What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

“We [were] suddenly and unwarily drawn in to sign a certain paper published in Mr. Rivington’s Gazetteer.”

Abraham Miller, William Crooker, James Jameson, and a dozen other men from the town of Rye had second thoughts about signing their names to an open letter that appeared as the first item on the first page of the October 13, 1774, edition of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer.  That letter, initially endorsed by more than eighty men, stated, “WE … being much concerned with the unhappy situation of public affairs think it our duty to our King and country to declare, that we have not been concerned in any resolutions entered into, or measures taken, with regard to the disputes at present at present subsisting with the mother country.”  As other colonizers had participated in protests or proposed responses to the Coercive Acts, these men claimed that they had remained neutral, not taking any action or expressing any views on the matter.  Furthermore, they did not appreciate what they had observed happening in their communities and in the public prints.  “[W]e also testify,” the letter continued, “our dislike to many hot and furious proceedings, in consequence of said disputes, which we think are more likely to ruin this once happy country, than remove grievances, if any there are.”  In conclusion, they declared “our great desire and full resolution to live and die peaceable subjects to our gracious sovereign King George the third, and his laws.”

That letter apparently elicited responses that at least some of the men who affixed their signatures did not expect … and they experienced those unhappy responses very quickly.  Just four days after the letter appeared in print, Miller, Crooker, Jameson, and others signed another letter, that one backpedaling on the sentiments expressed in the first one.  The new letter ran as an advertisement, not a letter to the editor, in the October 20 edition of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer.  The men who signed it moved quickly to submit it in time to appear in the first issue published after the one that carried the initial letter.  In addition, they paid to make sure that it found a place in the newspaper.  They claimed that they had been “suddenly and unwarily drawn in to sign a certain paper published in Mr. Rivington’s Gazetteer.”  When he published an advertisement in the Boston-Gazette to apologize for signing an address to Governor Hutchinson a few months earlier, Thomas Kidder claimed that he had sone so “suddenly and inadvertently.”  Colonizers who regretted expressing Tory sympathies suggested that they did not hold those views but had only signed their names in haste without taking the time to read and contemplate what they were signing.  After “mature deliberation,” Miller, Crooker, Jameson, and others realized “that we acted preposterously, and without adverting properly to the matter in dispute, between the mother country and her colonies.”  They apologized, asserting that they “are therefore sorry that we ever had any concern in said paper,” the original letter, “and we do by these presents utterly disclaim every part thereof, except our expressions of loyalty to the Kind, and obedience to the constitutional laws of the realm.”  They calculated that disavowal would be sufficient to satisfy most patriots who had made their lives difficult.  After all, few clamored for declaring independence in the fall of 1774.  Most colonizers still wanted a redress of their grievances with Parliament and looked to the king to intervene on their behalf.  They believed that the “constitutional laws of the realm” supported their cause, if applied appropriately.  Miller, Crooker, Jameson, and others did not go as far as endorsing “any resolutions entered into, or measures taken” in protest, but they did run an advertisement to advise the public that they did not discourage or disdain such actions.