Coercive Acts

October 9

Carl Robert Keyes Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

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

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (October 6, 1774).

“ALMAN[A]CK … Ornamented with a large and elegant Engraving, representing the VIRTUOUS PATRIOT.”

When it came to buying almanacs, residents of Boston had many choices during the era of the American Revolution.  That meant that printers often advertised what made the almanacs they published distinctive from others on the market.  Such was the case for John Kneeland when he advertised Nathanael Low’s Astronomical Diary: Or, Almanack for the Year of Christian Aera, 1775 in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter in the fall of 1774.  The production of the almanac and its promotion resonated with current events as the imperial crisis intensified.  The Boston Port Act closed the harbor, the Massachusetts Government Act revoked the colony’s charter, and the other Coercive Acts punished the port city for the Boston Tea Party.

Kneeland informed prospective customers that this almanac was “Ornamented with a large and elegant Engraving, representing the VIRTUOUS PATRIOT at the Hour of Death.”  In addition to the usual contents, “every Thing necessary in an Almanack,” it also included a “long and sympathetic Address to the Inhabitants of Boston, with several other Pieces of Speculation, which tends to rend it not only useful, but entertaining.”  The engraving dominated the cover of the almanac.  It depicted a man, the “VIRTUOUS PATRIOT,” on his deathbed. A woman, presumably his wife, and three children kneeled in the foreground.  On the other side of the bed, a minister prayed while another man, perhaps a relative and likely another patriot, joined the family in their vigil.  Above the bed, an angel welcomed the “VIRTUOUS PATRIOT” into heaven.  A caption below the image stated, “IF Prayers and Tear th’ PATRIOT’s Life could save, None but usurping Villains Death would have.”

According to an auction catalog prepared by PBA Galleries, the “long and sympathetic Address” filled the first four pages of the almanac.  Echoing rhetoric that circulated in newspapers and pamphlets, the address “rails against the British,” assuring residents of Boston that “[Your countrymen] are sensible the heavy hand of power under which you are now groaning is designed only as a prelude to the utter abolishment of American freedom.”  The Coercive Acts, the address warned, would enslave the colonies to Britain.  (Two advertisements on the same page as the advertisement for the almanac in the October 6, 1774, edition of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter concerned enslaved people, one presenting an enslaved woman for sale and the other offering a reward for the capture and return of an enslaved man who liberated himself by running away from his enslaver.)  The address proclaimed, “My dear brethren, the destiny of America seems to be suspended on the present controversy; and it is on your fidelity, firmness, and good conduct, for which you have so remarkably signalized yourself on all occasions, that a happy issue of it in a great measure depends.”  The advertisement for the almanac containing this address ran in the newspaper as the First Continental Congress continued its meetings in Philadelphia.  A month earlier, the colonial militia in Worcester County to the west of Boston had closed the courts and removed British authority in what has become known as the Worcester Revolution of 1774.  Six months after Kneeland advertised the almanac with the engraving and the address, a war for independence began with the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord.

Nathanael Low, An Astronomical Diary: Or, Almanack for the Year of Christian Aera, 1775 (Boston: John Kneeland, 1774). Courtesy PBA Galleries.

June 28

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

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

Connecticut Courant (June 28, 1774).

“GOOD TEA, To be Sold.”

William Beadle was at it again.  He advertised “GOOD TEA, To be Sold by WILLIAM BEADLE, At Wethersfield” in the June 28, 1774, edition of the Connecticut Courant and Hartford Weekly Intelligencer.  Unlike many other merchants and shopkeepers, Beadle had not refrained from advertising tea after colonizers disguised as Indians dumped tea into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773.  In March 1774, he advertised “Best Bohea TEA, Such as Fishes never drink!!”  In April, he opened a new advertisement with a headline promoting “A New Supply of TEA, Extraordinary good.”  Perhaps Beadle sold smuggled tea that evaded the duties imposed by Parliament but could not state that was the case in the public prints … or his politics did not align with the patriots who objected to Parliament regulating trade in the colonies … or he realized that many consumers still wished to drink tea even with the controversy swirling around that commodity.

Still, his latest advertisement hawking tea and only tea seemed especially bold.  It was the first one he published after the Boston Port Act closed and blockaded the harbor until residents of that town paid for the tea that some of them destroyed.  Word of that punishment arrived in the colonies in May, before the legislation went into effect on June 1.  Newspapers throughout the colonies carried coverage of the Boston Port Act and reactions in Boston and other towns.  Many people called for a new round of boycotts on goods imported from England, including tea.  Further coverage focused on other measures meant to bring Boston in line, the series of Coercive Acts that included an Act for the Impartial Administration of Justice and a Quartering Act.  The issue of the Connecticut Courant that ran Beadle’s advertisement featured “AnAUTHENTIC ACCOUNT” from London “of Friday’s DEBATE on the second Reading of the Bill regulating the civil government of the Massachusetts-Bay.”  Known as the Massachusetts Government Act, that legislation abrogated the colony’s charter from 1691 and gave new powers to the royal governor.  That same issue included updates from Boston and, on the same page as Beadle’s advertisement for tea, a “Copy of a Letter from the Committee of Correspondence in New-York, to the Committee in Boston.”  Yet not everyone held what seemed to be the prevailing political sentiments captured in the public prints.  Even as John Holt swapped out the British coat of arms for the severed snake representing American unity in the masthead of the New-York Journal, some merchants and shopkeepers, such as William Beadle, continued advertising tea rather than making pronouncements about abstaining from the beverage due to political principles.