New-Hampshire Gazette, published by Daniel Fowle (ca. 1715-87), was typical of many newspapers throughout the colonies that protested the steep taxes instituted by the Stamp Act on virtually every aspect of a printer’s business. Printers signified the imminent demise of their business due to the Stamp Act by decorating their newspapers with black mourning borders and skulls and bones. This October 31, 1765, issue was published the day before the act was slated to go into effect. Through their protest, printers gained the support of much of their communities and, after the repeal of the Stamp Act, were emboldened to be ever more critical of royal policy in their printings.

Click the image below to browse the full issue.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> This broadside proclaims the “Glorious News” that on March 18, 1766, the king had given his assent to Parliament’s act to repeal the Stamp Act. In order to authenticate the news, the broadside explains exactly where it came from: a ship of John Hancock’s (1737-93) had just made port from London after six weeks and two days and carried copies of the London Gazette, from which the broadside quotes.

As the second part of the broadside illustrates, the Stamp Act was so hated in London—particularly by merchants who dealt in trade with the Americans—that news of its repeal resulted in public celebrations. Similar celebrations soon broke out in the colonies. As the broadside concludes, “It is impossible to express the Joy the Town [Boston] is now in,” and “The Bells in all the Churches were immediately set a Ringing, and we hear the Day for a general Rejoicing will be the beginning of next week.”

Perhaps what’s most remarkable about this broadside, however, is that excitement on receiving the news was so great that the publishers of the Boston newspapers put aside competition and all worked together to spread the news with no monetary benefit to themselves. The note on the very bottom of the broadside reads, “Printed for the Benefit of the PUBLIC, by Drapers, Edes & Gill, Green & Russel, and Fleets. The Customers to the Boston Papers may have the above gratis at the respective Offices.”

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View larger image]]> While newspapers decried in print the occupation of Boston by British troops beginning in 1768, Paul Revere (1734-1818), a silversmith and engraver in Boston, also did so visually. This engraving shows Boston Harbor facing the north part of town, full of British warships and troops disembarking onto Long Wharf. Revere labels the eight British ships and describes the scene: “On Friday Sept^r 30^th 1768, the Ships of War, armed Schooners, Transports, &c. Came up the Harbour and Anchored round the Town; their Cannon loaded, a Spring on their Cables, as for a regular Siege. At noon on Saturday October the 1^st the fourteenth & twenty-ninth Regiments, a detachment from the 59^th Reg^t and Train of Artillery, with two peices [sic] of Cannon, landed on the Long Wharf; there Formed and Marched with insolent Parade, Drums beating, Fifes playing, and Colours flying, up King Street. Each Soldier having received 16 rounds of Powder and Ball.”

Though at first glance it appears to be a dispassionate description, the implication that the British were preparing for a siege and the use of “insolent” when describing the troops’ parade into town suggest otherwise. Furthermore, Revere cheekily dedicated the engraving to the Earl of Hillsborough (1718-93), secretary of state for the colonies, in a cartouche at the bottom right that is bordered by a Native American standing on a British soldier. “This View of the only well Plan’d Expedition, formed for supporting y^e dignity of Britain & chastising y^e insolence of America, is hum’y Inscrib’d,” he concludes. Aside from any textual ambiguities, the enormity of resorting to military occupation would have been clear in such a detailed visual representation.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View larger image]]> Paul Revere (1734-1818) was a silversmith and engraver born and raised in Boston. Though The Bloody Massacre, often referred to as “The Boston Massacre,” was not Paul Revere’s first foray into using engraving as commentary on news events and politics, it is his most famous. This copy of the engraving was hand-colored by Christian Remick (1725-after 1783), a mariner and artist who hand-colored several of Revere’s prints.

The confrontation on March 5, 1770, that almost immediately became known as the Boston Massacre began when a large group of locals—mainly comprised of sailors and rope makers who felt threatened by British soldiers who were competing for part-time jobs during off-duty hours—started taunting British soldiers with snowballs, stones, and clubs. At the head of this group was Crispus Attucks (ca. 1723-70), probably a runaway slave of African and Native American descent who was working as a sailor and rope maker in the city. Several more British soldiers came to help those already being attacked by the colonists and opened fire on the crowd. It is unclear whether Attucks attacked a soldier first, but he ended up being the first fatality from bullet wounds. Two others, Samuel Gray and James Caldwell, also died during the incident, and Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr died days later as a result of their injuries. Six others were wounded.

This print is full of inaccuracies. It depicts British soldiers firing on their commander’s orders, clearly insinuating that it was an unprovoked military attack. The colonists are all well dressed and appear to be from the middle and upper classes, rather than from the working class. They are also depicted as being unarmed and helpless, but brutally mowed down regardless. Attucks, if depicted, is not rendered as African American.

Despite its inaccuracies, this engraving is Revere’s most well-known print and the most referenced image of the event. It was an effective propaganda piece, aiming to demonstrate what occupation by the British soldiers meant for the colonists. And unlike his earlier print depicting the landing of the British troops in Boston, which only subtly criticized the British in the accompanying text, Revere makes his opinions very clear through the poem below the image here. It begins:

Unhappy Boston! see thy Sons deplore
Thy hallow’d walks besmear’d with guiltless gore
While faithless P____n [Captain Preston] and his savage bands
With murd’rous rancour stretch their bloody hands
Like fierce barbarians grinning o’er their prey
Approve the carnage and enjoy the day.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View the Illustrated Inventory of Paul Revere's works at the American Antiquarian Society]]> The first newspaper to appear in America outside Boston was the American Weekly Mercury, launched by Andrew Bradford (1686-1742) in Philadelphia in 1719. His father, William Bradford (1663-1752), had opened the first print shop in the new city of Philadelphia in the 1680s, before moving on to New York, where Andrew grew up. Andrew Bradford’s decision to use the word “American” in the name of his newspaper was telling. He intended that the paper would seek readers and advertisers beyond the city of Philadelphia—in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and even New York. And it did just that. The American Weekly Mercury was the only newspaper outside Boston until 1725, when Andrew’s father started the New York Gazette.

This issue of the American Weekly Mercury is from the last year of Andrew Bradford’s proprietorship. Like most newspapers of the time, it includes mainly European news, but with some attention as well to news from Boston and New York. England was at war with Spain in 1741, so the paper also has a substantial amount of war news from the Caribbean. This issue is also typical in that it includes an essay, a style Bradford began to use in the 1720s when he published young Benjamin Franklin’s satirical “Busy-Body papers.” This particular essay is on manners.

American Weekly Mercury was aimed mainly at the commercial class, with shipping notices and ads for the mercantile trade. The elaborate woodcut banner on the front page nicely illustrates the newspaper’s commitment to news and commerce. The first image in the banner is the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger of the gods and the god of trade and commerce; the second is the Philadelphia waterfront, bustling with ships; the third is a galloping post rider, delivering the Mercury to subscribers far distant from the city. Post riders announced their arrival by blasting on a horn and carried in their pouches not just the “public prints”—newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides—but personal mail as well. They generally delivered the newspapers to a central location in the community, such as a general store, tavern, or post office where rural subscribers would retrieve them with the rest of their mail when next they came to this location. Printers were often also postmasters and their printing offices were thus communication hubs from which post riders were coming and going.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> Although it is now the calligraphic version of the Declaration—commissioned by Congress and signed by all the members after it had been accepted by the colonies—that is most familiar today, it was actually through the printed version that the colonies first learned about and agreed to support the Declaration of Independence.

To help disseminate the news, the first printed versions of the Declaration were read aloud to gathered crowds, instantly and exponentially expanding their reach. They also acted as copy for printers throughout the colonies, who immediately started creating their own broadsides and reprinting the text of the Declaration in newspapers. The important ways in which printed and oral dissemination of the Declaration were intertwined in these early days is illustrated in this broadside edition of the Declaration, printed in Salem, Massachusetts, byEzekiel Russell (1743-96) less than two weeks after the Declaration’s approval. Although very similar to other early broadside versions of the Declaration, it has an added paragraph at the bottom beneath the “signatures” of John Hancock (1737-93) and the secretary of the Continental Congress, Charles Thompson (1729-1824). This section states that the Revolutionary Council of the State of Massachusetts ordered this broadside printed and a copy sent “to the Ministers of each Parish, of every Denomination, within this State,” so that they could read the Declaration to each of their respective congregations. After doing so, they were to deliver their copies to the “Clerks of their several Towns or Districts,” who were “required to record the same in their respective Town, or District Books, there to remain as a perpetual Memorial thereof.” With the vast majority of citizens attending church services, the governing body of Massachusetts—now given additional authority with the approval of the Declaration—knew that this would be the best way to reach as many people as possible.

Although in most cases we have no way of knowing if these orders were followed, in this instance a small scrap of paper accompanying the broadside contains a handwritten note that reads, “The original copy of the Declaration of Independence, sent by the Council at Boston to the Town of Charlton July 17, 1776 and there read by the minister, Rev. Caleb Curtis, as directed. (See the order below the Declaration.) E. I. Comins.” The Reverend Caleb Curtis was the town’s first minister, and he was a staunch Whig and active in local politics, serving as a member of Charlton’s Committee of Correspondence. He also preached before the Charlton militia, providing a blessing to them as they headed off to fight the regulars at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Given this background it follows that Curtis would have been eager to read the Declaration of Independence before his congregation at the first opportunity.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> In 1690, a recent immigrant to Boston, Benjamin Harris (d. 1716), decided the time was right to launch a newspaper. In the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the royal regime change in England, colonists longed for news from home. Harris, who had been a printer and publisher in London and now ran a bookstore and coffeehouse in Boston, recognized this need. His fledgling newspaper was called Publick Occurrences, Both Forreign and Domestick. The paper looked like an English newspaper and had an array of news from Europe and America. Harris promised that it would appear “once a month (or if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener)” and would include accounts of the “Circumstances of Public Affairs” as well as “Memorable Occurrences of Divine Providence.”

But the first issue of Publick Occurrences was also the last. The paper was suppressed by the colonial authorities in Massachusetts and never appeared again. Most copies of the paper were destroyed; the only known surviving copy is in the Public Record Office in London. But several copies of the broadside cease-and-desist order have survived, such as the one shown here. It is not entirely clear what the governor and council found objectionable, but certainly the most important objection was that the paper was published without their approval. At that time, Massachusetts had a licensing system in force, and the authorities looked over the shoulders of all the printers in the colony. By the eighteenth century licensing for printing had ended in both Britain and America.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> This broadside, printed in Boston in April 1773, contains the text of a letter from the Virginia House of Burgesses informing Boston of the creation of a standing Committee of Correspondence and assuring the New Englanders of Virginia’s continued support in the constitutional crisis. The letter also asks that other Committees of Correspondence be maintained in the assemblies of the other colonies. As the rancor toward British policy grew, it became increasingly important for the colonies to show support for one another, share information, and expand the communication network. This letter, and the reprinting of it, was one means of accomplishing those goals.

]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> AAS Catalog Record]]> View larger image]]> Maps were an important form of news gathering and reporting during the American Revolution. Most were created by engineers in the British army and often they depicted military campaigns or battles, providing not only important intelligence about the topography and geography of a region, but also, as in the case with this map, a narrative of the events of the conflict.

This is the first battle map of the Revolutionary War. This copperplate engraving by J. De Costa was printed in London three months after the Battles of Lexington and Concord and is based on a manuscript map drawn by an unknown cartographer in Lord Percy’s command.

The use of pictorial symbols, rather than rectangles and lines to represent the troops and their movements, was unusual but not unprecedented. This map is the only one to feature the marches of the British forces and battle sites. It shows actual British troops moving out of Boston and engaging with the colonials, complete with gunfire and fallen soldiers, as well as the location of the “Bridge where the attack began.” It also illustrates the British retreat, noting “Provincials firing behind the walls”; minutemen who just got the call on the road to join the fight; encampments and fortifications; and a keyed list of all the ships in Boston Harbor. But this map also indicates the situation after the battles, as it includes representations of the encampments of American forces in the siege of Boston that occurred throughout the spring and summer of 1775. The key also references Bunker Hill and the battle that took place there on June 17, 1775.

De Costa dedicated the map to Richard Whitworth (d. 1811), a member of Parliament from 1768 to 1780, who was likely his patron. Whitworth and others in politics and influential positions used maps throughout the war to better understand the conflict and its progression and to make political and military decisions and policies.

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