What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?
“LAW BOOKS … being the Remainder of the COLLECTION of the late PETER MANIGAULT, Esq.”
Nicholas Langford advertised dozens of law books for sale in the June 14, 1774, edition of the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal. In addition to listing the authors and titles, his advertisement featured a headline, “LAW BOOKS,” enclosed within a border composed of decorative type. It was the only notice in that issue that received such treatment. Langford also advertised in the June 10 edition of the South-Carolina and American General Gazette, deploying the same headline with the list of books. In that instance, the headline did not receive special treatment, suggesting that the printing office was responsible for the enhancement to the version in the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal instead of Langford issuing instructions or making a request.
Why might Charles Crouch, the printer of that newspaper, have decided that this advertisement merited such a headline? Perhaps it was an act of deference. Langford advertised “the Remainder of the COLLECTION of the late PETER MANIGAULT, Esq.” Crouch and readers would have been familiar with the prominent lawyer, legislator, and plantation owner. “Because of his large land and slave holdings,” Michelle Brown notes, Manigault “became one of the wealthiest men in eighteenth-century British North America.” He owned thousands of acres and enslaved hundreds of men, women, and children. Manigault served in the Commons House of Assembly from 1755 to 1772, elected as Speaker during the time that South Carolina and other colonies protested the Stamp Act and reelected seven times. His political career began shortly after he returned from London, where he studied law at the Inner Temple from 1750 to 1754. He resigned in 1772 due to ill health, returning to England in hopes of recuperating, but died there on November 12, 1773. Brown reports that “his body was returned to Charleston for burial in the family vault of the Huguenot Church.” His estate entrusted Langford, a bookseller, with selling his library of law books. Given Manigault’s influence in the colony, Crouch may have decided that this advertisement deserved a more elaborate headline than others published in his newspaper.