Battle of Bunker Hill

October 2

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

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

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet (October 2, 1775).

“THE SPEECH of EDMUND BURKE, Esq; on moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies.”

Interest in current events continued to influence some of the products advertised to colonial consumers in the October 2, 1775, edition of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet.  Robert Aitken once again ran his advertisement promoting a “neat and correct VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill.  Subscribers to the Pennsylvania Magazine would receive the print as a premium, while others could purchase it separately.

Immediately below Aitken’s advertisement, James Humphreys, Jr., announced that he sold “THE SPEECH of EDMUND BURKE, Esq; on moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775.”  In that speech, delivered less than a month before the battles at Lexington and Concord, Burke presented peace and strengthening ties with the colonies as preferable to war.  The colonies, after all, were an important market for British goods.  Burke proposed allowing the colonies to elect their own representatives to send to Parliament as well as establishing a General Assembly with the authority to regulate taxes that would meet in the colonies.  By that time, colonizers already recognized Burke as a friend and advocate for their cause.  In April 1774, he had delivered a speech in favor of repealing duties on tea.

Humphreys also advertised a collection of speeches made “in the last session of the present Parliament” by “Governor Johnston; Mr. Cruger; the Hon. Capt. Lutterell; Col. Ackland,” and several others.  That anthology included another speech by Burke, that one “in favour of the Protestant Dissenters” and religious liberty from 1773 during “the second Parliament of George III.”  In addition, Humphreys stocked an “Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great Britain in the present dispute with America” by Arthur Lee, born in Virginia yet serving as an agent for Massachusetts in London in 1775.  Humphreys concluded with a note that he also sold “several other valuable pamphlets on American affairs.”  He most likely marketed American editions published by James Rivington, the printer of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer often derided as a Tory who supported Parliament.  Yet Rivington printed, advertised, and disseminated pamphlets representing a range of views, considering each of them opportunities to generate revenue.  Among the “valuable pamphlets” that Humphreys named in his advertisement, he selected only those that supported the American cause, though he may have made a broader range of perspectives available without listing them in the public prints.  Whatever the case, he anticipated that pamphlets about current events would attract customers.

September 20

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

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

Pennsylvania Gazette (September 20, 1775).

“A neat and correct VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN, not inferior to any hithero proposed.”

After appearing in the Pennsylvania Ledger on September 16, 1775, the subscription proposal for “An exact VIEW of the late Battle at Charlestown,” now known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, ran in the Pennsylvania Gazette four days later.  It featured nearly identical copy, including a list of local agents, among them several printers in Philadelphia, who collected the names of subscribers in that city and other towns from New York to Virginia.  The notice named Nicholas Brooks as the “printer of said view,” but did not mention that he collaborated with Bernard Romans, the cartographer and engraver.  An addition at the bottom of the advertisement, “Frames and Glass may be had at the abovesaid N. Brooks’s,” suggested that Brooks managed the marketing of the proposed print.

Immediately below that advertisement, Robert Aitken announced, “NOW engraving for the Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum, a neat and correct VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN, not inferior to any hitherto proposed.”  Aitken, who was not among the printers listed as local agents for the Brooks and Romans print, promoted a competing print!  This one, however, “shall be printed in a size proper for the Magazine.”  The two prints looked strikingly similar, not unlike the competing prints of the Boston Massacre produced by Henry Pelham and Paul Revere in 1770, though one was larger than the other.  Aitken’s print measured 18 x 26 cm (approximately 7 x 10 inches), the right size to tuck it inside the magazine for delivery to subscribers.  Brooks and Romans’s print measured 31.5 x 42.2 cm (approximately 12.5 x 16.5 inches) on a 40.6 x 50.5 cm sheet (approximately 16 x 20 inches), perhaps making it a better candidate to frame and display.

Robert Aitken (engraver and publisher), “A Correct View of the Late Battle at Charlestown” (1775). Courtesy Library of Congress.

Subscribers to the Pennsylvania Magazine received the print as a premium.  Nonsubscribers could purchase the issue for “One Shilling and Sixpence, on account of the great expence of the engraving.”  On other occasions, including the September 16, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger, Aitken advertised the price as one shilling per issue.  He now informed “those Gentlemen who incline to purchase this View of the Battle may be furnished with it at the moderate price of Sixpence.”  In effect, he did not give readers who purchased a single issue of the magazine any sort of discount, perhaps hoping to encourage them to subscribe to receive the print as a gift.  Whatever the case, Aitken’s print was slightly more expensive than the five shillings that Brooks and Romans charged for their uncolored print.

Nicholas Brooks (publisher) and Bernard Romans (engraver), “An Exact View of the Late Battle at Charlestown” (1775). Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

Given the similarity of the prints, did Aitken pirate his “VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN” from Brooks and Romans?  That had been the case with Revere issuing a print based on a drawing by Pelham before the artist managed to publish his own.  Or did Aitken collaborate with Brooks and Romans?  It was not the first time that an image that accompanied his magazine resembled one of their projects.  The July 1775 issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine featured a map, “A New and Correct Plan of the Town of Boston, and Provincial Camp.”  Aitken marketed it at the same time that Brooks and Romans published a map of eastern Massachusetts and northern Rhode Island that featured an inset showing a “Plan of BOSTON and its ENVIRONS 1775.”  The two did not resemble each other as much as the “VIEW” that each advertised.  Whether they collaborated or competed, Aitken and Brooks and Romans all aimed to disseminate a commemorative item that simultaneously kept buyers better informed and inspired them to support the American cause.

September 16

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

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (September 16, 1775).

“It is proposed to PRINT An Exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN.”

Bernard Romans, a cartographer, apparently met with sufficient success in marketing and publishing his “MAP, FROM BOSTON TO WORCESTER, PROVIDENCE AND SALEM” in the summer of 1775 that he launched a similar project as fall arrived.  He placed a subscription proposal for a print depicting “An Exact VIEW of the late BATTLE at CHARLESTOWN,” known today as the Battle of Bunker Hill, in the September 16, 1775, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger.  The proposal stated that it “shall be printed on a good crown imperial paper” at a price of five shillings, “plain,” or seven shilling and six pence, “coloured.”

In promoting the print, Romans summarized the battle, though most readers likely already knew the details.  “[A]n advanced party of Seven hundred PROVINCIALS,” the cartographer narrated, “stood an attack made by Eleven Regiments and a Train of Artillery, of the Ministerial forces, and after an engagement of two hours retreated to their main body at Cambridge, leaving Eleven Hundred of the Regulars killed and wounded on the field.”  Even though the British prevailed, it was such a costly victory in terms of casualties that officers that British General Henry Clinton wrote in his diary, “A dear bought victory, another such would have ruined us.”  The Americans had reason to feel proud despite retreating.  Romans hoped to capitalize on that even as he aimed to publish a print that helped colonizers far from Boston visualize the battle.  The print included “a view of Gen. [Israel] Putnam,” an American officer, “a part of Boston, Charlestown in flames, Breed’s hill, Provincial breast-work, a broken Officer, and the Somerset man of war and a frigate firing upon Charlestown.”

As had been the case with his map, Romans collaborated with Nicholas Brooks, a shopkeeper and “Printer of said View” as well as local agents in several cities and towns from New York to Virginia.  The subscription proposal indicated that the print would be ready “to be delivered to the subscribers in about ten days,” not nearly enough time to disseminate the proposal and collect the names of subscribers before making the first impressions.  In both instances, Romans likely felt confident that consumers would be so interested in purchasing items that commemorated the newest chapter in the struggle against Britain that the demand for the map and the print would justify the expense of producing initial copies as well as prompt him to issue even more as local agents submitted their lists of subscribers.