Spreading the News of the Spread of a Fire

We can see the spread of news in the spring of 1775 through articles on the fire in Boston on the night of 17–18 May 1775.

The first printed report appeared in Samuel Hall’s Cambridge-based New-England Chronicle on 18 May, in the middle of other local news:

A terrible Fire broke out in Boston about 9 o’Clock last Evening, and raged a long Time. We hear it began just above the Draw Bridge, and burnt along the Town-Dock. A great Number of Buildings are doubtless consumed; but it is not possible to collect the Particulars for this Paper.

That same dire but vague paragraph was reprinted in Hartford on 22 May, Portsmouth on 26 May, and Philadelphia on 29 May.

Ebenezer Watson’s Connecticut Courant of Hartford confirmed that report in the 22 May issue by also quoting “a Letter from a Gentlemen in Cambridge…dated May 18”:

They had a great Fire in Boston last Night---it appeared to be between King-Street and the Market---it continued all night, and is not yet extinguished. What has really happened, is to us uncertain, as yet.

James Rivington chose to run the latter item in his 25 May New-York Gazetteer.

Meanwhile, on 22 May Solomon Southwick’s Newport Mercury offered an extract from “a manuscript account of the fire which happened in Boston last Wednesday night”:

The fire began in the barracks, under the arch formerly improved by Benjamin Davis, about half after eight o’clock, 17th May.—The soldiers were receiving some cartridges, by which means one took fire, and communicated to many more, which immediately set fire to the room.

That account then listed many property owners starting with John Hancock and including “a cooper’s shop, owned by Eliakim Hutchinson, adjoining the town dock, improved for barracks.” It concluded:

Instead of ringing the bells as usual, the soldiers beat to arms, by which means the people were in great confusion, not being used to such signals in time of fire.

N.B. The inhabitants took particular care to save the goods in Mr. Hancock’s store.

Curiously, in his 26 May New-Hampshire Gazette Daniel Fowle printed a version of that same detailed report on page 1 even as on page 3 he ran the New-England Chronicle’s first story saying it was “not possible to collect the Particulars for this Paper.”

John Holt put the “manuscript account” in his New-York Journal on 1 June with the dateline “CAMBRIDGE, May 12”—an obvious error since the fire hadn’t yet occurred then. Presumably Holt’s shop should have printed 19, 21, or 22 May, getting one digit wrong or transposing them.

No newspaper was published in Cambridge on those dates, suggesting Holt indeed took that text from a manuscript, not from a preceding newspaper. In addition, that text never appeared in the New-England Chronicle, the only newspaper then published out of Cambridge.

That strongly suggests that the Patriot authorities in Cambridge, perhaps Boston town officials in exile, sent their own quasi-official report on the fire out to newspapers in other colonies.

TOMORROW: A more pointed description.

“The supposed Author of a Pamphlet”?

The pamphlet titled A Letter from a Veteran, to the Officers of the Army Encamped at Boston didn’t specify an author, printer, or place of printing, simply the date of 1774.

The earliest mention of this publication that I’ve found is an advertisement from the bookselling firm of Cox and Berry in the 31 October Boston Post-Boy. (Price: “6d. Sterling.”)

Edward Cox and Edward Berry were British by birth, and Isaiah Thomas wrote they went back across the Atlantic during the war. So it makes sense that they would sell a pamphlet said to be by a British officer for other British officers. 

Nobody claimed that the Letter from a Veteran was actually printed in Boston, however. The 10 November New-York Journal stated: “[Hugh] Gaine, has lately published, or at least sells, a pamphlet, called ‘a Letter from a Veteran, to the Officers of the Army, encamped at Boston.’”

An item in the 8 December New-York Journal listed A Letter from a Veteran first among “Several pamphlets…lately published by Mr. [James] Rivington and Mr. Gain.”

Modern analysis has confirmed that supposition. In a bibliography supplied to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1956, Thomas Randolph Adams wrote that A Letter from a Veteran “has been assigned to Gaine because all but one of the eleven type ornaments used in this pamphlet are also found in the Laws…of the City of New York also printed by him in 1774.”

As for the author, people had different ideas at the time. On 17 November the New-York Journal published an open letter signed “A Friend to the Liberties of Mankind” which started:

To D——r ————‚ the supposed Author of a Pamphlet (which has made its appearance within a few Days) intitled, A Letter from a Veteran to the Officers of the Army at Boston…

That letter then began “Revd. Sir.” It sneered that the “Veteran” hadn’t really been educated as “a soldier” but had simply “assumed” that identity. (I quoted that article’s criticism of the whole “infamous Piece” yesterday.)

Obviously, the “Friend of the Liberties of Mankind” believed the author of A Letter from a Veteran was a minister with a doctorate. The Rev. Dr. Thomas Bradbury Chandler fits that description, and he was writing other pro-Crown pamphlets at the time. But later when he listed his political publications for the Loyalists Commission, Chandler didn’t claim to be the “Veteran.”

TOMORROW: A postwar attribution.

“Hardships only make him firmer”

On 1 Jan 1775, 250 years ago today, young Joseph Cree went out into the streets of New York City with copies of the New-York Gazetteer, published by James Rivington, and a handbill asking for tips.

Joseph’s handbill read:

VERSES
Addressed by JOSEPH CREE,
To the
Gentlemen and Ladies,
To whom he carries the
NEW-YORK GAZETTEER.
January 1, 1775.

KIND SIRS, a young and bashful Boy,
Now comes, with Heart brimful of Joy,
To see, if you by some small Favor,
Will please t’encourage such a Shaver---
Though small, he has strove to do his Duty,
And hopes that he did always suit ye;
Through Frost and Snow and scorching Heat,
He has gone with News from Street to Street;
Without a Whimper or a Murmur,
For Hardships only make him firmer.
And now he thinks there’s some Pretence,
T’ obtain of you a few good Pence;
Or something that his Heart will cheer,
And make him merry this NEW-YEAR.

This is a sample of “carrier verses.” It’s unusual in two ways. It makes no mention of current events, possibly because the politics of 1775 meant any comment would offend someone. And it specifies the name of the printer’s boy distributing it; though some other surviving examples did that, most didn’t.

Cree family historian Gary L. Maher has stated that Joseph Cree was born in 1765, which would make him nine years old as he delivered those newspapers. If so, he probably didn’t write or set this verse himself, as some older printing apprentices did. The lines definitely emphasize how little he was.

However, Maher has also found a Joseph Cree enrolled in the New York militia in 1779, and a fourteen-year-old wouldn’t have been enrolled in the militia. So perhaps Joseph was older.

Cree started to work as a printer for Shepard Kollock’s New-Jersey Journal in Elizabeth, New Jersey, about 1783, the same year that Rivington gave up his newspaper in New York. Cree married a woman named Ann Crissey or Creesy, and they had children. City and county records show him living in Elizabeth in the 1790s.

While newspaper owners’ names appeared in their pages regularly, the employees who printed those pages usually remained anonymous. Cree’s name didn’t appear in any newspaper until the 18 Sept 1798 New-Jersey Journal:

DIED.
On Sunday night [16 September], in this town, of the yellow fever, which he caught in New-York, JOSEPH CREE, Printer, for fifteen years a journeyman with the Editor of this paper.—He has left a worthy woman and four small children to deplore his loss.

Cree was buried in the graveyard of Elizabeth’s First Presbyterian Church, twenty-three years after he passed out his greeting for the new year.

“John Hancock, Esq; lay past all hopes of recovery”

By 1774, John Hancock was a well known Massachusetts Whig.

Newspapers in other colonies reported on him, though not always correctly. This item appeared in the Norwich Packet on 2 June:

By a Gentleman that arrived here Yesterday, from New-York, we are informed, that a Vessel from London had brought Intelligence, that…General [Thomas] Gage is ordered to send the Honourable John Hancock, of Boston, to England in Irons.

That peril wasn’t why Hancock didn’t attend the Salem session of the Massachusetts General Court, though. Instead, he became seriously ill.

The earliest public mention of this illness that I’ve found appeared in Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer. The issue was dated 22 June, but this item was dated 23 June, suggesting the newspaper may have been printed late: “By accounts from Boston we are told, that John Hancock, Esq; is in a very bad state of health…”

Things escalated quickly. John Holt’s New-York Journal stated on 7 July: “We have the melancholy news from Boston, that the Hon. John Hancock, Esq; lay past all hopes of recovery.”

And William Goddard’s Maryland Journal, 16 July:

The last Boston Mail brings us the melancholy News that the Honourable JOHN HANCOCK, Esq; that distinguished Patriot and amiable Gentleman, who has been long indisposed, lay, to the inexpressible Grief of his affectionate Countrymen, past all Hopes of Recovery.

However, by then Bostonians could read good news in Isaiah Thomas’s 15 July Massachusetts Spy (delayed one day from its usual Thursday publication, probably because that had been proclaimed a “day of fasting and prayer”):

It is with pleasure we can inform the public that the Hon. John Hancock, has so far recovered his health as to be able to take an airing in his chariot.

The following Monday, 18 July, Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette shared inside information on Hancock’s health:

It is with the greatest Pleasure, we can inform tha Publick, that the Hon. JOHN HANCOCK, Esq; has so far recovered his Health, as to be able to walk abroad; and in the Course of the past Week, has twice honored this Office with his presence. He likewise attended divine Service Yesterday.

Boston Post-Boy printers Mills and Hicks backed the Crown government, but even they shared that day’s news, albeit with less enthusiasm: “The Hon. John Hancock, Esq; is so far recovered from his long Indisposition, as that he Yesterday attended Divine Service.”

The update reached Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer on 21 July: “We hear from Boston, that the Hon. John Hancock, Esq; is now perfectly recovered; and is engaged in returning visits received from his numerous acquaintance during his late illness.”

Finally, on 18 August the Massachusetts Spy reported on a dinner in Roxbury celebrating the first public protest against the Stamp Act in 1765. It quoted several toasts, and the eighth was: “Recovered and confirmed Health to that worthy Patriot the Honourable John Hancock, Esq.” No other local was called out by name.

TOMORROW: The consequence of that illness.

“The public may be assured that this will be his last exhibition”

Yesterday I quoted Jacob Bates announcing that his last display of horsemanship in Philadelphia would be on 23 Sept 1772, and he was pulling out some new tricks for the occasion.

It’s possible Bates left the city and visited some nearby towns, putting on more shows that didn’t make the newspapers.

But that definitely wasn’t his last show in Philadelphia because the 2 November Pennsylvania Packet announced:

To the PUBLIC.

MR. BATES intending in a short Time to leave the Province, and being desirous of manifesting his Gratitude to this City,—proposes to exhibit on Thursday next, (if the weather is good,—otherwise on the succeeding Saturday) at the upper End of MARKET-STREET,—All his various Feats in HORSEMANSHIP,—having Confidence in the generous Attendance of the Citizens; as the Sum which may be then collected, shall be deposited in the Hands of three Gentlemen of Reputation, who will apply it in the advancing inclement Season, to the Relief of such modest Poor, as have experienced better Days.

• The Doors to be opened at Three o’Clock, and to mount precisely at Four.

There’s no sign of where Bates spent the winter and spring. He surfaced next in the second largest British city in North America, New York.

On 17 June 1773, an advertisement in the New-York Journal announced:

HORSEMANSHIP,
By Mr. BATES,
The Original PERFORMER;
Who has had the honour of performing before the Emperor of Germany, the Empress of Russia, the King of Great-Britain, the French King, the Kings of Prussia, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, and the Prince of Orange; also, at the courts of Saxony, Bavaria, Brunswick, Mecklenbergh, Saxe-Gotha, Hilbourghausen, Anspach, and every other court in Germany; at all which he received the greatest applause, as can be made manifest by the CERTIFICATES from the several courts, now in his possession, and is allowed, by the greatest judges in the MANLY ART he professes, to excel any Horseman that ever attempted any thing of the kind.

THIS AFTERNOON, at Five o’clock, he will perform at the Bull’s-Head, in the Bowery Lane.

The doors will be opened at four o’clock, and he will mount precisely at five.

The seats are made proper for Ladies and Gentlemen.

He will take it as a particular favour, if Gentlemen will not suffer any dogs to come with them.

TICKETS for the first place, at One Dollar each; and for the second, Four Shillings; to be had at the bar of the Coffee-House, at Mr. Rivington’s, and at the place of performance. No money will be taken at the doors, nor admittance without tickets.

Bates advertised several more performances in the New York papers over the following weeks, usually stating that he planned only one or two more shows.

Earlier this month Carl Robert Keyes, who studies advertising in the colonial press, posted an essay on one of those ads, dated 5 August. That one stated it “was intirely the Printer’s mistake in advertising last week that Mr. BATES would perform only once more.” Was it really? Prof. Keyes asks.

One detail to add to that consideration: The printer whom Bates was throwing under a wagon for supposedly misreporting his schedule was James Rivington, who’d sold tickets to his first performances in June. (Later Bates also sold through another printer, Hugh Gaine.)

Another wrinkle: Bates announced he had “changed his tickets,” and none “of the old tickets should be taken at the door.” Does that suggest a falling-out with his printer? Or had he just ordered another batch of tickets printed?

On 9 August the New-York Gazette repeated:

Mr. BATES,
WILL perform on Tuesday next, if the weather should permit,—if not, he will ride on the Friday following. The public may be assured that this will be his last exhibition, and that he will leave the town on his way to Boston, the day after his finishing performance.

COMING: A warm Boston welcome.

“America’s typ’d by a SNAKE”

Last week the Age of Revolutions website shared its lists of the most-read postings of 2022 and the earlier postings that people had most revisited. On the second list is my 2021 article “Join, or Die: Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?”

G. Patrick O’Brien of the University of Tampa chimed in on Twitter:

We read @Boston1775’s “Join, or Die: Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?” this semester, and students loved how creative it was. One student is even researching the reappropriating of the snake by modern, far-right groups. A great piece to teach students about thinking broadly!

That’s very gratifying, of course.

I expanded on one footnote in that article back here. Here’s more material about Revolutionary snake symbolism that I didn’t have space to include beyond a brief mention.

As the North American colonists’ confrontation with the Crown government heated up in 1774, some Whig newspaper printers adopted new mastheads incorporating snakes as symbols of the resistance.

James Rivington, a decidedly not-Whig printer, put these lines into his New-York Gazetteer on 25 August:

For the New-York Gazetteer.
On the Snake, depicted at the Head of some American News Papers.

YE Sons of Sedition, how comes it to pass,
That America’s typ’d by a SNAKE — in the grass?
Don’t you think ’tis a scandalous, saucy reflection,
That merits the soundest, severest Correction,
NEW-ENGLAND’s the Head too; — NEW ENGLAND’s abused;
For the Head of the Serpent we know should be Bruised.

This verse pointed out the great paradox in the American Whigs’ adoption of snakes as symbols: For centuries, western culture had treated snakes as Very Bad Things. The lines brought up both Biblical and classical precedents:

• According to the King James Version of Genesis 3:15, God told the snake, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
• In his third Eclogue, Virgil wrote, “latet anguis in herba,” meaning, “a snake lurks in the grass.”

With such powerful authorities warning against snakes, why should people admire them now?

Margaret Draper and John Howe’s Boston News-Letter reprinted that item from New York on September 8. A week later, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy (which had a new masthead with a massive venomous snake on it, as shown above) responded in kind:

On reading the piece, (inserted in Draper’s last paper) relative to the Snake at the head of some of the American Papers.

YE traitors! the Snake ye with wonder behold,
Is not the deceiver so famous of old;
Nor is it the Snake in the grass that ye view,
Which would be a striking resemblance of you,
Who aiming your stings at your own country’s heel,
Its Weight and resentment to crush you — should feel.

There we see the devastating, impossible-to-refute argument of ‘I know you are, but what am I?’

“An authentic Copy of a Letter, which was thrown into both the Camps”?

Today I’m returning to the question of whether the letter printed in James Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer on 8 Sept 1774, naming particular Boston Whigs as the chief troublemakers, was indeed “authentic.”

Some nineteenth-century authors accepted the accompanying statement that the letter “was thrown into both the Camps, on Monday Night last,” and even called it a “handbill,” suggesting it was printed.

I see no evidence for that. None of the sources from 1774 referred to a handbill. It’s less trouble to copy two or three copies of a letter than to set it in type.

The Harvard biographer Clifford K. Shipton suggested the letter might be Patriot propaganda, aimed at riling up the Boston crowd to defend their leaders from perfidious Loyalists and redcoats.

That theory seems untenable for two reasons. First, as Charles W. Akers argued, the Patriots wouldn’t have sullied two of the town’s leading ministers with charges of being political, even while putting them in someone else’s mouth.

Even more convincing, Boston’s radical press didn’t trumpet this supposed evidence of danger but made nothing of the threats at all. The only newspaper in town to pick up the item from New York was the moderate Whig Boston Evening-Post.

In sum, the letter does seem to be a genuine Loyalist attempt to direct the attention of British army officers (and possibly enlisted men) at leading Boston Whigs. But how did that message get out?

One possibility is that copies of the letter were truly tossed into the compounds where the army was camping in Boston around the start of September 1774, with a copy sent to New York.

Another is that the writer cut out the step of distributing copies in Boston and just sent the letter to New York with a false cover story.

And the third is that the letter was created in New York, false story and all, with the real goal of influencing redcoats who were about to embark for Boston.

I lean slightly toward the last possibility because of these details:

• The lack of any mention of such a letter in Boston before it surfaced in New York.
• The reference to “both the Camps” when the Boston press always spoke of “the Camp” on the Common (even though some redcoats were camped at the South Battery).
• The slip of replacing of the name of William Dennie, a well-known Boston merchant, with William Denning, a New York merchant and activist.

It’s possible that the omission of Dr. Joseph Warren from the list of troublemakers also reflected incomplete knowledge of who the most fervent Boston leaders were, based on reading newspapers or hearing reports. To be sure, whoever wrote this letter might just have respected Warren personally and thought he didn’t deserve to be lambasted as much as others.

At the end of the year, Rivington presented readers with extracts of another letter from Boston. Mills and Hicks repeated that item in their pro-government Boston Post-Boy while Isaiah Thomas denounced part of it as “A d——d lie” in the Massachusetts Spy. So there might be a pattern here.

Of course, that’s just a guess. If I see more evidence, such as someone printing the letter before Rivington, I’ll have to rethink everything.

TOMORROW: Did this letter have any effect?

“All the marks of the Whig propaganda department”?

The newspaper item I quoted yesterday, listing fifteen Whigs as Boston’s chief troublemakers and adding the surnames of three printers in a postscript, tends to be quoted in books and articles focused on those individuals.

That letter or “handbill,” various authors have said, is evidence of the real threats faced by [take your pick] Samuel Adams, Dr. Thomas Young, William Cooper, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, Benjamin Edes, Isaiah Thomas, and even Dorothy Quincy, John Hancock’s fiancée.

One anomalous but influential author who mentioned the text was Clifford K. Shipton, compiler of Sibley’s Harvard Graduates in the mid-1900s. He didn’t like radicals, which meant he was less than sympathetic to New England’s Patriots.

In his profile of the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy (shown above), a staunch opponent of both bishops and New Lights and a strong supporter of the Boston Whigs, Shipton quoted a bit of the document and wrote:

The “handbill” has all the marks of the Whig propaganda department, and Charles Old Brick [i.e., Chauncy] may have put his own name into it.

Shipton offered no evidence that Chauncy ever engaged in this sort of subterfuge and provocation, however. Indeed, that same paragraph quoted the minister in August worrying that some towns would act with too much “precipitancy,” so he wanted the political atmosphere to calm down, not heat up.

I think stronger evidence that this letter was a hoax is that the Boston Whigs made so little of it. As I said yesterday, I found only one mention in the local press, in the Fleet brothers’ Boston Evening-Post after the text had appeared in New York. (Of course, if anyone finds an earlier Boston printing that I missed, then I’d have to rethink this whole line of thought.)

Benjamin Edes and John Gill didn’t complain about the threat in their Boston Gazette, nor did Isaiah Thomas in his Massachusetts Spy—and they were the printers the letter called “trumpeters of sedition” (an old term). Newspapers in Hartford, Salem, New London, and Portsmouth picked up the item, to be sure, but those printers didn’t have first-hand knowledge of what was really going on in Boston.

Perhaps, we might consider, those Boston printers were scared and didn’t want to give the letter more publicity. But there’s also nothing about the threats in the private minutes of the Boston selectmen, even as they complained to Gen. Thomas Gage about other things that month. There’s nothing in John Andrews’s gossipy letters. That pattern leads me to think that the Boston Whigs didn’t believe that this message was a real threat.

Thinking about where the text came from and why, I see four possibilities.

1) A Boston Loyalist really did throw this letter into the army camps to direct military attention to specific Whig leaders and printers. Charles W. Akers takes this position in his biography of Samuel Cooper, The Divine Politician. In that case, we must ask how the text leaked out, and why Boston leaders showed so little reaction to it.

2) A Boston Whig wrote the letter, tossed it into the camps, and made sure it got into the press in order to inflame public opinion. Why, then, did it not appear first in any Boston newspapers? How come so few Whigs trumpeted it? (Akers further argues that no one who was truly allied with Chauncy and Cooper would have had the effrontery to suggest they were involved in worldly politics, even though everyone knew they were.)

3) Someone in Boston created the letter and sent it to New York as authentic. It appeared in James Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer below an extract of a private letter from Boston, and it wasn’t credited to any Boston newspaper like items that followed. If this was the case, was the person who created the fake letter a Whig or a Loyalist?

4) Rivington created the letter himself. He was already speaking up for Crown authority, and Whigs already accused him of creating fake news. Later in the war he certainly did that, either as satire or propaganda. Was this an early example?

The item appeared in the New-York Gazetteer as army regiments were moving from that city to Boston, a process that Gen. Gage sped up after the “Powder Alarm” of 2 September. The letter’s intended audience might therefore have been not “the Officers and Soldiers of his Majesty’s Troops at Boston” but those on their way.

TOMORROW: Naming names.

“It is just that they should be the first victims”

September 1774 was a very busy time around Boston. On the first day of the month, Gen. Thomas Gage’s troops seized gunpowder from Middlesex County.

The next day, thousands of militia men streamed into Cambridge and demanded all royal officials, up to Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver, resign or apologize.

Relations deteriorated from there.

In The Road to Concord, I wrote about one critical development of that month, what I call an “arms race” to secure every artillery piece the Patriot leaders or royal army could get their hands on in and around Boston.

The conflict was heating up on other levels, too. Jurors were refusing the serve. Eastern Massachusetts was catching up to the west on county conventions. Towns held meetings without the governor’s approval to send delegates to the official Massachusetts General Court or unofficial Provincial Congress, whichever came first.

On 8 September, James Rivington (shown above) printed in his New-York Gazetteer this item in a column headed “BOSTON.,” in among news that Boston papers had printed in the first week of the month:

The following is an authentic Copy of a Letter, which was thrown into both the Camps, on Monday Night last, directed, “To the Officers and Soldiers of his Majesty’s Troops at Boston:

It being more than probable that the King’s standard will soon be erected, from rebellion breaking out in this province, its proper that you soldiers, should be acquainted with the authors thereof, and of all the Misfortunes brought upon the province, the following is a list of them, viz.

Mess. Samuel Adams, James Bowdoin, Dr. Thomas Young, Dr. Benjamin Church, Capt. John Bradford, Josiah Quincey, Major Nathaniel Barber, William Mollineux, John Hancock, Wm. Cooper, Dr. [Charles] Chancy, Dr. [Samuel] Cooper, Thomas Cushing, Joseph Greenleaf, and William Denning.—

The friends of your King and Country, and of America, hope and expect it from you soldiers, the instant rebellion happens, that you will put the above persons immediately to the sword, destroy their houses, and plunder their effects; it is just that they should be the first victims to the mischiefs they have brought upon us.

A Friend to Great Britain and America.

N. B. Don’t forget those trumpeters of sedition, the printers [Benjamin] Edes and [John] Gill, and [Isaiah] Thomas.”

I presumed Rivington reprinted that letter from a Boston newspaper and went looking for its first appearance. But I can’t find it in any such paper from late August to early September. (When Hezekiah Niles reprinted this text in the mid-1800s, he credited “the Boston Gazette, 1774.” But again, I can’t find it there.)

In fact, on 19 September the Boston Evening-Post reprinted most of the text from New York, adding some typos and abbreviating several words, as you can read here in the Harbottle Dorr newspaper collection. If the letter had already appeared in the Boston press, why would the Fleet brothers find it newsworthy enough to reprint then?

TOMORROW: Questions of authenticity.

“Too deeply impressed with the melancholy Situation”

A few days back I mentioned fireworks at New York’s celebration of King George III’s birthday in June 1774. I thought the report of that event in John Holt’s New-York Journal was interesting.

Saturday, June 4, of that year was when the king “entered the 27th Year of his Age.” The newspaper started with a discussion of the British military’s actions under Gen. Frederick Haldimand and Cdr. James Ayscough. (Gov. William Tryon was in Britain or else he would probably have led the celebration.)

The item continued:

In the Evening some very curious Fireworks were exhibited, and a small Number of Houses were illuminated; but the Generality of the Inhabitants (though perfectly well affected to his Majesty’s Person and Family, and prefering the English Constitution to every other Form of Government) were too deeply impressed with the melancholy Situation of all the British Colonies, to assume the least Appearance of public rejoicing, while it remains in Suspense whether we shall remain Freeman by maintaining our Rights, or submit to be Slaves.

Hugh Gaine’s New York Gazette and [James] Rivington’s New York Gazetteer didn’t include any of the words after “illuminated.”

In Philadelphia the diarist Christopher Marshall reported even less visible enthusiasm on what was ordinarily a patriotic holiday:

4th. This being the birth day of King George III., scarcely, if any, notice was taken of it in this city, by way of rejoicing: not one of our bells suffered to ring, and but very few colours were shown by the shipping in the harbour; no, nor not one bonfire kindled.

The problem was the Boston Port Bill and other Coercive Acts. Americans Whigs like Marshall were alarmed by how Parliament was clamping down after the Tea Party and wanted to make their fellow colonists equally alarmed that the same could happen to them.

At the same time, Whig printer Holt wanted to assure readers in America and Britain that the colonists were still loyal to the king and constitution. They just differed with the ministers in London about what that constitution demanded.

A Hoax about a Hoax

On 29 Mar 1781, a blacksmith named Benjamin Montanye (1745–1825) was detained near Haverstraw, New York, by a Loyalist squad under Lt. James Moody.

Moody discovered Montanye was carrying several letters from Gen. George Washington to Philadelphia. He had Montanye hauled into New York City and jailed.

Eventually Montanye was released and became Baptist preacher in Orange County. He talked about his experience in a fashion that led to this story as a footnote in Benson J. Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution:

[Washington] directed the messenger to cross the river at King’s Ferry, proceed by Haverstraw to the Ramapo Clove, and through the Pass to Morristown.

Montaigne, knowing the Ramapo Pass to be in possession of the Cow-boys and other friends of the enemy, ventured to suggest to the commander-in-chief that the upper road would be the safest. “I shall be taken,” he said, “if I go through the Clove.”

“Your duty, young man, is not to talk, but to obey!” replied Washington, sternly, enforcing his words by a vigorous stamp of his foot.

Montaigne proceeded as directed, and, near the Ramapo Pass, was caught. A few days afterward he was sent to New York, where he was confined in the Sugar House, one of the famous provost prisons in the city.

The day after his arrival, the contents of the dispatches taken from him were published in Rivington’s Gazette with great parade, for they indicated a plan of an attack upon the city. The enemy was alarmed thereby, and active preparations were put in motion for receiving the besiegers.

Montaigne now perceived why he was so positively instructed to go through the Ramapo Pass, where himself and dispatches were quite sure to be seized. When they appeared in Rivington’s Gazette, the allied armies were far on their way to the Delaware.

Montagnie admired the wisdom of Washington, but disliked himself to be the victim.

The frightening experience of being captured by the enemy thus became part of a clever ruse by the great Gen. Washington.

Except, as Jeffrey L. Zvengrowski wrote in an article for Washington’s Papers in January, that story of a hoax was itself a hoax.

James Rivington did print one of Washington’s intercepted letters in his Royal Gazette on 4 April, a message to his cousin and plantation manager Lund Washington dated 28 March, but it didn’t mention any attack plans.

The Papers of Gen. Henry Clinton contain other Washington letters, apparently from the same mailbag:

• 23 March to Francisco Rendon, a Spanish diplomat in Philadelphia.
• 27 March to Continental Congress delegate Benjamin Harrison. (This was at least the second time the correspondence between those two Virginians was waylaid.)
• 29 March to dentist John Baker.

None of those documents say anything about a plan to attack New York. Indeed, in the letter to Harrison, Washington said that even with reinforcements he would “have an Army barely sufficient to keep the Enemy in check in New York.”

Zvengrowski writes: “Washington’s letter to Harrison was not printed for fear among British commanders at New York City that knowledge of its contents would generate pressure upon them to launch an invasion of New Jersey!” Thus, the general using those letters to manage opinion was actually Clinton.

Another reason to doubt the story printed by Lossing is that Washington didn’t make plans with the French general Rochambeau to leave the New York theater and besiege Gen. Cornwallis in Virginia until several weeks later. At that point the Continentals probably did try to fool the enemy about their plans. But not back when Lt. Moody captured Montanye.

“Poor are the Boston-Poor indeed”

In May 1774, Gen. Thomas Gage arrived in Boston with the news that he was the new royal governor and that Parliament had ordered the port closed to most shipping.

Anticipating increased unemployment, the town of Boston began what we’d call public-works programs to create more jobs, such as mending the roads with more cobblestones.

The committee of correspondence also started a continent-wide campaign asking for contributions from other ports and colonies, helping to make Boston’s cause into America’s.

On 29 Aug 1774, Hugh Gaine (shown here) favorably highlighted one response to that campaign in his New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury:

We hear that last Monday morning as two of the Gentlemen appointed a Committee to collect for our suffering Bretheren in Boston, set out upon that Business, the first Gentleman they called upon was Mr. D—e, who generously presented them Ten Pounds in Cash, and the best Pipe of Brandy in his distillery, called at twenty eight pounds; observing, at the same time, that the generosity of the Virginians and Carolinians, &c., was great and honourable with respect to food, but he thought such glorious sufferers for the common Good ought to drink as well as eat.

The Loyalist printer James Rivington took note. In his 2 September issue he named the donor as “Mr. [Richard] Deane, an eminent Distiller at the North River.”

Then Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer added a poetic comment on the situation:

On a late spirited SUBSCRIPTION.

’Twas an happy Device, I thought then, and think still,
For if Brandy won’t save them, we know Nothing will.

On the POOR of BOSTON being employed in paving the Streets.

In spite of Rice, in spite of Wheat,
Sent for the Boston-Poor—to eat,
In spite of Brandy, one would think,
Sent for the Boston-Poor---to drink;
Poor are the Boston-Poor indeed,
And needy, tho’ there is no Need:
They cry for Bread; the mighty Ones,
Instead of Bread, give only Stones.

• RISUM teneatis? ha! ha! he!

The bit of Latin meant “Can you help laughing?” Some printers were taking the situation less seriously than others.

When Hancock Moved on Mein

John Mein arrived in Boston from Scotland in 1764. He first set up a shop with Robert Sandeman, though he wasn’t a member of the Sandemanian sect.

The next year, Mein took over the London Book Store on King Street, formerly co-owned by James Rivington. Later he became partners with printer John Fleeming, another Scotsman, to publish books.

Finally, in 1767 Mein and Fleeming launched a new newspaper, the Boston Chronicle. It soon became the voice of the royal government in Massachusetts. The Customs office gave Mein and Fleeming its printing business, providing them with financial support.

At the same time, Mein owed a lot of money to his London suppliers, the publisher and book dealer Thomas Longman (d. 1797) and the stationery firm Wright & Gill. He ordered more than £2,000 worth of books and paid off only £419. In that respect, Mein was a lot like other North American merchants.

Then came the non-importation controversy of 1768 and 1769. The Boston Chronicle published Customs documents showing that many of the town’s merchants, including several involved in enforcing the boycott, were still having goods shipped to them from Britain. Mein added some choice insults.

Meanwhile, in July 1769 Thomas Longman wrote to John Hancock, asking if he was willing to be the firm’s Boston agent in collecting the money Mein owed. To sue John Mein for debt? To seize his goods? To potentially send him to debtors’ prison? Why yes, Hancock was happy to.

It took a while for Hancock and Longman finalize their arrangement. Other Boston merchants acted more directly, threatening Mein and Fleeming in the middle of town on 28 Oct 1769, as described here. Mein went into hiding on Castle Island and sailed for home the next month.

Once in London, Mein called on Longman and told him how he’d had to shut down his Boston business. He promised to pay off his debt, no doubt asking for more time. But Longman was already moving against him.

On 1 Mar 1770, Hancock received legal powers of attorney from Longman and Wright & Gill. That same day, Hancock’s lawyer John Adams filed the paperwork to have deputy sheriffs seize Mein’s property in Boston—his stock of books and his printing equipment.

The Loyalist magistrate James Murray negotiated with Hancock and Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf. He appears to have wanted the suit to be handled in London courts, far from Boston juries. Those discussions were going on in the same week as the Boston Massacre.

Murray’s action allowed Fleeming to continue the Boston Chronicle, “much to the Surprize and Disappointment of Mr. H—— and his party,” he wrote.

But Hancock took all he could. On 18 May, 250 years ago today, he wrote to Longman:

Your favours of Dec. 2d. 1769, & Jany 3d. 1770 are now before me, & duly note the Contents. In Consequence of the Rect. of the former, as Mr. Mein was absent, I immediately attached everything I could find of his Effects for the benefit of you & Wright & Gill & the matter is now in the Law.

The Effects are in the Hands of the Sheriff, and as soon as it has gone thro’ the Law, & the Effects turn’d into money, the neat proceeds shall be remitted you, and you will determine the settlement between you and Messrs. Wright & Gill. Tho’ I fear even the Whole of his Effects will fall vastly short of the Debts, but I have got all & could have no more.

You will please, as I am now greatly hurried, to present my respects to Mess Wright & Gill & acquaint them. I will render them every service in my power & will write them by next opportunity. Cannot You get further Security of Mr. Mein in London. You may rely I will do all in my power for your Interest in this or any other matter.

Around the same time, across the Atlantic, Longman had Mein arrested.

COMING UP: Wending through the courts.

“He was Billy, and the old servant of General Washington”?

In 1777 a London printer issued a pamphlet titled Letters from General Washington, to Several of His Friends in the Year 1776.

James Rivington, New York’s leading Loyalist printer (shown here, courtesy of the New-York Historical Society), soon reprinted those letters in his Royal Gazette newspaper. He issued a pamphlet of his own, adding a couple of genuine American letters to fill out the pages. Other Loyalist printers issued a particularly embarrassing private letter on handbills.

The preface to the pamphlet offered this explanation of how the person publishing the documents had come by them:

Among the prisoners at Fort-Lee, I espied a mulatto fellow, whom I thought I recollected, and who confirmed my conjectures by gazing very earnestly at me. I asked him, if he knew me. At first, he was unwilling to own it; but when he was about to be carried off, thinking, I suppose, that I might perhaps be of some service to him, he came and told me, that he was Billy, and the old servant of General Washington. He had been left there on account of an indisposition which prevented his attending his master.

I asked him a great many questions, as you may suppose; but found very little satisfaction in his answers. At last, however, he told me that he had a small portmanteau of his master’s of which, when he found that he must be put into confinement, he entreated my care. It contained only a few stockings and shirts; and I could see nothing worth my care, except an almanack, in which he had kept a sort of a journal, or diary of his proceedings since his first coming to New-York:

there were also two letters from his lady, one from Mr. Custis, and some pretty long ones from a Mr. Lund Washington. And in the same bundle with them. the first draughts, or foul copies, of answers to them. I read these with avidity; and being highly entertained with them, have shown them to several of my friends, who all agree with me, that he is a very different character from what they had supposed him.

The letters were addressed to Martha Washington, her son Jack Custis, and Lund Washington, the cousin managing Mount Vernon at the time. They portrayed Washington as disillusioned with the Continental Congress and hoping for a negotiated peace. They were entirely fake.

Whoever wrote those letters was familiar enough with life at Mount Vernon to have been in the Washingtons’ circle in Virginia. The general suspected John Randolph, the Loyalist father of his former and future aide, Edmund Randolph. Scholars have theorized that the Rev. John Vardill guided this and other propaganda efforts.

Describing the letters as having been captured with an enslaved servant also reminded readers that Washington and many of his biggest American supporters were slaveholders. That was a big talking-point in British political writing at the time, not out of any abolitionist sentiment but to undercut the Continental claim to be fighting for “liberty.”

In 1795, as domestic political disputes heated up, American printers opposed to President Washington’s policies pulled out this pamphlet and reprinted its contents, not necessarily claiming the letters were authentic but just stirring the pot.

Eventually Washington wrote to several of his associates in the war reminding them that these “spurious letters, [were] known at the time of their first publication…to be forgeries,” as he told Benjamin Walker. He asked them to remind other people, too.

The President added:

But of all the mistakes which have been committed in this business, none is more palpable, or susceptible of detection than the manner in which it is said they were obtained, by the capture of my Mulatto Billy, with a Portmanteau. All the Army, under my immediate command, could contradict this; and I believe most of them know, that no Attendant of mine, or a particle of my baggage ever fell into the hands of the enemy during the whole course of the War.

To that we can add that in 1776 William Lee was not an “old servant” of the general but only in his early twenties.

Those letters from the 1790s are the only time that Washington referred to his former body servant William Lee as “Billy” after 1771. And he wasn’t really referring to Will—he was referring to the fictional version of his servant described by a British propagandist using that name.

Washington hoped that Rivington, who appears to have become an American intelligence source by the end of the war, would be able to reveal the author of the letters. That didn’t happen. Rivington probably knew as little about their origin as anyone else in America.

The Fighting Ground “between the Enemy & the American force”

Asa Lord was born on 29 June 1760 in Saybrook, Connecticut. Around the time he turned sixteen, he signed up for a few months of military service, and he continued to do short-term stints as the war continued.

Lord was eighteen years old in April 1779 when he enlisted in a Connecticut regiment for nine months. He was sent to Horseneck or Greenwich, on Long Island Sound, “employed in guarding the lines between the Enemy & the American force & in preparing materials for entrenchments.”

In January 1780 Lord was one of the Connecticut militiamen who raided the Morrisania, New York, house of Isaac Hatfield, Jr., a lieutenant colonel in the Loyalist militia, as I’ve been describing. Decades later Lord’s pension application stated:

On the 17th day of January, About one hundred & ten of their Soldiers, volunteered to go down to Morisena & Attack a British Guard Stationed there. They put themselves under Capt. Samuel Lockwood. They started about noon of the 17th—And about one oclock the next morning, attacked the Said Guard in front of their quarters. A hot engagement ensued & they finale killed most of the British guard, took nine or ten prisoners & Started on their retreat

However, one of the Loyalist officers who had been staying with Hatfield, Maj. Thomas Huggeford (also spelled Huggerford and Hungerford), slipped away from the Connecticut men. Someone who knew him after the war described Huggeford as “a large, fleshy, middle-aged man, active and humane,” but evidently he could move with stealth and speed.

The story continues in James Rivington’s Royal Gazette:

Major Huggerford soon after effected his escape, and returning, formed a small body of Refugees, consisting of thirty-five Dragoons, and twenty-eight Infantry, under the command of Capt. [Henry] Purdy, instantly pursuing the rebels with this detachment.

The Infantry took post upon the heights, beyond East Chester, and the mounted, consisting of Cornet Hilat, Adjutant [John] Pugsley, two Serjeants, and twenty-nine privates, under the command of Lieut. [Samuel] Kipp, continued the pursuit, and came up with their rear between New-Rochelle and Mamarroneck…

Because the Loyalists in that militia all came from the same communities, they had many ties. For example, captured with Isaac Hatfield was his sister Mary’s husband, Moses Knapp. The lieutenant who led the pursuing light horsemen, Samuel Kipp, was a brother-in-law of another of Isaac Hatfield’s sisters, Abigail. And eventually Samuel Kipp married Mary Knapp, daughter of Moses and Mary—i.e., his brother’s sister-in-law’s daughter.

Despite that strong motivation to rescue their friends and relatives, the pursuers were too late to free the men whom the Americans had taken captive. Isaac Hatfield stated that he was “carried to New England; [and] remained Prisoner about 3 months.”

But others in the raiding party moved more slowly, as Gen. William Heath wrote:

The militia after conducting this enterprize with much address and gallantry imprudently loitered in their retreat, were pursued & overtaken by a party of light Horse, a number of them shockingly cut

Rivington’s newspaper reported that the Loyalists had “killed 23, and took 40 prisoners, some of whom are wounded.” Furthermore:

We are assured that the only weapon used by Major Huggerford and his determined band of Refugees, in their attack and defeat of Capt. Lockwood’s party, was the Sabre,---and had not their horses been jaded to a stand-still, every one of the enemy would have fallen into their hands.

Among the prisoners was Asa Lord, who recalled in his 1832 pension application:

Between nine & ten oclock in the morning of the 18th Jany. they were overtaken by a detachment of Queens Guards, many of the Americans killed & the Declarant & Eight others taken prisoners, carried to New York & confined in The Old Sugar House. The Declarant was confined there ten months & three days.—He was then exchanged.

Yet another view of this clash comes from George Eld, who had joined the Coldstream Guards as an ensign—the equivalent of a second lieutenant—in March 1776. A copy of his diary is owned by the Boston Public Library.

The Coldstream Guards were sent to New York in 1779. Since Eld was born in America, that was some sort of homecoming, but unfortunately we don’t seem to have any information about exactly where or when he was born.

Ens. Eld was stationed on the British lines outside New York City, and at the start of 1780 he was put in command of a light infantry company. In his diary he wrote:

The two Light Infantry Companies of the Guards with the mounted refugees were ordered out under the Command of Colo. [Francis] Hall—after a march of 25 miles fell in with their [the enemy’s] rear guard—a trifling but general contest ensued—nine rebels were killed, sixteen taken prisoners, many wounded.—The rebels now appeared to the amount of 800, when on our taking an advantageous situation they retired—

we returned 12 miles & remained the night in some log houses & returned to the lines on being joined by a detachment sent out to Cover Our retreat.

That was the end of this seesaw skirmish in the “neutral ground” of Westchester County. Because there was so much territory between the army lines, such raids meant long marches—the Connecticut lieutenant colonel Matthew Mead wrote of his men marching “30 miles out,” and Ens. Eld recorded a 25-mile march and an overnight stop on the way back. And at the end of all the fighting, both sides had seen some men killed and more taken prisoner.

TOMORROW: Ens. Eld in the city.

Raid on Isaac Hatfield’s House

As I described yesterday, in January 1780 Capts. Samuel Lockwood and Samuel Keeler of the Connecticut militia attacked the home of Isaac Hatfield, Jr., in Morrisania, New York.

Hatfield (1748-1822) had been born in America to a substantial farming family and raised in Westchester County. The notes of what he later told the Loyalists Commission say:

On breaking out of Troubles, from the first took part with Brit. Was required by rebels to serve in their Militia, & to sign their Association, which he refused. In consequence Of this he made himself Obnoxious. They fin’d him which he refused to pay, & he was obliged to quit home.

While he was away, Hatfield said, “he lost 18 Head Cattle, 4 Horses, farm horses, 50 Sheep.” He “Heard Of some being taken by one person, some by another, some for fines.” In other words, his neighbors were stripping away his property.

When the Crown forces landed on Long Island in the fall of 1776, Hatfield volunteered for the Queen’s Rangers, commanding a company in that Loyalist regiment. In 1777 he joined Gen. Oliver De Lancey’s Brigade. Then came commissions from Gov. William Tryon to be an officer in the Westchester County militia, ultimately a lieutenant colonel.

On 18 January, the Connecticut militia came for Hatfield. The raiders shot three sentries and killed his horse—“a very fine horse,” worth 40 guineas, Hatfield’s lieutenant, Thomas Kipp, recalled.

Hatfield and the men stationed with him raced to the upstairs chambers of the house. There, Lt. Col. Matthew Mead of Connecticut wrote, “they had prepared a number of Casks of salt, of Flour & other lumber” as barricades.

In his memoir Gen. William Heath described the fighting inside Hatfield’s house:

The Colonel and his men took to the chambers, and fired out at the windows and down stairs at those who had entered the house; it appeared difficult, if possible, to dislodge them, the house was instantly set on fire, by putting a straw bed into a closet [i.e., small room], which compelled the enemy to jump out at the chamber windows, to avoid the flames.

On 22 January, James Rivington’s Royal Gazette reported inside New York:

Early on the morning of the 18th instant, a detachment of Rebel Militia, collected from the neighbourhood of Horseneck [i.e., Greenwich], under the command of a Captain Lockwood, attacked ahouse between Kingsbridge and De Lancey’s Mills, in which Lieut. Col. Hetfield, Major [Thomas] Huggerford, Captain [Moses] Knap, a Quarter-Master, and ten private Refugees of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s corps, were quartered:

The house being bravely defended for fifteen minutes; the Rebels were enabled to set fire to it, from the having gained possession of the ground floor; in consequence of which, this small party were reduced to the necessity of abandoning their post, and laying down their arms; they were in course taken prisoners, and the enemy immediately began their retreat.

The Connecticut men had fifteen prisoners of war in all. They triumphantly headed back north to the Continental lines.

But then Maj. Huggeford escaped.

TOMORROW: Rearguard action.

[The photo above, from Find a Grave, shows the headstone of Mary (Bayeux) Hatfield, whom Lt. Col. Isaac Hatfield married in 1786 after settling in Digby County, Nova Scotia.]

Lt. Henry Barry: “sappy looking chap” or “calm, worthy man”?

The British army officer who asked Henry Knox to publish a political pamphlet in January 1775, as discussed yesterday, was Lt. Henry Barry (1750-1822), shown here as J. S. Copley painted him about ten years later.

We know about Barry’s authorship because John Andrews mentioned him again in a letter on 29 January:

a pamphlet…wrote in answer to General [Charles] Lee’s by one Barrey, an officer in the 52nd Regiment, whose performance is pretty much like himself, being an awkward sappy looking chap, the more so I think than any officer I have seen among all that’s here.

Others were more complimentary about Barry, and he did manage to get his pamphlet published by the end of that month. The title was The Strictures on the Friendly Address Examined, and a Refutation of its Principles Attempted, and the first edition named no publisher or printer.

On 31 January, the young painter Henry Pelham sent a copy to Charles Startin, a brother-in-law. (To be exact, Startin was Pelham’s half-brother Copley’s wife’s sister’s husband.)

I also inclose you a pamphlet wrote by a young Gentleman, a Lieutenant in the Army here. I believe it will please you as a sensible dispassionate and polite answer to another filled with invective attributed to Gen’l Lee.

Of course, Pelham had become a decided Loyalist after the Boston Tea Party.

Another admirer of Barry was John Eliot, who leaned toward the Whigs. He sent the lieutenant’s pamphlet to the Rev. Jeremy Belknap on 30 January and followed up on 18 February to say:

The author of the “Strictures Examined” is a young gentleman of my acquaintance, an officer in the fiftysecond, now station’d with us, an ingenuous, calm, worthy man. The enclosed is another production of his, which asks your acceptance.

Lt. Barry’s second pamphlet was The Advantages which America Derives from Her Commerce, Connexion, and Dependence on Britain. It doesn’t have a printer listed, either. Some bibliographers guess it was printed in New York, but Barry probably went to the same Boston print shop as before. He also wrote a reply to a Patriot sermon by the Rev. William Gordon of Roxbury.

James Rivington, the New York printer who had first published the Friendly Address and started the back-and-forth, reprinted Barry’s response to Lee’s response under the title The General Attacked by a Subaltern—i.e., a junior officer had answered the (Polish) general. We can assess Barry’s argument here.

(The portrait of Lt. Barry above is now at the Saint Louis Art Museum.)

“After the Destruction of Captn. Chambers’s Tea”

Everyone agreed that during the New York Tea Party of 22 Apr 1774 and associated demonstrations, the rest of the city was peaceful. Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden told the absent governor, William Tryon, “the Quarter where I reside, and the greatest Part of the Town were perfectly Quiet.”

For the Whigs, that showed how the New York community was normally peaceful and under control; right-thinking locals destroyed the eighteen chests of offensive tea and did no other damage. For their opponents, the fact that only a small fraction of New Yorkers got involved showed how the movement wasn’t really popular.

That split reflected the ongoing battle for public opinion. The Whig committee that orchestrated the tea destruction was playing to several audiences. They wanted to show the government and mercantile community in London, and the East India Company, that their city was adamantly opposed to paying the new tea tax. They wanted to warn merchants and sea captains like James Chambers against trying to evade that boycott.

They also wanted to show the Whigs of Boston and Philadelphia and other North American ports, who had already dealt with tea shipments, that they were just as strongly opposed. As Hugh Gaine’s New-York Gazette concluded its 25 April report:

Thus, to the great Mortification of the Secret and open enemies of America, and the joy of all the friends of liberty and human nature, the union of these Colonies is maintained in a contest of the utmost importance to their safety and felicity.

In addition, the Whigs wanted to assure the city’s riled-up populace, who actually started destroying the tea before the self-appointed leaders wanted, that their committee was looking out for the public interest.

Of course, not everyone supported the tea destruction. The first newspaper attack on the action appeared in James Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer on 28 April. In highly emphasized language a correspondent demanded:

What is the Committee of Observation? By whom were they appointed? and what authority had they to order Capt. Chambers, or any body else, to attend them at Mr. [Samuel] Francis’s, or any other place whatsoever? Who says, and upon what authority does he say, that the sense of the city was asked, relatively, either to the sending away Capt. [Benjamin] Lockyer, or the destruction of the tea on board the London? Has not every London Captain brought tea, under the same circumstances? And, if so, what were the Apostates that informed against the unfortunate man, who was threatened with DEATH for obeying the laws of his country? . . .

I wish the printers of public chronicles would be cautious of disgracing their papers, by publishing party relations. While they adhere to matters of fact, ’tis all well; but when they expand their columns to either patriot or ministerial minions, without any known evidence,— nay, contrary to the truth of fact,—they must not, they cannot, they shall not hope to escape the animadversions of a lover of Constitutional Liberty; but a sworn foe to Coblers and Taylors, so long as they take upon their everlasting and unmeasurable shoulders, the power of directing the loyal and sensible inhabitants of the CITY and PROVINCE of NEW-YORK.

According to Lt. Gov. Colden, the radical Whigs actually lost the ensuing political struggle. On 7 Sept 1774, he wrote to the governor:

After the Destruction of Captn. Chambers’s Tea, and some other violent Proceedings of the pretended Patriots, the principal Inhabitants began to be apprehensive and resolved to attend the Meetings of the Inhabitants when called together by Hand Bills.

The Consequence has been that [John Morin] Scott, [Alexander] McDougall, [Isaac] Sears & [John] Lamb are all in disgrace, and the People are now directed by more moderate Men. I hope that the giving [of] any new offence to Parliament will be guarded against.

New York City remained in a delicate balance between factions. In the summer of 1775 it simultaneously welcomed both Gov. Tryon and Gen. George Washington. In 1776 New Yorkers celebrated the Declaration of Independence by tearing down George III’s statue, and then half a year later the city, retaken by the British military, became the center of Loyalism for the rest of the war.

TOMORROW: What happened to Capt. James Chambers?

Extracts of Letters from Boston?

On 29 Dec 1774, Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer ran the following items:

Extract of a letter from Boston.

“Every thing is at present quiet here, and the governor takes all possible precautions to keep things so. The people are continually tampering with the soldiers to desert; a corporal of the 38th regiment was last Monday addressed by one of their Agents, he pretended to consent to go off with him, upon which the fellow took him to a house, gave him a suit of plain cloathes and put his regimentals into the saddle-bags, he then put the corporal upon his horse and got up behind; they rode on together till they came to the Fusileers barrack, into which the corporal turned, the fellow instantly jumped off and made his escape, leaving the horse, saddle-bags and clothes, all of which have been given to the corporal as a reward for his wit and spirit.[”]

A Gentleman in Boston, writes to his friend here, of the 12th instant;—

Two ships of the line, viz. the Asia and Boyne, are arrived here, and the Somerset is now firing guns in the offing. The day before yesterday it was moved in Provincial Congress, that arms be immediately taken up against the King’s Troops; but one of the members got up and told them such a move was infamous, when at the same time the Members knew, that neither Connecticut nor any of the southern colonies meant to oppose his Majesty’s arms, on which account the Congress immediately dissolved, and a new one is to be chosen, to meet the tenth of next month.

At Plymouth they are now beating up for volunteers to attack the troops; the parties sent for a parson to pray for them, who refused to comply; but he was obliged to attend on being sent for a second time, on penalty of being shot.

James Rivington was then a strong supporter of the Crown, on his way to being put out of business by a Patriot mob and then sponsored by the royal government in occupied New York through the war.

On 1 Jan 1774, Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks reprinted the entire article in their Boston Post-Boy. In the preceding May they had taken over from Green and Russell and turned the Post-Boy into a strongly pro-government paper.

On 5 January, Isaiah Thomas printed the part about plans to attack soldiers instead of to suborn them in the Patriot Massachusetts Spy, crediting “the New-York Gazette,” but he added at the bottom:

[A d——d lie.]

And indeed there’s no evidence supporting the article’s claims about the congress. If Rivington had actually seen a letter from Boston with that story, he fell for an alarmist rumor—and it’s quite possible he just made it up.

Even so, the letter from “A Gentleman in Boston” was reprinted in several British magazines in early 1775, helping to shape public opinion there.

[ADDENDUM: Follow-up from Don Hagist.]