Loyalist

May 16

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

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

New-York Journal (May 16, 1776).

“STOP A TORY!”

The headline almost certainly grabbed the attention of readers of the New-York Journal.  Other advertisements had headlines that announced, “WRITING PAPER,” “SCRIVENER’S OFFICE,” or “GEORGE WEBSTER, GROCER,” but this one proclaimed, “STOP A TORY!”  It delivered news that Moses Kirkland “MADE his escape from the gaol” in Philadelphia on the evening of May 7, 1776.  Colonel Kirkland, a Loyalist planter from South Carolina, had been confined in the jail “by order of the Honourable Congress, for practices inimical to this Colony.”  An account that first appeared in the January 17, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Journal and subsequently in many other newspapers reported that Kirkland had been “at the head of the tories in the back parts of South Carolina” before making his way to Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia who offered freedom to enslaved people who fled from Patriot enslavers and joined the king’s forces.  Dunmore dispatched Kirkland “to general Howe at Boston,” but he was captured along the way, imprisoned in Cambridge, and then transported to Philadelphia.

The advertisement provided a physical description of Kirkland and documented the clothes he had been wearing when he made his escape, though he “may possibly have taken other clothes with him” and donned them to elude capture.  The advertisement also gave an account of Kirkland’s likely movements, noting that he crossed the Delaware River into New Jersey at Cooper’s Ferry and “it is supposed [he] will either endeavour to get on board one of the men of war in the river, or at Sandy Hook.”  According to Michael Adelberg, Sandy Hook became a haven for Loyalists as the Revolutionary War entered its second year.  The British Navy took possession of Sandy Hook in April 1776, making it an appealing destination for Loyalists seeking refuge and a good place for Kirkland to make his escape.

The notice further advised that the “public are earnestly desired to endeavour to apprehend this dangerous enemy to the American cause.”  To that end, “a reward of One Hundred Dollars is hereby offered to any person, or persons that shall take and bring him back” to the jail in Philadelphia.  A nota bene called on the “Printers of the several news papers in the Colonies” to aid in the search for Kirkland by running the advertisement.  Several newspapers from New York to Virginia, Adelberg states, did publish the notice, though not all of them gave it a vivid headline that called on readers to “STOP A TORY!”  Despite the reward and the widespread dissemination of the advertisement, Kirkland managed to elude capture and went on to serve as a Loyalist officer in southern campaigns during the Revolutionary War.[1]

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[1] See, for instance, Randall M. Miller, “A Loyalist Plan to Retake Georgia and the Carolina, 1778,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 75, no. 4 (October 1974): 207-214.

May 4

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

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (May 4, 1776).

“His large and elegant STOCK of China, Glass and Earthern Wares.”

The extensive advertisement for a “large and elegant STOCK of China, Glass and Earthern Wares” that Joseph Stansbury ran in the May 4, 1776, edition of the Pennsylvania Ledger looked more like advertisements that appeared before the Continental Association went into effect on December 1, 1774, and before the war began on April 19, 1775.  It filled an entire column, listing countless items that Stansbury sticked at his store “opposite Christ Church [in] Philadelphia.”

To help prospective customers navigate his inventory, Stansbury used headings for “CHINA,” “GLASS,” and “EARTHERN WARE.”  To make the most efficient use of the space, he divided the column into two columns with a line of decorative type running down the center.  Under each heading, he grouped similar items together and, when their description extended more than one line, indented the second and subsequent lines so the resulting white space guided readers.  Some categories of goods were short, just two lines, such as “Rich enamelled tea-table sets complete” and “Blue and white soup terrines, two sizes.”  Others were much longer, including one that extended for twenty-two lines.  That one offered “Cream-pots, salts, mustards, pepper-castors, egg slices, custard cups, blamange moulds, cheese-toasters, cream-buckets, Italian lamps for the chambers of the sick, garden pots, flower horns, jarrs and beakers, sauce-boats, terrines, butter-tubs and stands, egg cups, bottles and basons, water dishes, fish drainers, cream cheese dishes, chamberpots, pattypans, baking dishes, compotiers, pudding dishes, pap boats, sallad dishes, plates, oblong dishes, mugs, jugs, childrens tea sets, whistling birds, &c.”  The “&c.” (the abbreviation for et cetera commonly used in the eighteenth century) suggested an even greater array of goods available to consumers who visited Stansbury’s store.  He promoted “a great choice of patterns” among his “Chocolate, & coffee tea-cups and saucers,” part of his larger theme of presenting all kinds of choices to consumers.

Stansbury encouraged the sort of conspicuous consumption that had become increasingly popular in the middle decades of the eighteenth century as colonizers participated in a transatlantic consumer revolution.  A series of boycotts (known at the time as nonimportation and nonconsumption agreements) during the imperial crisis and then the disruptions to trade during the war prompted many merchants, shopkeepers, and consumers to suspend some of their operations or abstain from importing and purchasing all sorts of goods.  Stansbury’s advertisement, however, testified to an active market or, at least, his desire to continue making sales despite the trying times.  As a Loyalist, Stansbury may not have much cared about the Patriot position when he ran his advertisement.  He was imprisoned later in 1776 for boisterously singing “God Save the King” and eventually served as an intermediary between Benedict Arnold and John André.

March 18

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury (March 18, 1776).

“The Deceiver unmasked … In answer to a Pamphlet, entitled, COMMON SENSE.”

As Robert Bell advertised Plain Truth, a response to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, in Philadelphia in March 1776, Samuel Loudon, a printer and bookseller in New York, prepared to publish and sell “The Deceiver unmasked, or Loyalty and Interest united; in answer to a Pamphlet, entitled COMMON SENSE.”  On Monday, March 18, he announced that two days later he would make available a new pamphlet “Wherein is proved that the Scheme of INDEPENDENCE is ruinous and delusive, and that in our Union with Great-Britain on liberal principles consists our greatest glory and happiness.”  By the time Loudon placed this advertisement, he may have seen an advertisement for Plain Truth in a newspaper printed in Philadelphia, borrowing the words “ruinous” and “delusive” for his own advertisement.

At first glance, this advertisement seems to contradict Thomas R. Adams’s assertion that only two pamphlets directly responding Common Sense appeared in the colonies in the six months between its publication in January and the Continental Congress declaring independence in July.  Bell published Plain Truth in the middle of March and James Humphreys, Jr., published The True Interest of America Impartially Stated in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense at the end of May.[1]  What about Loudon’s Deceiver Unmasked?  In a footnote, Adams explains that a “third pamphlet … was printed by Samuel Loudon in New York, but it was never sold because a Committee of Mechanics under Christopher Duyckinck destroyed almost all of the 1,500 copies.”[2]  One of the notes in the American Antiquarian Society’s catalog entry for Deceiver Unmasked provides more information: “The New-York Historical Society copy bears the [manuscript] note: General Duykinck’s Committee went to the House of Mr. Loudon’s and destroyed all these pamphlets just as they were ready to be published. — this Copy was saved.”  That delayed rather than prevented dissemination of Deceiver Unmasked.  The pamphlet eventually came off Humphreys’s press in Philadelphia as The True Interest of America.  Readers intrigued by Loudon’s advertisement for Deceiver Unmasked had to wait months for its publication, not knowing during that time whether Loudon or any other printer would even attempt it.  The first edition met with sufficient success that Humphreys issued a second edition.  While neither Plain Truth nor Deceiver Unmasked/True Interest of America had much impact, the publication and marketing of these responses to Common Sense demonstrates that printers believed a market existed for Loyalist tracts.

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[1] Thomas R. Adams, “The Authorship and Printing of Plain Truth by ‘Candidus,’” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 49, no. 3 (1955): 230-231.

[2] Adams, “Authorship and Printing,” 230.

March 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (March 16, 1776).

“PLAIN TRUTH … containing Remarks on a late Pamphlet intituled COMMON SENSE.”

Robert Bell published the first edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense on January 9, 1776, and not long after that he published a response, “PLAIN TRUTH; addressed to the INHABITANTS of AMERICA, containing Remarks on a late Pamphlet intituled COMMON SENSE.”  As was often the case in eighteenth-century advertisements for books and pamphlets, Bell used the extensive subtitle as the copy for marketing the volume: “Wherein are shewn, that the Scheme of INDEPENDENCE is Ruinous, Delusive, and impracticable: That were the Author’s Asseverations, respecting the Power of AMERICA, as Real as Nugatory, Reconciliation, on liberal Principles with GREAT-BRITAIN would be exalted Policy: And that, circumstances as we are, permanent Liberty, and true Happiness can only be obtained by Reconciliation with that Kingdon.”

According to Thomas R. Adams, only two pamphlets answered Common Sense in the six months between its publication in January and the Continental Congress declaring independence in July.  Robert Bell first advertised Plain Truth in the Pennsylvania Gazette on March 13.  Near the end of May, James Humphreys, Jr., published The True Interest of America Impartially Stated in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense.[1]  Bell quickly placed advertisements in other newspapers printed in Philadelphia, including the Pennsylvania Evening Post on March 14 and the Pennsylvania Ledger on March 16.  In each advertisement, he set the price at three shillings for a single copy “with large allowance to those who buy per the hundred or dozen.”  In other words, Bell offered a significant discount for buying in volume, hoping to make the pamphlet more attractive to consumers who might buy a dozen to share with friends and retailers who might buy a hundred to sell in their own shops in Philadelphia and beyond.  He may not have anticipated that Plain Truth would achieve the same popularity as Common Sense, yet he was still a savvy entrepreneur who aimed to generate revenue from the debate over declaring independence.  “To this Pamphlet is subjoined,” a nota bene at the end of the advertisement informed readers, “a Defence of the Liberty of the Press.”  Adams asserts that Bell “pleaded for the right to present both sides of the question.  No doubt he hoped thereby to increase the sales of both pamphlets.”[2]  James Rivington had done the same in advertisements with headlines like “THE AMERICAN CONTEST” and “The American Controversy” that promoted pamphlets “on both sides, in the unhappy dispute with Great-Britain.”  Humphreys, who eventually published The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, also ran advertisements for “POLITICAL PAMPHLETS, ON Both Sides of the Question.”  Such pamphlets educated colonizers and helped them understand and formulate their own positions, yet they also presented opportunities for printers to generate revenue from current events.

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[1] Thomas R. Adams, “The Authorship and Printing of Plain Truth by ‘Candidus,’” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 49, no. 3 (1955): 230-231.

[2] Adams, “Authorship and Printing,” 235.

March 12

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

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

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (March 12, 1776).

“AN ORATION, IN MEMORY OF GENERAL MONTGOMERY.”

The March 12, 1776, edition of Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette carried an advertisement for “AN ORATION, IN MEMORY OF GENERAL MONGTOMERY: And of the OFFICERS and SOLDIERS who fell with him before QUEBEC.”  Readers knew well that Major General Richard Montgomery, the commander of the American invasion of Canada, had been killed in action in failed attack on Quebec City on December 31, 1775.  The deaths of Montgomery and Major General Joseph Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, had been the most significant losses during the first year of the Revolutionary War.  After the war, John Trumbull memorialized both patriots in paintings that depicted their sacrifice.

Shortly after Montgomery’s death, the Continental Congress invited William Smith, an Anglican minister and provost of the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania, to preach at a memorial service for Montgomery on February 19, 1776.  The message that he delivered surprised many members of the Continental Congress, angering them with the blatant loyalism he espoused.  As Christopher A. Hunter outlines, Smith “prais[ed] Montgomery’s ‘loyalty to his sovereign.’”  Furthermore, he proclaimed that “the delegated voice of the continent … supports me in praying for a restoration ‘of the former harmony between Great Britain and these Colonies.”[1]  Smith directly quoted the Olive Branch Petition, a final effort to broker peace and a redress of grievances.  When George III refused to even read that missive, it convinced many colonizers that reconciliation was not possible.

In a letter to Abigail Adams, John described the oration as “an insolent Performance” and described what happened after William Livingston, a delegate from New Jersey, suggested that the Continental Congress publish Smith’s memorial to Montgomery.  “A Motion was made to Thank the orator and ask a Copy—But opposed with great Spirit, and Vivacity from every Part of the Room, and at last withdrawn, lest it be should be rejected as it certainly would have been with Indignation.”  Yet an advertisement for the oration appeared in Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette and several other newspapers.  “The orator then printed it himself,” Adams continued, “after leaving out or altering some offensive Passages.”  Hunter notes that Smith doubled down on some parts that Adams and others found most troublesome, “adding a preface declaring, ‘whatever claim he may have to the appellation of a good Citizen or Friend to Liberty’ must rest on his efforts to prevent American independence.”[2]

John Dunlap, the printer of Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet and Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette, printed the “ORATION,” advertised it in his newspapers, and sold it at his printing offices in Philadelphia and Baltimore.  Despite the controversy, printers in New York, Newport, and Norwich published local editions, disseminating even more copies.  Each also published, marketed, and sold their own editions of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, a pamphlet that strongly advocated for declaring independence.  Perhaps they thought that honoring Montgomery and the officers and soldiers killed during the Battle of Quebec outweighed the portions of Smith’s commentary that patriots found so “insolent.”  Perhaps they merely sought to generate revenue by publishing a pamphlet that commemorated Montgomery.  Maybe they simultaneously pursued both courses.  Whatever their inspiration, readers of Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette and other newspapers repeatedly saw Montgomery memorialized when they perused the advertisements.  Many likely did not associate that act of veneration with the problematic rhetoric Smith introduced in his “ORATION.”

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[1] Christopher A. Hunter, “William Smith’s Catonian Loyalism, Race, and the Politics of Language,” Early American Literature 52, no. 3 (2017): 531.

[2] Hunter, “William Smith’s Catonian Loyalism,” 531.

October 12

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

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

New-York Journal (October 12, 1775).

“I Acknowledge that I have at several times spoken in favour of the laws of Taxation.”

Lemuel Bower wanted to return to the good graces of his community in the fall of 1775.  Events that occurred since the previous April – the battles at Lexington and Concord, the siege of Boston, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Second Continental Congress appointing George Washington as commander in chief of the Continental Army, an American invasion of Quebec – had intensified feelings about the imperial crisis and, apparently, made for a difficult situation for Bower since he had expressed Tory sentiments in the past.  In hopes of moving beyond that, he composed a statement that appeared in the October 12, 1775, edition of the New-York Journal.

“I Acknowledge,” Bower confessed, “I have at several times spoken in favour of the laws of Taxation, and against the measures pursued by America to procure Redress, and have thereby justly merited the displeasure of my country.”  To remedy that, “I beg forgiveness, and so solemnly promise to submit to the rules of the Continental and Provincial Congresses,” including abiding by the nonimportation and nonconsumption provisions in the Continental Association.  Furthermore, Bower pledged, “I never will speak or act in opposition to their order, but will conduct according to their directions, to the utmost of my power.”  He did not state that he had a change of heart, only that he would quietly act as supporters of the American cause were supposed to act rather than engage in vocal opposition.  As William Huntting Howell has argued, such compliance, especially when expressed in a public forum, may have been more important to most Patriots than whether Bower truly agreed with them.[1]  How he acted and what he said was more important than what he believed as long as he kept his thoughts to himself.

Bower did indeed express his regrets and his promise to behave better in a public forum.  He concluded his statement with a note that “this I desire should be published in the public prints.  When it appeared in the New-York Journal, it ran immediately below a notice from the Committee of Inspection and Observation in Stanford, New York, that labeled two Loyalists as “enemies to the liberties of their country” and instructed the public “to break off all commerce, dealings and connections with them.”  That was the treatment that Bower sought to avoid!  That notice appeared immediately below news from throughout the colony.  Bower’s statement ran immediately above paid advertisements.  The two statements concerning the political principles of colonizers thus served as a transition from news to advertising in that issue of the New-York Journal.  Did John Holt, the printer, treat them as paid notices?  Did he require Bower to pay to insert his statement?  Or did the Patriot printer publish one or both gratis?  Perhaps he printed the statement from the Committee of Inspection and Observation for free but made Bower pay to publish his penance.  Whatever the case, Bower’s statement was not clearly a news item nor an advertisement but could have been considered both simultaneously by eighteenth-century readers.

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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): 187-217.

October 5

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (October 5, 1775).

“THE Speeches of EDMUND BURKE, Esq; on American Taxation.”

James Rivington did not know it when he published the October 5, 1775, edition, nor did readers and the rest of the community, but he would soon discontinue printing Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer.  With hindsight, we know that less than two months later, on November 27, the Sons of Liberty would attack his printing office and destroy his press and type “because of his pronounced Tory sentiments.”[1]  It was not the first time.  His home and printing office had been attacked the previous May.  For a few weeks, he had sought refuge on a British ship in the harbor.  He had been hung in effigy.  After all that, the November 23, 1775, edition would be the last issue of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer that he would print before departing for London.  The printer returned to New York in 1777, during the British occupation, and established Rivington’s New-York Loyal Gazette.  Today, historians consider it possible that Rivington spied on behalf of the American cause, but that would not have been public knowledge in the 1770s.

What was public knowledge was that the masthead of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer featured the seal of Great Britain at a time when the mastheads for other newspapers did not have an image or chose some other device.  The “UNITE OR DIE” political cartoon depicting a severed snake, each segment representing a colony, even appeared in the masthead of the Pennsylvania Journal.  A few other newspapers did continue to include the seal of Great Britain in their masthead, but the printers did not have the same history of expressing positions that supported the officials considered enemies of American liberties.  Even with the seal of Great Britain in the masthead, the October 5, 1775, edition of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer included an advertisement for “THE Speeches of EDMUND BURKE, Esq; on American Taxation, delivered April 19, 1774” and “His Speech on Moving his Resolutions of Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22d, 1775.”  Rivington printed and sold both speeches by a member of Parliament considered a friend to America.  The printer had a history of marketing “pamphlets on the Whig and Tory side” of “The American Controversy” and arguing for freedom of the press when it came to the contents of his newspaper and other items he printed and sold.  After the battles at Lexington and Concord, however, he discontinued advertising pamphlets that expressed the Tory perspective.  The advertisement for Burke’s speeches, pamphlets that he printed as well as promoted, starkly presented only one side of “THE AMERICAN CONTEST.”  Rivington seemingly changed his advertising strategy as the political situation in the colonies intensified once hostilities commenced in Massachusetts.

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[1] Clarence S. Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820 (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1947), 686.

August 8

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette (August 8, 1775).

“A SERMON, PREACHED … the DAY recommended by the Honorable CONTINENTAL CONGRESS for A GENERAL FAST.”

On July 20, 1775, the “DAY recommended by the Honorable CONTINENTAL CONGRESS for A GENERAL FAST Throughout the TWELVE UNITED COLONIES of NORTH-AMERICA,” Thomas Coombe delivered a sermon to “the Congregations of CHIRST CHURCH and ST. PETER’s” in Philadelphia.[1]  Less than three weeks later, John Dunlap advertised a local edition of the sermon “PUBLISHED BY REQUEST” and sold in Baltimore in Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette.  He also printed a Philadelphia edition of the sermon, which apparently sold well enough to convince him to publish a second edition.  Solomon Southwick, printer of the Newport Mercury, produced yet another edition, as did James Magee in Belfast, Ireland.

According to researchers at the William Reese Company, a prominent antiquarian rare book dealer specializing in American, Coombe “was an Anglican minister and Loyalist in Philadelphia, and formerly the Chaplain for the Marquis of Rockingham.”  Both the advertisement and the title page noted the latter credential.  The sermon “calls for restraint amongst the citizenry of Philadelphia in the wake of the opening battles of the American Revolution.”  After the colonies declared independence, Coombe was imprisoned for his political stance, but “allowed to return to England in 1779.”  Publishing and disseminating this sermon, like various other sermons advertised during the summer of 1775, allowed the public greater access to discussions about how to respond to the imperial crisis after hostilities commenced in Massachusetts.  Colonizers read newspapers that carried reports about current events and editorials, examined pamphlets that outlined perspectives drawn from political philosophy ancient and modern, and participated in town meetings and everyday conversations about the deteriorating relationship between the colonies and Britain.  Sermons that circulated in print gave them even greater access to public discourse.  Just as they read news about events they had not witnessed when they perused newspapers, they became members of a congregation or audience when then read sermons printed and sold by early American printers.

Dunlap did something savvy in marketing the Baltimore edition of Coombe’s sermon.  He devoted the entire first page of the August 8, 1775, edition of Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette to the first portion of the sermon.  It spilled over onto the second page, along with a note: “To be Concluded in our next.)”  The printer gave readers a taste of the sermon.  Those who could not wait a week for the next issue or who wanted a copy in a single pamphlet could purchase the sermon at Dunlap’s printing office.  Those who did wait for the August 15 edition of the newspaper were disappointed.  The first page featured a portion of “The SPEECH of EDMUND BURKE, Esq; on moving his Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775,” along with a familiar note, “[To be Continued.]”  The remainder of Coombe’s sermon did not appear in that issue, nor in the Postscript, additional pages, that supplemented it.  Dunlap did continue Burke’s speech in the August 22 edition, but he neglected to provide the remainder of Coombe’s sermon.  The advertisement for the sermon, however, did appear on August 15 and August 22, enticing readers who wanted to finish what they had started.

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[1] Why twelve “UNITED COLONIES” instead of thirteen?  Georgia had not yet sent delegates to the Second Continental Congress.

May 20

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (May 20, 1775).

“POLITICAL PAMPHLETS, ON Both Sides of the Question.”

When he launched the Pennsylvania Ledger in the winter of 1775, James Humphreys, Jr., distributed proposals declaring that it would be a “Free and Impartial News Paper, open to All, and Influenced by None.”  With high hopes for operating an impartial press as the imperial crisis intensified, he soon advertised “POLITICAL PAMPHLETS … on Both Sides of the Question” in February 1775.  Several months later, he ran a notice advising that “POLITICAL PAMPHLETS, ON Both Sides of the Question, May be had of the Printer hereof” in the May 20 edition.  Doing so required both courage and commitment, especially considering recent events.

Humphreys published that advertisement a month after the battles at Lexington and Concord.  The siege of Boston continued, yet he did not allow news of the battles or the siege to dissuade him from hawking pamphlets on “Both Sides of the Question.”  Perhaps more significantly, James Rivington, the printer who also published pamphlets “on both sides, in the unhappy dispute with Great-Britain” at his “OPEN and UNINFLUENCED PRESS” in New York, had been hung in effigy in New Brunswick, New Jersey, by colonizers dissatisfied with what they considered his Loyalist sympathies.  Rivington covered that event in his newspaper, Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer, even including a woodcut depicting the scene.  Given that printers exchanged newspapers with their counterparts in other cities and towns, Humphreys likely read about the effigy; even if he did not, he almost certainly heard about it.  Even more recently, Rivington published a notice in which he acknowledged that “many Publications have appeared from my Press which have given great Offence … to many of my Fellow Citizens,” asserted that “Nothing which I have ever done, has proceeded from any Sentiments in the least unfriendly to the Liberties of this Continent,” and pledged “to conduct my Press upon such Principles as shall not give Offence to the Inhabitants of the Colonies.”  Despite his effort to clarify that he had not pursued a political agenda but instead followed his “duty as a Printer” to encourage “the Liberty of the Press,” the Sons of Liberty attacked his home and office on May 10.  Rivington took refuge on a British naval vessel.  Assistants continued publishing the newspaper, inserting his notice about his true intentions twice more.  Rivington had already discontinued advertising political pamphlets representing both sides of what he had previously called “The American Controversy” and “THE AMERICAN CONTEST.”

Although Humphreys advertised political pamphlets from “Both Sides” on May 20, word of what happened to Rivington may have prompted him to reconsider his courage in the weeks and months that followed.  He discontinued that advertisement.  In the next issue, he marketed only one pamphlet for sale at his printing office, The Group, a satire by Mercy Otis Warren that depicted a “SCENE AT BOSTON.”  That publication unabashedly supported the American cause.  A week later, that advertisement appeared on the first page of the Pennsylvania Ledger (as it had in the May 20 edition that carried the advertisement for political pamphlets on the final page), next to an advertisement for a multi-volume set of Political Disquisitions recommended for “all the friends of Constitutional Liberty, whether Britons or Americans.”  Still, the editorial perspective of the Pennsylvania Ledger, according to Isaiah Thomas, “was under the influence of the British government” and Humphreys eventually “refused to bear arms in favor of his country, and against the government of England.”[1]  He experienced sufficient difficulty that he suspended the newspaper at the end of November 1776.  In May 1775, a year and a half earlier, he grappled with what kinds of publications he would promote among the advertisements in his newspaper, first forging ahead with notices for pamphlets representing multiple perspectives and then emphasizing those that supported the American cause, perhaps doing so in hopes of avoiding the treatment that Rivington received.

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[1] Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America: With a Biography of Printers and an Account of Newspapers (1810; New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 398.

May 13

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

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

Pennsylvania Ledger (May 13, 1775).

“Any that will be wanted for REGIMENTALS, he will cut at the wholesale price.”

After word of the battles at Lexington and Concord arrived in Philadelphia, Philip Marchinton took to the pages of the Pennsylvania Ledger to “acquaint his Friends and the Public, that he hath a very large Quantity of … London BROWN CLOTHS … and a large Quantity of superfine London Brown Forest Cloths” for sale at his shop.  He listed the prices for each type of textile, also noting that “Any that will be wanted for REGIMENTALS, he will cut at the wholesale price.”  In other words, he offered a discount to customers who purchased cloth to make uniforms.

Doing so made good business sense, but it did not necessarily reveal Marchinton’s politics at that moment or the decisions he would make once the colonies declared independence.  Although he set prices that favored American patriots just after the war began, Marchinton ultimately identified as a Loyalist and migrated to Nova Scotia.  According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Marchinton was born in England around 1736, served a “commercial apprenticeship” before migrating to Philadelphia in 1771, and “established himself as a general merchant.”  He tried to remain neutral, even “agreeing to serve in the local militia but refusing to renounce his allegiance to the crown” during the early stages of the war.  Marchinton later “declared himself a loyalist during Philadelphia’s occupation by British forces” in 1777 and 1778, leaving him “no choice but to leave the city when the army abandoned it in June 1778.”  He spent the rest of the war in British-occupied New York, leaving in November 1783.  After spending a few months in Bermuda, he settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia, became a prosperous merchant, and held public office.

Marchinton had experience with using favorable prices as a marketing strategy.  In October 1773, he placed an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette and the Pennsylvania Journal, declaring that “it is in his power to sell” all sorts of textiles “as low as any shop or store in the city.”  Responding to current events in the spring of 1775 provided an opportunity for the merchant to devise a promotion aimed at men who needed fabric for uniforms, a gesture that he likely expected would garner good will among the public and draw customers to his shop to make other purchases as well.  Like many colonizers, Marchinton apparently supported resistance aimed at securing a redress of grievances, but over time he found that he could not endorse independence.  His advertisement in the Pennsylvania Ledger testified to his entrepreneurial ingenuity rather than his deeply held political beliefs.