News from France and “the language of patriotism”

Boston’s Civic Festival to honor the new republic of France on 24 Jan 1793 came at an unusual cultural and political moment.

The latest news from Europe relayed the events of late 1792. Bostonians knew about how the French assembly had deposed Louis XVI and proclaimed a republic. The French army was pushing back the combined forces of several European monarchies and keeping Britain at bay. It looked like the American model of political liberty and equality was spreading in the Old World.

To be sure, the news included a hint of French Revolutionaries turning on themselves. After trying and failing to preserve the king and constitutional monarchy, the Marquis de Lafayette (shown here) had fled to Austrian territory. He was under arrest, viewed by both French republicans and Austrian monarchists with suspicion.

The 26 January Columbian Centinel showed how Bostonians still admired Lafayette and were following his story. One of the toasts offered at the festival was “Justice to M. LAFAYETTE.” Did that mean justice from France or from Austria? Quite possibly both.

For the most part, however, the people of Boston saw plenty to celebrate. Though Louis XVI’s government did support the U.S. of A. in its fight for independence, Americans had grown up thinking of the French monarchy as an example of tyranny. Now the former king appeared to be in alliance with his fellow despots against his people, so it was easy to hail his downfall. Likewise, New Englanders with their Puritan heritage and established Calvinism felt little sympathy for the Catholic church in France. The decorations on Faneuil Hall included “a crown, sceptre, mitre, and chains” being broken under the feet of Liberty.

The festival toasts signaled high hopes for republicanism:

• “The Law—May it always breathe the spirit of liberty and speak the language of patriotism.”
• “Civic virtues to the military, and a military spirit to the citizens.”
• “May the light of philosophy irradiate the caverns of superstition and despotism, and reveal their horrors."
• “In all governments may Liberty be the check, and Equality the balance.”

There were similar but smaller celebrations in other Massachusetts towns.

New Englanders didn’t know that the French government had indicted Louis XVI for treason in December and beheaded him just three days before their festival. Once news of that execution arrived in late March, Americans’ support for the French republic began to fade. Splintering opinion about France was a big part of the development of two semi-organized political parties in the U.S. of A.

In the spring of 1793, some Americans founded what historians later called Democratic-Republican Societies, the basis of what became the Jeffersonian party. On 8 April, Edmond-Charles Genêt arrived in Charleston as the new French minister to America and set about commissioning privateers to attack British ships. President George Washington issued a controversial neutrality proclamation on 22 April.

Those developments changed how Bostonians responded to the French Revolution. In January, as I discussed, Benjamin Russell’s Columbian Centinel not only applauded the Civic Festival but referred to local dignitaries and the editor himself with the title “Citizen.” By June, however, that newspaper was firmly Federalist and using that honorific only for officials from France. In his book Parades and the Politics of the Street, Simon P. Newman wrote that by spring Federalist politicians were conspicuously absent from further celebrations of the French republic.

The Centinel continued to refer to “Liberty Square” instead of Dock Square for several months, but that term faded away. As for “Equality Lane,” the name appeared almost exclusively in advertising for John Bryant’s tavern (no longer called “Liberty Hall”). The last reference that I found came in the 23 Aug 1793 American Apollo, in an advertisement for young acrobats.

After that, “Equality Lane” reverted to being called “Exchange Lane” (no more “Royal”) or “Shrimpton’s Lane” after an early owner of the land. The new name had lasted such a short time that it was never official, never appeared in town directories or on maps. When historians have mentioned “Equality Lane,” it was always in the way William Cobbett used it, as evidence of Boston’s brief infatuation with the French Revolution.

But for a moment in early 1793, Bostonians were calling each other “Citizen” and honoring “Equality” over commercial “Exchange.”

Citizens at Boston’s Civic Festival of 1793

I’m jumping around among multiple series here [whatever happened to the Saga of the Brazen Head?], but there’s no better date than 14 July to return to Boston’s celebration of republican France in 1793.

At the start of the month I quoted a suggestion in the 21 Jan 1793 Boston Gazette that the selectmen find a new name for the short street in central Boston called “Royal Exchange Lane.” The word “royal” was just so pre-Revolutionary.

That proposal appeared in the midst of reports on Bostonians preparing for a big “Civic Feast” celebrating how France had become a republic. The deposition of King Louis XVI meant that Americans could be grateful to the French nation for being a crucial ally in the war for independence without the awkwardness of supporting a despot far less constitutionally fettered than George III.

Boston’s civic holiday took place on Thursday, 24 January. That day’s Independent Chronicle reported one some of the events:

A large number of citizens will dine at Fanuiel [sic] Hall; notwithstanding which tables plentiously provided, will be laid in State Street; and whoever chooses may partake freely.

At the Stump of Liberty-Tree, an entertainment is providing for a large number of citizens, who usually have celebrated propitious events at that spot.

The Citizen Soldiers of the Independent Fusiliers, will dine at BRYANT’s Liberty Hall, Equality-Lane, (late Royal Exchange Lane.)

It looks like innholder John Bryant decided to rename the street his establishment stood on “Equality Lane” to reflect the new political ethos, even in advance of action by the selectmen.

The long, detailed report on the “CIVIC FESTIVAL!” in the 26 January Columbian Centinel showed how people were adopting that new name. That newspaper said the fusilier company “dined together at Citizen BRYANT’s, in Equality-lane.” Likewise, it referred to the nearby Dock Square as “Liberty-Square.”

Innkeeper Bryant wasn’t the only celebrant to receive the republican title “Citizen.” The newspaper reported that “citizen S[amuel]. Adams,” then lieutenant governor, presided over the feast in Faneuil Hall alongside “Citizen Letombe”—French consul Philippe André-Joseph de Létombe, who had started serving under the king and would remain in office through to the emperor. “Citizen [Josiah?] Waters” was marshal of the parade and oversaw the decorations. “Citizen [Samuel] Bradlee” commanded the company of artillery.

“Citizen Joseph Croswell, of Plymouth” provided the words of a hymn “To Liberty” while “Citizen [John] Woart” hosted another gathering at the Green Dragon Tavern where mechanics sang “God Save Great Washington.” Likewise, “Citizen Charles Jarvis,” soon to be one of Boston’s leading Jeffersonians, proposed a toast to President George Washington.

Most striking of all to me, this same page of the Columbian Centinel included a letter to the editor that proudly began “Citizen Russell.” Benjamin Russell (shown above in later life) and his newspaper would soon be pillars of the Federalist Party in New England. Yet in January 1793 they were going gaga over Revolutionary France.

Indeed, another news item on this page of the Centinel warned “24 Frenchmen” in Boston who had signed “A Protest against the French revolution” that they should be “upon their guard, in attempts of this nature,” and maintain “a respectful silence.” Nobody, not even Frenchmen, were supposed to criticize France as it finally became a republic.

COMING UP: Party poopers.

”Altering the Name of ROYAL Exchange Lane”

As I quoted yesterday, in 1796 William Cobbett, a Federalist writer based in Philadelphia, complained about Bostonians changing the name of “Royal Exchange Alley” to “Equality Lane.”

Cobbett said this showed the pernicious effect of the French Revolution on America. He thought that the name “Liberty Stump” showed the same effect even though, as discussed yesterday, that term for the remains of Liberty Tree predated the French Revolution by over a decade.

The name “Equality Lane” doesn’t appear in the records of the Boston selectmen. It’s not mentioned in the town directories of 1789 and 1796, the earliest issued. I haven’t found it on any maps of the town. In 1910 the city published A Record of the Streets, Alleys, Places, etc. in the City of Boston, and that doesn’t include “Equality Lane” as an entry or as an alternative name for Exchange Alley.

Nonetheless, Cobbett was correct. For a very short time, under the influence of news from republican France, at least some Bostonians did rename Royal Exchange Alley as Equality Lane. The new name shows up in newspapers of early 1793—and let me tell you, those newspapers are wild!

The first hint of a change appears in the 21 Jan 1793 issue of Benjamin Edes’s Boston Gazette. That paper was full of news from Europe, including a list of “Places subdued by the victorious French,” a description from London of a procession in “Stratsbourg" in which “Louis the last was personated,” and news of a “Tree of Liberty” planted in Belfast with “NO KING AND LIBERTY” inscribed on it.

A great deal of page 3 was about a Civic Feast that Bostonians were planning later that week to celebrate “the triumph of Liberty in France,” which had become a republic in September 1792. A committee was selling tickets to a banquet inside Faneuil Hall, trying to gather the banners left over from President George Washington’s visit in 1789, and urging people to close their shops at noon. There would be plenty of roast ox, the committee promised.

One of the paragraphs associated with that festival said of a volunteer militia company:

The Boston Independent Fusileers, are to celebrate the CIVIC FEAST at Bryant’s Hall, near the Exchange.—They will make their appearance with a Cockade similar to that worn by the National Guards of France, the form of which was recommended to the Company by Madame PLACIDE.

John Bryant had announced just the previous month that he had “opened a Boarding and Lodging-House, in that large, roomy, and elegant building in Exchange-Lane.”

In the midst of all that festive planning was this small item:

A correspondent submits to the Citizens Selectmen, the propriety of altering the Name of ROYAL Exchange Lane.

As I said, there’s no evidence in the selectmen’s records that they took up that question, but the newspapers of the following weeks show that John Bryant did.

COMING UP: The citizens’ feast of 1793.