“A sotish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man”

Having whole-heartedly adopted the American cause, Thomas Paine embedded himself with the Continental Army in the fall of 1776.

That was not a good time for the Continental Army.

Returning to Philadelphia, Paine started to publish The Crisis, urging Americans not to let themselves fall back under the control of a tyrant:

Let them call me rebel, and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sotish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.

I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow and the slain of America.

There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful.

It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war: The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolfe, and we ought to guard equally against both.

In that quotation I followed the spelling and punctuation of the broadside issued “opposite the Court-House, Queen Street,” in Boston. That was how Edward Eveleth Powars and Nathaniel Willis, publishers of the Independent Chronicle, described their print shop, in a space originally used by James Franklin. The town hadn’t yet gotten around to giving the street a new, non-monarchical name.

“I would hope that you are the Sons of Liberty from principle”

I want to highlight the web version of Jordan E. Taylor’s Early American Studies article “Enquire of the Printer: The Slave Trade and Early American Newspaper Advertising.”

Produced using ArcGIS’s Storymaps platform, the article displays many newspaper ads from the eighteenth and nineteenth century pertaining to slavery, showing how printers were part of the process of selling people and hunting them down when they escaped.

The earliest newspaper ads about slavery in America appeared in the earliest ongoing newspaper in America, the Boston News-Letter, in 1704.

Taylor also documents a shift around the Revolution as some people began to speak out against slavery, or at least against the slave trade: “In 1777, as the American revolutionary war exploded around him, a man named William Gordon wrote a letter to Edward Powars and Nathaniel Willis, the editors of a Boston Patriot newspaper called the Independent Chronicle.”

Gordon’s letter said:

Messieurs PRINTERS,

I WOULD hope that you are the Sons of Liberty from principle, and not merely from interest, wish you therefore to be consistent, and never move to admit the sale of negroes, whether boys or girls, to be advertised in your papers. Such advertisements in the present season are peculiarly shocking. The multiplicity of business that hath been before the General Court may apologize for their not having attended to the case of slaves, but it is to be hoped that they will have an opportunity hereafter, and will, by an act of the State put a final stop to the private and public sale of them, which may be some help towards eradicating slavery from among us. If God hath made of one blood, all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, I can see no reason why a black rather than a white man should be a slave.

Your humble servant,
WILLIAM GORDON.
Roxbury, May 12, 1777.

N.B. I mean the above as a hint also to the other printers.

Gordon (shown above) wasn’t just any man in Roxbury. He was one of that town’s ministers, so when he made a moral claim and dropped a phrase from the Bible, he spoke with religious authority.

Gordon was also a strong supporter of the Massachusetts Patriots, despite having arrived from England only a few years before. He was close to political leaders, whom his letter mildly chided for not having taken up the 13 January “petition of A Great Number of Blackes detained in a State of Slavery in the Bowels of a free & christian Country” before the end of the legislative session. 

As Taylor’s article shows, printers Powars and Willis went right on running advertisements about slaves. But they also printed this letter. They knew the morality of slaveholding was under debate and were ready to promote that debate, just as they promoted the trade. They may also have felt ready to give up slavery advertisements—so long as they knew all rival printers would do the same.

Dr. Amos Windship and the House on Queen Street

When John Adams was in Philadelphia at the Continental Congress, Abigail Adams had to handle the family finances. Among her responsibilities was a house that John had bought on Queen Street in Boston in 1772. Since Abigail and the children were living at the farm in Braintree, that house was sitting empty.

On 6 and 13 Feb 1777, the Continental Journal ran this advertisement:

To be Let, a House in Queen-Street, Boston, next Door to Powers and Willis’s printing-office.—For further Particulars enquire of the printer.

“The printer” was John Gill, formerly partner of Benjamin Edes. Abigail told John that when she placed the ad for the house, she, “supposing any person would chuse to see it, before they engaged it, desired him [Gill] to Let them know where the key was to be found.” (That means the house was locked but the key hidden somewhere convenient—a detail of everyday life.)

Nathaniel Willis, one of the two men printing the Independent Chronicle next door to the Adams house, went to Abigail in Braintree to discuss it. They reached a deal for a rent of “22 per annum.” But Willis had trouble moving in, as Adams described:

Upon his return to Boston and applying to Mr. G–ll for the key he found the famous Dr. [Amos] W[ind]ship had taken it and would not deliver it to him, tho He let him know that he had hired the House of me, and this same Genious had the Confidence to remove his family into the House without either writing to me or applying to me in any shape whatever, and then upon the other insisting upon having the House, he wrote to Let me know that he had moved in and would pay his Rent Quarterly, and that he supposed Mr. G–ll had the Letting of the House, which was absolutely falce for Mr. G–ll never gave him any leave, and had no right to.

In Reply to him I let him know that I had Let the House to Mr. W——s, that I could do nothing about it, that I had nothing more to do with it than with any other House in Town. He and Mr. W——s must settle the matter between themselves.

In this Time Mr. W——s had taken advice upon it and was determind to prosecute him; tis near a Month since they have been disputing the Matter, and the Dr. finding Mr. W——s determind has promised if he will not put him to farther Trouble to remove in about a week.

Given that history, one might think that John Adams would have been upset to find Dr. Amos Windship as the surgeon on the ship taking him to Europe in 1779. But Windship, with his knack for social climbing, found the way to win over the most important man aboard: he told Adams that other people were secretly badmouthing him.

On 11 May, Adams wrote in his diary:

Dr. W. told me of [navy captain Samuel] Tuckers rough tarry Speech, about me at the Navy Board.—I did not say much to him at first, but damn and buger my Eyes, I found him after a while as sociable as any Marblehead man.—Another [anecdote] of [captain Elisha] Hinman, that he had been treated with great Politeness by me, and his first Attention must be to see Mrs. Adams, and deliver her Letters.

Yes, Abigail Adams would be so happy to encounter Dr. Windship again.

TOMORROW: Dr. Windship and Abigail Adams’s trunk.