“Having loaded a Swivel that had lain buried near 25 Years”

Last month I quoted in passing how “Ensign Jonathan Folsom was shot through the shoulder” in the Battle of Lake George in 1755.

According to some family historians, this Jonathan Folsom (1724–1800?) had also served in the Louisburg campaign ten years earlier.

However, the man of that name was already a lieutenant in 1744, and he was listed as “Decd.” on 20 Jan 1745 in New Hampshire records. So I think that was probably a relative.

By 1758 the former ensign Folsom had recovered from his shoulder wound enough to be serving as a first lieutenant. (His younger brother Nathaniel Folsom rose much higher in provincial military rank.)

The 2 June 1766 Boston Post-Boy ran this article:

We hear from Exeter, that great Rejoicings were made there on Monday last, upon receiving the News of the Repeal of the Stamp-Act, by Ringing of Bells, Firing of Cannon, Illuminations, Fireworks, &c.

The following Accident happened last Monday at Newmarket, to Lieut. Jonathan Falsom of that Town—he having loaded a Swivel that had lain buried near 25 Years, it burst in Pieces, one of which struck him in the Breast and several others in one of his Legs which split the Bone thereof to Pieces, on which the Surgeons thought proper to cut it off above the Knee.

The first paragraph was the summary of an item in the 30 May New-Hampshire Gazette from Portsmouth, the second a word-for-word transcription of a later paragraph from that paper.

The timing strongly suggests that Folsom decided to fire the old swivel gun (a small cannon designed to be mounted on fortification walls or ship rails) to celebrate the Stamp Act repeal. And that turned out to be a poor decision.

That history wasn’t always transmitted accurately, though. One genealogy for this family, Nathaniel Smith Folsom’s Descendants of the First John Folsom (1876), said the accident happened during “rejoicings over the recent capture of Louisburg.” Everything pointed back to Louisburg.

TOMORROW: More Folsom family lore.

“That the leaning of the writer of the above might not be mistaken…”

Yesterday I quoted most of the Boston News-Letter’s 22 Aug 1765 report on the first anti-Stamp Act protest the week before.

In 1856 Samuel Gardner Drake (shown here) quoted the same article at length in his History and Antiquities of Boston. He appears to have missed printer Richard Draper’s sarcastic jibes at the crowd, however. Drake wrote:

That the leaning of the writer of the above might not be mistaken, he closed by a memorable saying of Lord Burleigh, much in use in those days, “England can never be undone but by a Parliament.” Thus the mob was encouraged, and, as by the sequel it will appear, a very partial account was given of what had taken place. The course taken by the papers under the control of the Government had some effect in producing the above, for the News-Letter had been jeered by them because it had not come out with early denunciations of the proceedings of the mob.

The criticism of the News-Letter appeared in an Whiggish newspaper, not in one “under the control of the Government.” The Boston Whigs faulted Draper for not reporting on the demonstration at all; if he’d “come out with early denunciations of the proceedings of the mob,” they’d have faulted him even more vigorously.

Drake’s extract included these lines from the News-Letter (with modernized capitalization and punctuation):

The populace after this went to work on the barn, fence, garden, and dwelling-house, of the gentleman against whom their resentment was chiefly levelled [Andrew Oliver], and which were contiguous to said hill. And here, entering the house, they bravely showed their loyalty, courage, and zeal, to defend the rights and liberties of Englishmen. Here, it is said by some good men that were present, they established their Society by the name of the Union Club.

In context, coming right after describing rioters breaking into Oliver’s house “to defend the rights and liberties of Englishmen,” the reference to the “Union Club” looks like another bit of Draper’s sarcasm.

Whigs in Bristol, England, had formed a Union Club by 1750, pushing for political reform and the protection of liberties. In the 1760s a ship of that name was visiting Boston. New Englanders would have known what the “Union Club” stood for—and should have seen the irony of forming one in somebody else’s house.

In 1865 William V. Wells quoted that line about the “Union Club” without its context in his Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams. He went on to say those men were doubtless the same group as the “Sons of Liberty” who had organized the protest.

Later authors repeated that equation: the Sons of Liberty, the Union Club, and the “Loyall Nine” (a term from yet another source, published later) were all names for the same protest organizers identified by the Rev. William Gordon.

In fact, I haven’t found a single source besides the Boston News-Letter using the name “Union Club” that way. It doesn’t reappear in the newspapers. It doesn’t show up in John Adams’s or Samuel Adams’s writings. It doesn’t show up in John Rowe’s or John Tudor’s diaries. Given the sarcasm in the initial report, I doubt the “Loyall Nine” ever really adopted the term.

(By December 1774 a Union Club was established in Salem. It contributed something for the poor after the Boston Port Bill, and on 16 December Samuel Adams sent a thank-you letter to Samuel King. I can’t find any other period mention of that organization.)

Richard Draper’s “Report of these Images”

As long as I’m discussing nomenclature for Boston’s political groups in the 1760s, I’ll tackle “the Union Club.”

America’s first public, outdoor demonstration against the Stamp Act took place along Boston’s main road on Wednesday, 14 Aug 1765. The big elm where the protesters hung effigies hadn’t yet been named Liberty Tree.

The next day, Richard Draper published his Boston News-Letter newspaper with a two-page supplement. It didn’t report on the protest, however—that sheet was entirely devoted to foreign news.

The News-Letter did print Gov. Francis Bernard’s 15 August proclamation of a reward for the rioters who had torn down stamp agent Andrew Oliver’s building the night before. That was the paper’s only description of the event.

Boston’s Whigs complained that Draper was tilting his coverage to please the royal government. In his 22 August issue the printer objected to the News-Letter being called “a Court-Paper…under the Controul of higher Powers.” He insisted:

IN regard to the Occurrences of last Week, we would observe, that it was out of our Power to give a perfect Account thereof, as the Transactions were not finished, and a partial one would perhaps have drawn down the Resentment of many of the true Sons of Liberty, and caused us to be more in Fear, than it is said were of publishing any Thing relating thereto:—

Had the Gentleman who furnished one of the Papers with a decent Account of the Affair, been so kind as to have sent us something of the same Nature, he would have saved himself the Trouble (if he really took the Trouble) to inform the Public that we filled an extraordinary Half Sheet with immaterial Foreign Articles.

The News-Letter’s account of the anti-Stamp Act protest, “as concise and true…as it is in our Power,” followed. In the details it agreed with the Monday newspapers, but it also included several sarcastic zings at the protest.

VERY early on Wednesday Morning, the 14th Instant, were discovered hanging on a Limb of the Great Trees, so called, at the South Part of this Town, two Effigies, one of which by the Labels appeared to be designed to represent a Stamp-Officer, the other a Jack-boot, with a Head and Horns peeping out of the Top. said by some of the Printers, to be the Devil or his Imp; but, as we are not acquainted with that Species of Gentlemen, we cannot so well determine whether it was an exact Resemblance or not:

The Report of these Images soon spread thro’ the Town, brought a vast Number of Spectators, and had such an Effect on them that they were immediately inspired with a Spirit of Patriotism, which diffus’d itself through the whole Concourse: So much were they affected with a Sense of Liberty, that scarce any could attend to the Task of Day-Labour; but all seemed on the Wing for Freedom.

About Dusk the Images were taken down, placed on a Bier, (not covered with a Sheet, except the Sheet of Paper which bore the Inscription) supported in Procession by six Men, followed by a great Concourse of People, some of the highest Reputation, and in the greatest Order, ecchoing forth, Liberty and Property! No Stamp! &c—

Having passed through the Town-House, they proceeded with their Pageantry down Kingstreet, and it is said intended for the North Part of the Town; but Orders being given, they turned their Course thro’ Kilbystreet, where an Edifice had been lately erected, which was suppos’d to be designed for a Stamp-Office.

Here they halted, and went to work to demolish that Building, which they soon effected, without receiving any Hurt, except one of the Spectators, who happened to be rather too nigh the Brick Wall when it fell: This being finished many of them loaded themselves with the wooden Trophies, and proceeded (bearing the two Effigies) to the Top of Fort-Hill; where a Fire was soon kindled, in which one of them was burnt; we can’t learn whether they committed the other to the Flames, or if they did whether it did not survive the Conflagration, being its said like the Salamander conversant in that Element.—

The Populace after this went to work on the Barn, Fence, Garden, and Dwelling-House, of the Gentleman against whom their Resentment was chiefly levelled, and which were contiguous to said Hill; and here entering the House they bravely showed their Loyalty, Courage, and Zeal, to defend the Rights and Liberties of Englishmen:——

Here, it is said, by some good Men that were present, they established their Society by the name of The Union Club.—

Their Business being finished, they retired, and proceeded to the Province-House, which was at about 11 o’Clock, gave three Huzzas, and all went quietly home.

The report went on to events of 15 August: Oliver’s resignation and an aborted action against Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s house.

The 19 August Boston Gazette offered a detailed and favorable description of the protest in its own two-page supplement. The same day’s Boston Evening-Post printed a positive report from “A.Z.,” who also got in the dig at Draper’s paper. The Boston Post-Boy, friendly to the royal government, ran nothing. None of the three Monday papers reprinted Gov. Bernard’s proclamation.

TOMORROW: The long and short of “The Union Club.”

Counting the “Loyall Nine”

In a 19 Dec 1765 letter divulging details about Boston’s latest Stamp Act protest, and earlier ones, Henry Bass wrote of the organizers as “the Loyall Nine.” He added:

And upon the Occasion we that Evg. had a very Genteel Supper provided to which we invited your very good friends Mr. S[amuel] A[dams] and E[des] & G[ill] and three or four others and spent the Evening in a very agreable manner Drinkg Healths etc.

On 15 Jan 1766 John Adams wrote in his diary:

Spent the Evening with the Sons of Liberty, at their own Apartment in Hanover Square, near the Tree of Liberty. It is a Compting Room in Chase & Speakmans Distillery. A very small Room it is.

John Avery Distiller or Merchant, of a liberal Education, John Smith the Brazier, Thomas Crafts the Painter, Edes the Printer, Stephen Cleverly the Brazier, [Thomas] Chase the Distiller, Joseph Field Master of a Vessell, Henry Bass, George Trott Jeweller, were present.

I was invited by Crafts and Trott, to go and spend an Evening with them and some others, Avery was mentioned to me as one.

Finally, in 1788 the Rev. William Gordon wrote in his history of the Revolution about the first anti-Stamp protest, back in August 1765:

Messrs. John Avery, jun. Thomas Crafts, John Smith, Henry Welles, Thomas Chace, Stephen Cleverly, Henry Bass, and Benjamin Edes…provide and hang out early in the morning of August the fourteenth, upon the limb of a large old elm, toward the entrance of Boston, over the most public street, two effigies,…

Those sources, which were published in reverse chronological order, all seem to refer to the same group of men. The lists of names overlap—but not exactly.

Bass said there were nine men, and seemed to treat Samuel Adams, Edes, and Gill all as guests. Gordon named eight men, including Edes among them. John Adams also listed Edes in the group, and he treated George Trott, not on Gordon’s list, as in the group.

John Adams didn’t list Henry Wells from Gordon’s list (though Tea Leaves and some subsequent books misquote him as doing so). Instead, Adams named Joseph Field, saying he was a ship captain. According to mentions in the Boston press before he died in 1768, Henry Wells was also a ship captain. Would either of them have been in town long enough to help plan protests? 

It’s therefore difficult to say exactly who the “Loyall Nine” were, but there was definitely a political club supping at the Chase distillery near Liberty Tree and organizing the protests under that tree.

TOMORROW: A change of names?

Paging Through the Nova-Scotia Chronicle

The Nova Scotia Archives has digitized several newspapers from various periods in the province’s history, with the results open for anyone to look at.

This digital archive doesn’t include the region’s first newspaper—the Halifax Gazette launched by John Bushell, fresh from Boston, on 23 Mar 1752. But the Nova Scotia Archives does own the one surviving copy of Bushell’s first issue; it acquired that precious sheet from the Massachusetts Historical Society in 2002.

The earliest newspaper available in the digital database is the Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser, published by Anthony Henry in Halifax from 1769 to 1770.

Henry had taken over the Halifax Gazette when Bushell died in 1761. But then he lost his position as the local government’s preferred printer by opposing the Stamp Act of 1765. (Isaiah Thomas, who worked for Henry after skipping out on his apprenticeship in Boston, claimed he pushed his employer into political action. Thomas also sniffed that Henry printed “in a very indifferent manner.”)

For a few years Robert Fletcher enjoyed the government’s favor for his new Nova-Scotia Gazette. Copies of that paper can be read through the University of Toronto.

Anthony Henry’s Nova-Scotia Chronicle was thus the province’s first newspaper published without being sponsored by the province itself. When he started, Henry had only eighty subscribers.

In 1770, after Fletcher returned to Britain, Henry renamed his newspaper Nova Scotia Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, regaining semi-official status by default. He even became the King’s Printer in 1788. After Henry died in 1800, another Boston-trained printer, the Loyalist John Howe, took over. A version of that paper appears today as an official organ of the provincial government: Nova Scotia’s Royal Gazette.

Like other North American newspapers, the Nova-Scotia Chronicle was a weekly. Its pages were half the size of most other papers, but a typical issue contained eight pages instead of four. Without much local news that his readers hadn’t already heard, Henry printed lots of excerpts from British newspapers, as well as articles from the other North American ports.

Folks using the digital archive to track particular citations should bear in mind that Henry dated each issue by the full week it covered: “From TUESDAY September 26, to TUESDAY October 3, 1769,” for instance. Each paper was actually printed on the last date in that range, and the database dates each paper accordingly. However, sometimes authors have cited issues by the first date.

I digitally flipped through these pages hoping to find interesting coverage of the Boston Massacre, but Henry appears to have reprinted articles from the Boston newspapers without commentary. But then I stumbled across an interesting page I’d never read anywhere before.

TOMORROW: Character studies.

Adm. Benjamin Hallowell Carew, R.N., a Son of Boston

Last month David Morgan’s Inside Croydon website profiled a notable British naval figure who grew up in pre-Revolutionary Boston.

Adm. Benjamin Hallowell Carew was one of the sons of Loyalists who joined the British military during the American War and remained in it through the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.

Morgan writes:

He was an American, born in 1761 in Boston to a family who were supporters of the British in the difficult years before the American War of Independence. Hallowell’s father, also named Benjamin, had also seen service in the Royal Navy, and had become a Commissioner of the Board of Customs in the port of Boston. His mother, Mary Boylston, was a second cousin of John Adams, who would go on to become the second President of America. . . .

The Hallowells of Boston lived a comfortable life by the standards of the time, with enough income to be able to employ one of the great American portrait painters of the day, John Singleton Copley, to produce family portraits.

Distance from Boston led Morgan into some geographical errors in describing the Hallowells’ houses. On 26 Aug 1765, an anti-Stamp Act mob damaged the Customs official’s house in Boston. He also owned a mansion in the Jamaica Plain part of Roxbury which was more secluded and safe. (J.P. and Roxbury are separate neighborhoods now, but in colonial times Roxbury was the town, Jamaica Plain simply an area within it.)

As a Customs officer, Benjamin Hallowell was unpopular with the merchants and people of Boston. He may have attracted special resentment because he was from a local family, his father a prominent merchant captain himself. In other words, people might have perceived him as switching sides.

In 1768 Hallowell helped to seize John Hancock’s ship Liberty, and the waterfront crowd physically attacked him, driving him into hiding onto Castle Island. Within the Customs service, however, Hallowell parlayed that treatment into a promotion as the Crown’s replacement for John Temple, a commissioner the administration came to see as too close to the locals.

Commissioner Hallowell was also the target of part of the “Powder Alarm” multitude gathered on Cambridge common on 2 Sept 1774. Leaders of that crowd successfully urged most of the men to leave him alone, but some chased him on horseback all the way across the Charles River bridge, up through Brookline and Roxbury to the gates of Boston.

Naturally, the family didn’t stick around to try their chances in March 1776. Commissioner Hallowell moved to Britain, taking his wife and children.

The next Benjamin's story continues:

Young Hallowell was aged 14 or 15 when he arrived in England, and wasted little time before joining the navy.

Hallowell enjoyed Navy life and was promoted to lieutenant in 1783 having already been involved in the Battle of Chesapeake Bay in 1781, St Kitts in 1782 and the Battle of Dominica later that same year.

Hallowell, by then a Commodore on frigate HMS Minerve, was on board the British flagship HMS Victory with Nelson at the Battle of Cape Saint Vincent in 1797. . . .

By the time of Battle of the Nile in 1798, Hallowell was in command of the 74-gun HMS Swiftsure. The British had hunted down the French fleet all the way from Toulon, via Malta, and tracked them to Egypt.

For how that fight worked out for Hallowell, why Adm. Horatio Nelson sent him a coffin, and finally how his surname became Carew, see the Inside Croydon post.

The Continentals from the Lower Counties

From the start of nationhood Americans have spoken of the “thirteen colonies,” but really it was more like twelve and a half.

The Penn family were proprietors of both Pennsylvania and Delaware and always appointed the same man to govern both.

Though Delaware had an older history of European settlement, Pennsylvania became much bigger and wealthier. The “Lower Counties on the Delaware” had their own legislature, but many people treated that area as a mere adjunct.

Delaware didn’t rate its own part of the “Join, Or Die.” snake that Benjamin Franklin printed in 1754, for example. (Though I should also note that all of New England was one piece.)

Under the Stamp Act, the British government appointed John Hughes to collect the tax in both Pennsylvania and Delaware.

The First Continental Congress’s Articles of Association in 1774 still referred to “the three lower counties of Newcastle, Kent and Sussex on Delaware,” as did the Second’s commission for a commander-in-chief in 1775.

We might say that Delaware made itself a full-fledged state by participating in the American resistance. The three counties sent representatives to the Stamp Act Congress and then the Continental Congresses. Deriving their authority from the people through a legislature meant those men were separate from the Pennsylvania delegation. By late 1775, John Adams was writing of “Thirteen Colonies.”

Delaware also raised its own troops to support the Continental Army in January 1776. Not many, since it was a small colony: about 800 men in one big regiment under Lt. Col. John Haslet. In the summer of 1776 those Delaware Continentals marched north to New York.

One young officer in that regiment was Lt. William Popham (1752–1847, shown above). He arrived in New York City on 21 August, and a few days later the Delaware Continentals crossed to Long Island. They were grouped with Marylanders under Gen. Stirling.

A few days later, Popham wrote:

I marched toward the ground occupied by our army, in the summit of the high ground in front of Gowanus, near the edge of the river, where the enemy were landing from their ships, one or two lying near the shore to cover the landing. Many shots were exchanged between us and the enemy.

About 12 o’clock Gen. Stirling came to the east brow of the hill and ordered the Delaware regiment up. Here we received the first order to load with ball, and take care that our men (who were awkward Irishmen and others) put in the powder first.

We then marched up and joined the army which was drawn up in line, my regiment and my company on the left. The whole bay was covered with the enemy’s shipping. The firing continued all the time of the enemy’s landing, and we lost several men.

The British and Hessians began to spread out and march toward the American positions. Haslet saw how “the enemy began to send detachments as scouts on our left.” Though the Continentals held the high spots, the Crown forces outnumbered them and might try to outflank them.

One more thing about the Delaware regiment: They wore blue coats with red facings, not unlike the Hessians.

TOMORROW: Two lieutenants meet.

Fort Plain Museum’s 2024 Conference in the Mohawk Valley, 14–16 June

The Fort Plain Museum’s Revolutionary War Conference 250 in the Mohawk Valley will take place this year on 14–16 June in Johnstown, New York. Registration is open.

The scheduled speakers are:

• James Kirby Martin and guest host Mark Edward Lender having a fireside chat about the American Revolutionary War, its Sestercentennial, and their legacies as historians
• Nancy Bradeen Spannaus, “Alexander Hamilton’s War for American Economic Independence Through Two Documents” (supported by the Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society)
• Gary Ecelbarger, “‘This Happy Opportunity’: George Washington and the Battle of Germantown”
• Shirley L. Green, “Revolutionary Blacks: Discovering the Frank Brothers, Freeborn Men of Color, Soldiers of Independence”
• Mark Edward Lender, “‘Liberty or Death!’: Some Revolutionary Statistics and Existential Warfare”
• Shawn David McGhee, “No Longer Subjects of the British King: The Political Transformation of Royal Subjects to Republican Citizens, 1774-1776”
• James Kirby Martin, “The Marquis de Lafayette Visits the Mohawk Valley, Again and Again”
• Kristofer Ray, “The Cherokees, the Six Nations and Indian Diplomacy circa 1763-1776”
• Matthew E. Reardon, “The Traitor’s Homecoming: Benedict Arnold’s Raid on New London, September 4-13, 1781”
• John L. Smith, “The Unexpected Abigail Adams: A Woman ‘Not Apt to Be Intimidated’” (supported by the Dr. Joseph Warren Foundation)
• Bruce M. Venter, “Albany and the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765”
• Glenn F. Williams, “No Other Motive Than the True Interest of This Country: Dunmore’s War 1774”
• Chris Leonard, Schenectady City Historian, “Storehouse Schenectady: Depot and Transportation Center for the Northern War”
• David Moyer, “Recent Archaeology Discoveries on the Site of Revolutionary War Fort Plain”

There will also be a bus tour of Revolutionary sites in the area with the theme of “1774: The Rising Tide.” In that year Schenectady saw a violent Liberty Pole riot while the British Indian agent Sir William Johnson passed away in July.

For more information, visit this page.

“Let him take care of His House, Person & Effects”

Next week Christie’s in New York plans to auction off a handwritten document it describes as “the earliest known documentary evidence of popular revolt against Great Britain in the American colonies.”

It’s a piece of paper with this message written on it:

Pro Patria

The first Man that either
distributes or makes use of Stampt
Paper, let him take care of His
House, Person & Effects,

Vox Populi;
We dare

Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden, soon to be the target of anti-Stamp Act rioters, sent a similar document over to London on 26 Oct 1765, reporting that it had just been posted around New York City.

John Romeyn Brodhead made a facsimile of that paper in the British government archive in 1843. That image was published in the Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New York series in 1856.

Last November, historian Michael Hattem shared a photo of the British National Archives’s copy on his Twitter feed (see below). He also wrote a thorough essay on the background of the Christie’s document, published on the auction house’s website.

The Brodhead facsimile and the document now offered for sale look very similar, down to the triangular tear at the bottom. They are not identical, though; the first capital T is different, and the word “His” shifts a line. Aside from the capital T and the ampersand, the handwritings are nearly identical; curiously, neither message was written with the long s.

Christie’s says:

The present example was found by the antiquarian, Joshua Brookes, who added a note on the recto: “I have reason to believe that this is an original paper stuck up in New York as mentioned in [William] Gordon’s History of War, page 131 Vol. 1. in 1765”

Brookes died in 1859, so he could very well have seen the image published three years earlier, but he didn’t cite that authority.

I’m still wondering how the triangular tear got into both copies.

Christie’s estimate for the copy in New York is $4–6,000,000. Bidding starts in four days.

Chandler on Stamp Act Protests in New England, 1 Nov.

On Wednesday, 1 November, Abby Chandler will speak to the North Andover Historical Society about her new book, Seized with the Temper of the Times: Identity and Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary America.

As Chandler explained in an interview at the Journal of the American Revolution:

My original plan was to write a biography of Martin Howard who was a Loyalist from Rhode Island who later became the Chief Justice of North Carolina. He refused to disavow his loyalty to Britain in Rhode Island in 1765 and again in North Carolina in 1777 and had to flee for his life both times.

The reason I found him interesting was because the arguments that he made for supporting the British Empire are rooted in the same political traditions used by the men who argued in favor of revolting against the British Empire. . . .

The problem, however, with studying a man who had to abandon everything twice and died in exile is that he left very few documents explaining his thought processes.

So Chandler’s book became a study of the political movements swirling around Howard. Both Rhode Island and North Carolina were overshadowed by large neighboring colonies that became known for leading resistance to the Crown. Yet arguably each of those smaller colonies saw more resistance to authority in the pre-war period. And they were also the last two holdouts against the Constitution.

For the North Andover Historical Society, Chandler will focus on the Stamp Act protests of 1765, and how the movement in Rhode Island played out. While the Crown had appointed Francis Bernard to be governor of Massachusetts, and he felt a duty to enforce the new tax, Rhode Island elected Gov. Samuel Ward. He refused royal instructions to uphold that law. While Bostonians targeted the house of the appointed lieutenant governor, Thomas Hutchinson, in August 1765, Newporters had to find a different sort of target for their wrath—which is where Martin Howard comes in.

Abby Chandler is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She serves on the 250th American Revolution Anniversary Commission in Massachusetts. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing her speak at many forums, most recently this summer’s History Camp Boston.

This talk is scheduled to start at 7:30 P.M. in the Stevens Center on the Common, 800 Massachusetts Avenue, North Andover. Register through this site.

“Not to repel Force by Force, unless in case of absolute Necessity”

Earlier this month the Clements Library in Ann Arbor announced that it had started posting digital images from the Papers of Gen. Thomas Gage.

Specifically:

The William L. Clements Library has made available volumes 1-11 of the English Series of the Thomas Gage Papers from a famed British commander-in-chief in the decade leading up to the American Revolution and who also was governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1774 to 1775.

The papers are being digitized through a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize more than 23,000 items from one of the Clements Library’s largest and most utilized collections.

These first volumes cover the dates from October 1754 to April 1768. They contain Gage’s “correspondence with military officers and politicians in England, including Secretaries of State, Secretaries at War, the Treasury, the Board of Trade, the Board of Ordnance, the paymaster general, commanders-in-chief, and others.” (Correspondence with North American officials, officers stationed in North America, and civilians are in the separate American Series.)

Gage’s letters back and forth with his main bosses, the Secretary of State for North America (different men over time) and the Secretary at War (always Viscount Barrington, shown here), were transcribed and published in two volumes back in 1931. The full series contains many more documents.

Here’s the meat of one letter written on 24 Oct 1765 by Christopher D’Oyly (1717–1795), deputy secretary in the War Office:

In the Absence of my Lord Barrington, who is now at a Distance in the Country, it falls upon me as a Duty to transmit to you His Majesty’s Commands upon a Matter of the highest Importance to the Tranquility of the Colonies of North America…

It having been represented to His Majesty in Council, that violent & dangerous Riots have arisen in the Town of Boston…with a View to prevent the Execution of an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, for levying a Stamp Duty…you do forthwith issue your Orders to the several Officers commanding all the Regiments Posts & Detachments under your Command in America, that, in case by the Exigency of Affairs in any of the Provinces in America it should be necessary to procure the Aid of the Military in support of the Civil Power, and that, for that Purpose the Governor of the Province where that may happen, should apply to the Commanders of His Majesty’s Land Forces in America, the said Commanding Officers should, upon such Requisition made by the Governor of the Province to them give the said Governor their concurrence & Assistance for the Purpose abovementioned.

Having thus for signified to you the King’s Pleasure, in the strictest conformity to the abovementioned Order in Council, permit me to apprize you of the Precautions constantly observed by the Secretary at War, in every Case, wherein he had found himself obliged by the urgent solicitation of the Civil Magistrates in the Mother Country to grant them the Assistance of a Military Force, to aid them in the suppression of any Riots & Disturbances which have occasionally happened here.

In the first place the commanding Officer hath always been directed to take no step whatever, either with respect to the Marching, or quartering the Troops under his Command, but at the express requisition of the Civil Magistrate.

Secondly, that when so marched & quartered, the Forces are to take no Step whatever towards opposing the Rioters, but at the same Requisition; and Thirdly, that they are not to repel Force by Force, unless in case of absolute Necessity and being thereunto required by the Civil Magistrate.

In sum, Viscount Barrington was happy to pass on the government’s orders that the army help out in enforcing the law, but local civil authorities had to take the lead—and thus the heat. That restraint reflected the values of the British constitution as top officials in London saw it.

D’Oyly’s letter ended up playing no part in the Stamp Act crisis. Gage didn’t receive it in New York until six months later, on 3 May 1766. By that time the city had already suffered its own Stamp Act riot, the law was dead on the continent, and the new ministry in London was moving to scrap it.

I see that John Phillip Reid quoted these orders in In Defiance of the Law: The Standing-army Controversy, the Two Constitutions, and the Coming of the American Revolution (1981). Back then a researcher had to travel to Ann Arbor or London to read this letter. But now we can see D’Oyly’s words from the comforts of our own homes.

“The ever-memorable Anniversary”

The Boston Gazette published on Monday, 17 Aug 1767, included this local report:

Friday last being the ever-memorable Anniversary of the 14th of August, a great Number of Gentlemen met at Liberty-Hall, under the sacred Elm, which was decently decorated, and drank the following Toasts.

1. The King.
2. The Queen and Royal Family.
3. The Sons of Liberty.
4. All Mankind.
5. Friends to America in Great-Britain.
6. May an Abhorrence of Slavery still and ever remain the best Criterion of a true British Subject.
7. None but Tories Slaves.
8. America.
9. The 14th of August 1765.
10. May the 26th of August 1765, be veil’d in perpetual Darkness.
11. May every House of Respresentatives in America strenuously defend what they have wisely resolv’d.
12. Union, Stability and Fidelity among the Sons of Liberty throughout America.
13. May the Man who will not defend the Cause of his Country, in Case of Danger, be held in universal Contempt by every Son of Virtue and Liberty.
14. May that Day which sees America submit to Slavery, be the last of her Existence.

That Friday, 14 August, was the second anniversary of Boston’s first public protest against the Stamp Act, which inspired a wave of similar protests all along the North American coast and even into the Caribbean. Boston’s political organizers were proud of that.

They weren’t proud of the mob that had nearly destroyed Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s house twelve days later. In these toasts they mentioned that event once, but they thought they got away with it all right.

As for the numerous mentions of “Slavery,” these gentlemen meant political slavery, or giving up their traditional British rights. They didn’t mean, you know, slavery slavery.

Background to the Boston Tea Party

If Parliament had enacted a tariff on tea in 1765 instead of a Stamp Act for North America, would colonists have resisted that new tax as strongly as they did? It’s impossible to answer a historical counterfactual question, but nonetheless I keep asking myself this one.

The tea supply was, after all, made possible by the might and spread of the British Empire. Taxing people who enjoyed that commodity to support the imperial government therefore might seem justified.

Many colonists would have paid the stamp tax directly, making it easy for American Whigs to show that new revenue laws affected everyone, even farmers (and most Americans were farmers). In contrast, only the merchants importing tea paid the tea tariff. They passed that cost on to their customers, to be sure, but it wasn’t so obvious.

Furthermore, unlike some of the actions taxed by the Stamp Act, such as court filings and marriages, no one was legally required to buy tea. And yet, because tea supplied that pleasant touch of caffeine, many Americans were in the habit of drinking it.

In 1765, therefore, Americans might well have grumbled about an imperial tea tariff, but not massively and energetically enough to render the new law unenforceable. Would that revenue have satisfied the ministry in London enough that successive administrations wouldn’t have tried new tax laws? Or would it have provided a precedent for more tariffs based on similar commodities?

As it was, the ideas that the British constitution rightly bars taxation without representation, that corrupt royal appointees were draining money from the colonies, and that these problems could affect even people in small towns far from the ports were widespread by 1773. That made the Tea Act loom larger than it otherwise would have.

In this Sestercentennial year for the tea crisis, many institutions are examining that conflict through events and exhibits. Of course, the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum focuses on the climax of that crisis every day. It’s got two events coming up exploring the background of the event and commemorations of it.

Thursday, 8 June, 7:00 to 8:30 P.M.
Canton to Boston: How Chinese Tea Steeped at American Revolution
Abigail’s Tea Room and online (registration required)

Tea historian Bruce Richardson was recently granted access to the vaults of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, where he searched for teas like those tossed into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773. He will share news of his detective work and the fascinating journey of the Boston teas as they left Canton bound for London’s East India Company warehouses and Colonial America.

Sunday, 25 June, 7:00 P.M.
Rev War Revelry: The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum
Facebook Live

Join the hosts at Emerging Revolutionary War as they talk with staff of the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum on the history of the events leading up to and on December 16, 1773, learn more about their interactive museum and learn about all the events planned around this year’s 250th anniversary.

A Taste of Shumate’s Sugar Act

At the Journal of the American Revolution, John Gilbert McCurdy (author of Quarters) just reviewed Ken Shumate’s new book, The Sugar Act and the American Revolution.

I’m pleased to know about this study because I’ve long seen histories mention the Sugar Act of 1764 as colonial Americans’ first grievance of the decade. It prompted James Otis’s pamphlet The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, which established “no taxation without representation” as the logical foundation for colonial resistance (without using that phrase, which didn’t appear until 1768).

And yet in looking at the more widespread resistance to the Crown in the late 1760s, and reading the colonists’ own arguments, the taxes and restrictions on sugar (and molasses, and rum, and later coffee and wine) show up barely at all.

Shumate’s study offers some explanations. First, the traders of the 1760s were used to an imperial tax on molasses, which was first instituted in 1733. The main purpose of that law was to discourage trading with French, Spanish, and Dutch West Indies, so objecting to it didn’t come across as patriotic or law-abiding. It was easier to smuggle quietly.

Then in 1764 prime minister George Grenville revised the law, actually cutting the duty in the hope that more American merchants would see obeying the law as the economical alternative. Then in early 1766 the Marquess of Rockingham’s government reduced the duty still further. There was literally less to complain about. To be sure, that last revision meant the government was taxing molasses from the British islands, too, but the North Americans were so pleased with Rockingham’s repeal of the Stamp Act that they didn’t raise a fuss.

Another big factor in the colonial response, I think, was that that Sugar Act’s taxes and trade restrictions affected only a small portion of the population. Molasses traders and rum distillers were a special interest. The biggest threat to their business actually came from distillers on the British Caribbean islands producing their own rum instead of shipping all the raw material to the mainland.

In contrast, the Stamp Act affected everyone in the colonies who filed or responded to lawsuits, read newspapers, got married, and more, which meant everyone. Though rum made from molasses was popular, tea was even more popular, so Charles Townshend’s 1767 tax on that import produced more widespread, longer-lasting opposition.

As McCurdy writes:

Although strict enforcement actually increased with the 1766 revision, the Americans raised few objections to the Sugar Act. Instead, between 1768 and 1772, the law brought in nearly £165,000 from duties on molasses, sugar, madeira, and other goods. But taxing British sugars did little to stem the tide of foreign products as 97 percent of the four million gallons of molasses that came into America derived from foreign sources.

Colonial ambivalence toward the Sugar Act continued despite the Townshend duties of 1767. Although Boston merchants demanded that no British goods would be imported until all taxes were repealed — including the Sugar Act — resistance from merchants in Philadelphia and New York forced them to drop this demand. Indeed, it was not until after the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and the Coercive Acts of 1774 that Americans turned against the Sugar Act.

Looking back, writers started to treat the Sugar Act as the start of their troubles. At the time, however, colonists saw bigger things to complain about.

A Ko-fi Reward, Cheap for Cash

At the end of last year, I announced a Boston 1775 membership tier on the Ko-fi platform.

And at the end of last month, on Tuesday, I posted the first reward for “Buff and Blue” members. It’s an essay titled “A Bankruptcy in Boston, 1765,” about Nathaniel Wheelwright’s financial failure and the effect it had on what became the Revolution. This is a much expanded, updated, and citation-festooned version of an article I wrote for Massachusetts Banker magazine way back during the Great Recession.

If you’ve signed up to make a small monthly contribution to Boston 1775, you should have received a message about this essay, or it’s waiting for you on Ko-fi. I’m not sure how exactly the platform works since this is the first time I’ve used it this way. If reading about the ripples of one colonial merchant’s bankruptcy sounds intriguing, you can sign up on Ko-fi this month now and I’ll get you the file. Thanks for your support in whatever form.

While revamping this article, I wondered if Boston shopkeepers became more eager for cash payments in 1765 as the Wheelwright bankruptcy and the impending Stamp Act made specie even more desirable. And how could I measure that?

Shopkeepers signaled that they gave discounts to customers paying with hard currency through the phrase “Cheap for Cash.” I decided to ask the newspaper database at Genealogy Bank to search through Massachusetts newspapers for “cheap for cash” (and “cheap for cafh,” since the system more often doesn’t recognize the long s) in each year of the 1760s.

I realized that approach could be thrown off by the arrival of a new newspaper, like the Boston Chronicle in late 1767, or simply by one or two businesspeople who liked that phrase and advertised with it week after week. Still, it’s better to have flawed data than no data.

Here’s the result as a bar graph:

The year 1765 was indeed the peak of “Cheap for Cash” advertisements. However, the big rise actually occurred the year before. Then the total tapered off until a big drop in 1769.

Looking at those lines brings me to these tentative conclusions:

• The post-Seven Years’ War economic recession started making business harder for Boston shopkeepers in 1764. That situation might well have been one stress on Wheelwright’s finances. His bankruptcy in January 1765 in turn made everyone else’s hunger for hard cash even more urgent.
• When the British military was active in the region, as in the war years and then in the occupation of Boston that started in late 1768, the paymasters and commissaries brought enough specie into the province that shopkeepers didn’t feel they needed to advertise special pricing for cash.

This is of course a crude methodology, and I’m sure specialized historians could improve on it. For instance, a more detailed count of advertisers could determine how many different shops used the phrase. Breaking years down into quarters or months might fine-tune the analysis. Other phrases besides “Cheap for Cash” might have carried the same message. The overall number of ads could have waxed and waned. But for ten minutes’ work, I’m happy with this.

The Details in the Devil

For the Washington Post, University of Delaware history professor Zara Anishanslin wrote about the roots of far-right accusations that the Devil is involved in American politics reach down deep to the Revolutionary protest movement.

Devils were a crucial element of American protests against the Stamp Act, including the August 1765 effigies hanging from what became Liberty Tree, the subsequent processions modeled on that event in other colonies, and even Isaiah Thomas’s little stamps on the Halifax Gazette.

I’d push that form of politics back even further because the Stamp Act protest borrowed imagery from New England Pope Nights, which always included the Devil and multiple imps. Since that holiday was part of the British Empire’s loud stance against Roman Catholicism and the Stuart claimants to the throne, using a religious figure of evil made sense.

And Pope Night was always political as well. The Stuart claimants were contemporary figures, and Charles Edward Stuart almost came within striking distance of the British throne in 1745. A 1750s Pope Night was recalled as lambasting Adm. John Byng, another contemporaneous villain. So the shift to using Pope Night–like effigies against men associated with the Stamp Act wasn’t all that big.

Likewise, after Benedict Arnold defected in 1780, Americans resurrected the Pope Night imagery, largely suppressed while leaders sought alliances with the Québecois and French, to show their enmity to him. The details might change, but the Devil did not.

Anishanslin also writes:

How the devil looked was important. And in Colonial and revolutionary era America, the devil was often portrayed as a Black man. Illustrations of the devil in Cotton Mather’s account of the Salem Witch Trials and Paul Revere’s prints alike both showed the devil with black skin. Such depictions played into the racism and fear of slave revolt that undergirded much of the revolution.

That made me take a closer look at figures of the devil in American printing. The first thing I noticed is a difference between the depictions in woodcuts and in more expensive engravings, such as Revere’s “A Warm Place—Hell.” Engravings could show more detail, but they couldn’t depict solid black. The devils and demons on those pages tend to look like dark, hairy monsters.

In contrast, woodcuts like the one above usually did show the devil as almost a black silhouette. Often that silhouette had a tail, long pointed nose, and spiky horns or hair—different from how artists of the time showed a generic “Black man.” While the symbolism of blackness itself in British-American culture can’t be denied, I don’t think British-American artists were depicting the Devil in the form of either a man or an African. 

“He is now exciting those very people to rise in arms”

When I first read about the idea that Americans rebelled because they worried about the British government moving to end chattel slavery, advanced in books by Alfred and Ruth Blumrosen and Gerald Horne, I didn’t see how that fit the pattern of where the resistance broke out. Nor on where the ensuing Revolution had the greatest effect on slavery.

If the anxiety of slaveholders was a major driver in the onset of the Revolution, why did the worst early confrontations happen in New England, which had the smallest percentage of people enslaved?

Why did that obstreperous Massachusetts assembly vote twice in the decade before the war to end all imports of human property from Africa? Why did the legislature entertain petitions from enslaved men, reportedly encouraged by its clerk Samuel Adams? Why did those states move to end or limit slavery during and soon after the war?

Conversely, if slaveholders had become so anxious as to defy the government in London, why did Jamaica and the other Caribbean islands, which depended completely on chattel slavery, remain firmly loyal to Britain? Why was the British military able to reconquer Georgia and the capital of South Carolina, two of the three newly independent states with the largest fractions of their populations enslaved?

Those questions apply to the hypothesis that slaveholders were aroused by the Somerset decision of 1772, as the Blumrosens and Horne argued. And there’s already very little contemporaneous evidence to suggest that white colonists viewed that legal decision as portending any change for America.

On the other hand, if we look at the hypothesis that the slaveholders’ anxiety arose not from the Somerset case but from the Dunmore and Phillipsburg Proclamations, as Sylvia Frey, Woody Holton, and others have written, the pattern of resistance makes more sense.

In that view, the early resistance to new taxes, the shift of power in New England in late 1774, and the outbreak of war in 1775 were driven by a lot of other factors—not only economics and constitutional beliefs but everything from post-Puritan suspicion about the threat of an Anglican bishop over America to unspoken resentment over more vigorous Customs enforcement.

Chattel slavery wasn’t necessarily a big factor for American Whigs in that period, except in how Whig philosophy deemed people without traditional British rights as little more than ”slaves,” and the presence of some actual slaves in town might have made that threat feel more real. (Then again, the master class in a slave society is remarkably capable of not seeing themselves as having anything in common with the people they enslave.)

Once fighting began, however, British commanders looked for every resource they could. In late 1775 the Earl of Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, promised freedom to people enslaved by Patriots. His offer had power in only one colony, but Virginia wasn’t just any colony—it had the largest total population by far, and over 40% of those people were enslaved.

Dunmore’s campaign was shut down rather quickly, but not before, according to Holton, it pushed Virginians, and perhaps southern Patriots generally, toward independence in 1776. In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson blamed King George III for perpetuating the slave trade and then wrote:

he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Southern delegates who wanted to maintain chattel slavery and avoid ridicule for total hypocrisy edited that down to seven words: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.” The document moved quickly on to complaining about the Crown’s Native American allies. No one used the word “slave,” but everyone knew “domestic insurrections” meant slave revolts.

The war ground on. Gen. Henry Clinton renewed Dunmore’s policy in the Phillipsburg Proclamation of 1779 and extended it across all the rebellious colonies. But it had different effects in different regions.

By that point, New England, which already had the least to fear of slave uprisings, was also largely free from the British military. The Phillipsburg Proclamation meant about as little there as the Somerset decision.

The southern states had become the focus of Clinton’s strategy, and that was also where Patriot and neutral planters saw the most to lose from their human property escaping or rebelling. It makes sense for the biggest backlash against the British to arise there.

As for Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean, they had never rebelled, so Clinton’s proclamation meant nothing to those planters. The ocean blocked enslaved islanders from seeking freedom behind army lines. The same ocean also made those islands dependent on remaining part of the transatlantic trading system; despite some protests against the Stamp Act in 1765, the Caribbean planters were never in a position to rebel.

(These thoughts were prompted by Twitter conversation with Woody Holton in early September. He looked at the percentage of enslaved in different colonies. I’ve added the factor of when those places saw the most fighting.)

“Stamp Act Memes” Online Talk on 9 Sept.

On Thursday, 9 September, I’ll deliver the latest version of my online talk “How Americans Fought the Stamp Act with Memes” via the American Revolution Round Table of New Jersey.

For details about that event and how to cadge an invitation, see this description.

This event feels bittersweet because I had the pleasure of speaking to this group in Morristown once and had planned to be there again. I was even building a longer trip around the event with archive and family visits. But “community spread” of the Covid-19 virus has risen again, and we decided that it’s safer to avoid large gatherings.

Speaking of large gatherings, my talk will explore how crowds, with the help of newspaper printers, defined the details of an anti-Stamp Act protest in August 1765, and then repeated that action with variations for months until they made the law a dead letter.

We can see that effect in this 6 September letter from the Philadelphia printer David Hall to his mentor and business partner in London, Benjamin Franklin:

We are all in a Ferment here, as well, as in the other Governments, about the Stamp Law taking, or not taking place.

You, very probably before this can reach, may have heard of Mr. [Andrew] Oliver, the Stamp officier being hanged in Effigy in Boston; a House pulled down, which was supposed to have been erected for the Business of the Stamp Office, and other Damage done him; upon which he resigned and, it is said, wrote home to the Commissioners of the Stamp-Office, letting them know that he could not put the Law in Execution; and that he believed it impracticable for any One else to do it.

Soon after this Mr. [Augustus] Johnston, appointed for Rhode Island; Mr. [James] McEvers for New York, and Mr. [William] Coxe for New Jersey, all gave up their Commissions.

At New-London the Stamp Officer has likewise been hanged in Effigy. And at New-Haven the House of the Officer there, has been beset by a Number of People, who desired to know whether he intended to act in that office, or resign? His Answer, it is said, was, that having accepted the Office in Person he did not think he had Power to resign. They then demanded whether he would deliver the Stamp Materials, as soon as they arrived, to them, in Order to make a Bonfire, or to have his House pulled down? Upon which he promised, that when they Arrived, he would either reship them to be sent back, or that when they were in his House, his Doors should be open, and they might then act as they thought proper, on which they despersed.

Mr. [Jared] Ingersoll has likewise been hanged in Effigy [actually, all those preceding Connecticut events were aimed at Ingersoll], as has Mr. [Zachariah] Hood, the officer for Maryland.

Mr. [George] Mercer, the Officer for Virginia, is not yet Arrived, but the People of that Colony, are much enraged.

Mr. [John] Hughes [of Pennsylvania] has not yet resigned; whether he will, or not, I cannot say, but I understand his Friends are all endeavouring to get him to resign.

In short, there seems to be a general Discontent all over the Continent, with that Law, and many thinking their Liberties and Privileges, as English Men lost, or at least in great Danger, seem Desperate. What the Consequences may be, God only knows; but, from the Temper of the People, at Present, there is the greatest Reason to fear, that the Passing of that Law will be the Occasion of a great Deal of Mischief.

The most awkward part of the news for Franklin was that he had used his influence as a lobbyist to get Coxe, Hughes, and Hood appointed as stamp agents in their respective colonies. The patronage job was supposed to be a pleasant surprise. Instead, those men came under threat, and Hood actually had to decamp for New York.

“How Americans Fought the Stamp Act with Memes,” 9 Aug.

On Monday, 9 August, I’ll deliver an online talk to the Paoli Battlefield Preservation Fund on “How Americans Fought the Stamp Act with Memes.”

Here’s our event description:

The word “meme” is a modern coinage expressing how ideas replicate, spread, and mutate like genes, and the conflict over the Stamp Act shows memes at work in the Revolutionary era.

When news of the new tax arrived in North America in the spring of 1765, it produced an unprecedented wave of protests. Colonial politicians and printers promoted that opposition with slogans like “Sons of Liberty,” repurposed images like the “Join, Or Die” snake, and a radical new form of outdoor political protest that edged into riots. As those activities spread from colony to colony, they created the first continental resistance to imperial policy.

How effective was the anti-Stamp campaign, what problems did it cause colonial leaders, and what new ideas did it establish for the next imperial dispute?

I’m still honing my talk, but it could take in fake news about Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin’s bad timing, and Richard Henry Lee leading a procession of his slaves while dressed as a clergyman.

Sign up for this event here, and learn more about the Paoli Battlefield while you’re at it.

The Political Significance of Snakes

Last week the Age of Revolutions blog shared my new article “Join, or Die: Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?”

Prompted by a question from editor Bryan A. Banks of Columbus State University, for this essay I delved into how and why Americans adopted snakes as symbols of their resistance when most of the time they didn’t like snakes. At all.

And by “snakes” I mean multiple species. The fractured snake that appeared in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper in 1754 and then resurfaced during the Stamp Act debate is sometimes called a rattlesnake, but it didn’t have a rattle. It was a different species, called a glass snake (or joint snake, or brimstone snake).

The rattlesnake slid onto the scene in late 1775 as the American colonies were at war and needed a more forceful, dangerous viper to make their point. In both cases, I argue, traits that natural histories had ascribed to these New World species fit well into the political narrative that American colonists wanted to promulgate at that time.

Researching this essay made me look anew at a couple of pictures that Paul Revere created for Isaiah Thomas’s Royal American Magazine in March and April 1774. They’re both visible on this webpage from the American Antiquarian Society, and I’ve coped a relevant detail above.

The pictures are portraits of John Hancock and Samuel Adams in elaborate frames surrounded by symbolic figures. At the right stands an allegorical woman—Liberty and Britannia, respectively. The woman (and, in Liberty’s case, a lion) is stomping on a grenadier from the 29th Regiment, the unit involved in the Boston Massacre.

That grenadier in turn is grasping a snake. When I first saw these pictures, I thought the grenadier might have been trying to introduce the snake into American society and gotten caught. Now I wonder if Revere meant that snake was American society, and the grenadier was trying to squash it, only to be squashed by higher forces.

And what about Revere’s engraving of a “Hooded Serpent” or cobra in the June 1774 issue of the Royal American Magazine? Thomas copied the text of that from a 1771 British magazine and had Revere duplicate the engraving. It doesn’t seem like it would have any allegorical significance for the American colonies. But now that I’ve explored political snake symbolism, I wonder.