“The Spies of 1775” in Acton, 31 Mar.

On Monday, 31 March, I’m returning to Acton to speak in the town’s series of Sestercentennial lectures.

My topic this time is “Spies and Military Intelligence,” though I’m titling it “The Spies of 1775” for the assonance.

In my previous visit last spring I talked about the story of The Road to Concord: the Patriots’ effort to build an artillery force and Gen. Thomas Gage’s desire to thwart them.

That talk covered the Boston militia men who smuggled cannon away from the redcoats, the British officers scouting the countryside, and the still unidentified spy sending Gage messages from Concord in bad French.

I don’t want to go over the same ground again, so for this talk I’m collecting the stories of other intelligence sources active from late 1774 to early 1776. One I’ve mentioned only once on this blog is John Skey Eustace, represented above by his coat of arms.

Eustace arrived at Gen. George Washington’s Cambridge headquarters in December 1775, one of several Virginians whom Capt. John Manley had captured on a British ship. He’d been sent north to Boston by his mentor: Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia.

Within weeks Eustace was giving Gen. Washington useful tips about Dunmore’s agent Dr. John Connolly. Washington had already collected information on Connolly’s plan to recruit a Loyalist regiment, and at his warning Patriot authorities in Maryland had locked the man up. On 25 December, Washington warned John Hancock there was more to find:

I have received undoubted Information—that the genuine instructions given to Conolly, have not reached your hands—that they Are very artfully Concealed in the tree of his Saddle & coverd with Canvas So nicely, that they are Scarcely discernable—that those which were found upon him are intended to deceive—if he was caught—you will Certainly have his Saddle taken to pieces in order to discover this deep Laid plot.

Washington repeated that intelligence at the end of January 1776:

You may rely that Conolly had Instructions concealed in his Saddle—Mr Eustice who was one of Ld Dunmores family, & Another Gentleman who wishes his Name not to be mentioned, saw them cased in Tin, put in the Tree & covered over—he probably has exchanged his Saddle, or withdrew the papers when It was mended as you Conjecture—those that have been discovered are sufficiently bad, but I doubt not of the Others being worse & containing more diabolical & extensive plans

That information must have been deemed reliable because on 13 June Richard Henry Lee wrote to Washington:

I am informed that a certain Mr Eustace, now in New York, but some time ago with Lord Dunmore, is acquainted with a practise that prevailed of taking letters out of the Post Office in Virginia and carrying them to Dunmore for his perusal and than returning them to the Office again. As it is of the greatest consequence that this nefarious practise be stopt immediately, I shall be exceedingly obliged to you Sir for getting Mr Eustace to give in writing all that he knows about this business, and inclose the same to me at Williamsburg. I wish to know particularly, what Post Offices the letters were taken from, by whom, and who carried them to Lord Dunmore.

What’s striking about John Skey Eustace eagerly sharing what he knew about Lord Dunmore’s plots is that he was only fifteen years old.

And he’s just one of the people I’ll cover in this talk.

Monday, 31 March, 7 to 8:30 P.M.
The Spies of 1775
Acton Town Hall, Room 204

This event is free to all. It will be livestreamed on ActonTV.org and recorded for posting on the Acton 250 YouTube channel.

The Latest Stamp Act

The United States Postal Service just announced some of its plans for new stamps in 2025.

Among the subjects are “Battlefields of the American Revolution,” as shown above:

Marking the 250th anniversary of the start of the Revolutionary War, this pane of 15 stamps invites us to witness and remember five turning points in the fight for American independence. Watercolor paintings depicting scenes of five battles appear alongside photographs of sites involved in each battle. Derry Noyes, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps with art by Greg Harlin and photographs by Jon Bilous, Richard Lewis, Tom Morris, Gregory J. Parker and Kevin Stewart.

I like the juxtaposing of history painting and travel photography. And it’s interesting to see how Harlin tackled the challenge of his artwork needing to work by halves.

But which battles are commemorated?

• Lexington and Concord (1775).
• Bunker Hill (1775).
• Trenton (1776).
• Saratoga (1777).
• Yorktown (1781).

That’s an even more limited presentation of the Revolutionary War than usual. Of course, featuring only American victories and moral victories cuts down the list of possible battles considerably. But this series suggests that only one fight mattered during the last five years of the war and in any state south-southeast of New Jersey. 

The Tercentenary Telling of the Marshfield Tea Burning

In 1940, the town of Marshfield celebrated the 300th anniversary of its founding.

Among the projects of the Tercentenary Committee was the publication of a new town history assembled by Joseph C. Hagar, who had succeeded Lysander S. Richards as head of the local historical society.

That book’s title page says: Marshfield 70°–40´W : 42°–5´N: The Autobiography of a Puritan Town. Book cataloguers have been divided on whether the title includes that longitude and latitude, or whether they’re just too much trouble.

On the burning of tea in the town, Hagar wrote:

The British had brought a large quantity of tea to the town, which they were unable to sell on account of the high price. They stored it in various places in the village.

On the southwest side of the old Marshfield Training Green is a hill on which now stands quite a modern residence. This hill is known as Tea Rock Hill, although the rock itself has been blasted and pieces used in the foundations of two nearby homes. The ledge, however, is still visible.

Not far away toward the South river, but northeast from the hill, stands the former old John Bourne store, now a fairly modern Post Office. The store was built in 1709. Toward the east are two houses of interest, both being old Thomas homes. . . . [One was] the residence of Nehemiah Thomas; and in his cellar was stored some of the tea which had been brought into the town. More tea was stored in the old Bourne store.

A few days after the Boston Tea Party, the enthusiastic patriots of Marshfield (one of whom, Jonathan Bourne, fought in the battle of Bunker Hill) marched quietly and earnestly to these places and secured the tea there stored. This act required courage and conviction as Marshfield had such a strong Tory element. The tea was loaded onto an ox-cart and hauled to Tea Rock Hill.

Among the patriots were women and children as well as men. Mr. Charles Peterson remembers that his grandmother told him she was one of the group.

On the top of the hill they placed the tea “upon a stone quite flat on top” and as it was evening, they knelt in the dim light of the primitive lanterns and offered prayer. A torch carried by Jeremiah Lowe was applied to the tea and it was burned. Jeremiah Lowe was later forced to flee to New York with his family.

Hagar’s book doesn’t cite evidence for specific statements. It echoes passages from sources like the D.A.R. description of the event, sometimes word for word, without acknowledgment. It contains errors. (There was no Jonathan Bourne, for instance.) All that makes it a frustrating source to work with, but it was the towns’s official tercentenary history.

This book adds a couple of details to the story of the tea burning, such as the pause for prayer before the bonfire—apparently based on what Charles Petersen’s grandmother told him.

Most important, Hagar’s recounting specified a new location for the stash of confiscated tea: “the former old John Bourne store.” In terms of commemoration, that had a couple of advantages over Deacon Nehemiah Thomas’s house, the only place previously named:

• First, it was closer to Tea Rock Hill, making for a more compact commemoration.
• Second, it still existed, albeit as a part of a larger building.

That building still stands today, as shown above in a photograph from Patrick Browne’s article at Historical Digressions.

TOMORROW: Two generations on, and the first reenactment.

“The best Company in the World”

In October 1772, Baron le Despencer hosted Benjamin Franklin at his estate at West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire (shown here). At the time, Franklin’s London landlady was moving house, so he got to stay away from that “troublesome Affair.”

Franklin wrote to his son William, “I spent 16 Days at Lord Le Despencer’s most agreably, and return’d in good Health and Spirits.” To John Foxcroft, his fellow deputy postmaster general for the colonies, Franklin reported: “I spent a Fortnight lately at West Wyecomb, with our good Master Lord Le Despencer, and left him well.”

Although Franklin referred to the postmaster general as “our good Master,” the light-hearted tone of that reference seems very different from the way Foxcroft had written about “the Displeasure of our Honored Masters” when he worried his job was in jeopardy.

Either then or soon afterward, Despencer invited Franklin to work with him on editing down the Anglican Church’s Book of Common Prayer. The baron wrote on his manuscript: “Doctor Franklyn is desired to add, alter, or diminish as he shall think proper anything herein contained. L[ord] L[e] D[espencer] is by no means tenacious.”

Early in the summer of 1773, the baron invited Franklin to visit his home again and accompany him to see Lord North installed as the new chancellor at Oxford. The two men stayed in adjoining chambers at Queen’s College. The American told his son, “Lord Le Despencer…is on all occasions very good to me, and seems of late very desirous of my Company.”

Franklin closed that letter by saying he would “allow my self no more Country Pleasure this Summer.” But in August he visited West Wycombe again—“quite a Paradise,” as he called the estate. And he was back again in late September.

By that time Franklin clearly returned the baron’s admiration, writing:

I am in this House as much at my Ease as if it was my own, and the Gardens are a Paradise. But a pleasanter Thing is the kind Countenance, the facetious and very Intelligent Conversation of mine Host, who having been for many Years engaged in publick Affairs, seen all Parts of Europe, and kept the best Company in the World is himself the best existing.

All those remarks show that by 1773 Franklin and Despencer had developed a real friendship; they were no longer just a noble supervisor and his colonial deputy.

That change is also evident in the way Franklin wrote to the baron. Yesterday I quoted a letter from 1770. By April 1774, Franklin started another letter “My dear Lord” instead of “My Lord,” and closed with “With unalterable Attachment” instead of “with the greatest Respect.” (In return, Despencer addressed his sole surviving letter to Franklin “Dear Doctor.”)

In early 1774 Lord North’s government stripped Franklin of his postal service appointment and income, but that didn’t end Despencer’s affection. The two men even attended a public event in London together.

After Franklin sailed for Pennsylvania, now at war with the British government, the baron told Foxcroft, “Whenever you write to Dr. Franklin assure him of my Sincere good will and Esteem. I fear much I shall not see him here so soon as he assured me I should.” Meanwhile, the doctor had sent his own friendly letter with good wishes for Despencer—and his mistress and their children.

That takes me back to the question I started this month with: What evidence is there linking Franklin with the “Monks of Medmenham Abbey” club that Baron le Despencer had started in the 1750s when he was Sir Francis Dashwood, baronet?

As I view the surviving documentary record, there are no recorded links between Franklin and Dashwood in the 1750s and early 1760s, when that club was active. The baron became the American’s superior in the postal service in 1767, but the two men remained on formal terms until 1770. I can’t see Dashwood/Despencer inviting Franklin into his secret activities during those years.

By 1773, however, that situation had changed. Franklin and Despencer admired each other, enjoyed each other’s company, exchanged potentially sensitive ideas about imperial politics and religion, and remained friends despite being separated by politics and war until the baron died in 1781.

“A grateful Sense of your Lordship’s Good-will”

Only a few pieces of correspondence between Baron le Despencer and Benjamin Franklin survive in the Franklin Papers, but they show a developing relationship between the lord appointed to be a postmaster general and one of his deputies for North America.

By June 1770, Franklin could report on details of the baron’s home remodeling: “I am told by Lord Despencer, who has covered a long Piazza or Gallery with Copper, that the Expence is charged in this Account too high; for his cost but 1/10 per foot, all Charges included.”

The first surviving direct letter between the men dates from the next month. In that document Franklin both responded to a political memo from Despencer (now lost) and argued that he should keep his job.

At that time, Franklin was representing the refractory legislatures of multiple North American colonies before Parliament, so he was a voice of opposition to the Townshend Acts. (That after telling London in 1766 and 1767 that Americans would accept such tariffs as an “external tax.”)

On 18 March, Franklin had written to Charles Thomson, encouraging American merchants to keep up their non-importation agreements against the Townshend duties even though Lord North’s government was moving to repeal all but the tax on tea. Critics started to say that an official receiving a salary from the Crown shouldn’t behave that way.

It looked like time for Franklin to shore up support from Despencer, one of his two bosses. On 26 July he wrote with somewhat stiff, genteel formality:

My Lord,

I heartily wish your Lordship would urge the Plan of Reconciliation between the two Countries, which you did me the Honour to mention to me this Morning. I am persuaded that so far as the Consent of America is requisite, it must succeed. I am sure I should do everything in my Power there to promote it. . . .

I have Enemies, as every public Man always has. They would be glad to see me depriv’d of my Office; and there are others who would like to have it. I do not pretend to slight it. Three Hundred Pounds less would make a very serious Difference in my annual Income. But as I rose to that Office gradually thro’ a long Service of now almost Forty Years, have by my Industry and Management greatly improv’d it, and have ever acted in it with Fidelity to the Satisfaction of all my Superiors, I hope my political Opinions, or my Dislike of the late Measures with America (which I own I think very injudicious) exprest in my Letters to that Country; or the Advice I gave to adhere to their Resolutions till the whole Act was repealed, without extending their Demands any farther, will not be thought a good Reason for turning me out.

I shall, however, always retain a grateful Sense of your Lordship’s Good-will and many Civilities towards me, and remain as ever, with the greatest Respect, Your Lordship’s most obedient and most humble Servant

Franklin’s letter combined arguments for fairness and the greater good with some personal flattery—as the British patronage system of the time encouraged.

I don’t see any similar letters from Franklin to the other postmaster general at this time, the Earl of Sandwich. In fact, I don’t see any letters from Franklin to Sandwich at all, nor from Franklin to the previous office-holder, the Earl of Hillsborough.

That might hint that Franklin saw Despencer as his main protector within the British bureaucracy. At the same time, this letter doesn’t suggest a relationship closer than colleagues in government, one man clearly superior to the other.

Franklin did keep his postal service job. In a letter to his sister, Jane Mecom, he stated, “I had some Friends…who unrequested by me advis’d the” government to keep him on; “my Enemies were forc’d to content themselves with abusing me plentifully in the Newspapers, and endeavouring to provoke me to resign.” Was Despencer one of those friends? If so, was Franklin’s letter to the baron truly not a request to stay on? In any event, it worked.

TOMORROW: Warming up.

“The Displeasure of our Honoured Masters”

Sir Francis Dashwood, baronet, served as chancellor of the exchequer in the government of the Earl of Bute. That went poorly for both of them, and Dashwood’s tenure lasted less than a year.

After leaving government, Dashwood made his case for inheriting the Despencer barony, the oldest in Britain not held by a peer with a higher title. That peerage gave him a guaranteed seat in the House of Lords.

Toward the end of 1766 the new Baron le Despencer was appointed one of the two postmasters general of the British Empire. This was a sinecure granted to various aristocrats, who in British society of the time usually failed upward.

In that year the other postmaster general was the Earl of Hillsborough, who was soon made Secretary of State for the colonies. The next appointee was the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who had previously been First Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary of State for the Northern Department (i.e., northern Europe) and would hold both those posts again.

Despencer, in contrast, kept the job of postmaster general until his death in 1781. He may not have totally ignored the job, though the real work was done by department secretaries Henry Potts (d. 1768) and Anthony Todd (1717–1798, shown above). That situation made Despencer a boss of the two deputy postmasters general for the colonies: John Foxcroft of New York and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania.

Franklin had held that appointment since 1753. He had been quite successful, even making the American postal service profitable for the first time. By the mid-1760s Franklin was living full-time in London, focusing on representing Pennsylvania and other colonies to Parliament, but he continued to manage the postal system with Foxcroft. It brought him a valuable income.

Within the British government’s system of patronage appointments, that meant Franklin had a strong incentive to keep the Baron le Despencer happy. Sucking up to your bosses never hurt. Neither did sucking up to lords. And when those lords were your bosses, you went all out.

As a taste of how this worked, in February 1769 Foxcroft wrote to Franklin from Virginia, reporting that he and Gen. Thomas Gage had disagreed about when a packet ship should sail. Even though the regulations gave Foxcroft the authority to make that decision, Hillsborough took Gage’s side. “I have fallen under the Displeasure of our Honoured Masters,” Foxcroft lamented. “I hope my Dear Friend that you will be able to prevent any disagreable consequences taking place from this unfortunate mistake.”

We don’t know what happened next, but Foxcroft kept his appointment—probably because Hillsborough had moved on to the Colonial Office. Sandwich was a navy man, after all, and might not have gone out of his way for army concerns. When the system ran on personal favors and connections, a change of person could mean a lot.

As part of keeping the bosses in good humor, Franklin appears to have helped with Despencer’s agricultural experiments. He got favors in return, such as an invitation to dine on a buck from one of the postmasters’ estates. But those interactions were arranged through the secretaries, not directly.

TOMORROW: Forging a more personal connection.

Early American Science in Kansas City

The Linda Hall Library in Kansas City is featuring a small but mighty display of publications titled “Promoting Useful Knowledge: The American Philosophical Society and Science in Early America.”

The items include:

• Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia.
• The first U.S. edition of John Muller’s A Treatise of Artillery, published in 1779 during the war.
• Almanacs published by Dr. Nathaniel Ames of Dedham and Isaiah Thomas.

The label on the Thomas almanac says, “after the battles of Lexington and Concord, Thomas had to move his press from Boston to Worcester to prevent his own arrest and that of his printers, and to prevent the presses from being seized and destroyed by the British.”

Thomas left Boston just before the war began to feel safe from the British army. Timothy Bigelow and other Worcester Patriots assured him he could sell newspapers in their town.

Thomas hoped to gain the printing business of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, but then Benjamin Edes set up in Watertown and Samuel and Ebenezer Hall moved their press from Salem to Cambridge. Thomas got the contract to print the congress’s report on the opening battle and nothing else, but he did become Worcester’s postmaster.

Back to the Linda Hall Library exhibit. Its anchor is a copy of Poor Richard’s Almanack for 1753, describing Benjamin Franklin’s first electrical experiments and showing a transit of the planet Mercury.

That almanac was loaned to the library by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia after a bet on the outcome of last winter’s Super Bowl. (The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 38–35.) The story behind the exhibit is thus itself notable.

I was also intrigued by the story behind the Linda Hall Library. Herbert and Linda Hall left a multimillion-dollar bequest to establish “a free public library for the use of the people of Kansas City.” In post–World War Two America, the trustees decided that institution should be dedicated to scientific and technical information.

The Linda Hall Library started by purchasing the collection of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded in 1780 by James Bowdoin and other Enlightened gentlemen from newly independent Massachusetts. Which probably explains why it holds so many almanacs from New England.

Another Dispatch from James Madison’s Montpelier

The Culpepper Star-Exponent is reporting on an odd wrinkle in the already public conflict over historical interpretation at Montpelier, James Madison’s slave-labor plantation.

The U.S. Postal Service closed the small post office near that historic site on short notice in June because, as Allison Brophy Champion reports, “it objected to a historical exhibit there.” The small building that housed the post office is part of the property of the Montpelier Foundation.

A spokesperson told the newspaper, “Service at Montpelier Station was suspended after it was determined the display at the site was unacceptable to the Postal Service.”

The display at issue consists of one panel on the outside of the building and several more inside—through a door separate from the one that went to the working post office.

The exhibit is titled “In the Time of Segregation,” and it describes segregation at that post office, opened in 1912, and in other services in the Jim Crow states.

Now one might at first guess that this display was a project of the new management at Montpelier. In May, as I described here and here, the Montpelier Foundation resolved months of internal controversy by seating eleven new members representing descendants of people enslaved at that plantation and others nearby, and installing new top management. The organization seemed poised to focus more attention on the site’s history of slavery and segregation.

In fact, the “In the Time of Segregation” exhibit was installed twelve years ago when the post office building reopened after Montpelier restored it. Only in June, within a month of the Montpelier Foundation management change, did some U.S. Postal Service manager deem that presentation of history “unacceptable.”

The post office’s local spokesperson declined to offer any more information and also claimed, “we attempted to address the issue with the property owner.” The head of the Montpelier Foundation told the Star-Exponent, “The U.S. Postal Service did not contact the current CEO or chief of staff, nor did it contact the previous CEO or chief of staff.”

The closure doesn’t affect Montpelier alone. About a hundred people had boxes at that post office because they don’t get mail delivered to their houses nearby. They “were supposed to get temporary postal boxes in Orange,” about four miles away, but that hasn’t happened. The Postal Service also promised a public meeting, but there’s no report of one taking place.

Furthermore, the area’s representative in Congress has told the U.S.P.S. district manager that “To close a post office, the agency is required to make its determination in writing, made available to the customers served by the office, and may not close it until 60 days afterward.” That clearly didn’t happen.

A Poetic Postmistress

I heartily recommend reading this webpage from Carpe Librum books, written to sell a rare book of poems printed in London in 1773.

Setting out the sparse known facts about the author Ann Williams, Brad at Carpe Librum succeeded in both assembling an interesting life story and in selling the book.

A taste:

Unlike the majority of women authors before 1800, Williams was not to the manor born. She appears [to] have hailed from the middling classes, and worked for a living as the post mistress of Gravesend, Kent. To the extent that she is remembered today, Williams is known as an experimental biologist, who corresponded with the Society of Arts (after 1908 the Royal Society of Arts, or RSA), which awarded her twenty guineas in 1778 for her observations on the care and feeding of silkworms. She kept her “little family” of “sweet innocent reptiles” in the dead letter pigeon-hole at the post office.

Williams’s poems address astronomy, Gen. James Wolfe, women’s equality, and many other topics, including one “Written when I was extremely sleepy, yet obliged to attend business.”

Unfortunately, Williams died after a laboratory accident in 1779.

Digital Databases to Stay Home For

Here are four digital resources that caught my attention over the past few months.

The British Library has digitized George III’s Topographical Library and put the scans on Flickr, each linked back to its own catalogue for full information. There are 17,908 images in this album, many appearing to come from Germany. As I clicked through, I saw maps, landscape prints, pages from books, gravestone rubbings, printed maps, elevations of fortifications and other buildings, garden plans, bird’s-eye views of towns, architectural drawings, harbor charts, elevation of canals, hand-drawn maps, maps, and maps. Finding specific items may mean starting from the British Library catalogue and then running a search for a title on Flickr.

The American Philosophical Society transcribed three ledgers from Benjamin and Deborah Franklin’s Philadelphia print shop in Philadelphia in the 1730s and ’40s. Alongside images of those financial records, researchers can now find the data in spreadsheets totaling over 15,000 rows, ready to download and study. The transcribers also handled the task of linking people entered into the books with different spellings of their names. These transcriptions expand an earlier project on Franklin’s post office records. Learn more here.

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Princeton University and the Center for Digital Editing at the University of Virginia announced the publication of the Jefferson Weather & Climate Records. For nearly fifty years, starting when he was in the exotic city of Philadelphia at the Continental Congress, Jefferson recorded observations about the weather. These included temperature and general conditions, sometimes barometric pressure, moisture, wind direction and force, and precipitation. Occasionally he mentioned the appearance of particular birds or the first harvest of peas. Visitors to the website can view images of Jefferson’s meteorological manuscripts, drawn from the collections of five different repositories, alongside the transcriptions.

Finally, if you’re frustrated that the Leventhal Center’s handsome Atlascope site overlaying maps of Boston goes back only to 1868, check out Bill Warner’s Mapjunction. Its images go back to 1769, plus more recent renderings of the town as far back at 1630. Of course, some of those have to be stretched a bit as cartography has become more exact. Atlascope works like Superman’s X-ray vision while MapJunction has a nifty slider interface.

Launching The Road to Concord, 2 June

I received two excellent packages from Westholme Publishing in the past week, and this photo shows me preparing a fine cup of Yorkshire Gold Tea to celebrate.

Yes, The Road to Concord is a real book now. I understand Amazon is shipping early orders, and the University of Chicago Press is supplying retailers. I’ve even started an Amazon author page.

The Massachusetts Historical Society has graciously offered to host the book launch. That’s a fitting place to share The Road to Concord since of the crucial documents behind it are in M.H.S. collections, and I first shared its thesis at the M.H.S.’s early American seminar series.

That launch will take place on Thursday, 2 June, starting with a reception at 5:30 P.M. followed by a talk and ceremony scheduled for 6:00 to 7:00. Here’s the event description, just added to the M.H.S. calendar:

In September 1774 Boston became the center of an “arms race” between Massachusetts’s royal government and emboldened Patriots, each side trying to secure as much artillery as they could for the coming conflict. Townsmen even stole four small cannon out of militia armories under redcoat guard. As Patriots smuggled their new ordnance into the countryside, Gen. Thomas Gage used scouts and informants to track down those weapons, finally locating them on James Barrett’s farm in Concord in April 1775. This book reveals a new dimension to the start of America’s War for Independence. MHS Fellow J. L. Bell, proprietor of Boston1775.net, will share highlights from The Road to Concord and describe how the society’s collections provided vital clues to this untold history.

As a special treat, the U.S. Postal Service will join us for the Massachusetts unveiling of a new stamp commemorating the 250th anniversary of the end of the Stamp Act crisis, the first act of the American Revolution.

I’ve even managed to come up with a way to tie the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-66 to the “arms race” and four stolen cannon of 1774-75. It helps that pre-Revolutionary Boston was really a small town where nearly everyone was connected in some way to everyone else.

The event will be free; the M.H.S. asks people to register in advance. Copies of The Road to Concord will be on sale, and I’ll of course be happy to sign them and thank you for your interest and support.

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.

An Anti-Stamp Stamp

In the second quarter of 2016, the U.S. Postal Service will issue this stamp commemorating the repeal of the Stamp Act. Which makes this a stamp celebrating the end of another stamp.

Linn’s Stamp News & Insights reports, “The stamps will be issued in a pane of 10 with the image of a one-penny revenue stamp proof print.”

Linn’s also states that this issue is connected with the World Stamp Show in New York next spring. That might mean this stamp gets limited circulation to philatelists and no big debut in Boston. But we can hope for some sort of ceremony here because it appears to depict activists nailing the big news to Liberty Tree.

Earlier in 2016, no doubt in February, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp commemorating the Rev. Richard Allen (1760-1831), founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was enslaved in Delaware when the Revolutionary War began. In 1777 he became a Methodist, as did his owner, and that opened the door for him to purchase his freedom six years later.

Remembering Mary Katherine Goddard the Right Way

Earlier this month the Baltimore Sun reported on the installation of a historical plaque in a downtown Rite-Aid pharmacy.

That drugstore is on the probable site of the Goddard print shop in 1777. On 18 January of that year, Mary Katherine Goddard issued a broadside reprinting the Declaration of Independence with the names of all the Continental Congress delegates who had signed the document so far.

The Sun article has such headlines as “How a Baltimore woman defied the Redcoats” and “See how Mary Katherine Goddard helped win the Revolutionary War.”

It quotes Andrew Carroll, author of Here Is Where and promoter of this plaque, saying that her printing “was a total act of defiance. She was saying, ‘I’m stepping forward and I’m putting my life at risk in the expectation that other people will do the same. There's no turning back now.’”

Printing the Declaration, the article says, “put her life at risk.” An official at the Maryland Historical Society states of Goddard, “If the war had ended differently, the signers would have been convicted and hanged for treason, and she probably would have been hanged as well.”

For the record we should note that:

• There were no redcoats in Baltimore to defy. The British army was no closer than Princeton, New Jersey, that month, and it never attacked or occupied Baltimore.
• The British authorities had just held New Jersey signer Richard Stockton in custody and did not try or hang him.
• There’s no example of the Crown executing an American printer for supporting independence or printing the Declaration. In fact, many British printers reprinted that text because it was significant news.  
• While making the Declaration look nice for the Congress no doubt suggested support for its cause, Goddard’s status as a woman would have given her more insulation from political accusations—not that she was ever in British custody to be so accused.

Goddard’s work as both printer and postmaster was undoubtedly significant and deserves to be remembered. But the rhetoric around the installation of this plaque seems unduly sensational.

Filling in the Hole in West’s Painting

Yesterday I showed an image of Benjamin West’s painting of the American diplomats who went to Paris to negotiate the end of the War for Independence.

As shown above, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay signed the treaty of peace with Great Britain. West also pictured Henry Laurens and William Temple Franklin, two other Americans involved in the negotiation. But he couldn’t get David Hartley to represent the British side he had signed for, so West abandoned the painting.

In the last few decades, at least two New England artists stepped in to fill that hole.

In 1983 the U.S. Postal Service commissioned a painting for a stamp commemorating then bicentennial of the treaty signing. David Blossom of Weston, Connecticut, created the image above, showing the treaty signers only—and Hartley from the rear. Esther Porter adapted the image for the stamp. Blossom’s original painting now belongs to Winterthur.

In the last decade, David R. Wagner of Scotland, Connecticut, undertook a series of paintings about events along the Rochambeau Revolutionary Route. To that he added an image of the Treaty of Paris, based on West’s original, but with Hartley inserted, reportedly based on other portraits.

Wagner’s painting was shown at the Carroll Museum in Baltimore and at Yorktown in 2008. Judging by the artist’s website, it is now available for purchase.

“I have therefore been backward in Writing”

As I described yesterday, in late 1775 David Hartley, an opposition Member of Parliament, sent two letters to Benjamin Franklin proposing an unlikely way to reconcile Britain’s central government and the rebellious North American colonies. The Crown would pull back its tough laws on Massachusetts and the colonies would guarantee all slaves the right to trial by jury.

In The House of Commons: 1754-1790, Lewis Bernstein Namier and John Brooke called Hartley’s proposal “a tribute both to his benevolence and naïvety”:

It never occurred to Hartley that even if the British Parliament could be induced to pass such an Act, it would merely be regarded in America as one more example of British tyranny.

Franklin must have been savvy enough to know that. So how did he respond?

He didn’t. The next surviving letter from Franklin to Hartley was sent from Passy, France, in 1777, over a year later. It began:

I received duly your Letter of May 2nd. 77. including a Copy of one you had sent me the Year before, which never came to hand, and which it seems has been the Case with some I wrote to you from America.

This is the equivalent of “Your email never arrived, something must have gone wrong with my emails, let’s start over.” Which, given the wartime conditions, was quite plausible.

But then Franklin protested a little more:

Filled tho’ our Letters have always been, with Sentiments of Good Will to both Countries, and earnest Desires of preventing their Ruin, and promoting their mutual Felicity, I have been apprehensive that if it were known a Correspondence subsisted between us, it might be attended with Inconvenience to you. I have therefore been backward in Writing, not caring to trust the Post, and not well knowing, who else to trust with my Letters. But being now assured of a safe Conveyance, I venture to write to you, especially as I think the Subject such a one as you may receive a Letter upon without Censure.

Which at least opens the door to another explanation: Franklin found Hartley’s letters so impolitic and impractical that he just didn’t make a priority of responding.

Either way, Franklin started right up where his last extant letter had left off, complaining about how badly the Crown was treating the colonies:

She has given us by her numberless Barbarities, in the Prosecution of the War, and in the Treatment of Prisoners, (by her Malice in bribing Slaves, to murder their Masters, and Savages to Massacre the Families of Farmers, with her Baseness in rewarding the unfaithfulness of Servants, and debauching the Virtue of honest Seamen, entrusted with our Property,) so deep an Impression of her Depravity, that we never again can trust her in the Management of our Affairs, and Interests.

Once again, even though Hartley had advocated more rights for enslaved people and eventual abolition, all Franklin had to say about slaves was that the British army was encouraging them to revolt. His personal opposition to slavery was growing, but at this point he was writing as a diplomatic representative of the U.S. of A.

In fact, by the time the two men resumed their correspondence, Hartley was advocating that Parliament ban the trans-Atlantic slave trade. He was the first British abolitionist to propose such a law. It took another generation for that idea to take hold.

TOMORROW: Hartley and Franklin meet again.

“Red Horse Tavern” Reenactment in Sudbury, 1 Nov.

On Saturday, 1 November, Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury will host the annual “Battle of the Red Horse Tavern” reenactment. This event isn’t designed to recreate any specific fight in the Revolutionary War. Rather, it offers a chance to explore a typical skirmish scenario.

The host organization, the Sudbury Company of Militia and Minute, offers a program for this year’s event:

Start the day by listening to colonial music, talking with re-enactors, visiting sutlers, observing cannon firing demonstrations and more. Then watch as the Colonial and British armies battle for control of the Red Horse Tavern.

Eighteenth-century taverns were important in the Colonies as a place to hear the news and other current events, engage in commerce, conduct militia drills and provide respite for weary travelers. The Red Horse Tavern sitting along the Boston Post Road, the major east-west route to and from Boston and New York, was crucial in that anyone or anything travelling into or out of Boston to/from the west would have to pass by its door. Whichever side controlled the Tavern could control the flow of supplies, troops and information.

The Redcoats are determined to wrest control, no matter the cost, while the Colonists will do all they can to stop them and send them back to Boston.

Who will control the tavern? Come and find out.

11:45 A.M.-12:45 P.M.: Cannon demonstration, fyfe & drum music, 18th century fashion show, sutlers, mix-n-mingle with the re-enactors

1:00 P.M.: Formation & inspection of troops

1:15 P.M.: Battle of the Red Horse Tavern – near grist mill

2:30 P.M.: Battle of the Red Horse Tavern II – south field

Of course, in real life, rural Massachusetts wasn’t contested territory after 19 Apr 1775. The only British army to traverse that countryside was the Convention Army of P.O.W.’s after Gen. John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga. But there were plenty of skirmishes over taverns, crossroads, and other key points elsewhere in the young U.S. of A.

Gov. Thomas Gage’s Very Bad Month

Yesterday I broke the news that I’ll be speaking about “The Near-Total Breakdown of Royal Rule in Massachusetts, September 1774” at Worcester’s celebration this Sunday of pre-Revolutionary events in that town.

How bad was that breakdown? At the start of the month, Gen. Thomas Gage had just returned to Boston from Salem, where the government in London had told him to summon the Massachusetts General Court, one of the measures to punish Boston for the Tea Party.

While Gage was there, both the Massachusetts legislature and the local town meeting had defied him. But on 1 September his soldiers took control of the provincial gunpowder and two cannon assigned to the Middlesex County militia. Gage was feeling confident enough that day to issue a call for new legislative elections.

And then things went to hell. By 25 September, Gage was sending this alarm to the Secretary of War, the Viscount Barrington:

I write to your Lordship by a private Ship fearing the Post to New York which must convey my Letters from hence for the Packet not quite safe, tho’ it has not yet been stopped; but People have been so questioned, and impeded on the Road, there is no knowing how soon the Post may be examined, for there seems no Respect for any Thing.

Affairs here are worse that even in the Time of the Stamp-Act, I don’t mean in Boston, for throughout the Country. The New England Provinces, except part of New Hampshire, are I may say in Arms, and the Question is now not whether you shall quell Disturbances in Boston, but whether those Provinces shall be conquered, and I find it is the General Resolution of all the Continent to support the Massachusett’s Bay in their Opposition to the late Acts.

From Appearances no People are more determined for a Civil War, the whole Country from hence to New York armed, training and providing Military Stores. 

At that point, it was clear, Gage could exercise royal authority, including enforcing Parliament’s new Coercive Acts, no farther west than the gates of Boston.

“It would give him the Appearance of having my Confidence”

When John Adams wrote those cranky letters from Philadelphia that I quoted yesterday, he had someone looking over his shoulder: a young lawyer named Benjamin Hichborn (1746-1817).

Hichborn was a cousin of Paul Revere, but he came from a branch of the family that was already upwardly mobile. He had attended Harvard, graduating in 1768, and then gone to work as a clerk for the Boston lawyer Samuel Fitch.

Fitch was a Loyalist. This should not have been a surprise to Hichborn since Fitch was already accepting royal appointments in the Vice Admiralty courts in 1768. Then he signed the complimentary farewell address to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson in 1774 and stayed in Boston during the siege.

Fitch’s actions made Hichborn’s political allegiance suspect. Or at least he said so. It might have helped if he’d been politically active before the war, like a couple of his older relatives, but I don’t see his name anywhere prominent. So Hichborn went to Philadelphia to prove his dedication to liberty.

As Adams remembered the situation decades later:

A young Gentleman from Boston, Mr. Hitchbourne, whom I had known as a Clerk in Mr. Fitch’s office, but with whom I had no Particular connection or Acquaintance, had been for some days soliciting me, to give him Letters to my Friends in the Massachusetts. I was so much engaged in the Business of Congress in the day time and in consultations with the Members on Evenings and Mornings that I could not find time to write a Line.

He came to me at last and said he was immediately to sett off, on his Journey home, and begged I would give him some Letters. I told him I had not been able to write any. He prayed I would write if it were only a Line to my Family, for he said, as he had served his Clerkship with Mr. Fitch he was suspected and represented as a Tory, and this Reputation would be his ruin, if it could not [be] corrected, for nobody would employ him at the Bar. If I would only give him, the slightest Letters to any of my Friends, it would give him the Appearance of having my Confidence, and would assist him in acquiring what he truly deserved the Character of a Whigg.

To get rid of his importunity, I took my Penn, and wrote a very few Lines to my Wife and about an equal Number to General James Warren.

Actually, Adams also included Hichborn on a short list of young Massachusetts men he hoped Warren could find appointments for.

One might think that Adams, facing a young man whom he barely knew and whose political loyalty was so debatable, would send him off with some innocuous correspondence. Adams had just written to his wife and his friend Warren, so he didn’t really have to say more to them. But maybe that was the trouble—trying to think of stuff he hadn’t already written.

In any event, in his “very few Lines” for Hichborn to carry, Adams managed to say impolitic things about John Dickinson, Charles Lee, and most of his colleagues in the Continental Congress, and also to advocate for radical measures that he and his Massachusetts colleagues were still publicly disavowing.

Adams wasn’t the only delegate to entrust Hichborn with letters. Benjamin Harrison (shown above in a miniature owned by the Virginia Historical Society) also gave him a letter to carry to Massachusetts, in his case to his fellow Virginian Gen. George Washington.

TOMORROW: And how did Hichborn carry out that task?

John Adams and “the Oddity of a great Man”

Abigail Adams wasn’t the only person reporting to her husband John about public reaction in Massachusetts to the arrival of Gen. George Washington and Gen. Charles Lee in early July 1775.

Legislative leader James Warren was another Adams confidant. On 7 July he wrote:

General Lee I have seen but a Minute. He appears to me a Genius in his way. He had the Marks about him of haveing been in the Trenches. I heartily rejoice at the Appointment of these two Generals, and I dare say it will give you pleasure to hear that every Body seems to be satisfied with it. I have not heard a single word Uttered against it. This is more than I Expected with regard to the second, since their Arrival everything goes well in the Army.

Lee’s appointment had been more controversial in Philadelphia than Washington’s. Though he had become well known as a pamphleteer for the American colonial cause and as a military expert, he was still widely considered an Englishman and therefore a curious choice to be third-in-command of the Continental Army. And Lee’s eccentric personal style didn’t help.

On 24 July, Adams sat down to write back to Warren. He had written just the previous day, but a young man was pressing him to write some more. So he wrote a bunch more, including this about Gen. Lee:

You observe in your Letter the Oddity of a great Man—He is a queer Creature—But you must love his Dogs if you love him, and forgive a Thousand Whims for the Sake of the Soldier and the Scholar.

Warren hadn’t actually said much about Lee’s “Oddity,” but it’s possible that by then Adams had received Abigail’s letter of the 16th and had her comments about his lack of outward “Elegance” on his mind. (According to the editors of the Adams Papers, William Tudor’s 19 July letter from Cambridge had reached Adams four days later, so it was possible for mail to move that quickly.)

In any event, Adams wrote about Lee with admiration but what some might consider an impolite frankness. But that’s no surprise since he’d started his message to Warren:

In Confidence,—I am determined to write freely to you this Time.—A certain great Fortune and piddling Genius whose Fame has been trumpeted so loudly, has given a silly Cast to our whole Doings…

That comment was about John Dickinson, a wealthy and well regarded Pennsylvania delegate resisting more radical measures.

That same day, Adams also sent a reply to Abigail, which managed to remain polite all the way until the postscript:

I wish I had given you a compleat History from the Beginning to the End of the Journey, of the Behaviour of my Compatriots.—No Mortal Tale could equal it.—I will tell you in Future, but you shall keep it secret.—The Fidgets, the Whims, the Caprice, the Vanity, the Superstition, the Irritability of some of us, is enough to—

He didn’t need to finish that sentence for her.

And then John Adams gave those two letters to Benjamin Hichborn, a young lawyer, to carry back home to Massachusetts.

TOMORROW: And how did that go?