Address to Governor Hutchinson

August 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (August 28, 1775).

“Impress’d with a sense of the prejudice and injury I have done my country, humbly ask their forgiveness.”

It was yet another apology for signing an address to Thomas Hutchison when General Thomas Gage replaced him as governor of Massachusetts and he departed for England.  This time Ziphion Thayer lamented his error in an advertisement in the August 28, 1775, edition of the Boston-Gazette, published in Watertown as the siege of Boston continued.  Thayer acknowledged that he signed the address and “thereby have been justly exposed to the censure due to such as have been prejudicial to their country, by endeavouring to support the British administration in the subversion of our Rights and Privileges.”  As others indicated in their own apology-advertisements, signing the address came with consequences.  The “censure” that Thayer experienced likely included other colonizers refusing to engage with him socially or in business.

For a time, many signatories who published apology-advertisements claimed that they had affixed their names in haste without reading carefully or fully considering the full implications of the address.  More recently, however, others explained that they signed because they thought at the time that Hutchinson had the power to protect them from the “Vengeance of the British Ministry” and an inclination to advocate for American liberties.  “I solemnly declare, that before, and at the time of signing said address,” Thayer claimed, “I really supposed governor Hutchinson had influence sufficient to prevent the acts obnoxious to our privileges from taking place; and that he was engaged to exert his said influence for that purpose.”

Things certainly did not work out that way, leading Thayer to declare that he had “since been fully convinced of my error” and now realized that Hutchinson’s designs “have been inimical to this country.”  Did Thayer have an authentic conversion?  Or did he merely say what others wanted to hear so he could return to his former standing in his community?  William Huntting Howell contends that the authenticity of such apology-advertisements mattered much less to Patriots than the “rote expression of allegiance” in the public prints.[1]  Thayer asserted that he became “impress’d with a sense of the prejudice and injury I have done my country” and, accordingly, he “humbly ask[ed] their forgiveness, and a restoration to their favour.”  Whether or not Thayer truly believed the former, he wanted the latter and likely believed that his apology-advertisement would help convince others to overlook what he had done.

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[1] William Huntting Howell, “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” Early American Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 215-6.

August 14

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (August 14, 1775).

“I feared the Vengeance of the British Ministry; and verily believed that Governor Hutchinson had Influence to avert it.”

Benjamin Clarke, “late of Boston” and now from Nantucket, joined the chorus of colonizers who recanted after signing an address to Governor Thomas Hutchinson when he departed Massachusetts.  Like others who did so, Clarke ran a newspaper advertisement to make it widely known that he did not support the governor.  His explanation, however, differed from what others had written in their notices.  Many had claimed that they signed their names without carefully reading the address first or that they only thought through the larger implications after they signed.

Clarke, on the other hand, gave a very different account of the circumstances around his signing of the “obnoxious Address to Governor Hutchinson.”  He asserted that he lived in fear of “the Vengeance of the British Ministry; and verily believed that Governor Hutchinson had Influence to avert it.”  According to scholars at the Winterthur Library, the repository that holds Clarke’s account book spanning 1769 to 1812, Clarke was a merchant who “specialized in brasses.”  He joined other merchants in signing a nonimportation agreement in 1768 and “the next year he signed the petition protesting the sending of the Regulars to Boston.”  Historian J.L. Bell notes that Clarke appeared on lists of colonizers involved in the Boston Tea Party compiled in the early nineteenth century.  Whether or not he participated, his history likely made him a suspect and, as he claimed in his advertisement, prompted him to sign the address to Hutchinson in hopes of finding favor and avoiding consequences under the governor’s protection.

In hindsight, Clarke claimed, he understood that was not the strategy he should have adopted.  Hutchinson, it turned out, supported Parliament more than Clarke realized when he signed the address, though some readers may have found that a convenient justification rather than an accurate account of the reputation the governor had earned.  “I have now the fullest Conviction of [Hutchinson’s] Enmity to this Country,” Clarke declared, “and am sensible of the Wrong and Injury which I have done my Countrymen.”  The same issue of the Boston-Gazette that carried his advertisement included a “Further Account of Tom. Hutchinson’s Assiduity in rooting up our ONCE happy Constitution, and of his Endeavours to disunite the AMERICAN COLONIES.”  With that as a backdrop, Clarke requested the “Forgiveness” of “my Countrymen” and “a Restoration to their Favour.”  Rehabilitating his own reputation may not have happened immediately, but Clarke became a justice of the peace when he returned to Boston after the Revolutionary War.

June 8

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

New-England Chronicle (June 8, 1775).

“I am ready to assist them in their Struggles for Liberty and Freedom.”

A year later, John Prentice of Londonderry, New Hampshire, had second thoughts about having signed an address lauding Governor Thomas Hutchinson when he left office and departed Massachusetts for England.  On June 6, 1775, Prentice wrote about the mistake he made, acknowledged that he misjudged the governor’s motives, vowed his support for the American cause, and submitted his missive for publication in the New-England Chronicle.  “I the Subscriber was so unfortunate (some Time since),” he explained, “as to sign an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson, so universally and so justly deemed an Enemy to American Liberty and Freedom.”  Prentice claimed he had not understood that in the spring of 1774 – “at the Time I signed the said Address, I intended the Good of my Country” – but now understood his error.  He lamented that to his “Sorrow” signing the address had “a quite contrary Effect.”

Some of the “contrary Effect” that Prentice regretted, however, may have been the reception that he received from his neighbors and others in his community who refused to associate with him socially or to conduct business with him.  Such treatment had previously prompted others who signed the address to the governor to recant and to beg for forgiveness.  Yet Prentice did not mention how others treated him, nor did he apologize, though he did “hope that my injured and affronted Fellow Countrymen will overlook my past Misconduct.”  Perhaps the battles at Lexington and Concord and the ensuing siege of Boston inspired a sincere change of heart, inspiring Prentice to “renounce the same Address in every Part” and proclaim that he was “ready to assist [his countrymen] in their Struggles for Liberty and Freedom, in whatever Way I shall be called upon by them.”

How did Prentice really feel about the address?  Did it matter to readers of the New-England Chronicle?  William Huntting Howell argues that the authenticity of such a conversion was not nearly as important as the ability of a local Committee of Safety or similar panel of Patriots to induce those who signed the address to make public declarations – in print – that they renounced their past actions and now supported the American cause.[1]  The June 8, 1775, edition of the New-England Chronicle carried other letters similar to the one submitted by Prentice, though an adjudication accompanied each of those.  The Committee of Safety in Salem, for instance, absolved thirteen signers of the address who “now to our Sorrow find ourselves mistaken” and “Wish to live in Harmony with our Neighbours” and “to promote to the utmost of our Power the Liberty, the Welfare and Happiness of our country, which is inseparably connected with our own.”  The same committee accepted a more succinct petition from Alexander Walker, while the Committee of Correspondence for Groton accepted Samuel Dana’s apology for “adopt[ing] Principles in Politics different from the Generality of my Countrymen” that contributed to “the Injury of my Country.”

No such endorsement appeared with Prentice’s letter.  In addition, the layout of the issue that carried it suggests that it could have been a letter to the editor that the printers, Samuel Hall and Ebenezer Hall, chose to publish because it matched their political principles or an advertisement that Prentice paid to insert because he considered it so important to place before the public.  Either way, it buttressed the narrative that more and more colonizers recognized the tyranny perpetrated against them once fighting commenced in Massachusetts in the spring of 1775.

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[1] William Huntting Howell, “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” Early American Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 208-215.

February 7

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

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

Essex Gazette (February 7, 1775).

“He had no Intention of injuring his Country, or of defending any one unfriendly to its Cause.”

It was yet another public disavowal of an address honoring Thomas Hutchinson, the former governor of Massachusetts, that many colonizers signed when he returned to England.  This time, Richard Stacey inserted his recantation in the February 7, 1775, edition of the Essex Gazette.  Similar advertisements began appearing in that newspaper and sometimes newspapers printed in Boston as early as July 1774.  Stacey explained that he waited several months because he “just returned to the Province after long Absence” and only upon his arrival did he discover “an Address which he signed to the late Governor Hutchinson has given great Uneasiness to the Public.”  He further explained that the former governor “is generally viewed as an Enemy to America.”

That being the case, Stacey “begs Leave to assure the Publick that he had no Intention of injuring his Country, or of offending it by supporting any one unfriendly to its Cause.”  Accordingly, “he now renounces the Address in every Part, and declares his Readiness to assist in defending the Rights and Liberties of America.”  With such a proclamation, disseminated far and wide in the newspaper, Stacey desired “that he shall still continue to enjoy the wonted Esteem of his respected Friends and Countrymen.”  He considered the prospects of reconciling with friends, neighbors, and associates worth the expense of placing an advertisement in the Essex Gazette.

Was Stacey sincere?  Or did he merely seek to return to the good graces of his community and simply get along during difficult times?  That is impossible to determine from his advertisement.  It did differ from some that previously appeared in the public prints.  For instance, Stacey did not attempt to blame his error on having quickly read the address without considering its implications before signing it.  Instead, he did not comment on what had occurred at the time he signed the address but focused on the harm he had done by doing so.  Others offered lukewarm assurances that they did not truly support Hutchinson or the policies he had enforced, while Stacey proclaimed his “Readiness to assist in defending the Rights and Liberties of America.”  In addition, some signers published advertisements that clearly copied from the same script.  Stacey’s was entirely original.  That may have been the result of the time that had passed since others inserted their advertisement or the political situation deteriorating and thus requiring stronger assertions from signers of the address branded as Tories.  William Huntting Howell suggests that for some readers Stacey’s sincerity may have mattered much less than the fact that he felt compelled to express support for the “Cause” of “his Country” in print.[1]

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[1] William Huntting Howell, “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” Early American Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 191, 208-215.

November 3

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Spy (November 3, 1774).

“I am now sensible that my signing the said Address was altogether improper and imprudent.”

Yet another colonizer who signed “an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson, on his leaving this Province” took to the public prints to recant and apologize.  Isaac Mansfield of Marblehead published his message to “my respectable Town and Countrymen” in the November 3, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Spy.  Like others who claimed that they regretted their actions, he asserted that he had endorsed the address “suddenly, and not sufficiently attending to its Impropriety and Tendency.”  In other words, he had carelessly affixed his name without giving the contents or their implications much thought.  Upon further reflection, realizing what he had done (and facing the consequences of giving “Offence”), he declared that he had no intention of “affronting any Individual” or, especially, “wounding the Constitution of my Country, the Rights and Liberties whereof I esteem it every one’s Duty to preserve and maintain, by all proper, laudable and lawful means.”  Mansfield had strayed in expressing Tory sympathies, but he had seen the light.  He described signing the address as improper and imprudent, following immediately with an apology and a request for the “Friendship and Regard of my Town and Countrymen.”

Similar disavowals and retractions had been appearing in newspapers in Massachusetts and neighboring colonies for some time.  Much shorter versions by J. Fowle and John Prentice, both of Marblehead, that ran in three newspapers published in Boston and another in Salem during the past week also appeared in the November 3 issue of the Massachusetts Spy.  Some printers treated them as letters to place among news items, while others placed them with advertisements, making unclear which genre these letter-advertisements represented and whether printers charged for inserting them in their newspapers.  Isaiah Thomas, the printer of the Massachusetts Spy, ran the letter-advertisements from Fowle and Prentice below a letter to the editor from “A PROPRIETOR” and above Donald McAlpine’s advertisement for fencing lessons, similar to their placement in the Boston-Gazette three days earlier.  Had the men from Marblehead submitted their letter-advertisements to Thomas’s printing office?  Or had the patriot printer decided to reprint news from another newspaper?  In this instance, the double line separating different kinds of content appeared above the letter-advertisements, signaling to readers that they had finished with the news and began the advertisements.  The placement of Mansfield’s letter-advertisement was less ambiguous.  It ran on the final page, embedded among advertisements.  A notice from Silent Wilde, a post rider, appeared above it and an advertisement for William Hunter’s “Auction-Room” below it.  Does that mean that Thomas charged for printing Mansfield’s letter-advertisement?  Perhaps, though he may have been more interested in publicizing that another member of the community had seemingly come into conformity with patriot politics than generating revenue from Mansfield’s missive.  Either way, readers encountered news about current events as they perused the portion of the Massachusetts Spy that contained advertisements.

November 1

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , ,

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

Essex Gazette (November 1, 1774).

“WHEREAS I the Subscriber signed an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson — I wish the devil had had said Address before I had seen it.”

More advertisements from men who wished to recant after signing “an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson, upon his leaving the Province” appeared in the November 1, 1774, edition of the Essex Gazette.  John Stimpson’s letter to that effect ran as an advertisement a week earlier, joined now by letters from Jonathan Glover, John Prince, J. Fowle, and John Prentice.  The printers, Samuel Hall and Ebenezer Hall, positioned them one after another at the end of a column, following an advertisement about a stray cow.  Their position on the page indicated that the Halls considered these letters to be advertisements.  In that case, they would have charged to run them in their newspaper.

Other printers, however, treated some of these same letters differently.  The short missives from Fowle and Prentice each appeared in the Boston Evening-Post, the Boston-Gazette, and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy the previous day.  In two of those newspapers, they ran with local news, while in the Boston-Gazette the printers placed them between news and advertisements.  They could have been the final news items or the first advertisements in that column.  Even if the printers considered them advertisements, they delivered news to readers.

In the Boston Evening-Post, Thomas Fleet and John Fleet, the printers, provided commentary, reporting that they “have received the Declarations and Acknowledgments of several Deputy Sheriffs, and other Persons, who by signing an Address to Governor Hutchinson had rendered themselves obnoxious to the People.”  They did not have room to publish all of them in that issue, but considered two of them “so concise we can’t omit obliging our Readers with them, as they may serve for a Specimen to other Addressers whose Principles are such as not to incline them to make long Confessions, even when they know they were to blame.”  Samuel Flagg had offered one of those “long Confessions” in the Essex Gazette a month earlier.

Fowle’s letter-advertisement succinctly stated, “WHEREAS I the Subscriber signed an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson — I wish the devil had had said Address before I had seen it.”  Prentice’s letter-advertisement contained an identical message.  Among the others that ran in the Essex Gazette, Glover asserted that he signed the address “without any View of injuring the Liberties of my Country, which I ever held sacred.”  Prince declared that he made “an Error in Judgment” without any “Design of injuring the Liberties of my Country, which I ever held sacred.”  Those two letter-advertisements had variations in wording yet had a similar structure.  For instance, Glover concluded with expressing his “hope the Publick will freely forgive this Error in their humble Servant,” while Prince stated, “I hope the Publick will freely forgive their humble Servant.”

In “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” William Huntting Howell examines other recantations that were either similar or identical.  He questions whether any of them expressed sincerely held beliefs given that they seemed to be “performing by rote.”[1]  That aspect of Fowle’s letter-advertisement calls into question Glover’s invocations of “the Liberties of my Country, which I ever held sacred” and Flagg’s much more extensive reflection on his role in what had transpired. Furthermore, Howell argues, “recantations like these might have kept the Committee of Safety away from one’s house, or signaled to one’s neighbors that one no longer wished to disagree, but they cannot possibly have represented a legitimate conversion or deeply held belief.”[2]  That being the case, the signatories made public apologies in hopes of getting along with others.  By offering the identical letter-advertisements by Fowle and Prentice as prescriptive models for others to copy when ready to make their own “Declarations and Acknowledgments,” the Fleets also signaled that they also believed, as Howell puts it, that “the rote expression of allegiance is not the antithesis of ‘true patriotism,’ but rather its very essence.  The public spectacle of apology or ‘patriotic’ conversion – especially one that follows a pattern – better serves the larger cause than a private change of heart.”[3]

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[1] William Huntting Howell, “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” Early American Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 214.

[2] Howell, “Entering the Lists,” 215.

[3] Howell, “Entering the Lists, 215-6.

October 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

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

Essex Gazette (October 25, 1774).

“By Signing an Address to Governor Hutchinson … I have given just Cause of Offence.”

It was another plea for forgiveness for exercising poor judgment, at best, or expressing unsavory political views by signing an address to Thomas Hutchinson that thanked him for his service as governor of Massachusetts.  At the end of October 1774, John Stimpson of Marblehead took to the pages of the Essex Gazette to a acknowledge to “the respectable Public” that he had “given just Cause of Offence to my Friends and Country” when he had done so.  He explained that he “was unacquainted” with Hutchinson’s character the previous spring, but in the time that elapsed since then he became “fully convinced of the Impropriety of the Step that I have taken.”  That being the case, he placed an advertisement to “wholly renounce the same” as well as seek forgiveness for that “Act of Inconsideration.”  Ultimately, Stimpson “hope[d] to be restored to their Favour and Friendship.”

He was not the first to insert an open letter in the Essex Gazette or other newspapers for that purpose.  Thomas Kidder published a similar apology in the Boston-Gazette in July 1774.  Samuel Flagg and Joseph Lee each did so in the Essex Gazette three weeks before Stimpson did.  Flagg’s extensive message to his “Fellow Citizens and Countrymen” incorporated an editorial on the “unjust and oppressive” legislation imposed by Parliament.  Others published similar missives explaining their error, assuring the public that they were not admirers of Hutchinson (and, by extension, the Tory perspective on current events), and asking for forgiveness so they could restore their standing within their communities.

Stimpson’s version of what was becoming a familiar feature in the newspapers did not appear among the news and editorials.  Samuel Hall and Ebenezer Hall, the patriot printers of the Essex Gazette, did not treat it as a letter to the editor to include alongside local news.  Instead, it ran between an advertisement offering a reward for the capture and return of an enslaved man, Caesar, who liberated himself from his enslaver, and a real estate notice announcing the sale of a house and land in Long Wharf Lane in Salem.  Stimpson’s message to “the respectable public” was an advertisement, a paid notice.  The Halls did not extend the opportunity to seek absolution for free.  They may have experienced a bit of satisfaction in generating revenue from someone who made such a poor decision in initially offering support to the royal governor so unpopular among Patriots.

October 4

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , , , ,

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

Essex Gazette (October 4, 1774).

“Forgive my Error [and] restore me to their Favour and Friendship.”

Samuel Flagg of Salem and Joseph Lee of Marblehead needed to do damage control and rehabilitate their reputations after signing “an Address to Governor Hutchinson, on his leaving this Province” in May 1774.  Like Thomas Kidder had done in July, they took to the public prints to confess their error and beg for the forgiveness of their friends and neighbors who believed they did not support the American cause.  The reaction they experienced became so overwhelming that they recanted a position that they claimed they never firmly held.  Lee, for instance, stated that he signed the address because at the time he “thought [Hutchinson] a Friend to America,” yet he had since reconsidered.  He expressed “great Concern” while confessing that “I am now convinced he is not that Friend to America nor the Constitution of this Government that I then thought he was.”  To that end, Lee renounced the entire address and “sincerely ask[ed] the Favour of all the good People of this Government to forgive my Error therein, and to restore me to their Favour and Friendship.”  His plea, dated October 3, first appeared in the October 4 edition of the Essex Gazette, with a notation that it would run for four weeks.  Rather than submitting a letter to the printer that might get printed once, Lee paid to run an advertisement that would present his story and his apology to readers multiple times.

Lee’s notice was brief compared to the one that Flagg inserted on the same day.  He had formerly been in good standing in the community, having the “good Will and Esteem” of his “Fellow Citizens and Countrymen,” but perceived “they behold me with a different aspect” after he signed an address in honor of the Governor Hutchinson upon his return to England.  Flagg confessed that this “has given me great Uneasiness; not simply because I am injured in my Business, but because nothing can compensate for the Loss of the good Opinion of my worthy Countrymen.”  Flagg acknowledged that his livelihood had suffered; apparently customers refused to shop at his store in Salem.  Yet participating in the marketplace was not the only or even the primary reason that Flagg wished to correct the record.  He desired the “Favour and Regard” that he had once enjoyed in relationships with other colonizers, plus he wanted to assure the public that he indeed supported the patriot cause.  He admitted his error while disavowing the address as “the Source of much Mischief to the Colonies and to this Province in particular,” but did not end there.  “I seriously declare,” he wrote, “that I have ever beheld with Pleasure the generous Exertions of my Countrymen in Defence of their Liberties.”  Furthermore, Flagg claimed that “I have note myself at any Time been an idle Spectator, but heartily joined them in their all-important Cause.”  In his advertisement for an “Assortment of ENGLISH and INDIA GOODS” on the next page, he indicated that he “is determined not to import any more Goods at Present,” signaling his support for nonimportation agreements as a means of protesting the Coercive Acts.

Beyond his confession and apology, Flagg incorporated an editorial into his advertisement seeking forgiveness from his “Fellow Citizens and Countrymen.”  He asserted, “I do not differ in Sentiment from my Countrymen; I have ever thought, and still think, those Acts of Parliament, of which they complain, to be unjust and oppressive.”  To demonstrate that point, he inserted quotations that made familiar arguments: “‘that they are intended to establish a Power of governing us by Influence and Corruption’” and “‘that it is the Duty of every wise Man, of every honest Man, and of every Englishman, by all lawful Means to oppose them.’”  Flagg thus had a duty to fulfill, prompting him to “pledge myself to my Countrymen that this I will do to the utmost of my Power.”  He reiterated that he regretted signing the “abovementioned Address,” insisting that it was “the first and only Act of mine that has the Appearance of Inconsistency with my former Conduct, and the Declarations now made.”  He apologized once again, requesting the “Candour and Generosity” of others in overlooking the entire incident.

Signing the address to Governor Hutchinson had been a lapse in judgment; at least that was how some of those who signed it depicted their actions when they repeatedly encountered hostile reactions.  Both Flagg and Lee sought to remedy the damage done to their reputations by placing advertisements in which they confessed their error.  Flagg did even more: he spilled a lot of ink in support of the American cause, hoping that doing so would convince the public of his sincerity and return him to their good graces.  News and editorials could not contain the politics of the period. Instead, advertisements became sites for participating in debates and controversies as the imperial crisis intensified in 1774.

July 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

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

Boston-Gazette (July 18, 1774).

“I did suddenly and inadvertently sign an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson.”

When he published an advertisement in the July 18, 1774, edition of the Boston-Gazette, Thomas Kidder of Billerica attempted to extricate himself from a difficult situation.  He explained that he had “suddenly and inadvertently sign[ed] an Address to the late Governor Hutchinson with some others, (Justices of the Peace) of Middlesex.”  Thomas Hutchinson, the outgoing governor, had received several letters praising his administration of the colony, each of them signed by dozens of colonizers.  Some of those letters found their way into print, revealing to the public which members of the community approved of the way the unpopular royal governor had participated in Parliament’s efforts to establish greater control over Boston, the rest of Massachusetts, and all the colonies.

That garnered the wrong kind of attention for Kidder and others, especially those who then professed that they did not actually harbor loyalist sympathies but had instead been “inadvertently” embroiled in the controversy.  Kidder explained that he had signed the letter to Hutchinson “in great Haste, and not so well considering every Part thereof, nor the dangerous Consequences of said Address.”  He did not enjoy the reception he received from colonizers who supported the patriot cause, prompting him to apologize.  He confessed that he was “very sorry” for signing the letter and “as it hath offended my Christian Brethren and Neighbours, I do hereby desire their Forgiveness, and a Restoration of their Friendship.”  Apparently, Kidder’s seeming endorsement of Hutchinson caused so many difficulties in his daily interactions with others that he found it necessary to take to the public prints to disavow an address that he claimed he had not fully considered or understood when he signed it.  It was no mistake that he ran his advertisement in the Boston-Gazette, a newspaper noted for advocating the political views of patriots who opposed the policies enacted by Parliament and Hutchinson’s collaboration in executing them.

In “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” William Huntting Howell documents which newspapers published addresses to Hutchinson and broadsides printed in response, some of them identifying the occupations and places of business of the signatories.  That amounted to an eighteenth-century version of doxing people based on their political views.  Howell argues that such a response was designed “to coerce and secure individual compliance.”  He examines several “RECANTATIONS” that appeared in the newspapers as signatories of addresses to Hutchinson attempted to restore their standing among their fellow colonizers.[1]  Over the next several months, the Adverts 250 Project will feature advertisements, like the one place by Kidder, placed for similar purposes, demonstrating the pressure that patriots managed to bring to bear against real and perceived loyalists as the imperial crisis intensified in 1774.

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[1] William Huntting Howell, “Entering the Lists: The Politics of Ephemera in Eastern Massachusetts, 1774,” Early American Studies 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 191, 208-215.