(Fig. 2.)
Common Sense
Before and during the American Revolution, citizen participation was never more replete than in the published pamphlet. The most celebrated of texts to grace politics of the American Revolution was Common Sense by Thomas Paine. A “brilliant polemicist,” Paine “migrated in the fall of 1774” to Philadelphia, whereupon he wrote for the Pennsylvania Magazine.[1] Once he was of sufficient literary status, Paine penned all of 47 pages of Common Sense “at breakneck speed,” under the “byline, ‘Written by an Englishman.’”[2] Paine was concerned, not only for the timing, but the relevance of his grand pamphlet, for the American colonies were in the midst of a non-importation movement, refusing en masse to consume British goods, so long as the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, or any other British excise taxes were still in place. Paine’s worries proved unfounded—due to its digestible form, Common Sense spread as a fever throughout “artisans’ benches, on the docks, in the taverns, and in the fields and barns,” selling “100,000 copies by the end of the year and thousands after that.” [3] Digestible indeed, Common Sense was centered around two primary contentions, 1. challenging the legitimacy of the British Crown, and 2. boasting the sovereignty of the American colonies. Why ought one man—the king—be born to a royal, ruling family, if that man has not any attributes that raises him above all humankind? If nature mandates that “all men” are “originally equals,” and if “the word of God bears testimony against” the powers of a monarch, to rule, and pass on the authority of his throne to his son, what right has that monarch to lay claim to the American colonies, or for that matter, the commerce for which they are responsible? [4] What then, is to become of the relationship between America and its parent country? No “reconciliation,” says Paine, can come between peaceful colonies and a capricious monarchy, for in America, no one usurps the scepter of kingship, but “LAW,” but “God,” but “the people.” [5] And to his challengers, those “warmest advocate[s] for reconciliation” he challenged “to shew, a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with Great-Britain. I repeat the challenge, not a single advantage is derived. Our corn will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.” [6]
The Age of Paine: Challenges to Common Sense
To that challenge, his opponents answered. The quality of any political document in the American Revolution is measured by the quantity and quality of rebuttals to which it is subject. Artisans and statesman commented in equal number on Common Sense. Some pilloried it. One pamphleteer, Samuel Loudoun, had drafted a rebuttal to Common Sense, but upon hearing of his plans, a New York mob took to burning his pamphlet and all copies therein printed. [7] John Adams wrote an extensive letter to his wife Abigail on the topic of Common Sense, commending its efforts, but ultimately writing it off as a work that capitulates to the common man in too many ways: he brushed it aside in much of his editorial work as a “crapulous mass.” [8] Common Sense proved to embody the spirit of pamphleteering, as the vehicle for mobilizing the colonists’ discontent, opening for common, and upper crust men the ability to participate in civic life, by reading, or writing pamphlets of their own.
The Anonymous Pamphleteer
All too often, elite figures of colonial politics took up the role of anonymous pamphleteer, dawning a pseudonym and duking it out with one another in the published space. Pseudonyms ensured statesmen and colonists alike an outlet, where they could air their grievances with a degree of unadulterated, unfiltered dialogue. While opponents to popular pamphlets like Common Sense were censored, pseudonyms afforded scores of Tory and loyalist dissenters the opportunity to voice opposition to the American Revolution. Pamphleteering, pseudonymous or otherwise, was a medium most prolific in 18th century America, capable of providing colonists with a proper avenue with which to understand and be understood, to institutions of government and society. We see in the lead-up to the American revolution, a spate of editorial writing that exposes schisms in America’s political decorum. Under the protection of pseudonyms, statesmen and noblemen could lower themselves to the slander and vitriol of the masses, to saying what they pleased without paying mind to the consequences. Such was the free and open discourse among all men, in the format of pamphlets, whereupon civic participation manifested itself in essays and installments, published as a means to sway politicians and supporters to the revolutionary cause.
Daniel “Massachusettensis” Leonard
Political rivalries never shone more brightly than in the spat between Reverend Daniel Leonard and John Adams, over the pretext of the American Revolution, and the subject therein of Britain’s right of taxation. Among the most virulent of colonists loyal to Britain, Daniel Leonard opted to publish a series of letters in the Massachusetts Gazette under the pseudonym of Massachusettensis, swimming against the current of Revolutionary thought taking hold at that moment. In the prelude to his first letter, Leonard argued the patriots’ cause to be false, a folly that took the option of shattering the cohesion of a territory “into twenty or thirty different parcels, instead of seeking a consolidation of several provinces into one empire.” [9] Instead of embracing the servile duties of an offspring colony to a paternal empire, the colonists instead opted to create a government of their own, from which “arbitrary dictates of a lawless congress, or the savage determinations of an insolent mob” resulted, bringing about disunity to the American territories. [10] If the colonies ought not revolt and quarrel with British taxation, what can they do? Not until his second letter does Leonard (or rather, Massachusettensis) specify the sort of place he believes colonies have in the British Empire. As for the question of taxation, Leonard brushes off the argument that America is not answerable to Parliament as a taxing authority, by claiming that “the revenue to the crown, from America, amounted to but little more than the charges of collecting it.—She thought it as reasonable, that the colonies should bear a part of the national burden, as that they should share in the national benefit.” [11] The French and Indian War left Great Britain penniless, unable to pay its debts, let alone the upkeep of the empire. As a means to recoup treasury funds spent long ago, the empire, and Leonard in particular, took to advocating for a series of taxes, from the Stamp Act to the Tea Act, meant to fulfill the promise of an empire and her subsidiaries, where paid dues garner parental protection for the periphery.
The Language of Dissenters
Leonard’s pamphlet was a testament to the utility of language, where he used repeated times the diction of naivete and childishness to describe the colonists. To Leonard, the colonists were rejecting the “love of empire,” and in its place installing “Effigies, paintings, and other imagery,” where “the fourteenth of August was celebrated annually as a festival in commemoration of a mob’s destroying a building,” the festivities punctuated with weekly meetings, whereupon “the people were told” “that the ministry had formed a plan to enslave them; that the duty upon tea was only a prelude to a window-tax, hearth-tax, land-tax, and poll-tax, and these were only paving the way for reducing the country to lordships.” [12] Much as naive children, the colonists were indoctrinated with the foreboding caricature of their parent empire as an overbearing, tottering state, close to its sudden decline. As such, anything British (contrary to the pro-English sentiment decades earlier) was cast off by colonists, torn asunder—Tories, loyalist and Crown officials alike were persecuted before and during the war, often “censured for remissness in not having exerted themselves sufficiently at this period.” [13] In part motivated to write his pamphlet under the pseudonym of Massachusettensis because of retaliation against Tories, Leonard’s pamphlet was if nothing else a call to colonial leaders and governing figures for reconciliation, to stop their “outrages, disgraceful to humanity itself,” but to instead send to England overtures of peace. [14] This was not some opinionated essay, but a citizen’s educated and impassioned appeal to men of institutions to mobilize in compromise, for a negotiated peace.
John “Novanglus” Adams
Writing under the pseudonym of Novanglus, John Adams set out to draft a rebuttal to Leonard’s published correspondences. The object of Adams’ rebuke was to challenge Leonard’s claim of Great Britain’s right of taxation, and raise doubt, as to whether the colonies were so offspring of the British Empire, answerable to laws and mandates of the mother country. The summon substance of Adam’s nom de plume was to reframe the debate over the colonies’ role in a larger British Empire. First, Adams took to task Leonard’s idea that Parliament had a right to tax the colonies, as a quid-pro-quo relationship, where colonists pay for the protection and supervision of Great Britain. Besides, America was not the incorporated territory of a larger empire as Leonard perceived it, but assented to become the subservient protectorate of a Greater England, without the benefits of representation in British Parliament. To which Adams inquired, why must America pay dues to a nation in which it has no legislative stake? “Is America incorporated into the realm? Is it a part of the realm? Is it a part of the kingdom? Has it any share in the legislative of the realm? The Constitution requires that every foot of land should be represented in the third estate, the democratical branch of the Constitution. How many millions of acres in America, how many thousands of wealthy landholders, have no representation there?” [15] Furthermore, appropriate with the founders’ admiration for Ancient Rome, Adams used the example of conquered polis’ outside of the walls of Rome, where Gallic tribes and Greek colonists were, in equal measure “always allowed all the rights of Roman citizens, and were governed by senates of their own.” [16] Compared to Rome, Britain was doing a dismal job of managing its territories; it was not allotting seats proportional to land or wealth or population to Ireland or India or America. As with the colonies of Rome, American colonies were permitted their own assemblies, senates, and governorships, but were still demanded of by Parliament to pay a litany of taxes and duties. If Parliament fashioned itself a contemporary Rome, why intercede now with quill and parchment, set on imposing taxes? Adams’ pamphlet, shrouded in the concealment of a pen name, was the very quintessence of civic engagement. It refuted the arguments of another pamphleteer, whilst endeavoring to speak to office holders and persuade them to mobilize, and act in colonists’ greater interest—to secede from England and tolerate no more the paltry argument that colonies ought be the subordinate to the governing Empire.
All the Rest
It garners saying, that there is a greater breadth of pamphlets beyond the aforementioned argument between John Adams and Daniel Leonard. The work of pamphleteering spanned loyalists and revolutionaries, yeomen and statesmen, leaping chasms of class and status as never before. Samuel Seabury for instance, a revered Bishop of the Episcopal Church, wrote under the pen name of Westchester Farmer, so as to establish the position of pious loyalists on the matter of the American Revolution. If his position could be refined to but a string of sentences, it is that of casting Great Britain as
"a vigorous matron, just approaching a green old age; and with spirit and strength sufficient to chastise her undutiful and rebellious children. Your measures have as yet produced none of the effects you looked for: Great Britain is not as yet intimidated: She has already a considerable fleet and army in America: More ships and troops are expected in the spring: Every appearance indicates a design in her to support her claim with vigour." [17]
With the Continental Congress as yet uncommunicative with Great Britain, attempting in all its might to secede from their mother country through a panoply of non-importation and objections to parliamentary law, it seems that Seabury’s pamphlet is trying nothing more than to call some measure of sense to the colonies. The crux of Seabury's argument is that of an imperial union between the periphery colonies and the metropole of England. If colonies were to act on their boasts of autonomy from Great Britain, what was to become of trade, of the welfare of the empire on the whole? As Seabury saw it, only economic and political calamity would ensue, as colonists set forth on an endeavor to make some adolescent point—after all, colonies not of America, from the West Indies to Ireland relied heavily on the resources extracted from America, and their resultant purchasing of goods made from those materials. [18] Why (futily) declare independence, if nothing but economic collapse and political disunity would result? Alongside select few pamphleteers like Leonard, Seabury was the loyalist poster child of an age where loyalist poster children were all too frequently censored. That his pamphlet was published at all is a testament to the diversity of ideals in political thought at the time, where pious and loyalist men alike could mobilize in objection to a revolution that was inexorably gaining traction, doing so as a way to provide to the public and powerful institutions a proposition of the best path forward.
The Hamiltonian Rebuttal
Of course, Seabury’s pamphlet did not go unanswered. The subject of his pamphlet was railed against time and again by the likes of young political turks such as Alexander Hamilton. To Hamilton, not only were the colonies warranted in whatever claims they made to full and unabated sovereignty, but whatever objections were raised as to the vital role of colonies in a larger British Empire, was a mere, baseless claim. Hamilton brushed aside detractors’ claims of the colonies’ essential involvement in Great Britain by countering that
"the total loss of our trade will be felt only for a time. Her merchants would turn their attention another way : New sources of trade and wealth would be opened : New schemes pursued. She would soon find a vent for all her manufactures in spite of all we could do. Our malice would hurt only ourselves. Should our schemes distress from branches of her trade, it would be only for a time; and there is ability and humanity enough in the nation to relieve those, that are distressed by us, and put them in some other way of getting their living." [19]
Cessation of the imperial union between colonies and their mother would be less an amputation of an essential limb, and more the cauterizing of a long-spoiling wound, painful for but a moment, yet beneficial on the whole. Hamilton’s argument, much like Paine’s was that of secession, and such an argument arose at precisely the right time, when colonists felt a disdain for England as never before. Hamilton was the mobilizer of long discontented colonists.
Pamphlets (MH)
It speaks volumes, that men of all sorts, from those of a background most pious, politicking, up-and-coming, and noble can each of them speak over the clamor and pallor of political thought by way of pamphlets. Easily distributable, legible to all, and uncensored (should you dawn a pseudonym), pamphlets proved to be a writing scape for the ages, a work that could express almost any political ideal to whomever it wished. Rebuttals could be issued as soon as written, without limits on length or content. The American Revolution is most often cast as some enlightenment era utopia, devised as an equal opportunity domain, where one is compelled to involve oneself with the operation and discourses of the state. And in this case, that ideal had become a reality. Men of all political and social strata could shroud themselves in as many personas, in as many volumes as they wished, adding dimensions to their involvement in political affairs as soon as they mused on the happenings of society.
A Pamphleteer for the Ages
Benjamin Franklin springs to mind as the quintessence of men who just as easily discarded old pseudonyms in favor of more updated ones. Franklin donned the cloak of varying personas, as a means to rally constituencies, from housewives, to farmers, to inventors, to manufacturers, a rare talent to mobilize seemingly incongruent populations, to the enterprise of building America. So often, Franklin was
"a man of many voices and masks who continually mocked himself. Sometimes he was a woman, like ‘Silence Dogood,’ ‘Alice Addertongue,’ ‘Cecilia Shortface,’ and ‘Polly Baker,’ saucy and racy and hilarious. At other times he was the ‘Busy Body,’ or ‘Obadiah Plainman,’ or ‘Anthony Afterwit,’ or 'Richard Saunders,' also known as “Poor Richard,” the almanac maker. Sometimes he wrote in the London newspapers as ‘An American’ or ‘A New England-Man.’ Other times he wrote as ‘A Briton’ or ‘A London Manufacturer’ and shaped what he wrote accordingly." [20]
Far beyond the scope of the treatises of anonymous pamphleteers the likes of John Adams or Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin reprised the role of pamphlet author because he was so attracted the excitingly elastic nature of these political works. To Franklin, what forum better to write at the pleasure of, than one that engendered authors to transcend political norms, gender, race, creed, and heritage? To test the waters of public opinion and political views, by becoming the devil’s advocate of that opinion, was the very notion of civic engagement in revolutionary times.
Letters From Revolutionaries
A written communication somewhat less possessed of breadth and variety, the letter served in the revolutionary era to strengthen, and at times sever political ties between and among colonists. All too often, letters proved to be the means with which political figures buttressed their power, both at home and abroad. Benjamin Franklin was the consummate example of someone who used the letter to negotiate his political identity in both British and American terms. Having obtained a series of letters in 1772, written by Massachusetts lieutenant governor Thomas Hutchinson, conspiring with English figures to enstate tough, “stern measures” on protesting colonists, Franklin aimed to release these letters to Massachusetts press. [21] Miscalculating such a gesture to an extraordinary degree, Franklin was derided by Loyalists as a turncoat who engendered hatred and disdain of colonists toward their governing officials, and Revolutionaries believed him to be a waffling politician, never quite the “true patriot.” [22] To get himself from out of the quagmire his first string of letters had created, Franklin opted instead to write a good friend of his stationed at British parliament. Writing his endeared and beloved correspondent William Strahan, Franklin severed ties with Great Britain with the stroke of his quill, at the words “You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my Country to Destruction. You have begun to burn our Towns and murder our People. — Look upon your hands! They are stained with the Blood of your Relations! — You and I were long Friends:— You are now my Enemy.” [23] Evident from his use of the letter, is Franklin’s veracity for the medium as an interactive and participatory landscape. Being a model of political opportunism, Franklin utilized letters to mend political relationships when need be, and destroy those that no longer suited his interests, the summon substance of civic participation by statesman in the 18th century. In this instance, political mobilization manifested in the utilization of letters to rally political support, to incite the ire, and in some cases, the ingratiation of certain constituencies.
Letters From Loyalists
So often, we are occupied by the founding fathers as figures that magnetized toward politically progressive tactics like letter writing. But loyalists too utilized the medium of letters, so as to improve their own standing with the Crown. Martin Howard Jr.’s letter entitled, surprisingly, A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax, attempts to mend alliances between himself and the Crown. While more structurally resemblant of a pamphlet, Howard wrote his letter to a friend from Rhode Island, full well aware of the fact that it would be published. If anything, Howard must have anticipated this letter finding its way to any number of publications, and as such, wrote it as his own political diary. Howard, for his part, believed the Crown to be infallible, and benevolent in dealing with the colonists. Howard imagined, with the scores of despots, totalities, monarchies existing outside the scope of the British Empire, things could certainly be worse. With but a mild pittance of export and excise taxes paid by the colonists, they would not only receive the protection of a global empire, but share in the economic glory that might come from British dominance. Howard disputes in his letter the very “dispute between Great-Britain and the colonies,” consisting “of two parts; first, the jurisdiction of parliament,---and, secondly, the exercise of that jurisdiction,” arguing that the dispute is ill-tempered and overzealous, but such a rebellion is unheard of, a defiance of a mother country meaning only the best of outcomes. [24] Submission to Great Britain, Howard believed, was a minor toll, compared to what “these spurious, unworthy sons of Britain” would feel on the receiving end of “the iron rod of a Spanish inquisitor, or a French farmer of the revenue; it would indeed be a punishment suited to their ingratitude.” [25] Loyalists like Howard, same as figures like Benjamin Franklin, engaged in letters as political statements, meaning to speak to and mobilize friends and allies. Letters were forms of networking, for loyalists to speak to judges, to governors, dukes, and kings, connecting with those figures as never before. Letters were rungs on the ladder to higher political status.
Common Sense
Before and during the American Revolution, citizen participation was never more replete than in the published pamphlet. The most celebrated of texts to grace politics of the American Revolution was Common Sense by Thomas Paine. A “brilliant polemicist,” Paine “migrated in the fall of 1774” to Philadelphia, whereupon he wrote for the Pennsylvania Magazine.[1] Once he was of sufficient literary status, Paine penned all of 47 pages of Common Sense “at breakneck speed,” under the “byline, ‘Written by an Englishman.’”[2] Paine was concerned, not only for the timing, but the relevance of his grand pamphlet, for the American colonies were in the midst of a non-importation movement, refusing en masse to consume British goods, so long as the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, or any other British excise taxes were still in place. Paine’s worries proved unfounded—due to its digestible form, Common Sense spread as a fever throughout “artisans’ benches, on the docks, in the taverns, and in the fields and barns,” selling “100,000 copies by the end of the year and thousands after that.” [3] Digestible indeed, Common Sense was centered around two primary contentions, 1. challenging the legitimacy of the British Crown, and 2. boasting the sovereignty of the American colonies. Why ought one man—the king—be born to a royal, ruling family, if that man has not any attributes that raises him above all humankind? If nature mandates that “all men” are “originally equals,” and if “the word of God bears testimony against” the powers of a monarch, to rule, and pass on the authority of his throne to his son, what right has that monarch to lay claim to the American colonies, or for that matter, the commerce for which they are responsible? [4] What then, is to become of the relationship between America and its parent country? No “reconciliation,” says Paine, can come between peaceful colonies and a capricious monarchy, for in America, no one usurps the scepter of kingship, but “LAW,” but “God,” but “the people.” [5] And to his challengers, those “warmest advocate[s] for reconciliation” he challenged “to shew, a single advantage that this continent can reap, by being connected with Great-Britain. I repeat the challenge, not a single advantage is derived. Our corn will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for buy them where we will.” [6]
The Age of Paine: Challenges to Common Sense
To that challenge, his opponents answered. The quality of any political document in the American Revolution is measured by the quantity and quality of rebuttals to which it is subject. Artisans and statesman commented in equal number on Common Sense. Some pilloried it. One pamphleteer, Samuel Loudoun, had drafted a rebuttal to Common Sense, but upon hearing of his plans, a New York mob took to burning his pamphlet and all copies therein printed. [7] John Adams wrote an extensive letter to his wife Abigail on the topic of Common Sense, commending its efforts, but ultimately writing it off as a work that capitulates to the common man in too many ways: he brushed it aside in much of his editorial work as a “crapulous mass.” [8] Common Sense proved to embody the spirit of pamphleteering, as the vehicle for mobilizing the colonists’ discontent, opening for common, and upper crust men the ability to participate in civic life, by reading, or writing pamphlets of their own.
The Anonymous Pamphleteer
All too often, elite figures of colonial politics took up the role of anonymous pamphleteer, dawning a pseudonym and duking it out with one another in the published space. Pseudonyms ensured statesmen and colonists alike an outlet, where they could air their grievances with a degree of unadulterated, unfiltered dialogue. While opponents to popular pamphlets like Common Sense were censored, pseudonyms afforded scores of Tory and loyalist dissenters the opportunity to voice opposition to the American Revolution. Pamphleteering, pseudonymous or otherwise, was a medium most prolific in 18th century America, capable of providing colonists with a proper avenue with which to understand and be understood, to institutions of government and society. We see in the lead-up to the American revolution, a spate of editorial writing that exposes schisms in America’s political decorum. Under the protection of pseudonyms, statesmen and noblemen could lower themselves to the slander and vitriol of the masses, to saying what they pleased without paying mind to the consequences. Such was the free and open discourse among all men, in the format of pamphlets, whereupon civic participation manifested itself in essays and installments, published as a means to sway politicians and supporters to the revolutionary cause.
Daniel “Massachusettensis” Leonard
Political rivalries never shone more brightly than in the spat between Reverend Daniel Leonard and John Adams, over the pretext of the American Revolution, and the subject therein of Britain’s right of taxation. Among the most virulent of colonists loyal to Britain, Daniel Leonard opted to publish a series of letters in the Massachusetts Gazette under the pseudonym of Massachusettensis, swimming against the current of Revolutionary thought taking hold at that moment. In the prelude to his first letter, Leonard argued the patriots’ cause to be false, a folly that took the option of shattering the cohesion of a territory “into twenty or thirty different parcels, instead of seeking a consolidation of several provinces into one empire.” [9] Instead of embracing the servile duties of an offspring colony to a paternal empire, the colonists instead opted to create a government of their own, from which “arbitrary dictates of a lawless congress, or the savage determinations of an insolent mob” resulted, bringing about disunity to the American territories. [10] If the colonies ought not revolt and quarrel with British taxation, what can they do? Not until his second letter does Leonard (or rather, Massachusettensis) specify the sort of place he believes colonies have in the British Empire. As for the question of taxation, Leonard brushes off the argument that America is not answerable to Parliament as a taxing authority, by claiming that “the revenue to the crown, from America, amounted to but little more than the charges of collecting it.—She thought it as reasonable, that the colonies should bear a part of the national burden, as that they should share in the national benefit.” [11] The French and Indian War left Great Britain penniless, unable to pay its debts, let alone the upkeep of the empire. As a means to recoup treasury funds spent long ago, the empire, and Leonard in particular, took to advocating for a series of taxes, from the Stamp Act to the Tea Act, meant to fulfill the promise of an empire and her subsidiaries, where paid dues garner parental protection for the periphery.
The Language of Dissenters
Leonard’s pamphlet was a testament to the utility of language, where he used repeated times the diction of naivete and childishness to describe the colonists. To Leonard, the colonists were rejecting the “love of empire,” and in its place installing “Effigies, paintings, and other imagery,” where “the fourteenth of August was celebrated annually as a festival in commemoration of a mob’s destroying a building,” the festivities punctuated with weekly meetings, whereupon “the people were told” “that the ministry had formed a plan to enslave them; that the duty upon tea was only a prelude to a window-tax, hearth-tax, land-tax, and poll-tax, and these were only paving the way for reducing the country to lordships.” [12] Much as naive children, the colonists were indoctrinated with the foreboding caricature of their parent empire as an overbearing, tottering state, close to its sudden decline. As such, anything British (contrary to the pro-English sentiment decades earlier) was cast off by colonists, torn asunder—Tories, loyalist and Crown officials alike were persecuted before and during the war, often “censured for remissness in not having exerted themselves sufficiently at this period.” [13] In part motivated to write his pamphlet under the pseudonym of Massachusettensis because of retaliation against Tories, Leonard’s pamphlet was if nothing else a call to colonial leaders and governing figures for reconciliation, to stop their “outrages, disgraceful to humanity itself,” but to instead send to England overtures of peace. [14] This was not some opinionated essay, but a citizen’s educated and impassioned appeal to men of institutions to mobilize in compromise, for a negotiated peace.
John “Novanglus” Adams
Writing under the pseudonym of Novanglus, John Adams set out to draft a rebuttal to Leonard’s published correspondences. The object of Adams’ rebuke was to challenge Leonard’s claim of Great Britain’s right of taxation, and raise doubt, as to whether the colonies were so offspring of the British Empire, answerable to laws and mandates of the mother country. The summon substance of Adam’s nom de plume was to reframe the debate over the colonies’ role in a larger British Empire. First, Adams took to task Leonard’s idea that Parliament had a right to tax the colonies, as a quid-pro-quo relationship, where colonists pay for the protection and supervision of Great Britain. Besides, America was not the incorporated territory of a larger empire as Leonard perceived it, but assented to become the subservient protectorate of a Greater England, without the benefits of representation in British Parliament. To which Adams inquired, why must America pay dues to a nation in which it has no legislative stake? “Is America incorporated into the realm? Is it a part of the realm? Is it a part of the kingdom? Has it any share in the legislative of the realm? The Constitution requires that every foot of land should be represented in the third estate, the democratical branch of the Constitution. How many millions of acres in America, how many thousands of wealthy landholders, have no representation there?” [15] Furthermore, appropriate with the founders’ admiration for Ancient Rome, Adams used the example of conquered polis’ outside of the walls of Rome, where Gallic tribes and Greek colonists were, in equal measure “always allowed all the rights of Roman citizens, and were governed by senates of their own.” [16] Compared to Rome, Britain was doing a dismal job of managing its territories; it was not allotting seats proportional to land or wealth or population to Ireland or India or America. As with the colonies of Rome, American colonies were permitted their own assemblies, senates, and governorships, but were still demanded of by Parliament to pay a litany of taxes and duties. If Parliament fashioned itself a contemporary Rome, why intercede now with quill and parchment, set on imposing taxes? Adams’ pamphlet, shrouded in the concealment of a pen name, was the very quintessence of civic engagement. It refuted the arguments of another pamphleteer, whilst endeavoring to speak to office holders and persuade them to mobilize, and act in colonists’ greater interest—to secede from England and tolerate no more the paltry argument that colonies ought be the subordinate to the governing Empire.
All the Rest
It garners saying, that there is a greater breadth of pamphlets beyond the aforementioned argument between John Adams and Daniel Leonard. The work of pamphleteering spanned loyalists and revolutionaries, yeomen and statesmen, leaping chasms of class and status as never before. Samuel Seabury for instance, a revered Bishop of the Episcopal Church, wrote under the pen name of Westchester Farmer, so as to establish the position of pious loyalists on the matter of the American Revolution. If his position could be refined to but a string of sentences, it is that of casting Great Britain as
"a vigorous matron, just approaching a green old age; and with spirit and strength sufficient to chastise her undutiful and rebellious children. Your measures have as yet produced none of the effects you looked for: Great Britain is not as yet intimidated: She has already a considerable fleet and army in America: More ships and troops are expected in the spring: Every appearance indicates a design in her to support her claim with vigour." [17]
With the Continental Congress as yet uncommunicative with Great Britain, attempting in all its might to secede from their mother country through a panoply of non-importation and objections to parliamentary law, it seems that Seabury’s pamphlet is trying nothing more than to call some measure of sense to the colonies. The crux of Seabury's argument is that of an imperial union between the periphery colonies and the metropole of England. If colonies were to act on their boasts of autonomy from Great Britain, what was to become of trade, of the welfare of the empire on the whole? As Seabury saw it, only economic and political calamity would ensue, as colonists set forth on an endeavor to make some adolescent point—after all, colonies not of America, from the West Indies to Ireland relied heavily on the resources extracted from America, and their resultant purchasing of goods made from those materials. [18] Why (futily) declare independence, if nothing but economic collapse and political disunity would result? Alongside select few pamphleteers like Leonard, Seabury was the loyalist poster child of an age where loyalist poster children were all too frequently censored. That his pamphlet was published at all is a testament to the diversity of ideals in political thought at the time, where pious and loyalist men alike could mobilize in objection to a revolution that was inexorably gaining traction, doing so as a way to provide to the public and powerful institutions a proposition of the best path forward.
The Hamiltonian Rebuttal
Of course, Seabury’s pamphlet did not go unanswered. The subject of his pamphlet was railed against time and again by the likes of young political turks such as Alexander Hamilton. To Hamilton, not only were the colonies warranted in whatever claims they made to full and unabated sovereignty, but whatever objections were raised as to the vital role of colonies in a larger British Empire, was a mere, baseless claim. Hamilton brushed aside detractors’ claims of the colonies’ essential involvement in Great Britain by countering that
"the total loss of our trade will be felt only for a time. Her merchants would turn their attention another way : New sources of trade and wealth would be opened : New schemes pursued. She would soon find a vent for all her manufactures in spite of all we could do. Our malice would hurt only ourselves. Should our schemes distress from branches of her trade, it would be only for a time; and there is ability and humanity enough in the nation to relieve those, that are distressed by us, and put them in some other way of getting their living." [19]
Cessation of the imperial union between colonies and their mother would be less an amputation of an essential limb, and more the cauterizing of a long-spoiling wound, painful for but a moment, yet beneficial on the whole. Hamilton’s argument, much like Paine’s was that of secession, and such an argument arose at precisely the right time, when colonists felt a disdain for England as never before. Hamilton was the mobilizer of long discontented colonists.
Pamphlets (MH)
It speaks volumes, that men of all sorts, from those of a background most pious, politicking, up-and-coming, and noble can each of them speak over the clamor and pallor of political thought by way of pamphlets. Easily distributable, legible to all, and uncensored (should you dawn a pseudonym), pamphlets proved to be a writing scape for the ages, a work that could express almost any political ideal to whomever it wished. Rebuttals could be issued as soon as written, without limits on length or content. The American Revolution is most often cast as some enlightenment era utopia, devised as an equal opportunity domain, where one is compelled to involve oneself with the operation and discourses of the state. And in this case, that ideal had become a reality. Men of all political and social strata could shroud themselves in as many personas, in as many volumes as they wished, adding dimensions to their involvement in political affairs as soon as they mused on the happenings of society.
A Pamphleteer for the Ages
Benjamin Franklin springs to mind as the quintessence of men who just as easily discarded old pseudonyms in favor of more updated ones. Franklin donned the cloak of varying personas, as a means to rally constituencies, from housewives, to farmers, to inventors, to manufacturers, a rare talent to mobilize seemingly incongruent populations, to the enterprise of building America. So often, Franklin was
"a man of many voices and masks who continually mocked himself. Sometimes he was a woman, like ‘Silence Dogood,’ ‘Alice Addertongue,’ ‘Cecilia Shortface,’ and ‘Polly Baker,’ saucy and racy and hilarious. At other times he was the ‘Busy Body,’ or ‘Obadiah Plainman,’ or ‘Anthony Afterwit,’ or 'Richard Saunders,' also known as “Poor Richard,” the almanac maker. Sometimes he wrote in the London newspapers as ‘An American’ or ‘A New England-Man.’ Other times he wrote as ‘A Briton’ or ‘A London Manufacturer’ and shaped what he wrote accordingly." [20]
Far beyond the scope of the treatises of anonymous pamphleteers the likes of John Adams or Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin reprised the role of pamphlet author because he was so attracted the excitingly elastic nature of these political works. To Franklin, what forum better to write at the pleasure of, than one that engendered authors to transcend political norms, gender, race, creed, and heritage? To test the waters of public opinion and political views, by becoming the devil’s advocate of that opinion, was the very notion of civic engagement in revolutionary times.
Letters From Revolutionaries
A written communication somewhat less possessed of breadth and variety, the letter served in the revolutionary era to strengthen, and at times sever political ties between and among colonists. All too often, letters proved to be the means with which political figures buttressed their power, both at home and abroad. Benjamin Franklin was the consummate example of someone who used the letter to negotiate his political identity in both British and American terms. Having obtained a series of letters in 1772, written by Massachusetts lieutenant governor Thomas Hutchinson, conspiring with English figures to enstate tough, “stern measures” on protesting colonists, Franklin aimed to release these letters to Massachusetts press. [21] Miscalculating such a gesture to an extraordinary degree, Franklin was derided by Loyalists as a turncoat who engendered hatred and disdain of colonists toward their governing officials, and Revolutionaries believed him to be a waffling politician, never quite the “true patriot.” [22] To get himself from out of the quagmire his first string of letters had created, Franklin opted instead to write a good friend of his stationed at British parliament. Writing his endeared and beloved correspondent William Strahan, Franklin severed ties with Great Britain with the stroke of his quill, at the words “You are a Member of Parliament, and one of that Majority which has doomed my Country to Destruction. You have begun to burn our Towns and murder our People. — Look upon your hands! They are stained with the Blood of your Relations! — You and I were long Friends:— You are now my Enemy.” [23] Evident from his use of the letter, is Franklin’s veracity for the medium as an interactive and participatory landscape. Being a model of political opportunism, Franklin utilized letters to mend political relationships when need be, and destroy those that no longer suited his interests, the summon substance of civic participation by statesman in the 18th century. In this instance, political mobilization manifested in the utilization of letters to rally political support, to incite the ire, and in some cases, the ingratiation of certain constituencies.
Letters From Loyalists
So often, we are occupied by the founding fathers as figures that magnetized toward politically progressive tactics like letter writing. But loyalists too utilized the medium of letters, so as to improve their own standing with the Crown. Martin Howard Jr.’s letter entitled, surprisingly, A Letter from a Gentleman at Halifax, attempts to mend alliances between himself and the Crown. While more structurally resemblant of a pamphlet, Howard wrote his letter to a friend from Rhode Island, full well aware of the fact that it would be published. If anything, Howard must have anticipated this letter finding its way to any number of publications, and as such, wrote it as his own political diary. Howard, for his part, believed the Crown to be infallible, and benevolent in dealing with the colonists. Howard imagined, with the scores of despots, totalities, monarchies existing outside the scope of the British Empire, things could certainly be worse. With but a mild pittance of export and excise taxes paid by the colonists, they would not only receive the protection of a global empire, but share in the economic glory that might come from British dominance. Howard disputes in his letter the very “dispute between Great-Britain and the colonies,” consisting “of two parts; first, the jurisdiction of parliament,---and, secondly, the exercise of that jurisdiction,” arguing that the dispute is ill-tempered and overzealous, but such a rebellion is unheard of, a defiance of a mother country meaning only the best of outcomes. [24] Submission to Great Britain, Howard believed, was a minor toll, compared to what “these spurious, unworthy sons of Britain” would feel on the receiving end of “the iron rod of a Spanish inquisitor, or a French farmer of the revenue; it would indeed be a punishment suited to their ingratitude.” [25] Loyalists like Howard, same as figures like Benjamin Franklin, engaged in letters as political statements, meaning to speak to and mobilize friends and allies. Letters were forms of networking, for loyalists to speak to judges, to governors, dukes, and kings, connecting with those figures as never before. Letters were rungs on the ladder to higher political status.