leaked this confidential letter did so through a printer in Boston, beyond the reach of Rhode Island law. When the Newport Mercury reprinted the letter in the new year, it credited Isaiah Thomas’s Spy.

TOMORROW: Going viral.

“Whether our inalienable rights and privileges are any longer worth contending for”

Before the Revolution, messages between the British secretary of state in London and royal governors were deemed confidential.

Govs. Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson spent a lot of time telling the Massachusetts General Court that no, they wouldn’t share the instructions they had received or their reports back to the ministry. The 1769 publication of Bernard’s letters, leaked by William Bollan, ended his effectiveness.

In Rhode Island, Gov. Joseph Wanton had a different understanding. Elected by the legislature, and he felt he should share the Earl of Dartmouth’s 4 Sept 1772 message about investigating the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee with those legislators and other top officials.

Wanton held those consultations sometime early in December. Details of Lord Dartmouth’s instructions quickly reached the newspapers.

As I wrote before, New England printers had reported on the Gaspee attack in June, but very plainly—a few select facts with minimal commentary. Once news of the royal commission arrived in December, printers started to editorialize.

Then on 21 December Solomon Southwick’s Newport Mercury published a long letter signed “Americanus.” I believe this was the first major newspaper essay addressing the Gaspee case. The writer pulled out all the rhetorical effects:

To be, or not to be, that’s the question: Whether our inalienable rights and privileges are any longer worth contending for, is now to be determined.——Permit me, my countrymen, to beseech you to attend to your alarming situation. . . .

A court of inquisition, more horrid than that of Spain and Portugal, is established within this colony, to inquire into the circumstances of destroying the Gaspee schooner, and the persons who are the commissioners of this new-fangled court are vested with most exorbitant and unconstitutional power.—

They are directed to summon witnesses, apprehend persons not only impeached, but even suspected! And them, and every of them to deliver to Admiral [John] Montagu, who is ordered to have a ship in readiness to carry them to England, where they are to be tried.— . . .

Upon the whole, it is more than probable, it is almost an absolute certainty, that, according to present appearances, the state of an American subject, instead of enjoying the privileges of an Englishman, will soon be infinitely worse than that of a subject of France, Spain, Portugal, or any other the most despotic power on earth: . . .

Ten thousand deaths, by the halter or the ax, are infinitely preferable to a miserable life of slavery, in chains, under a pack of worse than Egyptian tyrants, whose avarice nothing less than your whole substance and income will satisfy; and who, if they can’t extort that, will glory in making a sacrifice of you and your posterity, to gratify their master, the d––l, who is a tyrant, and the father of tyrants and of liars.

Who was “Americanus”? Some have assigned this essay to Samuel Adams, who had used a similar pseudonym in Boston. I doubt that, and not just because this essay started by quoting from [gasp!] the theater. Letters indicate that Adams didn’t know about the Gaspee commission until days after this essay appeared.

According to Neil L. York, the top candidate for Rhode Island’s “Americanus” is chief justice Stephen Hopkins (shown above).

TOMORROW: Dartmouth’s own words.

“The most clement measures shall be adopted towards the Americans”

By the fall of 1772, Rhode Island’s investigations of the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee had run aground as surely as the schooner itself had back on 9 June.

As was standard, Gov. Joseph Wanton had quickly issued a proclamation offering a reward for information—£100, in fact. By July, Adm. John Montagu (shown here) had collected testimony from Aaron Briggs or Biggs, who implicated some prominent merchants.

But Gov. Wanton soon had contradictory testimony from four other people.

James Helme, senior justice in Kings County, told his colleagues that at the October court session he

fully intended to give the affair of burning the said schooner and wounding the lieutenant, in charge to the jury; but having been nearly two months on the circuit, it entirely went out of my mind, when the grand jury was empannelled; and there being no business laid before said jury, they were soon dismissed.

Oops.

However, more was happening in London. In August, the secretary of state for the colonies, Lord Hillsborough, sent to Rhode Island the text of Parliament’s new Dockyards Law. Enacted that spring, it established that destroying a ship in a Royal Navy shipyard was tantamount to treason and subject to capital punishment.

Eventually Crown lawyers agreed that the Dockyards Law didn’t apply since the Gaspee hadn’t been in a naval shipyard when the raiders set fire to it. But Hillsborough’s message told Gov. Wanton how harshly the London government wanted to punish the men who attacked the schooner. (The only person ever executed under the Dockyards Law was James Aitken, alias “John the Painter,” who set fires at the Portsmouth Shipyard in 1777 in sympathy with the American cause.)

For unrelated reasons, in August the Earl of Dartmouth replaced Hillsborough as secretary of state. On 4 September the new minister sent a letter to Gov. Wanton detailing the plan for a royal commission to investigate the Gaspee incident and surrounding conflicts.

Rhode Island’s first report of this commission contained some positive details. The 30 November Newport Mercury shared the news under a 25 September London dateline, emphasizing signs of leniency:

His Majesty… [is] offering his pardon to any of the said offenders (excepting the person who wounded Lieutenant [William] Duddington, & excepting two others who assumed to be sheriffs of the colony, and the Captain or leader of the insurgents) who shall discover any of their accomplices, and also offering rewards for such discovery.

A correspondent informs us, that Lord Dartmouth has signified his determined resolution that the most clement measures shall be adopted towards the Americans.

Furthermore, Gov. Wanton was designated to chair the inquiry commission.

But soon, Rhode Islanders were hearing more ominous details.

TOMORROW: A leak from the legislature.

Ripples from the Boston Tea Party in 1774

Without the Boston Massacre reenactment looming over my schedule this year, I’ll devote the next few days to the events of early March 1774.

That was less than three months after the Boston Tea Party, and the ripples from that big splash in the harbor were still spreading.

Most Bostonians were excited about how the event had turned out. The local Sons of Liberty had kept the tea tax from being collected, but they hadn’t hurt any other property or any people. Other towns and ports along the American coast sent messages of support.

On 20 January an agreement among Boston merchants and shopkeepers to stop selling all tea, regardless of tax status, took effect. The Whigs hauled three barrels of tea to King Street and burned them in front of the customs house.

To be sure, there was still some tea circulating in the colony. A fourth tea ship, the William, had wrecked on Cape Cod, and some chests had been salvaged from the wreck. Local Whig crowds were chasing those down.

Meanwhile, the London government was digesting reports of disorder in Boston the previous fall—even before the tea destruction. Ministers considered the big public meetings and the attack on Richard Clarke’s family warehouse described here. On 5 February, Secretary of State Dartmouth sent Attorney-General Edward Thurlow (1731-1806, shown above) evidence about those events.

Six days later, Thurlow and Solicitor-General Alexander Wedderburn replied that several Bostonians had likely committed high treason. They specifically noted:

The conduct of Mr. [William] Molynieux, and…[William] Denny, [Dr. Joseph] Warren, [Dr. Benjamin] Church, and Jonathan [Williams?] who in the characters of a committee went to the length of attacking Clarke, are chargeable with the crime of High Treason; and if it can be established in evidence, that they were so employed by the select men of Boston, Town Clerk, and members of the House of Representatives, these also are guilty of the same offence.

The law officers also cited Samuel Adams and Dr. Thomas Young for their work on the committee of correspondence and John Hancock for participating in the armed patrols that kept the tea from being landed. Of course, securing prosecutions of any of those men was a bigger challenge.

Also in early February, King George III interviewed Gen. Thomas Gage, commander in chief of the army in North America. Gage stated “his readiness, though so lately come from America, to return at a day’s notice if the conduct of the Colonies should induce the directing coercive measures.” He also opined that those measures wouldn’t need any more troops.

And all the while, a ship called the Fortune was plying the Atlantic toward Boston, carrying more tea.

Wheatley and Attucks “Against All Odds” Advertisements

On his Black Quotidian website, Matt Delmont shares material from African-American newspapers—the news stories, opinion pieces, and advertisements that black Americans in larger cities were reading in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Earlier this week the site featured a comics-style advertisement for Black and White Ointment and Skin Soap from the 17 Sept 1938 Pittsburgh Courier. That ad featured the Boston poet Phillis Wheatley—shown as a little girl coming of a slave ship at left.

Another ad in the same “Against All Odds” campaign highlighted Crispus Attucks, shot and killed at the Boston Massacre. It looks like twelve such pages might have been combined to create the Against All Odds booklet one could buy with three Black and White Beauty Creations labels and 25¢. I haven’t found any trace of that booklet today.

I can pick holes in the history that both ads relate. Wheatley didn’t meet King George III or, as far as the contemporaneous evidence tells us, Gen. George Washington. (But she did meet the Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the colonies, and Washington did invite her to visit him at Cambridge.)

Likewise, no witness spoke of Attucks making a “speech” that incited opposition to the British troops on 5 Mar 1770, though he was at the front of the crowd that confronted the soldiers on King Street.

Still, these ads are valuable evidence of how the memory of Wheatley and Attucks was preserved and shaped in popular culture—not just in schoolbooks and formal histories but also in commercial communications. At a time when mainstream America was openly hostile to citizens of African ancestry, they upheld the memory of “the terrible ‘Middle Passage’” and of blacks’ role in the nation’s origin.