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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And William Goddard’s Maryland Journal, 16 July:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOMORROW: The consequence of that illness.

The Mysterious Constitutional Courant

Yesterday’s posting introduced Lawrence Sweeny, a New York newspaper carrier. He played a small but significant role in promoting resistance to the Stamp Act in 1765.

In September of that year, after protests against the Stamp Act had erupted in Boston and Newport, a fake newspaper called the Constitutional Courant appeared in New York. It was dated 21 Sept 1765, and said to be “Printed by Andrew Marvel, at the Sign of the Bribe refused on Constitution-Hill, North-America.” The Princeton University library displays its front page.

Isaiah Thomas later wrote that the Constitutional Courant was really printed in Woodridge, New Jersey, by William Goddard (1740-1815). After being trained in New Haven and New York, Goddard had run a newspaper in Providence until that spring, and the next year he tried Philadelphia. Crown officials reported hearing that James Parker (1714-1770) owned that press and, as a postmaster, sent copies to other cities.

The “newspaper” contained three anti-Stamp Act essays signed with three different pseudonyms and a brief mention of the recent change in government in London. Reportedly the established New York printers had turned down those essays because they were too incendiary. Hence the need for a special printing and secrecy.

In an exhaustive article published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Albert Matthews reported that there were at least two reprints of the Constitutional Courant, presumably from other presses responding to local demand. One of those reprints probably occurred in Boston since the 7 October Boston Evening-Post quoted one essay and told readers, “we hear, it will soon be republished.”

Lawrence Sweeny was one of the people who sold the Constitutional Courant on the streets of New York. According to Thomas, royal officials called him in and demanded to know where that paper had been printed. “Sweeney, as he had been instructed, answered, ‘At Peter Hassenclever’s ironworks, please your honor.’” Peter Hasenclever had come to America in 1764 to manage an extensive iron-manufacturing enterprise in New Jersey.

The masthead of the Constitutional Courant was the first reappearance of Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die” snake since 1754, when he created the image to promote colonial cooperation and the Albany Plan. From then on, the snake promoted a united American front against new measures from London instead of against external enemies. Printers pulled out those snake woodcuts again in 1774 as the conflict with London heated up.

Anti-Stamp Act Protests in Rhode Island

Public protests against the Stamp Act spread outside of Boston in August 1765 so quickly that I’ve fallen behind the sestercentennial anniversaries of those events.

Since the Newport Historical Society is commemorating that port town’s protests with a reenactment today, I’m focusing on the events in Rhode Island.

On 24 August, ten days after the first protest at Boston’s Liberty Tree, A Providence Gazette Extraordinary appeared. William Goddard (1740-1817) had stopped publishing this newspaper in May. This special issue was “Printed by S. and W. Goddard,” the “S.” being William’s mother Sarah (c. 1701-1770).

Sarah Goddard resumed the weekly publication of the paper in 1766 as “Sarah Goddard, and Company.” From January 1767 to 1769, the colophon clarified that she printed “(In the Absence of William Goddard),” the son having gone on to other cities. Finally she sold the business to employee John Carter, who maintained the paper for decades to follow. Her daughter, Mary Katherine Goddard, established a print shop in Baltimore.

That issue of the Providence Gazette was extraordinary indeed, being almost entirely devoted to one political cause:

• Above the masthead it proclaimed, “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” (“The Voice of the People is the Voice of God”).
• The essays were all about the problems with the Stamp Act, including a paragraph from Isaac Barré’s speech in Parliament.
• The news was all about anti-Stamp Act protests in Boston and Connecticut, and similar disturbances in Britain.
• The paper printed five resolutions from the Providence town meeting modeled on the resolutions that the Virginia House of Burgesses had reportedly passed that spring.
• The last page described a new paper mill that the Goddards were helping to build outside Providence—a business potentially at odds with the Stamp Act.

In his history of the Revolution, the Rev. William Gordon wrote that “Effigies were also exhibited; and in the evening cut down and burnt by the populace” in Providence on this date, but I haven’t found any confirmation of that.

Instead, the next big development in Rhode Island appears to have happened down in Newport on 27 August. Here’s the description of that day published in the 2 September Newport Mercury:

Last Tuesday Morning a Gallows was erected in Queen-Street, just below the Court-House, whereon the Effigies of three Gentlemen were exhibited, one of whom was a Distributor of Stamps, which was placed in the Center. The other two were suspected of countenancing and abetting the Stamp Act.

Various Labels were affixed to their Breasts, Arms, &c. denoting the Cause of these indignant Representations, and the Persons who were the Subjects of Derision.—They hung from Eleven o’Clock till about Four, when some Combustibles being placed under the Gallows, a Fire was made, and the Effigies consumed, amidst the Acclamations of the People.—The whole was conducted with Moderation, and no Violence was offered to the Persons or Property of any Man.

A report published in London later that year offered some more physical details: “about nine o’clock in the morning, the people of Newport, in Rhode Island, brought forth the effigies of three persons, in a cart, with halters about their necks, to a gallows, twenty feet high.”

Notably, the Mercury didn’t identify the three “Persons who were the Subjects of Derision,” even by initials. But everyone in town knew who they were:

• Rhode Island’s stamp-tax collector, Augustus Johnston (c. 1729-1790).
• Martin Howard, Jr. (1725–1781), a lawyer who had written a pamphlet titled A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax to His Friend in Rhode Island, supporting the Stamp Act—a very rare position for an American to take.
• Dr. Thomas Moffatt (c. 1702–1787), another supporter of stronger royal government.

Moffatt later identified three merchants—Samuel Vernon (1711-1792), William Ellery (1727-1820), and Robert Crook—as guarding the spectacle from local officials, just as the Loyall Nine did in Boston. The doctor also said that to build a crowd they “sent into the streets strong Drink in plenty with Cheshire cheese and other provocatives to intemperance and riot.” Yet that day ended with no other destruction than the burning of the effigies.

TOMORROW: But it wasn’t over yet.

Making the Mails Travel

Today Boston 1775 welcomes guest blogger Eric Jaffe, author of a new book titled The King’s Best Highway: The Lost History of the Boston Post Road, the Route That Made America. This essay, adapted from the book, describes the development of the British postal system along the Atlantic coast, and how it got caught up in Revolutionary change.

The first American post rider left New York for Boston in January of 1673. Francis Lovelace, colonial governor of New York, made establishing a postal system his personal mission. And his personal obsession. So consumed was Lovelace with the mail that he imprudently left New York that July to discuss the system, only to be interrupted with the news that the Dutch had taken Manhattan.

Following this fateful decision, the colonial postal system endured a period of fits and starts. The new Dutch leader outlawed correspondence with New England, even jailing the English post rider John Sharpe. When Britain regained New York in 1674, Governor Thomas Dongan was authorized to set up post offices all along the East Coast, but was sent “noe power”—read: money—“to doe it.”

A lack of adequate funding plagued the young system for decades. Duncan Campbell, colonial postmaster of New England and firm believer in a system “of so great a benefit to this country,” frequently petitioned the mother country for expenses. Still, by the time his son, John Campbell, assumed this position in the early 1700s, the office lost a considerable 275 pounds a year. By late September 1703, John Campbell was soliciting colonial leaders for “some encouragement” to boost his post office, “else of necessity it must drop.”

It was Ben Franklin who finally gave the post office the “encouragement” it needed to thrive. As joint deputy postmaster general, the post office’s highest position in America, Franklin addressed the problems with mail service that had lingered, nearly unchanged, for roughly a century. He provided postmasters with precise accounting tables and demanded punctuality of his riders. “You are not,” he instructed them, “out of Friendship or Compliment to any Person whatsoever, to delay his Majesty’s Post one Quarter of an Hour.” If a letter sat unclaimed for two months, it was sent to Philadelphia—the birth of the “dead letter office.”

Later on, Franklin devised an odometer that measured distance between routes and called for the placement of milestones to both guide riders and help them calculate costs. He hung rate-tables in every office and slashed the speed of exchange between New York and Boston: “By making the Mails travel by Night as well as by Day,” he wrote, “Letters may be sent and answers received in four Days, which before took a fortnight.”

Taken altogether, Franklin’s designs essentially drew the modern postal blueprint. He made communication in America strikingly efficient. Finally, come 1761, he made it profitable. It had taken eight years, but the colonial post office finally earned money for the English government: a modest 494 pounds. Over the next three years the American office sent the mother country roughly two thousand more.

Sure enough, the throne took a renewed interest in the colonial post. King George III ordered colonies to do whatever it took so “the Posts may meet with no delays or interruptions.” Soon the crown decreed that anyone caught robbing the post “upon the King’s Highway … shall suffer Death as a Felon.” The measures largely worked. By 1774, England annually brought in 3,000 pounds from the American post.

But early that year, in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, British leaders dismissed Franklin as deputy postmaster. Anyone considered “too much of an American,” like Franklin, was replaced with postal workers willing to put British interests ahead of colonial rights. The safety of American mail, wrote Franklin, “may now be worth considering.”

Indeed, rebellious colonial printer William Goddard was considering just that. In response to Britain’s tightened grip, Goddard formulated a plan for a “constitutional” post office. Not only would Goddard’s mail service employ only American sympathizers, but any revenue would be shared within the system, rather than sent to England as a general tax.

During the spring of 1774, driven by a single-mindedness worthy of Francis Lovelace, Goddard sold his plan to colonial leaders along the Post Road between New York and Boston. Samuel Adams embraced the plan with gusto. Paul Revere called it “one of the greatest strokes that our Enemies have mett with (except the late affairs of the Tea).” At the second Continental Congress, the following year, the gatherers finally ratified the constitutional post—unanimously naming Franklin the first American postmaster general.

Thanks, Eric! Check out the King’s Best Highway website for more information on the Boston Post Road and the many things that have happened along it.