Comparisons between this riot and the Battles of Lexington and Concord—hence the title The Lexington of 1861—were swift and inevitable: they both happened on April 19, involved Massachusetts men, and resulted in the first fatalities of the war. And, as the Union would have it, in both cases the Massachusetts men were simply going about their business when they were ruthlessly attacked by the aggressor. The subtitle of the print states: “The Massachusetts Volunteers fighting their way through the streets of Baltimore, on their march to the defence of the National Capitol April 19^th 1861. Hurrah for the Glorious 6^th.” 

Among the Coercive Acts was the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774, which revoked the colony’s 1691 charter and concentrated political power in the hands of the royal governor, Thomas Gage (1719-87). All government positions that had been elected were now appointed by the governor, including seats in the Governor’s Council, which acted as the upper house of the legislature. Paine was appointed by Gage to the council, and though he neither sought nor wanted this position, he felt he could not refuse it without being disloyal to the king. Throughout the colony, these mandamus councilors, as they were called, were forced to resign their commissions by large gatherings of militia. An article in the third column of the fourth page in the September 5, 1774, issue of the Boston Evening Post described how, to protest the Massachusetts Government Act, the militia gathered in Worcester forced Paine to recant his commission with a public statement of apology. 

The Tory Protest was signed by fifty-two men, many of whom were wealthy landowners and staunch supporters of the royal government. Perhaps most notable among them was James Putnam (1725-89), a prominent lawyer considered one of the finest legal minds in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Adams (1735-1836), the future second president of the United States, studied law as an apprentice to Putnam.

The Tory Protest exemplifies the role various media played in the political protests leading up to the Revolution. This was an open letter sent both to prominent public officials and to the “public prints” of influential newspapers. The protest itself also attacked the dissemination of information through the Committees of Correspondence, calling them “a public grievance and nuisance.” The protest further denounced the covenants of non-importation and other written petitions circulated through these committees when it cited “that papers have been lately published, and are now circulating through the province, inviting, and wickedly tempting all persons to sign them; fully implying, if not expressly denouncing the destruction of all, that refuse to subscribe those unlawful combinations, tending directly to sedition, civil war, and rebellion.”

In May of 1854, while still a minister in Worcester, Higginson led an unsuccessful effort to free a fugitive slave named Anthony Burns (1834-1862) from the courthouse in Boston as an act of protest against the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Upon his return to Worcester, he delivered this sermon, titled Massachusetts in Mourning, in which he uses the Anthony Burns incident as a way to call for the end of apathy toward slavery. He laments that fugitive slaves were not safe even in Massachusetts, and that many stopped only briefly before continuing on to Canada where the Fugitive Slave Act could not reach them. Higginson calls his parishioners to action, asking them at the very least to take a stand in their own city, advising them to “petition your City Government to revoke their appropriation” to Fourth of July celebrations, the promises of which he now saw as “hollow.”

In October 1854, a federal marshal, Asa O. Butman, arrived in Worcester to investigate Higginson’s part in the Burns affair. Butman was confronted by a mob and only escaped the riot with Higginson’s help. The Boston authorities issued a warrant for Higginson’s arrest on the charge of murder of a deputy who died during the effort to free Burns. Higginson presented himself freely, but the case was dropped due to lack of evidence.

When the Civil War finally broke out, Higginson first served as a captain in the Fifty-first Massachusetts Infantry, and then later as a colonel in the First South Carolina volunteers, the first regiment recruited from the freedmen for the federal army. After the war, Higginson spent most of his energy on literature. He was a frequent contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, which eventually led to his role as a mentor to the poet Emily Dickinson (1830-86). In addition to abolition, Higginson was also a fervent activist for women’s rights, labor rights, and temperance. 

In 1774 and 1775, Leonard wrote a series of seventeen articles, published in the Boston Tory newspaper Massachusetts Gazette; and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, under the pseudonym Massachusettensis, defending the policies of the British monarchy. The articles were reprinted in pamphlet form in England and in Ireland and are among the most articulate expressions of the loyalist point of view.

In this specific article, Leonard questions the concept that people have the right to govern themselves. He claims that this will lead to social disorder and mob rule and that individuals proclaiming liberty are often the first to become tyrants. The article in this issue is also followed by letters to the editors, retorts to Massachusettensis’s previous arguments.

These articles, along with those written in reply by John Adams (1735-1826) under the penname Novanglus, show the spirited dialogue that occurred among various parties in the press during the crisis with Britain. The different meanings of Leonard’s and Adams’s pseudonyms were also indicative of expanding colonial unity: “Massachusettensis” literally means “of Massachusetts,” while “Novanglus” stands for New England, signifying a unified voice among the colonies.

Leonard was eventually appointed chief justice of Bermuda and served from 1782 to 1806. He died in England of a gunshot, either an accident or a suicide.

The most striking natural occurrence in Boston in 1737 was the extraordinarily cold weather. Cooper took the “Irresistable Power of God’s Cold” as his subject in a sermon preached in January. In the sermon, Cooper struggles to explain the science of cold to his shivering listeners; the published version of the sermon even includes a footnote to Robert Boyle’s 1665 Experimental History of Cold. But the physical causes of cold—“frigorisick particles,” Cooper hypothesizes—were but “second causes only.” God was the “first cause,” and “these particles are of God’s making.” And what message did God send with his cold? According to Cooper, the frigid winter was a display of God’s restraint as well as his power. Yes, some Bostonians had frozen to death, but the city so far had been spared the communal judgment of a major fire, which, he said, loomed as a serious threat with town pumps and docks frozen. But perhaps most important, God’s cold called people to charity. “Next to the love of God,” Cooper declares, “we shou’d keep up a warm love to our neighbour . . . . Therefore the colder the season is, the warmer shou’d our charity be; for then the needs of the poor are greatly increased.”

Click the image below to browse the full pamphlet.

Poor Julian is an early example of a “last speech” broadside printed in Massachusetts. Julian was a Native American held as a servant (probably a slave) who had escaped captivity. He was recaptured, but then he killed the bounty hunter who was returning him to his master. In his speech, Julian warns other servants to “beware of Drunkenness, of Sabbath-breaking, and of running away from your Masters.” Three competing broadsides were published about this one execution. In this version, Julian thanks Thomas Fleet (1658-1758), the Boston bookseller who arranged for its publication, and he disavows the other broadsides as inauthentic frauds. Fleet was not a printer himself, but he had a good eye for what would sell, and he frequently played the role that would later be termed “publisher.” In the end, were these the actual words of “poor Julian”? No one knows. 

In this particular article, Adams argues that love and liberty are basic and profound human needs, that all men are created equal, and that kings are to serve the will of the people. These principles, he claims, are evident throughout history from Aristotle to Locke.

Adams’s articles, along with those written by Daniel Leonard under the penname Massachusettensis, show the spirited dialogue that occurred among various parties in the press during the crisis with Britain. The different meanings of Leonard’s and Adams’s pseudonyms were also indicative of expanding colonial unity: “Massachusettensis” literally means “of Massachusetts,” while “Novanglus” stands for New England, signifying a unified voice among the colonies.

Also of note in this issue of the Boston Gazette is the publication of the play The Group by Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814), a political writer and satirist who was also the wife, sister, and friend of leading patriots. The Group, along with other political poems and plays Warren wrote, served as a popular satirical voice for the colonial cause. Though she published anonymously until 1790, many knew of her early authorship. She was encouraged in her writing through her close friendship with John Adams. In 1805 Warren published one of the earliest histories of the American Revolution, a three-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

Stephen Salisbury was a wealthy merchant in the central Massachusetts community of Worcester, which was also the hometown of Bigelow. The two men were friends, having served together on the town’s Committee of Correspondence before war broke out. As a storekeeper, Salisbury would have been in possession of plenty of sugar and capable of sending it to Bigelow as he requests in the first letter.  

A transcription of the letters can be found here.