“May not great Heats and Animosities from hence be justly feared?”

In addition to the two protests against the Solemn League and Covenant boycott that I’ve quoted over the past two days, three Boston newspapers also published a letter laying out the argument against it at more length.

That letter is written in the first person singular: “I beg Leave to lay before them the following Facts and Observations…”

However, in a 22 July private letter, John Andrews, a signatory of the milder protest, wrote that “our reasons for a dissent are given [in that essay] in a more explicit manner than in the protest.”

So even if this letter had a singular voice, and may have come from a single hand, a larger community of merchants felt it spoke for them.

That letter was sent to the printers of the Boston Evening-Post, Boston Post-Boy, and Boston News-Letter addressed to “Messirs. Fleets,” “Messieurs MILLS and HICKS,” and “Messi’rs PRINTERS,” respectively. Editors still like a sign of individual attention.

(Management of the News-Letter was in flux that summer. On 9 June Margaret Draper announced that she was continuing her late husband Richard’s partnership with John Boyle. But on 11 August she announced that she was taking over the newspaper herself.)

The letter ran through the terms of the Solemn League and Covenant, emphasizing the hardships and how signers were supposed to shun anyone who didn’t sign and continued to import goods from Britain. Then it argued:

Whoever attends to these Terms of the Covenant, wholly proscribing the Goods expected in the Fall and all those upon hand, unless an Oath is taken, must be greatly concerned lest from the Non-exception of Articles of necessity the people should be drawn into a dangerous Snare, and Perjury in many Cases fatally ensue. The multiplication of Oaths (tending to introduce a disregard of them) has been always carefully avoided by wise Legislators; it being well judged that Society cannot exist when Oaths shall cease to be religiously observed. When that dreadful Event happens among any People, their Lives, Liberties and Properties cannot be safe. . . .

It may also be observed, that if a Carpenter, a Taylor, or a Shoemaker shall refuse to sign, he is to be considered as a contumacious Importer.--Or should they sign the Covenant, they cannot serve those in the Way of their Occupation who shall not---What distress must this occasion at a Season when little or no Employ is to be procured among us without these Restrictions? . . . May not great Heats and Animosities from hence be justly feared?

Upon the whole, as I think this Covenant not adapted to procure that Relief we so greatly need, because I think it arbitrary and oppressive, subversive of our Rights and destructive of the Morals of the People, as also inconsistent with the true Spirit of Liberty and the Constitution, and not founded on the Principles of Honor and Honesty, I am led to offer these Observations to the Public, which appear to me to be founded on Reason.

Of course, the people promoting the boycott wanted it to be total. They wanted non-participants to be shunned. And one group, at least, wanted people to be bound to the movement by oath. That was the path to solidarity.

TOMORROW: The weight of an oath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMING UP: The Worcester connection.

“We will suspend all commercial intercourse with the said island”

In his 1915 study of the Solemn League and Covenant, Albert Matthews based what he called Form A on a printed broadside preserved in Westford, as shown here and here.

Matching broadsides survive in the state archive and in Attleboro, as reported here.

That text also matches what appeared in Margaret Draper’s Boston News-Letter on 23 June 1774, printed at the request of an opponent of the boycott campaign.

The broadside version had blank spaces for leaders of each town to write in its name and the date in “June [blank] 1774” on which it voted to sign onto the agreement.

The text itself consists of a preamble and four promises for consumers:

1st, That from henceforth we will suspend all commercial intercourse with the said island of Great Britain, until the said act for blocking up the said harbour be repealed, and a full restoration of our charter rights be obtained. And,

2dly, …that we will not buy, purchase or consume, or suffer any person, by, for or under us to purchase or consume, in any manner whatever, any goods, wares, or merchandize which shall arrive in America from Great Britain aforesaid, from and after the last day of August next ensuing. . . .

3dly, That such persons may not have it in their power to impose upon us by any pretence whatever, we further agree to purchase no article of merchandize from them, or any of them, who shall not have signed this, or a similar covenant . . .

Lastly, we agree, that after this, or a similar covenant has been offered to any person and they refuse to sign it, or produce the oath, abovesaid, we will consider them as contumacious importers, and withdraw all commercial connexions with them, so far as not to purchase of them, any article whatever, and publish their names to the world.

This was the oath for retailers to swear if they wanted to retain their customers:

I [blank] of [blank] in the county of [blank] do solemnly swear that the goods I have now on hand, and propose for sale, have not, to the best of my knowledge, been imported from Great Britain, into any port of America since the last day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy four, and that I will not, contrary to the spirit of an agreement entering into through this province import or purchase of any person so importing any goods as aforesaid, until the port or harbour of Boston, shall be opened, and we are fully restored to the free use of our constitutional and charter rights.

The last part of the broadside was a generous stretch of blank paper for individual people to fill up with their signatures, as we can see on the copy above.

TOMORROW: Form B.

“The foregoing is a Copy of a Covenant…”

The Boston committee of correspondence’s Solemn League and Covenant went further than previous boycotts by having ordinary people pledge not to buy any goods from Britain after a certain date, and to shun business with anyone who continued to sell.

That’s why the 30 May town meeting voted “That the Comittee of Correspondence be & hereby are directed, to comunicate the Non Consumption Agreement aforesaid to the other Towns in the Province.” Not just non-importation by merchants but non-consumption by everyone.

According to the merchant John Andrews, that agreement was “sent out in printed copies by the Clerk to the Committee. W[illiam]. Cooper,” along with his printed letter dated 8 June 1774.

One might think that it would therefore be easy to identify the official text of that boycott agreement.

But there’s a lingering mystery about the Solemn League and Covenant. Two different texts were printed in American newspapers by the end of the month. Both also exist as broadsides carrying the date of June 1774. To add to the muddle, a third text was also printed as a broadside.

In 1915 Albert Matthews compared the two June 1774 texts for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, calling them Form A and Form B. I guess I’ll call that third version Form C when I get to it.

Normally the Boston town government favored the Edes and Gill print shop. The letter and broadside might well have come from its presses. On 20 June Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette editorialized in favor of it:

The Solemn League & Covenant for a non-consumption of British Merchandize is an Ax to the Root of the tree; by coming into it we establish our own Manufactures, save our Money, and finally our Country from the destruction that threatens it.

But that newspaper didn’t report the actual text of the new agreement. The Boston committee evidently didn’t want to publicize details of the boycott in town, at least not until a lot of rural communities had signed on to it.

Instead, the recently widowed Margaret Draper printed the document in her Boston News-Letter on 23 June. This wasn’t an official release. The document was prefaced with a request to print it and followed by:

The foregoing is a Copy of a Covenant, which I am told great Pains are now taking to promote in the Country. As I think it is of the most pernicious Tendency, as at present circumstanced, I beg Leave through your Paper to propose some Questions relating thereto.

Nearly a full column of political questions and argument followed. Then came an even longer series of questions leading to the suggestion not to take any action until “the approaching Congress.”

Four days later Mills and Hicks’s Boston Post-Boy printed the entire text of Cooper’s letter followed by the same form of the Solemn League and Covenant as in the News-Letter.

In other words, the Solemn League and Covenant wasn’t announced by Boston’s committee of correspondence. It was leaked by opponents through the Loyalist press.

TOMORROW: Form A.

“O may each bliss the lovely pair surround”

Margaret Draper’s Boston News-Letter was published on Thursdays, and thus couldn’t report on the marriage of province secretary Thomas Flucker’s daughter Lucy to bookseller Henry Knox until a week after the event, in the 30 June 1774 issue.

[I rewrote that sentence to be absolutely clear that the date refers to the newspaper, not the wedding. There’s enough confusion already.]

The News-Letter ran one thing that Boston’s other newspapers didn’t have, however. After the same one-line announcement of the marriage it published this poem:

Blest tho’ she is with ev’ry human grace,
The mein engaging, and bewitching face,
Yet still an higher beauty is her care,
Virtue, the charm that most adorns the fair;
This does new graces to her air inspire,
Gives to her lips their bloom, her eyes their fire;
This o’er her cheek with brighter tincture shows
The lily’s whiteness and the blushing rose.
O may each bliss the lovely pair surround.
And each wing’d hour with new delights be crown’d!
Long may they those exalted pleasures prove
That spring from worth, from constancy and love.

There’s no clue about who wrote these lines. Henry Knox himself wasn’t known for writing poetry. Knox biographers say a friend of the couple composed this tribute to the bride, but no one ventures a guess as to which friend.

One possible clue to the poet is that the News-Letter was by then known for supporting the Crown, so Loyalists were more likely to write for the newspaper and read what it published. But that still leaves a lot of possibilities. 

The internet tells me that Whit Stillman borrowed these lines for his movie and novelization Love and Friendship, built off of Jane Austen’s unfinished Lady Susan.

“St. David, mounted on a Goat”

In investigating the myths and realities of goat mascots in the 23rd Regiment of Foot, or Royal Welch Fusiliers, I’ll start with a fine inside source on that unit in the Revolutionary War, the diary of Lt. Frederick Mackenzie (c. 1731-1824, shown here later in life courtesy of the Royal Welch Fusiliers Regimental Museum). 

In his entry for 1 Mar 1775, Lt. Mackenzie described how the regiment’s officers organized a festive dinner in honor of St. David’s Day. David was the patron saint of Wales, and even though the 23rd’s no longer had a particular connection to Wales beyond its name, that was enough of an excuse for a feast at the end of winter.

Mackenzie listed the men who dined at this event, both from the 23rd Regiment and from the wider garrison. Generals Thomas Gage and Frederick Haldimand came, along with brigadiers Earl Percy and Valentine Jones. (Gen. Robert Pigot was invited but “was unwell.”) Adm. Samuel Graves represented the Royal Navy. Many top staff officers attended, as did the regimental surgeon and chaplain. Two officers “Formerly in the Regt.” and two designated only as “Welchmen” were additional guests. 

Unfortunately, about the festivity itself Mackenzie wrote nothing beyond that it was “according to Custom.” For more information we turn to the report printed in Margaret Draper’s Boston News-Letter the next day:

Yesterday being DAVID’s Day, (the Tutelar Saint for Wales,) the same was observed with the usual demonstrations of Joy, by his Majesty’s own Regiment of Royal Welch Fusilears; an elegant Entertainment was provided at the British Coffee-House, which his Excellency the Commander in Chief honored with his Presence: The Admiral and all the General Officers likewise assisted.--- 

On entering the Room, St. David, mounted on a Goat, adorned with Leeks, presented himself to View, and the whole Ceremony concluded with the following Healths:—

1. St. DAVID and Wales.
2. Prince of Wales.
3. The KING.
4. The QUEEN and Royal Family. 
5. The General and the Army.
6. The Admiral and the Navy.
7. Lord NORTH. 
8. Lord Dartmouth. 
9. Plume of Feathers. (August 26th 1346.)
10. Colonels and Corps.
11. The glorious Memory.
12. Our old Friend.
13. The 1st of August 1714. (Hanover Succession.)
14. The 1st of August 1759. (Minden.)
15. The 13th of September 1759. (Quebec.)
16. The 20th of November 1759. (Hawke.)
17. May Great-Britain forever maintain her Supremacy over the Colonies.
18. The 1st of July 1690. (Boyne.)
19. The 12th of July 1691. (Aghrim.)
20. The 15th of of April 1746. (Culloden.)
21. General Amherst, and the 8th of September 1760. (Surrender of Canada.)
22. Prince Ferdinand.

I’ve used links to annotate the historical allusions in those toasts.

This newspaper item offers what appears to be the earliest record of a goat associated with the Royal Welch Fusiliers: “St. David, mounted on a Goat, adorned with Leeks, presented himself to View.” The article doesn’t make clear what that means—evidently the right people were supposed to know already, indicating that this was an established tradition.

For more detail, we must turn to another officer’s account of that same dinner.

TOMORROW: Goat behaving badly.

“Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars” in Jamaica Plain, 4 Dec.

On Tuesday, 4 December, I’ll speak at the Loring-Greenough House in Jamaica Plain on the topic of “Boston’s Pre-Revolutionary Newspaper Wars (and What They May Tell Us About Today’s News Media).”

This is part of the site’s “Tuesday in the Parlor” lecture series. Here’s the description we came up with:

In the period leading up to the Revolution, colonial journalists produced a lively array of print publications aimed at keeping the populace informed about—or inflamed by—the political news of the day.

On the left were The Boston Gazette and The Massachusetts Spy while The Boston News-Letter, The Boston Chronicle, and Boston Weekly Post-Boy espoused viewpoints from the right. The Boston Evening-Post tried to maintain a centrist voice. The newspaper business could be a nasty and dangerous one, prompting rivalries between printers and occasional violence.

Join us for J. L. Bell’s enlightening talk about the how America’s early news medium operated in the volatile pre-Revolutionary environment and the significance of this history for today’s information media.

We’re scheduled to start promptly at 7:00 P.M. After the talk, there will be a book signing and light refreshments.

Tickets for this event are $5 for members of the Loring-Greenhough House and $10 for the public, plus a small processing fee to Eventbrite. Folks who join now will of course enjoy discounted tickets for events all the coming year.

“ODE on the New-Year” 1775

Traditionally Boston 1775 observes the turn of the year with a “carrier verse,” one of the topical poems that newspaper delivery boys and printers’ apprentices distributed at the new year to aid their request for tips.

This year’s example comes from the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter at the start of 1775, when the Crown had closed Boston’s port to intercolonial trade and stationed several army regiments in town. The News-Letter, then owned by the widow Margaret Draper with young John Howe probably running the presses, supported the Crown editorially.

That’s one thing that makes this verse so striking. It talks about Bostonians “with arms opprest” needing to “Be firm” against “threats of war” from “the grand Ruler of the NORTH” (i.e., Lord North). That was the Patriot line at the time. If this verse didn’t have the News-Letter’s name on top, I would have assumed it came from Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette or Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy.

The Carrier of the Massachusets-Gazette,
and Boston Weekly News-Letter,
humbly presents the following ODE
on the New-Year, to all his generous
Customers.                   1775.

I.
BEHOLD! Poor BOSTON sore distrest,
Why is she thus with arms opprest,
By’r cruel Parents hands?—
The reason surely, is because
She’ll not submit to BRITISH laws,
Impos’d by her commands.

II.
Let the grand Ruler of the NORTH,
Spend all that fair BITANNIA’s worth
To lay us at his feet:—
He’ll find his work but just began,
When seven long years their course have ran,
And seek a safe retreat.

III.
Be firm, BOSTONIAN’s, stedfast, true,
Yea ne’er submit to Turk or Jew,
Be of one mind and heart:—
Twas long ago that Heav’n decreed,
That our Fore-fathers here should bleed,
Shall we their cause desert?

IV.
No! GOD forbid,—we’ll firmly trust
In Heav’n’s protection,—’gainst the worst,
Thro’out the ensuing year:—
Tho’ hostile armies from afar,
Have reach’d our coast, with threats of war!
Like heroes banish fear.

V.
Permit your Servant at the door,
Who may be number’d with the poor,
Your bounteous hand to kiss:—
Whose grateful heart shall be replete,
With joy and transport at the sight,
And the kind Donor bless.

Another notable detail about this sample of printing is the prominence of the typographical errors: the printers not only spelled “Massachusetts” differently from how it appeared on the newspaper masthead, but they managed to screw up “Britannia.” Tradition holds that the apprentices themselves wrote and printed carrier verses, and that might explain why both politically and orthographically this one differed from the newspaper.

In one respect, this verse was remarkably prescient. It predicted “seven long years” of struggle for Lord North before he pulled back from his plans for America. Indeed, Lord North’s government fell seven years later in March 1782.

“Genuine Copies of the Intercepted Letters” in the Press

For the royal authorities in Boston, the letters that Benjamin Hichborn had carried from Philadelphia were the equivalent of today’s intercepted radio communications.

Those papers contained some sensitive information about the enemy’s army—for example, Virginia delegate Benjamin Harrison hinted that Gen. George Washington wasn’t fully impressed by his chief engineer, Col. Richard Gridley. And they laid bare the Continental Congress’s secret factionalism.

The British authorities decided to get even more value out of the documents by publicizing them. There was one newspaper left in Boston, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter published by Margaret Draper and John Howe (shown above, over four decades later). Its 17 August issue printed all three “Intercepted Letters,” noting that the first was signed by Harrison while the second was unsigned but in the same handwriting as the third, to Abigail Adams from her husband.

The documents offered Loyalists and British observers evidence to confirm the most dire warnings about the American radicals: Adams’s clear statement that he believed his side should already have “arrested every Friend to Government on the Continent and held them as Hostages.”

There were also hints of private misdeeds. On the way to the press, someone apparently juiced up the Harrison letter by adding lines about an interrupted dalliance with “pretty little Kate the Washer-woman’s Daughter over the Way,” and a hint that Harrison was happy to share her with Washington himself. I discussed that passage back here. It was probably included to embarrass and discredit the commander-in-chief.

Finally, the published letters let everyone in America see John Adams writing about his colleagues with contempt, especially “A certain great Fortune and piddling Genius.” I don’t know if folks in Massachusetts realized that meant John Dickinson, but politicians in Philadelphia certainly did. And the British evidently didn’t have to change a word of Adams’s prose to get that point across.

TOMORROW: Dr. Hope shares the news with the folks back home.

The Travels of Pompey Fleet

After the Boston printer Thomas Fleet died, his 1759 estate inventory didn’t include his slave Peter, suggesting that that woodcut carver had already died as well. But that estate did include two boys: thirteen-year-old Pompey and ten-year-old Caesar.

Isaiah Thomas also mentioned those boys in his history of printing, saying:

Fleet had also two negro boys born in his house; sons, I believe, to the man just mentioned [the woodcut artist], whom he brought up to work at press and case; one named Pompey and the other Cesar; they were young when their master died; but, they remained in the family and continued to labor regularly in the printing house with the sons of mr. Fleet, who succeeded their father, until the constitution of Massachusetts, adopted in 1780, made them freemen.

However, at the time of the evacuation, the new Massachusetts constitution of 1780, and the judicial decision that made slavery unenforceable in Massachusetts in 1783, Isaiah Thomas was living in Worcester. His information about these Fleet brothers may not have been reliable.

I’ve found Pompey Fleet one place in Boston’s records. In December 1773 he married Chloe Short, a free black woman who had arrived from Grafton sometime in late 1771 or early 1772. At the time he was listed as a “servant [i.e., slave] of Elizabeth Fleet,” Thomas’s widow. And that’s the last I’ve found of Chloe.

Instead, it appears that Pompey Fleet freed himself in 1776. His name appears in “The Book of Negroes,” the list compiled by British military authorities of black Loyalists leaving New York at the end of the war. That manuscript states includes these entries:

Ship Three Sisters bound for Port Roseway [captain] John Wardell

Pompey Fleet, 26, short & stout, (Alexander Robertson). Formerly slave to Thomas Fleet, Boston; left him at the evacuation of Boston. GBC.

Suky Coleman, 21, slight make, (Alexander Robertson). Formerly slave to Mr. Teabourlt, Philadelphia; left at the evacuation of Philadelphia. GBC.

Sam Fleet, 5, small boy, (Alexander Robertson).

(Here’s an image of the copy supplied to the American government.)

The “Book of Negroes” says Pompey Fleet left the younger Thomas Fleet and Boston in 1776. The British military’s record of that departure lists only heads of household and no one who might be Pompey Fleet. He could have attached himself to the military or to a family; the printer Margaret Draper left with four other people, for example, though she had no children. A 2009 article for the Loyalist Trails U.E.L.A.C. Newsletter says that in 1783 Pompey Fleet had a certificate testifying that he had served the Crown for seven years, but I don’t know the basis for that statement.

Alexander Robertson was, the “Book of Negroes” says, “in…Possession” of Pompey Fleet and others in 1783. Isaiah Thomas wrote of Robertson, “I have been informed that he was, unfortunately, deprived of the use of his limbs, and incapacitated for labor. He was, however, intelligent, well educated, and possessed some abilities as a writer.” In 1783 Robertson was co-publisher of the Royal American Gazette in New York, so Pompey Fleet was probably working in that newspaper’s print shop. The other co-publishers were Nathaniel Mills and John Hicks from the Boston Post-Boy and Robertson’s older brother James, who had worked briefly for John Mein in Boston in the late 1760s. Thus, Pompey Fleet had probably become acquainted with those printers while still working for the Boston Evening-Post.

In 1778, James Robertson had followed the British army to Philadelphia and printed the Royal Pennsylvania Gazette there for a few months. Did Pompey Fleet go with him and meet Suky Coleman in that city? Was little Sam Fleet their son? That would correspond to about when Sam was born. Of course, Suky would have been only sixteen at the time. But perhaps we shouldn’t rely on the ages listed in “The Book of Negroes”; since Pompey was thirteen in 1759, he was thirty-seven in 1783, not twenty-six.

The Three Sisters headed to Port Roseway, an old name for Shelburne, Nova Scotia. There the Robertson brothers and Mills reestablished their Royal American Gazette, though Alexander died in December 1784 at age forty-two. James Robertson left Nova Scotia in 1789 and eventually returned to Scotland.

It’s not clear if Pompey Fleet worked for any of those printers in Nova Scotia. In 1784 he was listed as the head of a family across the bay from Shelburne in the black community of Birchtown. That was a rough settlement, poorly supported by the British Empire. (The photograph above shows a ”pit house” of the type many families had to build to survive their first winters, recreated at the Birchtown Museum.)

In 1791 over a thousand Birchtown settlers took up an offer to move to the new British colony in Sierra Leone. The document transcribed here lists “Pomphrey Fleet,” Sukey Coleman, and Sam Fleet together among the inhabitants electing to travel to Africa. And I don’t know what happened to them there.

TOMORROW: The younger brother, Caesar Fleet.

“I snatch’d the golden glorious Opportunity”

In late July 1775, a Continental Congress delegate from Virginia named Benjamin Harrison (shown here, at least according to the federal government) wrote a letter to Gen. George Washington, an old acquaintance now commanding the American army outside Boston. He sent it north with a young Boston lawyer named Benjamin Hichborn, who was captured by the Royal Navy. (Someday I’ll tell that story in more detail.)

The British authorities in Boston had Harrison’s letter published in the 17 August Boston News-Letter, then being printed by Margaret Draper and John Howe. It was the only newspaper in town, and firmly in support of (and dependent on) the royal government.

Before Harrison’s letter saw print, someone inserted a few extra lines:

As I was in the pleasing Task of writing to you, a little Noise occasioned me to turn my Head round, and who should appear but pretty little Kate, the Washer-woman’s Daughter over the Way, clean, trim and rosey as the Morning; I snatch’d the golden glorious Opportunity, and but for the cursed Antidote to love, Sukey [Harrison’s wife], I had fitted her for my General against his Return. We were obliged to part, but not till we had contrived to meet again; if she keeps the Appointment I shall relish a Week’s longer stay.

At least historians assume those lines were inserted because they don’t appear in copies of the letter that Gen. Thomas Gage sent to his superiors in the Secretary of State’s office in London. (Harrison’s original has not survived.)

Apparently a British “dirty tricks” artist wanted to smear Gen. Washington, and cause personal problems for him. As for Harrison, the aside might in fact have been in character for him; John Adams later described him as “another Sir John Falstaff,…his conversation disgusting to every man of delicacy or decorum.” If Harrison, back in Philadelphia, denied ever writing those lines, Adams probably didn’t believe him.

The copies of that letter sent to the Admiralty in London included the spurious lines. That’s yet more evidence of something we already knew: the British army and navy commanders didn’t get along during the siege of Boston. Gage and his staff didn’t give their naval counterparts copies of the original letter. Adm. Samuel Graves’s staff must have either received a doctored copy, or transcribed the text from the News-Letter.

An Happy New-Year

In the eighteenth century, it was common for the teenagers who worked for newspaper printers to print up “New Year’s verses,” which they appear to have either read, sang, or sold to their customers for a little spending money. Here’s a sample from 240 years ago:

An happy New-Year to the worthy Customers of the Massachusets-Gazette & Boston News-Letter, Boston, January 1769.

Dialogue between two Lads who are News-Carriers.

SAID Ned unto Sam, What’s the News of the Day?
Is it peace? is it war? I prithee now say——
While the Red-Coats in throngs infest ev’ry Street,
And with Vessels of War the Town is beset;
How direful the Prospect in peaceable Times!
Such martial Parade—each Freeman condemns:

Be silent Friend Ned, let your Passion subside;
And hope better Times may sudden succeed:
Whilst GEORGE wields the Scepter we’ve nothing to fear,
To AMER’CA’s Complaints He will lend an Ear;
Then Oppression must cease, and Freedom once more—
In Triumph shall bless NORTH-AMER’CA’s Shore.

AMEN,

This reflects the prevailing colonial attitude in 1769, and indeed right through the outbreak of war: that once the king understood his American subjects’ difficulties and determination, he would overrule his corrupt ministers and reverse their misguided policies. It may also reflect the News-Letter’s editorial stance, which under the Drapers leaned toward the royal government more than most other Boston papers.

Judge Oliver Looks Down on Dr. Warren

I’m going back to the seasonal theme of political invective. After the siege of Boston began, Margaret Draper’s Boston News-Letter was the only newspaper still printed in town (and only on an irregular basis). Naturally, the views in its pages leaned toward the Crown. The 11 Jan 1776 issue of contained a long essay that referred to, among others:

the unhappy leader in the late action at Charlestown [i.e., the Battle of Bunker Hill], (who from ambition only, had raised himself from a bare-legged milk boy to a major general of an army)

That referred to Dr. Joseph Warren, who had indeed grown up on a Roxbury farm.

The author of this essay was probably Judge Peter Oliver (shown here), who used similar language in his Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion, completed around 1783:

Major Genl. Warren…was born near to Boston, & when young, was a bare legged milk Boy to furnish the Boston Market. He was a proper Successor to the bare legged Fisher Boy Massianello, & his Fate was almost as rapid. Being possessed of a Genius which promised him Distinction, either in Virtue or Vice, his Friends educated him at the College in Cambridge, to take his Chance of being a Curse or a Blessing to his Country.

(All other sources I’ve seen indicate that Warren’s mother paid for his tuition.)

Oliver sneered at Warren’s middling family background and ambition, just as he voiced snobbish ideas in other passages of his memoir:

As for the People in general, they were like the Mobility of all Countries, perfect Machines, wound up by any Hand who might first take the Winch.

Here Oliver used “mobility” in the sense of “mob.” And on the mobility we think about today—people rising or falling from one social class to another—he didn’t seem to care for it:

Never did the World exhibit a greater Raree Show, of Beggars riding on Horse back & in Coaches, and Princes walking on Foot. One Instance is Striking, of a Sand Man who carried Sand to the Doors of the Inhabitants of Boston, & is now riding in a Coach. This material World is turned topsey turvey every day.

A “Sand Man” carted around dry sand for homemakers to spread on floors as a cleanliness measure; it was a vocation for the very poor.

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, whose children intermarried with the Oliver family, displayed similar attitudes in writing about the political conflict. For example, after young Christopher Seider was fatally shot during a riot, Hutchinson wrote that the boy “was the son of a poor German. A grand funeral was, however, judged very proper for him.”

Those remarks seem almost stereotypically “Tory” because one way our culture remembers the Revolution is a fight between nose-in-the-air aristocrats and good Americans who believed that “all men are created equal.” I think the rhetoric of many Loyalist leaders really was more snobbish than that of Patriot leaders; even if those Loyalists didn’t look down on the common people to begin with, facing angry crowds tends to push you toward that thinking.

But the British-Americans who became Patriots had grown up in the same society as those who became Loyalists, and they also accepted that there was value in aristocracy, Greek for “rule by the best.” In Britain, “the best” had come to mean men raised in wealthy and powerful families, particularly those who had hereditary titles. Those men supposedly had the education, manners, resources, and bloodlines to govern best. In America, the aristocracy was simply a different set of wealthy families.

The new American republic still deferred to gentlemen, even if it eschewed noble titles. (When men with titles condescended to join the Continental Army—Lord Stirling, Baron de Steuben, the Marquis de Lafayette—most officers were flattered.) As Americans set up their republic, they also set up some aristocratic institutions, such as the Order of the Cincinnati, with membership passed down through sons. In the 1790s and early 1800s, New England Federalists had little trouble arguing that the American common man wasn’t ready to be in charge of government.

That changed, I think, with the triumph of the Jacksonian Democrats. It became politically unpalatable in America to imply that a man didn’t deserve to be in government or rise high in society simply because of his family’s wealth. Because of his racial or ethnic group—those restrictions remained in force for many more decades.

We can see that change within the career of Martin Van Buren. When he was a young lawyer, well-born opponents sneered at his background as son of a Kinderhook tavern-keeper. During one election, they publicly challenged Van Buren on whether he owned enough property to vote. But nothing derailed his political career until the Whig Party applied anti-aristocratic political rhetoric. Van Buren drank fine wine, those Whigs sneered, while Gen. William Henry Harrison preferred hard cider. Never mind that Harrison was the son of a rich planter who had signed the Declaration of Independence and served as Virginia governor. (Of course, the financial Panic of 1837 helped defeat Van Buren, too.)

Today, American voters tend to suspect rather than defer to politicians been born into wealth or power—even though children can’t help that any more than they can help being born into poverty. Of recent presidential candidates, George Bush and Al Gore were sons of Senators, George W. Bush the son of a President, John McCain the son and grandson of admirals. All in different ways have worked to reassure voters that they’re not aristocrats. But an eighteenth-century gentlemen like Peter Oliver would have seen all of them as natural members of the governing class.

On the other hand, a man whose father delivered milk for a living, like Dick Gephardt—we know what Judge Oliver would have thought of that.