A Province Aflame
A Day That Will Live in Infamy
The Boston Massacre served as a medicinal cathartic against the unbridled passions of radical Bostonians; as historian Page Smith writes, ‘In the eighteenth century, physicians prescribed bloodletting for a variety of ailments, especially for “fevers.” Someone fond of metaphor might have likened the Boston Massacre to a bloodletting (with the patient in this instance the populace of Boston) that reduced, if it did not cure, the revolutionary fever in that town. In another metaphor, it was as though the citizens of the Massachusetts Bay colony had come to the edge of the abyss and drawn back appalled at what they saw, which was the livid face of revolution.’ On New Year’s Day at the turn of 1771, the minister Samuel Cooper wrote to Benjamin Franklin that ‘there seems now to be a pause in politics.’ It was as if the Boston Massacre prompted a shuddering sigh after which many people simply wanted things to get back to normal; revolutionary tirades can be tiring. The same held true in England, where both Parliament and George III’s ministry, sensing the calming affect the Massacre had on the colonies, chose a path of least resistance in regards to colonial affairs: Lord North, heading the king’s ministry, sought to keep his hand from the fire so long as colonial agitations didn’t flare up again. If they did flare up, he intended that Parliament not be the case. Perhaps if things were allowed to drift, a sense of normalcy would return.
Nevertheless, the patriot fervor that had ‘defined’ Boston for the last several years had trickled to a low ebb. Victories had been won, to be sure: Boston’s government, despite being headed by the loyalist and crown-backed Hutchinson, practically lie in the hands of radicals; the Board of Customs had abandoned the town; and the redcoats who had ‘tormented’ the townspeople since 1768 had been relocated to the harbor’s island fortress . Victory can often have a negative affect on popular causes: once the battle is won, what then? In many peoples’ minds, their voices had been heard, Parliament was backing off, so why keep stirring the pot? For others, the events of the Boston Massacre didn’t merely highlight the ‘tyranny’ of the redcoats firing into the crowd but also the volatility of mob violence: if that was what colonial protest led to, they didn’t want it! Samuel Adams, along with many leading patriots, feared that the new state-of-affairs would be the slow and inexorable death-knell of colonial agitation, and Adams couldn’t stomach the thought. In the words of the historian Bruce Lancaster, Samuel Adams became ‘that most pathetic of figures – a fanatic with no vivid, popular issues to embrace.’ His heart dampened as leading patriots began to apparently back away from the ‘American Cause’: his cousin John closed his lawyer’s shop in Boston and retired to Braintree, John Hancock became strangely cold towards Samuel, and John Dickinson – the author of the farmer’s letters – became far more conservative in his radicalism.
Samuel tried to keep the patriot fire lit by visiting shops, ropewalks, warehouses, construction yards, taverns and coffeehouses to keep colonial issues alive and well. In the Boston Gazette he undertook a vicious yet well-oiled back-and-forth with a Tory under the pseudonym Chronus who flagrantly supported Parliament’s ‘irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority.’ Adams, writing as Candidus, summoned to his cause a who’s-who of political thinkers, saturating his editorials with quotes from Montesquieu, Lord Coke, and John Locke; he quoted not only Dickinson’s Pennsylvanian Farmer but also that most sacred of British documents, Magna Carta. The historian Samuel Griffith III encapsulates Adams’ overarching argument: ‘If, as the great Mr. Locke had unequivocally asserted, one of the principal functions of government instituted by men was to protect each in enjoyment of the property he had acquired by his skill and toil, how came it that the British Parliament could arrogate to itself the authority to take money from the Americans?’ Chronus asserted that King and Parliament formed ‘the supreme legislatures of the British dominions,’ to which Adams retorted that the American colonies were a separate dominion, and ‘it is certainly more concordant with the great law of nature and reason, which the most powerful nation may not violate and cannot alter, to suppose that the colonies are separate, independent and free, then to suppose that they must be one with Great Britain and slaves.’ An aghast Chronus couldn’t hide his fury: those who advocated independence from the mother country were little more than ‘pretended patriots,’ ‘intemperate politicians,’ and ‘men of no property’ whose sole ambition was ‘perpetually keeping up the ball of contention’ (in the last accusation, Chronus very well hit his target). Adams’ back-and-forth in the Boston Gazette revealed his desperation: while he had previously hinted at independence without forthrightly advocating it, he began to amp up his rhetoric and write what he really felt. No one could guess at what Candidus was about, and he hoped that such ‘shocking’ proposals would stir peoples’ emotions in a way that even the Massacre could not.
[When it was] found that taxation could not be supported by reason and argument, it seemed necessary that one act of oppression should be enforced by another, and therefore, contrary to our just rights as possessing, or at least having a just title to possess, all the liberties and immunities of British subjects, a standing army was established among us in time of peace; and evidently for the purpose of effecting that, which it was one principal design of the founders of the constitution to prevent (when they declared a standing army in a time of peace to be against law), namely, for the enforcement of obedience to acts which, upon fair examination, appeared to be unjust and unconstitutional… [The redcoats were] ever to be dreaded as the ready engines of tyranny and oppression… And this will be more especially the case when the troops are informed that the intention of their being stationed in any city is to overawe the inhabitants. That this was the avowed design of stationing an armed force in this town is sufficiently known; and we, my fellow citizens, have seen, we have felt the tragic effects! The fatal fifth of March, 1770, can never be forgotten. The horrors of that dreadful night are but too deeply impressed on our hearts. Language is too feeble to point the emotion of our souls, when our streets were stained with the blood of our brethren – when our ears were wounded by the groans of the dying, and our eyes were tormented with the sight of the mangled bodies of the dead.
Warren didn’t lay the noose of blame on the soldiers, for their guilt had already been decided by the courts. He pointed beyond the musket-wielding troops to those who had dispatched them. ‘The infatuation which hath seemed, for a number of years, to prevail in the British councils, with regard to us, is truly astonishing! What can be purposed by the repeated attacks made upon our freedom, I really cannot surmise; even leaving justice and humanity out of the question. I do not know one single advantage which can arise to the British nation from our being enslaved.’ Warren hoped that this truth would in time penetrate the consciousness of ‘a capricious ministry.’ He assured his audience that Parliament would ‘open their eyes to their true interest. They nourish in their breasts a noble love of liberty… They are also sensible that Britain is so deeply interested in the prosperity of the colonies that one must eventually feel every wound given to their freedom… I doubt not but that they will, ere long, exert themselves effectually, to redress your grievances.’ Warren’s optimism would soon be dashed upon the rocks.
Threats to colonial liberty didn't come only from outside the colonies, for in the southern British provinces of North and South Carolina, the very liberties espoused as sacred to all colonists were being stomped on by patriotic legislatures. In the late 1760s and early 1770s, two protest groups arose in the Carolinas, one in the northern province and another in the southern, and though they both styled themselves ‘Regulators,’ they had different motivations, albeit sharing a common thread: both felt their liberties were being abused by those who hoarded power.
In the 1760s migrating colonists from eastern cities inundated the western swathes of the Carolinas. While urban seaports dominated Carolina’s coastline, aristocratic plantation-owners carved their own fiefdoms inland. While many of these migrants were considered ‘middle-class’ – being merchants, lawyers, etc. – far more were the poor, the downtrodden, and the despised. While ‘middle-class’ and ‘upper-class’ migrants settled inland from the coast, the ‘cast-offs’ – runaway slaves, despised Scotch-Irish immigrants, and common criminals – pushed farther west into the Carolina backcountry. There they built up enclaves not unlike the ‘drinking towns’ of the piratical Caribbean, and their manner of living in no way resembled a ‘respectable’ life. The backcountry, however, wasn’t unpopulated: for decades settlers had pushed deeper into the frontier to farm land and raise families, and they soon became targets for these less-than-polite newcomers. Many of the newcomers – illiterate, unlearned, and immoral – embraced a way of life that appalled family homesteads, and many migrating women adopted characteristics of the Native Americans, such as treating their hair with bear oil and tying it behind their heads in a knot, and embraced a ‘frontier’ lifestyle of drinking, partying, and whoring. These ‘loose’ women made a show of their sexuality, exposing themselves in public and delighting at the shock on peoples’ faces. The greatest affront, however, wasn’t lewdness but brutality: because the backcountry lacked law enforcement of any kind, brigands became a dangerous staple to frontier Carolina life. Robbers used fire-heated irons to burn the flesh of farmers until they could provide money, and it wasn’t uncommon for gangs of bandits to break into a farmer’s house, tie him up, and rape his wife and children while forcing him to watch.
These ‘gang-bangs’ horrified the decent backcountry folk, and in 1767 they voiced their outrage to the South Carolina courts along the east coast – but those courts, populated as it were by the ‘plantation gentry’ and their ilk, who lived for feasting and dancing and hunting, cared little for anything that didn’t impact them personally. The affairs of their backcountry brethren meant less to them than the affairs of their ‘sub-human’ slaves. They didn’t care that backcountry settlers faced roving bands of rapists and robbers; what did it matter to them if ‘infernal gangs of villains’ looted and burned houses, stole livestock, and ‘perpetrated such shocking outrages throughout the back settlements, as is past description’? The spurned backcountry settlers came to see themselves as being forced into ‘abject slavery’ to the aristocratic courts. Their complaints against the courts – a lack of taxation without representation and disregard for the needs of their constituents, for example – echoed the very grievances patriots lodged against Great Britain. If the South Carolina government wouldn’t help them, and since they had no sheriffs or courts of their own, they would have to help themselves; it was to this end that they formed committees of vigilante ‘Regulators’ tasked with tracking down brigands, capturing and trying them, and executing punishment (usually flogging, forced labor, or exile, but sometimes – in extreme cases of barbarity – hanging).
These ‘Regulators’ prowled the backcountry, fighting against the criminal elements of the newly-arrived migrants, and when the American Revolution came, they couldn’t help but see it less as a ‘fight for freedom’ as an effort for the South Carolina aristocracy to protect their narrow interests against Parliamentary encroachment. It was the height of irony that the very same principles the aristocracy ignored in regards to their own backcountry citizens became the ‘touch-points’ of a conflagration that prompted them to take up arms for their own defense. They may not have been willing to defend the liberties of their constituents, but they’d be damned if they didn’t protect those liberties for themselves! It’s no surprise, then, that when the redcoats eventually reached South Carolina in the late 1770s, the backcountry ‘Regulators’ became militant Tories: they’d picked up swords and muskets against the bandits, and with the Revolution they carried their fire against the aristocrats who had trampled their rights in the first place.
In North Carolina, a different breed of ‘Regulator’ arose. These regulators didn’t come from the backcountry but from the ‘middle country’ between the sea and the frontier. Aristocratic plantation-owners, who had dominated this region of North Carolina, had fallen on hard times due to recurring droughts – always a bane of existence for those who make their living off agriculture – and the influx of merchants worsened their situation. If a planter’s crop didn’t grow, not only did the planter miss out on trading his goods, but he also needed to find ways to feed his family; this put planters in ever-deepening debt to newly-arrived merchants. If a planter couldn’t pay his debt, the merchants took him to court, and they had the money not only to afford good lawyers but also to solicit bribes when needed. Between 1755 and 1765, debt cases in the courts increased sixteen-fold. The court systems were rife with corruption: justice, it seemed, cost money, and only those with thick billfolds could afford it. Enraged North Carolinians banded together against the local officials who ‘continually squeezed and oppressed poor families’ through taxation and extortion; they worked to derail ‘abuses of power’ by refusing to pay taxes until their complaints were addressed. These ‘Regulators’ swelled in numbers and stood against local law enforcement, disrupting courts and freeing their jailed leaders. The popularity of the North Carolina Regulators can’t be overstated: at its peak, eighty percent of ‘middle country’ white men supported the Regulation.
In 1771 they freed one of their leaders from a jail at New Bern, North Carolina, where the iron-faced Governor Tryon was building a winter palace for himself and future crown governors. The Regulators determined to free their jailed leader and torch the town, but en route they were met by Tryon’s militia. The Regulators, numbering between two and six thousand strong, outgunned Tryon’s thousand-man militia, and they hoped their show of force would oblige Tryon’s outnumbered men to retreat. The grim Tryon, however, wouldn’t be undone: he told their leaders that by presenting arms, they were in open rebellion, and if they didn’t show the good sense to disperse, they’d pay for it. The Regulator leaders called his bluff, and on 16 May 1771 Tryon drove his small force towards the Regulators. In the opening shots, Tryon himself shot one of their leaders dead, and the Regulator resistance crumbled. The ‘Battle’ of Alamance (which was really a skirmish followed by a rout) left twenty-five dead and one hundred sixty wounded, with equal casualties on both sides. The captured Regulators were pardoned if they swore an oath of allegiance to the crown, but six leading Regulators were hanged. The historian Ray Raphael notes, ‘In this trial run at Revolution – featuring an oppressive government accused by ordinary citizens of unfair taxation and abuses of power – the rebels lost.’ Surviving Regulators bunkered down and waited for another window of opportunity to strike at their oppressors; this chance eventually came when war broke out between England the rebellious thirteen colonies. Because the Regulators’ principal enemies weren’t England but corrupt local courts and their officials, when war came to the Carolinas they, like their southern compatriots, were branded ‘loyalists’ because they set their teeth against enemies who had, in their own turn, rebelled against the crown.
In August 1772 the Earl of Hillsborough, Secretary of State for the American colonies, relinquished his position to the up-and-coming Earl of Dartmouth. Though the colonists had loathed Lord Hillsborough, they didn’t dance in joy for Dartmouth, for he’d made it clear that he believed Parliament was sovereign over colonial legislatures. Though he’d voted to repeal the Stamp Act (and in doing so won favor from many colonists, along with a pair of wooden ducks from John Randolph, Virginia’s attorney general), he’d wholeheartedly supported the Declaratory Act. He’d left politics in 1766 in the wake of the Rockingham ministry’s fall, focusing for a time on philanthropic support for Methodists and promoting evangelicalism in England. He stood side-by-side with John Newton, the slave trader who converted to Anglicanism, and assisted him in becoming a minister (John Newton’s fame continues today with his classic gospel hymn ‘Amazing Grace’). Though he resisted returning to politics, he eventually succumbed to Lord North’s entreaties and accepted the post as Secretary of State for the American colonies. Dartmouth’s first order of business was dealing with a prickly situation out of Rhode Island: months earlier, in June, patriot raiders committed a blatant act of war by seizing and burning a Royal Navy schooner.
Despite the collapse of nonimportation, smuggling continued throughout the colonies as merchants evaded the Navigation Acts. The Delaware River became an epicenter of smuggling (especially of Dutch tea), and as crown agents sought to curb smugglers, flare-ups inevitably occurred. In autumn 1770, colonial sailors beat a New Jersey collections agent when he attempted to investigate a ship off-loading its cargo into small boats in Delaware Bay (his son, who worked in the custom house, received a coat of tar and feathers for his troubles). The next year a customs schooner seized a colonial ship accused of smuggling; a crowd gathered to protest, and the schooner was boarded and overwhelmed by a horde of Philadelphian merchants. The crowd beat the captain and crew and locked them in the hold; by the time they were released, their ‘prize’ off the captured vessel had been whisked away, leaving them empty-handed. These Delaware River exploits found their mirror in Rhode Island, where merchants made a fortune off smuggling. Narragansett Bay, which cut Rhode Island in half, offered plenty of smuggling opportunities. When news reached England that two royal schooners had been ‘lost’ in Narragansett Bay, the new First Lord of the Admiralty, John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, ordered the H.M.S. Gaspee to the Bay to put an end to smuggling and to enforce the Navigation Acts. Sandwich’s choice for skipper, Lieutenant William Dudingston, was cold and calculating: Dudingston shared Sandwich’s heavy-handed approach to ‘solving’ the problem of colonial smuggling, and he was eager not only to do his job (which is commendable) but also to teach the colonists a lesson (which, one could argue, was taking his commission a bit too far).
Dudingston went straight to work: upon arrival in Rhode Island waters, he seized numerous American vessels. His stalwart response to smuggling enraged the local sheriff, who threatened to have him arrested. Dudingston complained of the sheriff in a letter to Admiral Montagu in Boston Harbor , and Montagu responded by writing a hotly-worded letter to Rhode Island’s Governor Wanton in which he upheld Dudingston’s crown-appointed authority to ‘protect your province from pirates… to give trade all the assistance he can… to protect the revenue officer and to prevent (if possible) the illicit trade that is carrying on at Rhode Island.’ Montagu echoed a rumor about shadowy Rhode Islanders hatching an outfit to equip ‘an armed vessel to rescue any vessel the king’s schooner may take carrying on an illicit trade,’ and he warned that such scoundrels ought to be cautious, ‘for sure as they attempt [to rescue smugglers] and any of them are taken, I will hang them as pirates.’ Wanton replied with a letter of his own, insisting that the rumors of local citizens planning on rescuing smugglers was ‘without any foundation, and a scandalous imposition… As to your advice, not to send the sheriff on board any of your squadron, please to know that I will send the sheriff of this colony at any time, and to any place, within the body of it, as I see fit.’ Wanton added that since the haughty Dudingston hadn’t clarified his authority to the governor, he couldn’t tell ‘whether he has come to protect us from pirates, or was a pirate himself.’ He shot back at Montagu, ‘I do not receive instructions for the administration of my government from the king’s admiral stationed in America.’
Dudingston, basking in the full backing of Admiral Montagu, strove with tireless zeal to fulfill his commission. For months in the spring of 1772, he preyed upon the colonists, seizing both legitimate and illegitimate cargoes and keeping the prizes for himself and his crew. Rumors flared that he’d express delight if Newport burned, and that ‘he would be damned’ if his crew would help put out any such conflagration. The colonists came to hate him, decrying him as ‘haughty, insolent, and intolerant, personally ill-treating every master and merchant of the vessels he boarded, stealing sheep, hogs, poultry, etc. from the farmers round the Bay, and cutting down their fruit and other trees for firewood; in a word, his behavior was so piratical and provoking that Englishmen could not patiently bear it.’ His brutal and senseless enforcement of the Navigation Acts was ‘more imperious and haughty than the Grand Turk himself.’ As if the blatant theft and disregard for law wasn’t enough, there remained the bitterest pill to swallow: Dudingston’s heavy-handed methods were indeed effective, and smuggling in Narragansett Bay plummeted.
Smuggler’s fortunes had waned, but Dudingston’s streak was soon to come to an end. That end came on the pitch-black night of 9 June when Dudingston’s eight-gun schooner, while pursuing an American merchant vessel south of Providence, Rhode Island, ran aground on a sandbar. The H.M.S. Gaspee was thoroughly wedged, and it wouldn’t be able to wiggle free until the next high tide lifted its hull. Dudingston could only curse as his prey disappeared into the inky blackness, and knowing that nothing more could be done, he ordered a sentry to keep a wary eye and retired belowdecks to his cabin. As Dudingston and most of the crew turned in for the night, the escaped colonial vessel reached shore and spread the delightful news that the Gaspee had gotten itself stuck. As the news spread, a patriot beat a drum and announced that any ‘interested citizens’ were to meet at the home of James Sabin. At Sabin’s lodgings, weapons were collected, and a band of raiders – led by a patriot named Abraham Whipple – crowded into eight long-boats and rowed out into the bay. Darkness shadowed the flotilla, and it wasn’t until the boats were in hailing distance of the Gaspee that the lone sentry saw their hulls materialize in the shadows. He shouted an alarm, and Dudingston rushed on-deck from his cabin to find his schooner circled by a fleet of rowboats.
‘Who comes there?’ he shouted over the placid waters.
The response came from Abraham Whipple: ‘I am the sheriff of the County of Kent, God damn you! I have a warrant to apprehend you, God damn you! So surrender, God damn you!’
‘I will admit no sheriff at this hour of the night!’ Dudingston roared back.
As if Dudingston’s refusal were the cue, a blood-curdling shout went up from the boats, and they began rowing full-speed for the schooner, approaching from the bow to avoid the Gaspee’s cannon. Dudingston shouted for his crew to repel boarders with small-arms fire, but his men had just tumbled out of their berths and were half-clothed and sleep-muddled. Several made it onto the deck, but by then the long-boats were abreast the schooner and patriots were clambering up the sides. The Gaspee’s crew put up a half-hearted resistance, but Dudingston fought with savage fury. He rushed one of the boarders, preparing to strike a blow with his sword, but another boarder intercepted him and smashed his arm with a club. A gun went off – whether from the patriots or the crew, no one could tell – and a round tore into Dudingston’s groin. The fury fled from Dudingston’s defense, and the lieutenant collapsed to the deck, screaming that he was mortally wounded. He struggled to his feet but fell again. Blood stained his pants and began to puddle on the deck. His men, hands raised and arms discarded, didn’t dare press the attack.
A boarder stood over the lieutenant. ‘Damn it, you’re wounded! And if you are, one of your own people done it!’
Another boarder taunted, ‘Beg for your life, you dog!’
A third demanded that Dudingston surrender the schooner.
Dudingston, fighting off shock and sensible to his situation, insisted that he’d surrender the Gaspee only if none of his crew were harmed. The boarders agreed, and Dudingston kept his word.
News of the ‘Gaspee Affair’ spread throughout the colonies, and even leading patriots couldn’t hold back their shock. Moderate colonists, not to mention ultra-loyalists, echoed the rage voiced by royal officials. Demonstrations, protests, embargoes, and even mob violence was one thing, but this was quite another. To seize and burn a ship of the Royal Navy was tantamount to a declaration of war. The ‘raiders’ were hotly condemned by crown officials, Tories, and moderate colonists, but calling them ‘raiders’ or ‘brigands’ was stretching the truth. Though Abraham Whipple and his boarders were decried as a ‘naval mob,’ the reality was altogether different; as Page Smith notes, ‘Although [Abraham] Whipple’s amphibians were described as a “water-borne mob” and their actions as a riot, it would have been much more accurate to call the disciplined men who carried out their raid so swiftly and efficiently, under the command of an experienced former officer, a guerrilla navy.’ When reports of the Gaspee’s boarding and burning reached England, Dartmouth called it a ‘daring act of violence’ and ordered Thomas Gage to immediately dispatch troops to Rhode Island to help ‘in the suppression of any riots or insurrections and for preserving the peace with the colony.’ Dartmouth’s knee-jerk reaction opened his term as Secretary of State for the American colonies on no-nonsense footing, but Gage took his orders as little more than rhetoric: he knew that to obey the ‘letter of the law’ would be to incite the very things Dartmouth wished to avoid, so no troops departed New York, and nor did they need to: no ‘riots or insurrections’ scarred Rhode Island.
Dartmouth moved to discipline those involved in the incident, and he championed the establishment of a royal commission to investigate the events. The commission was to determine which Rhode Islanders would be charged, with evidence, for trial in England. The commission was to be comprised of the chiefs of the supreme courts of Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey; the judge of Boston’s vice-admiralty court; and Governor Joseph Wanton of Rhode Island. The commission was to meet in Newport and begin collecting evidence. Admiral Montagu was to help the commissioners in finding and arresting the raiders to bring them to trial. To help collect evidence, the commission could reward five hundred pounds to anyone giving information that would lead to the arrest of the perpetrators (unsurprisingly, no informers came forward, for they didn’t wish to suffer the wrath of patriot reprisals). The commission failed to gather evidence or collect names for deportation to England for trial, and in January 1773 they declared Rhode Island’s civil officials guiltless.
The most reprehensible part of the whole affair, at least for colonists, wasn’t that the British government convened a commission; this was well and good, and only an inept government would fail to do so. What really rattled the colonists was that those accused with participating in the affair were to be shipped to England for trial. That the British ministry thought this wouldn’t irk the colonists is mind-blowing, for surely they remembered the colonial damnation of the establishment of vice-royalty courts! Nevertheless, England empowered the commission to send the accused to England for trial (along with witnesses and evidence), and if the accused were charged and found guilty, they were to be hanged. This violated the English right of trial by a jury of one’s peers, and when news of the crown’s plans spread throughout the colonies, newspapers spilled ink lambasting the government and bemoaning the corruption of liberties. For the accused to be sent to England for trial was ‘tyrannical, despotic, and indicated the intent of the [British] ministers to deprive the colonists of due process of law and reduce them to abject slavery.’ A colonist placed in such dire straits was in a situation ‘infinitely worse than that of a subject of France, Spain, Portugal or any other of the most despotic powers on earth.’ The commissioners were condemned as ‘a pack of Egyptian tyrants,’ and patriot leaders could read the writing on the wall: if England could ship those accused (or even suspected!) of participating in the Gaspee Affair to England for trial, then what was to stop the British ministry from attempting to try accused (or even suspected!) patriot leaders there, too? It isn’t surprising that not long afterward, in 1773, newspapers began to print articles openly pondering the timing of an American declaration of independence.
Committees of Correspondence
When news of the Gaspee Affair's commission and its authority to send the accused to England reached Williamsburg, Virginia, the House of Burgesses was in session. Patriot members such as Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee interpreted the move as most colonists did, as an attack on the English right of to trial by a jury of one’s peers. It was in Virginia – not, as many history books say,Massachusetts – that the first Committee of Correspondence was established (though Massachusetts would take center-stage in these committees soon enough). The House of Burgesses established its committee to facilitate quick, effective communication among the American colonies. Virginia’s Governor Dunmore reported to Lord Dartmouth that the establishment of the committee showed ‘a little ill humor in the House of Burgesses.’ He ‘thought them so insignificant’ that he ‘took no manner of notice of them.’ Dartmouth, however, was more far-sighted than Dunmore, and he informed King George III that Virginia’s committee of correspondence was ‘of a very extraordinary measure’ and ‘a measure of a most dangerous tendency and effect.’ He couldn’t have been more right, but it would be Massachusetts rather than Virginia that would corroborate Dartmouth’s pessimism.
Far north of Virginia in Boston, Samuel Adams had greeted the Gaspee Affair with relish, and, he soon received, in the words of historian Bruce Lancaster, another ‘glittering propaganda weapon’ to add to his arsenal: in October 1772 news came from across the Atlantic that Massachusetts judges of the Superior Court were now to be paid by the crown and upheld so long as they buckled down and did whatever Parliament instructed – and damn any colonists who sought to impede them! Up to this point, judges had served on the basis of their ‘good conduct,’ but now the basis shifted so that they served at the king’s pleasure – in other words, so long as they obeyed Parliament, they would keep their jobs and get paid straight from the crown’s treasury. If, however, they were ‘unduly influenced’ by the colonists, they’d lose their jobs and pay and undoubtedly be barred from future office. By paying judges from royal treasuries, the British ministry undercut the colonists so that judges wouldn’t feel compelled to empathize with their constituents. Bruce Lancaster captures the essence of this move: ‘The instant colonial officials looked to England for pay and support, they slipped completely out of local control. They would be most careful, from the very nature of things, to follow English instructions, to report what England wanted to hear, leaving the colonists mute.’ While this new state-of-affairs was isolated to Massachusetts, many feared that the colony was to be a ‘guinea pig’ before the policy was extended to other colonies.
That England took these steps isn’t surprising, for she’d been marching in that direction for some time. In previous years the British ministry sought to reign in the Massachusetts government by breaking her reliance upon its constituents: in 1768 the source of Hutchinson’s salary as chief justice was shifted to revenue from the Customs officers, and in 1770 Hutchinson (now as governor) and Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver were to be paid from the duty on tea. Thus when the English government decided in the summer of 1772 that the Superior Court justices would be paid by the crown and not by colonial sources, it was simply extending previously adopted policies.
Samuel Adams, who had been hoping and praying for another crisis to further the American Cause, leapt at the opportunity served to him on a silver platter. Colonial sentiments over the matter were clarified in the beginning of 1773 in a letter written from the Massachusetts House of Representatives (penned, unsurprisingly, by Samuel Adams) to Governor Hutchinson, in which the House vigorously opposed the king’s decision to pay royal salaries to Superior Court justices. The House wrote that ‘no Judge, who has a due regard to justice, or even to his own character, would choose to be placed under an undue bias as they must be under, in the opinion of this House, by accepting of, and becoming dependent for their salaries upon the Crown… When we consider the many attempts that have been made, effectually to render null and void those clauses in our charter, upon which the freedom of our constitution depends, we should be lost to all public feeling, should we not manifest a just resentment. We are more and more convinced, that it had been the design of administration, totally to subvert the constitution, and introduce an arbitrary government into this province; and we cannot wonder that the apprehensions of the people are thoroughly awakened.’
And the peoples’ apprehensions were thoroughly awakened indeed. Upon receiving news of the policy changes, the people of Boston gathered in an informal town meeting and asked for clarification from Governor Hutchinson about the motivations behind the new rules. Hutchinson refused to clarify, so the meeting requested that the legislature be called to session so that the issue could be addressed (by this point, the Massachusetts General Court, previously convened in Boston, had been ‘excommunicated’ to Harvard College because of Boston’s unrest). Hutchinson refused to do so, informing them not-so-politely that convening the legislature was his business, not theirs, and he simply wasn’t going to do it. His decision in effect left the people of Massachusetts with no further options. Samuel Adams decried Hutchinson as a traitor for ‘accepting the King’s bounty’ and proposed that Boston establish a ‘Committee of Correspondence’ to ‘state the rights of the colonists and of this province in particular, as men, as Christians, and as subjects; to communicate and publish the same to the several towns in this province, and the world as the sense of this town, with the infringements and violations thereof that have been, or from time to time may be made – Also [to] request of each town a free communication of their sentiments on this subject.’ Adams’ proposal met unanimous approval, and Boston’s ‘committee of correspondence’ was born (though, as we have noted, it wasn’t the first of its kind; nonetheless the Bostonian committee went beyond that of the House of Burgesses to draft a detailed ‘outline’ of their grievances).
Adams’ proposal didn’t come off the cuff, nor was it inspired by the decisions of the Virginia House of Burgesses. Earlier committees of correspondence had arisen from dissenting New England churchmen who opposed the establishment of an Anglican episcopacy in the American colonies. Jonathan Mayhew, a premier Congregationalist pastor in Boston (as well as a fiery patriot) had spearheaded ecclesiastical resistance in sermons and pamphlets. In 1766 Mayhew suggested to James Otis Jr. that such committees could be ‘reborn’ towards more ‘secular’ causes. He wrote Otis, ‘To a good man all time is holy enough; and none is too holy to do good, or to think upon it. Cultivating a good understanding and hearty friendship between these colonies appears to me so necessary a part of prudence and good policy that no favorable opportunity for that purpose should be omitted.... You have heard of the communion of churches:... while I was thinking of this in my bed, the great use and importance of a communion of colonies appeared to me in a strong light, which led me immediately to set down these hints to transmit to you.’ Mayhew proposed establishing a system of correspondence in which colonies could take concerted action to defend their liberties. Otis carried Mayhew’s idea to the leading Sons of Liberty, and for years it became a matter of discussion between Otis, Samuel Adams, James Warren, Thomas Young, and Dr. Benjamin Church. Adams felt the time was ripe for putting action to plans; in a series of letters to the patriot Elbridge Gerry, he laid out his case: ‘This country must shake off their intolerable burdens at all events. Every day strengthens our oppressors and weakens us. If each town would declare its sense in these matters, I am persuaded our enemies would not have it in their power to divide us.’ He advocated ‘a free communication with each town.’ He was convinced that outlying Massachusetts towns – despite being more conservative and supposedly more resistant to the ‘radicalism’ of metropolitan Whigs – would support Boston, ‘and when once it appears beyond contradiction, that we are united in sentiments, there will be a confidence in each other, and a plan of opposition formed, and executed with spirit.’
The fruits of Mayhew’s suggestion, and the deliberations of the leading Sons of Liberty, came to fruition in late November 1772 with the establishment of Boston’s committee of correspondence. Members were speedily elected, and they got down to business. The committee subdivided into three groups: one put together a list of ‘Rights’ held by the colonists, another listed all the British government’s infractions against those rights, and a third penned ‘A Letter of Correspondence with the other Towns.’ The resulting document, which stitched all of this together, was officially titled The Votes and Proceedings of Boston (but contemporaries knew it as the ‘Boston Pamphlet’). It spared no words determining that Britain’s encroachments on colonial rights – both from Parliament and from a bull-headed king’s ministry – indicated a sinister plot to enslave the colonies. The pamphlet rehearsed colonial grievances – taxation without representation and Parliament’s Declaratory Act took center stage – and reminded Massachusetts citizens of the ‘unlawful force’ used against them by a standing army and the ‘hordes of gluttonous placemen’ determined to do the government’s cruel bidding: ‘Our houses, and even our bedchambers, are exposed to be ransacked, our boxes, trunks and chests broke open, ravaged and plundered, by wretches, whom no prudent man would venture to employ even as menial servants.’ The pamphlet denounced Governor Hutchinson as ‘a ministerial engine’ eager to advance Parliament’s enslavement of the colonies. The pamphlet charged that the crown undertook paying Massachusetts judges from royal funds not merely to free the judges from worrying about what the citizens thought but also to ensure the enslaved couldn’t taste justice against their oppressors. The pamphlet reiterated that Massachusetts citizens were English subjects guaranteed the rights of all British subjects; these rights, which stemmed from Nature and Reason, were ‘absolute rights’ that couldn’t be removed by any government power nor surrendered by the people to any government power. While the Boston Pamphlet didn’t contain anything heretofore unseen, it rehashed colonial grievances and convictions with precision and summarized them in one place: if someone wanted to grasp what was happening in Boston, they didn’t need to gather bits of news from weary travelers in an inn here or a tavern there, nor would they need to rifle through countless newspapers and handbills. If they wanted the ‘true story,’ they could absorb it eloquently and succinctly in a single document. The power of the Boston Pamphlet in galvanizing Massachusetts resistance cannot be overestimated, and it undoubtedly factored into the spreading of committees of correspondence throughout the province.
When Hutchinson heard about Boston’s committee of correspondence, he laughed it off – but he came to see the error of such swift mockery when other committees began leapfrogging across Massachusetts. Though the Boston committee didn’t blatantly ask that outlying communities to form their own committees, it didn’t have to: six hundred copies of the Boston Pamphlet were printed, and by the spring of 1773 they’d electrified colonial resistance even in Massachusetts backwater towns. By April 1773 almost half of Massachusetts’ towns and districts had taken some sort of action in response to Boston’s lead, whether by forming their own committees, passing resolutions affirming the truths of the Boston Pamphlet, or directing representatives to investigate the judges’ salaries. Throughout the winter of 1772 and 1773, Hutchinson sought to derail the committees and render them impotent. In January 1773 Hutchinson spoke before the Massachusetts General Court and condemned Boston’s committee of correspondence and its much-loved pamphlet. He insisted that the people of Massachusetts had no need for such communities, and despite their feelings on the subject of inherent ‘English’ rights, the fact of the matter was that their rights derived not from the fact that they were English but from the charter granted them by the crown. Hutchinson argued that from thefounding of Massachusetts Bay Province, their government had been subordinated to Parliament. Yes, he conceded, they could claim some rights as Englishmen, but not all: they lacked the right to send representatives to Parliament (a right held by ‘proper’ Englishmen not under a chartered government), and though the Massachusetts legislature had a modicum of authority, it hadn’t been granted the authority to pass laws that conflicted with those of Parliament. Massachusetts citizens’ rights were limited by charter, custom, and geography, and up until recently no one had protested these limitations. He declared that those challenging long-held ‘facts’ were in the wrong, and he concluded, ‘I know of no line that can be drawn between the supreme authority of Parliament and the total independence of the colonies.’ In more gatherings of the General Court in February and March, Hutchinson informed the colonists that the ‘late proceedings’ not only displeased the king but were also unwarranted and of a ‘dangerous nature and tendency.’
Hutchinson could see what was afoot: within months, Massachusetts’ political landscape had shifted, and its ripple effect swept the American colonies of eastern North America. Within twelve months, all of the colonies – except for Pennsylvania, where the ultraconservative Joseph Galloway blocked action – had established their own committees of correspondence. In Boston, committee members – supposedly clandestine but, in fact, known to all and sundry – held private meetings in the backrooms or attics of taverns such as The Salutation and The Green Dragon. In April 1773 Adams wrote to Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, saying, ‘The colonies are all embarked in the same bottom. The liberties of all alike invaded by the same haughty powers.’ He argued that quick and sure communication was vital so that ‘the fire of true patriotism will at length spread throughout the continent.’ He urged Lee to encourage the establishment of a Virginian committee of correspondence ‘to promote the general union upon which the security of the whole depends.’ Adams didn’t know it, of course, but he was a day late and a dollar short: the House of Burgesses had preempted Boston’s move by months.
The principal aims of these committees of correspondence were to keep in touch with other colonies and to stay abreast of current events. Within this scope, they also aimed to expose closet loyalists and Tory spies. Some committees went so far as to demand that suspected loyalists swear oaths of allegiance to the patriot cause; it isn’t surprising, then, that the months after the establishment of Boston’s committee saw an exodus of Tories seeking shelter from patriot reprisals. Riders on horseback carried information from colony to colony, and a network of ‘express riders’ evolved so that news traveled fast and colonial reactions to said news could be concerted. At the root of the committees’ goal was the promotion of a free flow of information; the end game, as it were, was to unite the colonies. The ‘flow of information’ helped ‘bring over’ more conservative colonists to the patriot cause. The events of the past decade or so had taken place in seaport towns and cities, and those principally affected by Parliament’s measures were urbanites and those belonging to nearby towns whose commerce and vitality were innately connected with the cities. Those cities most affected by Parliament’s acts – such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia – were those cities most dependent upon trade with Great Britain, so that Parliament’s acts not only stepped on one’s English liberties but also (and this was the germ of it all) affected one’s wallet and thus one’s property. More rural colonists, disassociated from the cities, tended to be more conservative (this trend of ‘countryside conservatism’ and ‘city liberalism’ continues today), and if the Sons of Liberty wanted a more concerted and effective resistance against crown tyranny and the alleged plots to enslave the colonies, they needed to bring the countryside conservatives to their side. The committees of correspondence were the perfect tool in not only spreading information but also in helping outlying conservative communities feel a sense of connectedness to the affairs of seaport or riverside trade hubs. It’s for this reason that Admiral Montagu reported to the Earl of Sandwich not only that Boston was ‘managed by the select men and mob by what is called a town meeting’ but also that these vagabonds had ‘set the whole province in a flame’ as committees of correspondence swept the province like a dustbowl dance. ‘In short,’ he concluded, ‘they are almost ripe for independence.’
The role of these committees in bringing about a declaration of independence in the summer of 1776 cannot be downplayed; if it weren’t for the interconnectedness of the colonies, it’s likely that the ‘American Revolution’ would’ve never materialized, that the rebellion would’ve been consigned to seaport towns and cities, and that – in time – cooler heads would prevail and the colonies would remain under British government. Hutchinson later wrote in his History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay that ‘the appointing ‘the appointing [of] a committee to correspond with alike committee of the assembly of each other colony, whose business should be to obtain intelligence of all acts of the British parliament, and all proceedings of administration affecting the colonies, and reciprocally to communicate the same, seems to have laid the foundation of that union of the colonies, which was afterwards bound or secured by the establishment of a general congress, as a supreme authority over the whole.’ The late historian John Fiske makes the connection: ‘The system of committees of correspondence did indeed grow into a mighty tree; for it was nothing less than the beginning of the American Union… This was the most decided step toward revolution that had yet been taken by the Americans. It only remained for the various intercolonial committees to assemble together, and there would be a Congress speaking in the name of the continent.’
Governor Hutchinson, pictured here, stood stalwart against the Boston patriots despite having few friends left: when the Tories began evacuating Boston en masse, the last remnants of his stolid supporters crumbled. If he were a lesser man, a reactionary esteeming his popularity above all else, he may have softened his stance; but his love for King and Parliament brooked no dissent, and his renown skyrocketed in the worst way. Once a rising star in Boston politics, he became a meteor crashing to earth. The loathing patriots felt for him was encapsulated in 1772 by the playwright Mercy Otis Warren, who anonymously published a satire that cast Hutchinson as ‘Rapatio,’ an evil man determined to rape a fictional colony named Upper Servia. In The Adulateur, one of Rapatio’s cronies revealed the master-plan to subdue the people: ‘Cramp their trade till pale-eyed poverty haunts their streets and frowns destruction on, while many a poor man, leaning on his staff, beholds a numerous famished offspring around him, who would weep for bread.’ Hutchinson may have hoped to weather the storm and somehow come out on top, but in June 1773 his secrets were revealed (and The Adulateur’s accusations would seem mild in light of this unveiling): Samuel Adams had gotten his hands on stolen letters penned by several high-ranking government officials, Hutchinson among them, and had them read aloud before the Massachusetts House of Representatives before publishing them so all and sundry could see what Hutchinson really thought about the ‘American Cause.’
The published letters had been written between 1767 and 1769 by Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver (among others) to the Parliamentarian Thomas Whately, former secretary to George Grenville. The stolen letters had been delivered to the Boston patriot Thomas Cushing that previous winter, and they came from none other than Benjamin Franklin. Franklin had been serving as a colonial advocate in England for years, first for Pennsylvania, then for New Jersey and Georgia, and – beginning in 1770 – Massachusetts. Franklin occupied a ‘middle ground’ among American radicals: some trusted him and others despised him (he had yet to earn the fame and glory with which he’s crowned today). He’d lost much favor in the days of the Stamp Act when he’d solicited stamp distributor posts for his friends (he hadn’t thought the Stamp Act would arouse such vehemence in the colonies); though he changed his stance when it became clear how the colonies ill-welcomed the act, he had yet to win majority support with American patriots. Many considered him a religious heretic and resented his outright condemnation of violent opposition to Parliamentary overreach (many considered him a loyalist). The challenges to Parliament coupled with nonimportation and patriot rhetoric fostered a resentment for many things British, especially those which catered to the English elite, such as tea parties and aristocratic banquets; and because Franklin was known to rambunctiously enjoy such ‘English pleasantries,’ many patriots viewed him as an untrustworthy opportunist who would never go ‘far enough’ in representing Massachusetts’ viewpoints to the British ministry. All this aside, he was truly a friend to the colonies and a supporter of American patriotism. It was from his devotion to Massachusetts that he not only obtained the stolen letters (how he did so is unclear) but also shipped them to leading patriot and speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Thomas Cushing (insisting, however, that the letters be kept secret from the populace; were they to be revealed, they would be traced back to him, and that’d give him nothing short of a political migraine).
When Cushing received the letters, he respected Franklin’s wishes: he showed them only to a few leading patriots, didn’t copy or print them, and refused to disclose his source. The letters were passed hand-to-hand among the top tiers of the Boston revolutionaries, and they couldn’t believe what they read. The letter writers minced no words expressing their disappointment with colonial opposition to British actions and policies, and Hutchinson went so far as to confirm the patriots’ most banal accusations: Hutchinson did, indeed, threaten their liberties. If the letters couldn’t be printed, the patriots asked, how, then, could they be used to further the cause? The first step was to circulate rumors of their contents to raise peoples’ suspicions; rumor gave birth to rumor, and in time these rumored letters revealing the treachery of Boston’s crown-appointed government became the talk of inns, taverns, and coffeehouses. When John Adamsread the letters, he couldn’t contain his shock. His diary entry for 22 March 1773 alerts us to his reaction: ‘These curious projectors and speculators in politics will ruin this country – cool, thinking, deliberate villains, malicious and vindictive, as well as ambitious and avaricious.’ Adams’ flowery language indicates that this mild-mannered, hesitant reformer was now swinging heavily towards the radicalism of even the rowdiest Whigs – and the fulcrum had been given a good push by the stolen letters. His cousin Samuel wanted to do more with the letters, and he played upon Cushing, trying to convince him to damn his honor and do what was right for the colony by exposing the letters. Cushing, worn down and convinced by Adams’ entreaties, finally consented, and on 2 June 1773 Adams asked that House of Representatives be cleared of spectators, and with only the legislature gathered, he defied Franklin’s wishes and read the letters word-by-word.
The legislature sat stunned. Hutchinson and Oliver’s letters read like confessionals in which they advocated a conspiracy against the colonists to subjugate them to British enslavement and deprive them of their English liberties. Most appalling was Hutchinson’s suggestion to Whately that English liberties be reduced for ‘the good of the colony;’ he wrote: ‘I never think of the measures necessary for the peace and good order of the colonies without pain. There must be an abridgement of what are called English liberties. I relieve myself by considering that in a remove from the state of nature to the most perfect state of government there must be a great restraint of natural liberty. I doubt whether it is possible to project a system of government in which a colony 3,000 miles distant from the parent state shall enjoy all of the liberty of the parent state. I am certain I have never yet seen the projection. I wish the good of the colony when I wish to see some further restraint of liberty rather than the connection with the parent state should be broken; for I am sure such a breach must prove the ruin of the colony.’ The House voted 101 to 5 ‘that the design and tendency’ of the unveiled letters was to ‘encourage oppressive acts of the British government, to introduce arbitrary power into the province and subvert its constitution.’
The letters, having been read aloud to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, were then sent to the printing presses to be copied and distributed so that everyone would know the true natures of the men set over the colony. John Adams wrote to Arthur Lee, brother of Richard Henry Lee of the Virginia House of Burgesses, ‘I think there is now a full discovery of a combination of persons who have been the principal movers, in all the disturbances, misery, and bloodshed which has befallen this unhappy country.’ The cause of these disturbances and miseries and bloodshed wasn’t found in radical colonists but on the actions and convictions of the crown-appointed officers ruling over them. Adams then wrote to Richard Henry Lee that it was abundantly clear that ‘a plan for the ruin of American liberty’ had been hatched by a few designing men ‘governed by avarice and a lust for power.’ On 23 June, the House adopted a petition to George III in which they recited their complaints against Hutchinson and Oliver and prayed that the king would be kind and remove the governor and lieutenant governor from their posts.
The printed letters circulated throughout the colonies, and they caused quite a stir – they were also printed and circulated in England, where they became more than a migraine for Benjamin Franklin. Englishmen were enraged at how the letters had been stolen, and Whately’s brother and executor of his estate accused a fellow named Temple of purloining the letters. Temple bristled at the accusation and challenged Whately to a duel, in which Whately was wounded. Franklin then came forward, confessing his guilt in the affair to clear the names of both Whately – who’d been suspected by some as a ‘double agent’ – and Temple. Franklin insisted that he’d had every right to share the letters, since they were ‘written by public officers to persons in public stations, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures.’ His duty as Massachusetts’ agent compelled him to forward them to his constituents, and he declared that his motivation had been to promote harmony between England and her colonies (though how the letters would accomplish that, no one could say).
When Franklin received Massachusetts’ petition to the king, he handed it over to Lord Dartmouth, who in turn sent it to a committee of the king’s Privy Council. A date was set to debate the petition, and representatives from both the crown and the colonies would be allowed to speak. Privy Councils didn’t receive much clamor – how many of us tend to watch C-Span, after all? – but this meeting was packed to the brim. Undoubtedly this full house wasn’t merely in the interest of Franklin’s schemes but because word had just arrived of the Boston Tea Party (covered in the next chapter), and all England was in an uproar. Thirty-five Councilors attended the hearing, far more than usual, and visitors crammed the chambers. Esteemed viewers included Edmund Burke, friend to the colonists, and Joseph Priestley, a radical who had a soft spot for the Massachusetts patriots. Councilors on both sides of the Great Divide hotly debated what to do about the petition, but it was a losing battle for Franklin and the colonies from the start. The final knife in the gullet came from the solicitor general Alexander Wedderburn, who rather than wax on about the colonial crisis turned his ire on Franklin. According to one witness, Wedderburn’s speech was little more than ‘a most severe Phillipic on the celebrated American philosopher, in which he loaded him with all the licensed scurrility of the bar, and decked his harangue with the choicest flowers of Billingsgate.’ He alleged the affair of the stolen letters horrified him, though one would be forgiven for thinking he was actually elated with it as he pummeled Franklin before the Privy Council:
Amid these tragic events, of one person nearly murdered [a reference to the duel], of another answerable for the issue, of a worthy governor hurt in his dearest interests, the fate of America in suspense – here is a man who, with the utmost insensibility of remorse, stands up and avows himself the author of it all… Men will watch him with a jealous eye, they will hide their papers from him, and lock up their escritoires. Having hitherto aspired after fame by his writings, he will henceforth esteem it a libel to be called a man of letters… I ask, my Lords, whether the revengeful temper, attributed by poetic fiction only to the bloody-minded African, is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of the New Englander?
The conservative Councilors adored Wedderburn’s speech, splitting their sides in laughter and cheering with each biting turn-of-phrase. Charles James Fox, a Whig Parliamentarian, recalled years later how ‘all men tossed up their hats and clapped their hands in boundless delight at Mr. Wedderburn’s speech.’ Lord Shelbourne shook his head at the carnival atmosphere: ‘The indecency of their behavior exceeded, as is agreed on all hands, that of any committee of elections [renowned as rude and raucous hearings on disputed elections].’ The Privy Council voted that the Massachusetts petition was ‘false, groundless, and scandalous, and calculated only for the seditious purpose of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in the province.’ Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant Governor Oliver would retain their posts.
The denigration Franklin suffered in the Privy Council continued in the British press, where he was lampooned as ‘a viper… festering in the bosom of government.’ They damned him as an American Wilkes, ‘with a brand lighted from the clouds’ to set the empire afire. ‘The old Dotard thought he saw himself the Founder of Empires and the Father of Kings,’ one editorial chuckled, but in reality he was ‘a skunk or American Pole Cat.’ But Franklin, as was often the case, got the last word: years later he wrote a pamphlet detailing the blunders in British policy that led straight as an arrow to the American Revolution; he entitled it Hints on How to Make a Great Empire into a Smaller One – and he dedicated it to Alexander Wedderburn.
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