2023 Revolutionary War Conference in the Mohawk Valley, 9–11 June

On the weekend of 9–11 June, the Fort Plain Museum will host its annual Revolutionary War Conference in the Mohawk Valley.

This year’s session is called “Conference 250,” with several presentations looking back at events in 1773 and others looking forward to the Sestercentennial.

The lineup of speakers includes:

• James Kirby Martin in conversation with Mark Edward Lender, professor and former student discussing the Revolutionary War and its 250th anniversary
• Friederike Baer, “Hessians: The German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War”
• John “Jack” Buchanan, “The Battle of Musgrove’s Mill, 1780”
• Benjamin L. Carp, “The Boston Tea Party at 250: Reflections on the Radicalism of the Revolutionary Movement”
• Vivian E. Davis, ”Over 250 Years Ago!: The Battle of Golden Hill, January 19, 1770”
• Holly A. Mayer, “Congress’s Own: A Canadian Regiment, the Continental Army, and American Union”
• Steven Park, “250 Years of Remembering: The Changing Landscape of Gaspee History”
• Nina Sankovitch, “The Abiding Quest of a Forgotten Hero: How Josiah Quincy Battled Overwhelming Odds to Bring Together the Northern and Southern Colonies in 1773”
• Eric H. Schnitzer, “Picturing History: The Images of the American War for Independence”
• Sergio Villavicencio, “St. Eustatius and the American Revolution”
• Kelly Yacobucci Farquhar, “Jellas Fonda, a Letter, and the Boston Tea Party: A Look Back 250 Years Later”
• Terry McMaster, “A Revolutionary Couple on the Old New York Frontier: Col. Samuel Clyde & Catharine Wasson of Cherry Valley”
• “New York State and the 250th: Where Things Stand” presented by Devin R. Lander, New York State Historian; Phil Giltner, Director of Special Projects, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; and Lauren Roberts, Saratoga County Historian
• Norman J. Bollen, Fort Plain Museum board chairman, “The Fort Plain Museum & Historical Park’s Grand Enhancement Plan: Rebuilding the Blockhouse for the 250th”

Before the conference and under a separate registration, there will be a bus tour of “Forts and Fortified Homes of the Mohawk Valley” led by Bruce Venter, Wayne Lenig, and Norm Bollen. This is a new, in-depth tour of the historic forts, fortified homes, and other sites that formed the defensive perimeter around Fort Rensselaer (Fort Plain). Lunch will be included.

The conference will take place in the theater of Fulton-Montgomery Community College in Johnstown, New York. Based on past events, I expect an excellent selection of Revolutionary history books to be on sale.

For the full schedule as currently planned, additional information, and registration forms, visit this website.

“We shall not fail of informing our readers thereof”

Prof. Carl Robert Keyes, a historian of print culture and advertising at Assumption University, alerted me to a free database of the Maryland Gazette during the Revolutionary period, courtesy of that state’s government.

That made me think back on my look at newspapers that George Washington might have read at Mount Vernon at the start of 1773. [And looking back made me realize that posting had never posted while I was traveling last week, but it’s up now.]

The Virginia Gazettes carried only the barest news about the Crown’s investigation into the Gaspée affair. In contrast, the Pennsylvania Journal reprinted incendiary reports and commentary New England. What did Anne Catherine Green (shown here) and her son Frederick tells readers of their Maryland Gazette?

Their 31 December issue didn’t mention the Gaspée by name anywhere. But it reprinted items from the 14 December Boston Evening-Post, including:

Last Thursday evening an express came to town from New-York (which left that place the Sunday morning before) with dispatches brought thither by the Cruizer sloop of war, Capt. [Tyringham] Howe, who sailed from English the beginning of September, destined to this port; but meeting with bad weather, &c., was obliged to put away for South-Carolina, where he arrived the 10th of November, and has since got to New-York.

In consequence of the above dispatches, the Lizard frigate, Capt. [Charles] Inglish, with some of the armed schooners, which lay unrigged in this harbour, received orders from the admiral on Saturday morning to be immediately fitted for the sea, and accordingly before night were equipped ready for sailing, with a design (as we are told) to repair to Lord Hillsborough’s loyal colony of Rhode-Island.

The same morning an express set off from hence for New-York, with like orders for the Arethusa to sail for the same place, and letters to Gen. [Thomas] Gage and Governor [William] Tryon. Another express was sent to Capt. [Robert] Keeler, commander of the Mercury frigate at Newport: but the consequence of this unexpected naval manoeuvre we must leave for time to discover; though should any thing of importance transpire, further than that his Majesty’s ships lay this winter in the harbour of Newport with the same security from storms and tempests that they have hitherto done in that of Boston, we shall not fail of informing our readers thereof.

It is also further said, that two regiments are to be sent to Rhode-Island from New-York; and that a motion was intended to be made at the next session of Parliament to have the charter of that colony vacated.

These paragraphs suggested that the British military, both navy and army, was converging on little Rhode Island, and that Parliament was even going to change its constitution.

And for what? With no mention of smugglers attacking H.M.S. Gaspée, these measures looked even more tyrannical.

Of course, none of that happened. But rumors like these both reflected and raised the political tensions in North America, and perhaps at Mount Vernon.

“Calm, clear, & exceeding pleasant”

In my assessment of Benjamin Galloway’s recollection of George Washington threatening to lead “the Virginia riflemen” against British troops in early 1773, I come finally to the environment of the event. Not the political environment, but the actual weather.

In 1818 Galloway stated that Lord Stirling (shown here) and Edward Foy stayed at Mount Vernon “for three or four days, the weather being very tempestuous and sleety.” His 1822 letter echoed that detail, saying the men “continued there during three days, the weather being very tempestuous and snowy.”

The sharp words from Washington to Foy must have occurred on the last evening the two men were at Mount Vernon since, per Galloway’s 1818 account:

during the remainder of the evening [Foy] observed a deathlike silence to Col. Washington. Capt. Foye and Lord Sterling departed from Mount Vernon immediately after breakfast the next morning.

The 1825 version said after the exchange Foy “turned his face immediately towards Mrs. [Martha] Washington, said a few words to her, looked very silly, and soon after requested to be showed to his chamber!” That telling didn’t mention the man’s departure from the estate, but the mood could not have been friendly.

Again, we can test the accuracy of those details. In addition to his “Where & how my time is Spent” journal, Washington also kept a weather diary. And here’s how he described the weather in the days when Galloway, Foy, and Stirling were visiting:

Jany. [1.] Calm, clear, & exceeding pleasant.

2. Calm & very pleasant in the Forenoon with Wind, Clouds, & Rain from the Southward & Eastward in the Afternoon.

3. Clear with the Wind pretty fresh first from the Southwest, & then from the Northwest. But neither Cold nor frosty.

That period wasn’t snowy at all! Maybe the rain on 2 January was enough to make Lord Stirling and Capt. Foy take advantage of Washington’s hospitality for one night, but they weren’t snowed in. Galloway’s memory was more dramatic than actual events.

Then comes the matter of Edward Foy’s movements. Washington’s diary shows Stirling and Foy arrived on 2 January and left on 4 January, not staying “three or four” says. It also offers no support for a rift with their host. In fact, Washington wrote:

4. Lord Sterling & Captn. Foy set out after Breakfast for the Northward thro Alexa. to which place I accompanied them.

The master of Mount Vernon actually went out of his way to show Capt. Foy off.

When I first read this anecdote about Washington striking his table, I was skeptical. After finding that Benjamin Galloway really did meet Foy and Stirling at Mount Vernon at the time he described, I was ready to accept his story. But the false details of the weather and Foy’s departure made me dubious again.

As a young man, Galloway might well have witnessed Washington and Foy disputing over how the royal government should deal with tax resisters in the wake of the Gaspee attack. Their words might have seemed quite heated by pre-war standards. Washington may even have clenched his false teeth and struck the table. But Galloway made the event more dramatic by 1818, with a snowstorm outside and a sudden departure. That means we shouldn’t rely on his memory of what Washington or anyone else said.

“If the burning the Gaspee schooner was a matter of serious importance…”

Benjamin Galloway was indeed at Mount Vernon on 1–5 January 1773, much as he described decades later. The evidence for that is George Washington’s own diary.

The anecdote Galloway told about Washington hinged on him reading an article from a recent newspaper, one of several fetched by William Lee from Alexandria, which described the destruction of H.M.S. Gaspee in Rhode Island.

The Gaspee was burned in June 1772, however. Would it have still been hot news in Virginia early the next year?

As I discussed back here, the initial news stories on the Gaspee affair were quite low-key, considering it was an armed attack on a Royal Navy schooner. The American Whig press didn’t make a big deal out of it, as if the event was an embarrassment.

Only one issue of the three Virginia Gazette newspapers—Purdie and Dixon’s for 9 July—carried a report of the burning. Through the end of the year, the rare follow-up items were short dispatches reporting on government actions, such as offering rewards for information and setting up an investigatory commission.

However, in December Rhode Island politicians began to write to local newspapers and to colleagues in other colonies, like Samuel Adams in Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee in Virginia. They highlighted how that commission might send defendants and witnesses to Britain for treason trials. That would violate sacred British rights, they declared.

The 30 Dec 1772 Pennsylvania Journal joined that campaign by reprinting three separate items about the Gaspee affair from New England newspapers. Under the dateline of Boston, 17 December, printer William Bradford (shown above) combined an angry report on the commission from the 17 December Massachusetts Spy and this commentary from the 21 December Boston Gazette:

If the burning the Gaspee schooner was a matter of serious importance, much more so are the methods pursued by the British administration in consequence of it. This affair was transacted within the body of a county, in a free English government; one would think therefore it should be the subject of the inquiry of the grand jury of inquest for the same county: Instead of which we are told, that five gentlemen, four of whom are of superior rank in different colonies, the other indeed a judge of the admiralty, are appointed by commission to make the enquiry.

By a gentleman lately from Rhode-Island, we are informed, that three of these commissioners are empowered to act, at whose call the army and navy are to attend; that any persons accused, against whom the commissioners shall judge there is evidence sufficient to convict them, are to be apprehended, and together with the evidences [i.e., witnesses] sent to England for trial. And that Capt. [Robert] Keeler, of the Mercury, has notified Gov. [Joseph] Wanton, in consequence of orders, that his ship is ready to receive such persons for the purpose aforesaid.

[Boston News-Letter printer Richard] Draper tells us, that “Admiral [John] Montagu is ordered to hoist his flag in Newport harbour.” The purport of this parade is obvious to common sense. The Admiral will no doubt acquit himself to the satisfaction of his masters upon this occasion. It is said that he has recommended that those who, it is supposed, can give evidence of this matter, and refuse to do it, be put on board the men of war, and there kept until they do; which perhaps may be rather more eligible of the two, than the torture of the RACK.

The indignity offered to all the Colonies, and particularly Rhode-Island, says a gentleman of a neighbouring town in a letter to his friend in this, is not to be equalled. To have a set of crown officers commissioned by the ministry, and supported by ships and troops to enquire into offences against the crown, instead of the ordinary and constitutional method of a grand jury carries an implication that the people of that colony are all so deeply tinctured with rebellious principles, as that they are not to be trusted by the crown.

The inhabitants of this town and province can feel for their brethren of Rhode-Island, having themselves tasted of the cup of ministerial vengeance; when to aid and protect the commissioners of the customs, in carrying into execution a revenue act of the British parliament, Hillsborough’s troops were stationed in the capital, and the city turned into a garrison!—And though these troops, after slaughtering some of our innocent inhabitants, were obliged to retire from the town, they are yet posted in the principal fortress and key of the province.

What shall hinder the like scene of blood, rapine and slaughter in the capitol of Rhode-Island, if the commissions of enquiry there, should so readily call for the military aid as the commissioners of the customs did here? Such treatment of the colonies calls for the most serious attention; and however prophane it may be called by Mr. Draper’s writer the Yeoman, or his canting neighbour, we have reason with firm affiance in HIM who hateth oppression and tyranny, devoutly to acclaim, How Long!—O LORD!—How Long!

That was immediately followed by similar news from the 19 December Providence Gazette, which concluded:

The idea of seizing a number of persons, under the points of bayonets, and transporting them three thousand miles for trial, where, whether guilty or innocent, they must unavoidably fall victims alike to revenge or prejudice, is shocking to humanity, repugnant to every dictate of reason, liberty and Justice, and in which Americans and Freeman ought never to acquiesce.

And then material from the 21 December Newport Mercury, including a letter from a Bostonian warning that three army regiments were soon to march into Rhode Island and another from a Londoner saying:

Our tyrants in administration are greatly exasperated with the late manoeuvre of the brave Rhode-Islanders. . . . We believe that the ancient British spirit of independence which once blest this island, has improved by transportation, and preserves its vigour in the breasts of Americans; cherish it my dear friends! And by relieving yourselves save the small remnant of the virtuous in Britain.

Washington could have received this newspaper among others in early 1773. Living on Virginia’s northern border, he was almost as close to Philadelphia as to Williamsburg, and Philadelphia was a dynamic port with a freer press.

Thus, a newspaper delivered to Mount Vernon in the first days of 1773 could have ignited a dinner-table discussion about the Gaspee affair, British rights, and the use of the military to put down protests and tax resistance, as Galloway described. Those topics were all over the Pennsylvania Journal.

On the other hand, that newspaper did not include the details about how the Gaspee ran aground chasing a smuggling ship, details that Galloway explicitly recalled reading out to the company. He must have picked up that part of the story from other sources.

TOMORROW: George Washington’s other diary.

“A deathlike silence to Col. Washington”

Yesterday I quoted a letter that appeared in the Washington Republican newspaper in September 1822, describing a conversation at Mount Vernon almost fifty years before.

I found another version of the same anecdote, reportedly published in the Hagerstown Torch Light on 21 Dec 1818. Unlike the Washington Republican letter, this article didn’t spark any reprints in other newspapers that I could locate.

My access to back issues of the Hagerstown Torch Light being limited, I actually read this letter in Thomas J. C. Williams’s A History of Washington County, Maryland, published in 1906. (The following year, Williams abridged his text for an article in the Maryland Historical Magazine.)

Here’s the text as published in 1906, with added paragraph breaks:

A large company being at the supper table the last evening they were at Mount Vernon, Col. [George] Washington’s well known servant man, named Billy, entered the room from Alexandria, to which place he had been sent by Col. Washington for newspapers and letters, and delivered some newspapers to Col. Washington, who cast them about midway the table, and requested those who took them up to read aloud such articles of intelligence as they might judge would be desirable to the company.

I being seated in a chair which enabled me to lay my hand on one of the newspapers, took the liberty of so doing, and soon announced to the company a very interesting fact, to-wit: The destruction of the King of England’s sloop of war, called Gaspee, by a party of Yankees; she having when in close pursuit (heavy gale of wind) of a Brother Jonathan coaster (smuggling) missed stays and being so near to the shore, the commander of the Gaspee lost all command of her, and she was run ashore high and dry. The Yankees in a short space of time collected in sufficient force and burnt her.

Captain [Edward] Foye asked me to pass the newspaper from which I had communicated to the company the foregoing (I will venture to say to him) bitter pill read the article and instantaneously declared ore rotundo, that blood must be drawn from the Yankees before they would be taught to conduct themselves as obedient subjects ought to do; and insolently said that he, yes, that he would engage to put down all opposition to the execution of revenue acts which had been lately passed, by the King and Parliament of Great Britain; and moreover that he would undertake so to do at the head of five thousand British troops; which he would march from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina.

Col. Washington was engaged in perusing one of the newspapers, whilst Captain Foye was uttering these insulting and audacious words. Col. Washington withdrew his eyes from the newspaper, placed them steadfastly on Captain Foye, and observed that he (Col. W.) entertained no doubt that Capt. Foye could march at the head of five thousand British troops from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, but added that he should be obliged to Capt. Foye to inform him (Col. W.) whether he meant as a friend or as an adversary! “If as an adversary,” said Col. Washington, “and you, sir would inform me of your intention so to do a few weeks previous to your entry into the ancient dominion, I would engage to give you a handsome check with the Virginia riflemen alone!”

There were on the supper table, at the time when Col. Washington favored Capt. Foye with the above stated retort courteous, twelve or fifteen wine glasses and two or three decanters of excellent old Madeira. At the instant that Col. Washington uttered the words Virginia riflemen alone, he struck the table with his right hand so violently that the decanters and glasses leaped from their proper places and I expected to have beheld them all prostrate on the table.

Capt Foye made no reply but immediately addressed his conversation to Mrs. [Martha] Washington, at whose left hand he was seated; and during the remainder of the evening he observed a deathlike silence to Col. Washington. Capt. Foye and Lord Sterling departed from Mount Vernon immediately after breakfast the next morning.

This anecdote is very similar to the one quoted yesterday, even including some of the same phrasing. There are also some differences in wording and level of detail, though nothing directly contradictory. That suggests the person telling this tale was rather practiced at it.

The biggest difference between the two versions is that this one didn’t include the paragraph about the Rev. Walter Magowan telling other guests at Mount Vernon that he’d never seen Washington so upset.

I don’t know whether the Hagerstown Torch Light included the name of the person who told this story, but Williams included it in his local history: Benjamin Galloway.

TOMORROW: Who was Benjamin Galloway?

“He had never seen the master of Mount Vernon so displeased”

Last month I addressed the idea that George Washington attended fireworks in celebration of the second anniversary of the Gaspee attack in 1774.

I found that claim to be unsupported by any evidence in Washington’s writings or in the newspapers of Williamsburg, Virginia.

Taverns occasionally displayed fireworks, Washington occasionally attended, and in this case the date of a fireworks show simply coincided with the anniversary of an event in another colony many miles away.

Another source describes Washington showing a strong response to the Gaspee affair—or, more accurately, a strong response to a Crown official’s response to the Gaspee affair.

This story starts with the founding of the Washington Republican newspaper in August 1822 by the printer Thomas L. McKenny to support the political career of John C. Calhoun, then U.S. Secretary of War. McKenny invited his new readers to send material for him to print. Early the next month, someone from western Maryland supplied McKenny with this letter:

Mr. Printer: The authenticity of the following communication may be confidently relied on by the public, as there are now alive those who heard the person that now furnishes it, narrate the facts contained therein, immediately after his return from Mount Vernon to the city of Annapolis, precisely as he is now about to state them.
B. G.

Washington County, Sept. 5, 1822.

...just after the cloth was removed from the supper table, a man of colour named Billy, Col. Washington’s favourite servant, who had been sent by his master to Alexandria for letters and newspapers, entered the supper room and delivered to his master a large bundle containing letters and newspapers. Col. Washington, with a cast of his hand, placed the newspapers about mid way the supper table, around which there were then sitting a large company, Lord Sterling on the right, and Capt. [Edward] Foye on the left hand of Mrs. [Martha] Washington. When Col. Washington so placed the papers, he requested that if they contained any important information, it might be read aloud to the company.

It so happened that I laid my hand on an Eastern paper, which contained an article of intelligence to the following effect: “That a Yankee smuggler, being pursued by one of the King’s vessels of war, (and I think she was called the Gaspee,) hugged the shore so closely that the former (the wind then blowing extremely hard) missed stays, and ran plump ashore. The neighbouring brother Jonathans quickly collected in great numbers, the tide being at ebb, they soon boarded and burned her.”

I read said article aloud to the company, and was immediately requested by Captain Faye to pass the newspaper to him, who, when he had read the article, he had the audacity to declare that “The Yankees must be phlebotomized!” and that he, yes, that he, “would engage, at the head of five thousand British regulars, to march from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, and put down all opposition to the revenue acts,” that had been recently passed by the British Parliament for the purpose of raising a revenue in the British colonies.

Col. Washington, at the close of this insulting declaration, instantly fixing his eyes on Capt. Foye, observed: “I question not, Sir, that you could march from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, at the head of five thousand British regulars: but do you mean to say, Sir, that you could do so, as a friend, or as an enemy? If as the latter, and you will allow me a few weeks notice of your intention, I will engage to give you a handsome check with the Virginia riflemen alone.” When Col. Washington was uttering the words with the Virginia riflemen alone, he struck the table so violently with his clenched hand, that some wine glasses and a decanter near him with difficulty maintained their upright positions.

Captain Foye made no reply; but turned his face immediately towards Mrs. Washington, said a few words to her, looked very silly, and soon after requested to be showed to his chamber!

Col. Washington appeared to be very much displeased. Not a word was said by any of the company, in reference to said article of intelligence, while they remained in the room; but when the Rev. Walter Magowan, who was one of the company, and who had resided some years before in the Mount Vernon family as a private tutor to young [John Parke] Custis, had, with two other gentlemen and myself, arrived at our bed chamber, he remarked that, during the whole time he had lived in Col. Washington’s family, he had never seen the master of Mount Vernon so displeased as he appeared to have been that evening with Captain Foye.

I transcribed this from the 18 Sept 1822 Daily National Intelligencer, one of several newspapers that republished the Washington Republican item in late 1822 and early 1823. I couldn’t unearth the Republican itself. (As usual, I’ve broken the long block of text into paragraphs for easier reading on the web.) 

This letter has rarely been republished or cited since. In fact, I couldn’t find a single Washington biographer who quoted what this correspondent said he witnessed around the start of the year 1773.

TOMORROW: Another version of the same tale.

Ways to Explore the Gaspee Affair

As long as I’m virtually hanging out in Rhode Island, I’ll share some new links about the Gaspee affair.

Two hundred and fifty years ago last month, local men stormed a Royal Navy schooner that had run aground chasing a suspected smuggler. They shot the schooner’s commander, Lt. William Dudingston, though not fatally. They took the crew captive. And they set fire to the king’s ship.

The follow-up to that event violent dragged on over the next several months, into 1773. As part of the Sestercentennial, the Rhode Island Secretary of State’s office has digitized its archive of documents related to the Gaspee. We can browse that collection here.

Most of those documents are the records of the official commission that the London government set up to investigate the matter, headed by Rhode Island governor Joseph Wanton. He wasn’t keen on actually identifying who organized or led the attack on the Gaspee since that group almost certainly included some of the colony’s leading merchants. Much of the official correspondence therefore consists of navy commanders proffering one lead or witness after another, only for the governor and lieutenant governor to wave them off.

The commission papers appear to come to 221 pages. The digital archive includes those pages singly and as a bound batch, an index, transcriptions in English and Spanish, modern audio readings of a couple of witness testimonies, and a complete digital version of William R. Staples’s Documentary History of the Destruction of the Gaspee, compiled in 1845.

Another Sestercentennial Gaspee commemoration can be viewed at the Rhode Island Historical Society’s John Brown Museum in Providence. The exhibit “The Gaspee Legacy: Resistance or Treason?” (called “Resistance of Treason?" on this webpage) includes “more than 15 items from the RIHS collections related to the Affair, including John Brown’s cane engraved with the Gaspee’s name and rumored to be constructed of wood from the Gaspee.”

(You remember what I said about the colony’s leading merchants being behind that attack? John Brown, shown above, was almost certainly one of them. And he and his family don’t seem to have been ashamed of the association.)

The “Gaspee Legacy” exhibit will be on view through the end of 2022.

Earlier this year the Rhode Island Historical Society also cooperated with the Newport Historical Society in announcing a collection of scholarly essays to be titled The Bridge: The Gaspee Affair in Context. I’ve been told by one of the contributing authors that this book has been printed, but there’s still no mention of it on the societies’ websites. When it becomes available to the public, I hope to provide a pointer for ordering copies.

When George Washington “went to the Fire works”

One of the arguments for the importance of the Gaspee incident in the American Revolution is that George Washington attended fireworks in Williamsburg, Virginia, commemorating the second anniversary of the destruction of that Royal Navy schooner.

Or so wrote Shelby Little in her 1929 book George Washington: “he spent 3s.9d. to see the fireworks in celebration of the anniversary of the burning of the Gaspee.” That book was criticized for not having citations for all quotations or statements, just a long list of sources at the back.

Luckily, the Washington Papers and Founders Online make it possible for us to see what Washington recorded about on 10 June 1774 in his terse diary of activities, his weather diary, and his expense notebook:

10. Dined at the Raleigh, & went to the Fire works.

10. Again warm with the Wind in the same place and some appearances of Rain.

10— …By Cash paid for seeing the Fireworks 0. 3. 9

Nothing about the Gaspee. The 10th of June was indeed the anniversary of the destruction of that schooner. It was also, by coincidence, the anniversary of the seizure of John Hancock’s ship Liberty. But if people in Williamsburg were trying to make a point about the Gaspee with fireworks, I’d expect some public discussion of that issue.

There were three Virginia Gazette newspapers published at that time. The printers reported on the Gaspee controversy in 1772 and 1773, but they didn’t mention it in 1774, much less spotlight the June anniversary. As I wrote last month, American Whigs complained about the Crown’s measures to investigate that event, but they avoided defending or celebrating the attack itself.

In the late spring of 1774, the Virginia House of Burgesses wasn’t shying away from controversy. Thomas Jefferson and others proposed a fast day to protest the Boston Port Bill. Gov. Dunmore responded by dissolving the legislature, and the legislators responded by gathering in the Raleigh Tavern on 27 May, pledging to boycott the East India Company, and proposing a Continental Congress. Washington was part of that move (though that same evening he attended a ball for the governor’s wife).

At the end of May, Speaker Peyton Randolph proposed that the Burgesses gather on 1 August, regardless of the governor. That defiant meeting would become the first Virginia Convention. Yet those politicians didn’t list the Gaspee among their grievances.

So what was the purpose of the fireworks Washington paid to see? My first thought was George III’s birthday on 4 June. The Williamsburg newspapers reported on a fireworks display in his honor in New York. But I doubt Virginians would have been a week late for that. (If there were fireworks in Williamsburg around that date, Washington wasn’t in town to see them.)

Finally I looked up Washington’s other references to fireworks in these years:

Novr. 1st [1771]. Dined at Mrs. Dawson’s. Went to the Fireworks in the Afternoon and to the Play at Night.

17 [Jan 1774]— By Club at Mrs Hawkinss—& Fireworks 0.15. 0

Those dates don’t correspond to the king or queen’s birthdays or the anniversary of the king’s coronation. Maybe there were local occasions for them, but Washington didn’t note such purposes. Rather, it looks like every so often taverns hosted fireworks to entertain their guests.

In sum, George Washington paid to see fireworks just because he liked seeing fireworks.

Commemorating the Gaspee Sestercentennial This Week

On the evening of 9 June 1772, 250 years ago this week, a small flotilla of longboats set off from points near Providence, Rhode Island.

They headed for H.M.S. Gaspee, a Royal Navy schooner that had run aground off the coast while chasing a ship suspected of smuggling.

By morning, the commander of that ship, Lt. William Dudingston, was bleeding from two wounds and under the care of a local medical trainee. His crew had been bundled ashore. And the king’s schooner was on fire.

On Thursday, 9 June, Steven Park of Wheaton College will speak about “The Burning of His Majesty’s Schooner Gaspee: An Attack on Crown Rule Before the American Revolution” at the American Revolution Institute in Washington, D.C., and online. The event description says:

On June 9, 1772, a group of prominent Rhode Islanders rowed out to the British schooner Gaspee, which had run aground six miles south of Providence while on an anti-smuggling patrol. After threatening and shooting its commanding officer, the raiders looted the vessel and burned it to the waterline.

Despite colony-wide sympathy for the raid, neither the government in Providence nor authorities in London could let this pass without a response. As a result, a Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by Rhode Island governor Joseph Wanton zealously investigated the incident. Historian Steven Park reveals that what started out as a customs battle over the seizure of a prominent citizen’s rum was soon transformed into one of the sparks that ignited patriot fervor in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War.

The bio attached to that event description comes from the jacket of Park’s book about the Gaspee attack, so it discusses his career and other publications without making clear that book exists. So I’m showing it above with a link to his (our) publisher.

Park is scheduled to speak at 6:30 P.M. Go to this page to sign up for the online feed.

The town of Warwick, Rhode Island, is celebrating the Sestercentennial of the Gaspee attack this weekend, 11–12 June. Here’s the full schedule of 2022 events, which includes:

• Gaspee Days parade on Saturday morning starting at 10:00 A.M.
• Colonial encampment Saturday and Sunday
• ceremonial burning of a ship effigy, Sunday at 4:00 P.M.

This is as much a celebration of local pride in the community today as a commemoration of what happened 250 years ago.

For a thorough round-up of sources and interpretations on the Gaspee affair, check out the Gaspee Virtual Archives. The coding shows how it was created years before this Sestercentennial, but the information is still fresh.

“A man of weak capacity, and little political knowledge”

I hadn’t expected to write a week of postings about the Gaspee affair, even with its sestercentennial coming up next month. But I got intrigued.

One early discussion of the case I came across while looking for sources was in Mercy Warren’s 1805 History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

In a section on Rhode Island in 1775, Warren wrote:

It is the nature of man, when he despairs of legal reparation for injuries received, to seek satisfaction by avenging his own wrongs. Thus, some time before this period, a number of men in disguise, had riotously assembled, and set fire to a sloop of war in the harbour. When they had thus discovered their resentment by this illegal proceeding, they dispersed without farther violence.

For this imputed crime the whole colony had been deemed guilty, and interdicted as accessary. A court of inquiry was appointed by his majesty, vested with the power of seizing any person on suspicion, confining him on board a king’s ship, and sending him to England for trial. But some of the gentlemen named for this inquisitorial business, had not the temerity to execute it in the latitude designed; and after sitting a few days, examining a few persons, and threatening many, they adjourned to a distant day.

The extraordinary precedent of erecting such a court among them was not forgotten; but there was a considerable party in Newport, strongly attached to the royal cause. These, headed by their governor, Mr. Wanton, a man of weak capacity, and little political knowledge, endeavoured to impede all measures of opposition, and to prevent even a discussion on the propriety of raising a defensive army.

You’d never know it from the way Warren wrote of events, but Gov. Joseph Wanton had been the primary brake on the Gaspee “court of inquiry” that she decried. He helped to undercut witnesses found by the Royal Navy. He let the Earl of Dartmouth’s confidential instructions out. As chair of that royal commission, he had the most sway over how it dissolved without reaching any significant conclusions.

Two years later, when word of the Battle of Lexington and Concord arrived in Rhode Island, Gov. Wanton indeed refused to approve sending militia regiments north to face the king’s troops. So did deputy governor Darius Sessions, who back in 1772 had helped to alert Samuel Adams and other out-of-colony politicians about the threat of the Gaspee inquiry. For those men, hindering a royal commission was fine; taking up arms against the royal military went too far.

The Rhode Island assembly replaced both Wanton and Sessions by the fall. They never became outright Loyalists, simply retiring from politics. But for Mercy Warren, Wanton’s behavior in 1775 meant he deserved no credit for what he’d done in 1772–73.

“All should be ready to yield Assistance to Rhode Island”

We can see the logic of the London government’s decision to try people suspected of attacking H.M.S. Gaspee on 10 June 1772 in Britain, not Rhode Island.

For one thing, the colony hadn’t convicted anyone for the similar torching of the Customs ship Liberty in 1769. Or for earlier assaults on government vessels.

For another, a couple of the men accused of helping to storm the Gaspee were county sheriffs, and others were highly influential merchants and office-holders. The Crown controlled none of the branches of the Rhode Island government.

But by deciding on that plan, to be backed up by the army and navy, secretary of state Dartmouth gave Rhode Island’s Whigs a threat they used to rally other colonial leaders to their cause.

At first, American politicians and printers had been reluctant about supporting a bunch of smugglers who’d attacked a naval vessel enforcing the law. But once the issue became every British citizen’s right to be tried in the county where the alleged crime took place, not three thousand miles away, then Whigs found their voice.

Around Christmas, four Rhode Island politicians wrote to “several gentlemen in North America” about what Lord Dartmouth had told their governor. Those four politicians were:

• Darius Sessions, deputy governor, who months before had initiated official complaints about the Gaspee’s patrols.
• Stephen Hopkins, chief justice and possibly author of the “Americanus” essay on the case published days before.
• John Cole, attorney and former chief justice who would be called as a witness in the inquiry.
• Moses Brown, wealthy merchant and brother of the alleged leader of the attack.

One recipient of the men’s letters was Samuel Adams, leader of the Massachusetts resistance. He wrote three letters in return, saying such thing as:

It should awaken the American Colonies, which have been too long dozing upon the Brink of Ruin. It should again unite them in one Band. . . . It has ever been my Opinion, that an Attack upon the Liberties of one Colony is an Attack upon the Liberties of all; and therefore in this Instance all should be ready to yield Assistance to Rhode Island.

And:

I beg just to propose for Consideration whether a circular Letr from your Assembly on this Occasion, to those of the other Colonies might not tend to the Advantage of the General Cause & of R Island in particular

Adams had helped to guide the Massachusetts legislature through its 1768 circular letter dispute. In November 1772 he had led the Boston town meeting to set up a standing committee of correspondence to exchange political letters with other Massachusetts towns. He saw the Crown’s reaction to the Gaspee affair as a cue to do the same with other colonies.

Richard Henry Lee might have been another of the men who received the Rhode Islanders’ letter. At any event, on 4 February he wrote to Adams, introducing himself and asking about details of the Gaspee matter; “this military parade appears extraordinary, unless the intention be to violate all law and legal forms, in order to establish the…fatal precedent of removing Americans beyond the water, to be tried for supposed offences committed here.” Adams wrote back, assuring Lee that the stories out of Rhode Island were true.

Meanwhile, no American was actually removed to Britain. The royal commission never collected enough strong evidence against anyone to bring charges. The investigation petered out in the spring of 1773. But by then it had helped to inspire a wider network of correspondence and a little more paranoia among the American Whigs.

TOMORROW: Remembering Gov. Wanton.

“A genuine extract of the letter from Lord Dartmouth”

On 31 Dec 1772, the printer of the Massachusetts Spy, Isaiah Thomas, had a scoop.

Setting type so hastily that he datelined the item “TURSDAY” instead of “THURSDAY,” Thomas presented to the world “a genuine extract of the letter from Lord Dartmouth, to the Governor of Rhode Island, dated Whitehall, September 4, 1772”:

The particulars of that atrocious proceeding (referring to the burning the Gaspee schooner) have by the King’s command been examined and considered with the greatest attention; and although there are some circumstances attending it, in regard to the robbery and plunder of the vessel, which seperately considered, might bring it within the description of an act of piracy; yet in the obvious view of the whole transaction, and taking all the circumstances together, the offence is in the opinion of the law servants of the crown, who have been consulted upon that question, of a much deeper dye, and is considered in no other light, than as an act of high treason, viz. levying war against the King.

And in order that you may have all proper advice and assistance in a matter of so great importance; his Majesty has thought fit, with the advice of his privy council, to issue his royal commission, under the great seal of Great-Britain, nominating yourself and the Chief Justices of New-York, New-Jersey, and the Massachusetts-Bay, together with the Judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court established at Boston, to be his Majesty’s commissioners for enquiring into and making report to his Majesty, of all the circumstances relative to the attacking, plundering and burning the Gaspee schooner.

The King trusts, that all persons in the colony will pay a due respect to his royal commission, and that the business of it will be carried on without molestation; at the same time the nature of this offence, and the great number of persons who appear to have been concerned in it make every precaution necessary. His Majesty has therefore for the further support in the execution of this duty, thought fit to direct me to signify his pleasure to Lieutenant-General [Thomas] Gage, that he do hold himself in readiness to send troops into Rhode Island, whenever he shall be called upon by the commissioners for that purpose, in order to aid and assist the civil magistrate in the suppression of any riot or disturbances, and in the preservation of the public peace.

I have only to add upon that head, that his Majesty depends on the care and vigilance of the civil magistrates of the colony, to take the proper measures for the arresting and committing to custody, in order to their being brought to justice, such persons, as shall, upon proper information made before them, or before His Majesty’s commissioners, appear to have been concerned in the plundering and destroying the Gaspee schooner.

It is his Majesty’s intention, in consequence of the advice of his privy council, that the persons concerned in the burning the Gaspee schooner, and in the other violences which attended that daring insult, should be brought to England to be tried; and I am therefore to signify to you his Majesty’s pleasure, that such of the said offenders as may have been or shall be arrested and committed within the colony of Rhode-Island, be delivered to the care and custody of Rear Admiral [John] Montagu, or the commander in chief of his Majesty’s ships in North-America for the time being, or to such officers as he shall appoint to receive them; taking care that you do give notice to the persons accused, in order that they may procure such witnesses on their behalf as they shall judge necessary; which witnesses together with all such as may be proper, to support the charge against them, will be received and sent hither with the prisoners.

In the same issue, Thomas reprinted the “Americanus” essay I quoted yesterday.

Lord Dartmouth’s instructions to Gov. Joseph Wanton—and no one seems to have doubted this long quotation was genuine—validated some of the warnings from Whigs like “Americanus.” The Crown was planning to transport people accused of attacking H.M.S. Gaspee to Britain for trial. The army and navy had orders to help.

At the same time, the secretary of state also reminded Wanton that those defendants should be able to bring along witnesses on their behalf. Not that a long sea voyage and an indeterminate time in London would be convenient for such witnesses. But the ministers in London still wanted to stick to British standards for fair trials—they just didn’t think that would happen with Rhode Island jurors.

Notably, whatever official leaked this confidential letter did so through a printer in Boston, beyond the reach of Rhode Island law. When the Newport Mercury reprinted the letter in the new year, it credited Isaiah Thomas’s Spy.

TOMORROW: Going viral.

“Whether our inalienable rights and privileges are any longer worth contending for”

Before the Revolution, messages between the British secretary of state in London and royal governors were deemed confidential.

Govs. Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson spent a lot of time telling the Massachusetts General Court that no, they wouldn’t share the instructions they had received or their reports back to the ministry. The 1769 publication of Bernard’s letters, leaked by William Bollan, ended his effectiveness.

In Rhode Island, Gov. Joseph Wanton had a different understanding. Elected by the legislature, and he felt he should share the Earl of Dartmouth’s 4 Sept 1772 message about investigating the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee with those legislators and other top officials.

Wanton held those consultations sometime early in December. Details of Lord Dartmouth’s instructions quickly reached the newspapers.

As I wrote before, New England printers had reported on the Gaspee attack in June, but very plainly—a few select facts with minimal commentary. Once news of the royal commission arrived in December, printers started to editorialize.

Then on 21 December Solomon Southwick’s Newport Mercury published a long letter signed “Americanus.” I believe this was the first major newspaper essay addressing the Gaspee case. The writer pulled out all the rhetorical effects:

To be, or not to be, that’s the question: Whether our inalienable rights and privileges are any longer worth contending for, is now to be determined.——Permit me, my countrymen, to beseech you to attend to your alarming situation. . . .

A court of inquisition, more horrid than that of Spain and Portugal, is established within this colony, to inquire into the circumstances of destroying the Gaspee schooner, and the persons who are the commissioners of this new-fangled court are vested with most exorbitant and unconstitutional power.—

They are directed to summon witnesses, apprehend persons not only impeached, but even suspected! And them, and every of them to deliver to Admiral [John] Montagu, who is ordered to have a ship in readiness to carry them to England, where they are to be tried.— . . .

Upon the whole, it is more than probable, it is almost an absolute certainty, that, according to present appearances, the state of an American subject, instead of enjoying the privileges of an Englishman, will soon be infinitely worse than that of a subject of France, Spain, Portugal, or any other the most despotic power on earth: . . .

Ten thousand deaths, by the halter or the ax, are infinitely preferable to a miserable life of slavery, in chains, under a pack of worse than Egyptian tyrants, whose avarice nothing less than your whole substance and income will satisfy; and who, if they can’t extort that, will glory in making a sacrifice of you and your posterity, to gratify their master, the d––l, who is a tyrant, and the father of tyrants and of liars.

Who was “Americanus”? Some have assigned this essay to Samuel Adams, who had used a similar pseudonym in Boston. I doubt that, and not just because this essay started by quoting from [gasp!] the theater. Letters indicate that Adams didn’t know about the Gaspee commission until days after this essay appeared.

According to Neil L. York, the top candidate for Rhode Island’s “Americanus” is chief justice Stephen Hopkins (shown above).

TOMORROW: Dartmouth’s own words.

“The Idea of seizing a Number of Persons”

Though the first report about the London government’s plan for a special commission to investigate the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee was optimistic, as described yesterday, New England newspapers soon started to spread more alarming rumors.

Isaiah Thomas’s 17 Dec 1772 Massachusetts Spy told readers:

It is currently reported, that two regiments are ordered from New-York to Rhode-Island, to support the trial of persons there suspected, or rather informed against, for being concerned in burning the Gaspee armed schooner.

The Governor and Lieut Governor of this province, two of the appointed Judges, will shortly set out for Newport.

The Lively ship of war is also to sail, on board of which, the Admiral, another of the Judges, is to hoist his flag.

None of those statements turned out to be true. No army troops moved to Rhode Island, though the ministry did alert Gen. Thomas Gage in New York to be alert to requests from that colony.

Neither Gov. Thomas Hutchinson nor Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver was put on the commission of inquiry. Their relative Peter Oliver, chief justice of Massachusetts, and Vice Admiralty court judge Robert Auchmuty represented Massachusetts instead.

Adm. John Montagu wasn’t a commissioner, either, and he and his flagship remained in Boston harbor for the winter.

Finally, the commission was empowered to investigate the attack, not to try defendants.

The Spy added, “Others say, that these devoted persons [i.e., accused] are to be taken agreeable to a late Act of Parliament, and sent for trial to London!” That complaint was closer to the truth, but the royal commission never managed to identify any likely culprits.

The fake news didn’t stop Whig newspaper writers from preemptively deploring the threat of such proceedings. The Spy’s report ended by complaining:

Can any one hear of…subjecting the inhabitants to trial, without Juries, on matters done within the body of a county, or what is worse, if possible, transporting them beyond the seas, and think himself secure in the enjoyment of his natural and constitutional rights! — How long, O LORD——How long!

Within a couple of days, the Whigs had received more accurate information about the ministry’s plan. Writers narrowed in on the threat of accused men being taken to Britain. The 19 December Providence Gazette, published by John Carter (shown above), said:

In this Situation of Affairs, every Friend to our violated Constitution cannot but be greatly alarmed.—The Idea of seizing a Number of Persons, under the Points of Bayonets, and transporting them Three Thousand Miles for Trial, where, whether guilty or innocent, they must unavoidably fall Victims alike to Revenge or Prejudice, is shocking to Humanity, repugnant to every Dictate of Reason, Liberty and Justice, and in which Americans and Freeman ought never to acquiesce.

Again, that hadn’t happened yet and never would happen, but at last the American Whigs had found the issue to hammer on.

TOMORROW: Leaks and laments.

“The most clement measures shall be adopted towards the Americans”

By the fall of 1772, Rhode Island’s investigations of the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee had run aground as surely as the schooner itself had back on 9 June.

As was standard, Gov. Joseph Wanton had quickly issued a proclamation offering a reward for information—£100, in fact. By July, Adm. John Montagu (shown here) had collected testimony from Aaron Briggs or Biggs, who implicated some prominent merchants.

But Gov. Wanton soon had contradictory testimony from four other people.

James Helme, senior justice in Kings County, told his colleagues that at the October court session he

fully intended to give the affair of burning the said schooner and wounding the lieutenant, in charge to the jury; but having been nearly two months on the circuit, it entirely went out of my mind, when the grand jury was empannelled; and there being no business laid before said jury, they were soon dismissed.

Oops.

However, more was happening in London. In August, the secretary of state for the colonies, Lord Hillsborough, sent to Rhode Island the text of Parliament’s new Dockyards Law. Enacted that spring, it established that destroying a ship in a Royal Navy shipyard was tantamount to treason and subject to capital punishment.

Eventually Crown lawyers agreed that the Dockyards Law didn’t apply since the Gaspee hadn’t been in a naval shipyard when the raiders set fire to it. But Hillsborough’s message told Gov. Wanton how harshly the London government wanted to punish the men who attacked the schooner. (The only person ever executed under the Dockyards Law was James Aitken, alias “John the Painter,” who set fires at the Portsmouth Shipyard in 1777 in sympathy with the American cause.)

For unrelated reasons, in August the Earl of Dartmouth replaced Hillsborough as secretary of state. On 4 September the new minister sent a letter to Gov. Wanton detailing the plan for a royal commission to investigate the Gaspee incident and surrounding conflicts.

Rhode Island’s first report of this commission contained some positive details. The 30 November Newport Mercury shared the news under a 25 September London dateline, emphasizing signs of leniency:

His Majesty… [is] offering his pardon to any of the said offenders (excepting the person who wounded Lieutenant [William] Duddington, & excepting two others who assumed to be sheriffs of the colony, and the Captain or leader of the insurgents) who shall discover any of their accomplices, and also offering rewards for such discovery.

A correspondent informs us, that Lord Dartmouth has signified his determined resolution that the most clement measures shall be adopted towards the Americans.

Furthermore, Gov. Wanton was designated to chair the inquiry commission.

But soon, Rhode Islanders were hearing more ominous details.

TOMORROW: A leak from the legislature.

“Great expectations from the late affair at Rhode Island”

On 12 June 1772, the day after the Boston News-Letter broke the news of the Gaspee burning, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson sent a copy of that newspaper to the secretary of state in London, the Earl of Hillsborough.

Hutchinson added his own commentary:

If some measures are not taken in England in consequence of so flagrant an insult upon the King’s authority I fear it will encourage the neighbouring Colonies to persevere in their opposition to the Laws of Trade and to be guilty of the like & greater Acts of Violence.

As the Town of Providence joins to this Province and is less than 50 miles from this Town and the flame may spread here I hope your Lordship will not think that I go out of my line in this information.

That letter appears in the latest volume of The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson issued by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, which runs through June 1772.

Hutchinson had experienced the limits of Massachusetts justice himself after an anti-Stamp Act mob destroyed his house in the North End in 1765. He then witnessed more problematic proceedings as governor. He expected the Rhode Island courts to be ineffectual against these rioters. 

On 25 June the governor wrote to Hillsborough again, reporting, “A Gentleman yesterday from Providence informs me that the Perpetrators of the late atrocious crime are well known but that it would be as much as a man’s life is worth to bring forward a prosecution.”

That second letter also raised the possibility of American smugglers arming ships to fight government vessels, which would be “Acts of Rebellion upon the High Seas.” Anyone captured doing that, the governor suggested, should be shipped to England where “the Law must take its course.”

At the end of the month Hutchinson returned to that idea in telling Royal Navy commodore James Gambier about the Gaspee attack:

I hope if there should be another like attempt, some concerned in it may be taken prisoners and carried directly to England. A few punished at Execution Dock would be the only effectual preventive of any further attempts. In every Colony they are sure of escaping with impunity.

It’s notable that the governor didn’t suggest that the Gaspee attackers themselves be taken to Britain for trial. Instead, he wrote about conjectural future events. That was partly keeping himself out of the Rhode Island case, partly “slippery slope” thinking.

Later in the summer Hutchinson began to raise another possible response by the imperial government: changing the constitution of Rhode Island so that London had more leverage there.

On 29 August the governor wrote to John Pownall, the secretary managing the Colonial Office:

People in this province, both friends an enemies to government, are in great expectations from the late affair at Rhode Island of burning the King’s schooner, and they consider the manner in which the news of it will be received in England, and the measures to be taken, as decisive.

If it is passed over without a full inquiry and due resentment, our liberty people will think they may with impunity commit any acts of violence, be they ever so atrocious, and the friends to government will despond, and give up all hopes of being able to withstand the faction.

The persons who were immediate actors are men of estate and property in the colony. A prosecution is impossible. If ever the government of that colony is to be reformed, this seems to be the time, and it would have a happy effect on the colonies which adjoin to it.

Hutchinson felt he wasn’t alone in that assessment, telling Adm. Samuel Hood on 2 September:

So daring an insult as burning the King’s schooner, by people who are as well known as any who were concerned in the last rebellion and yet cannot be prosecuted, will certainly rouse the British lion, which has been asleep these four or five years. Admiral [John] Montague says that Lord Sandwich will never leave pursuing the colony, until it is disenfranchised.

After the Revolutionary War broke out, Patriots found Hutchinson’s copies of those letters left behind in his Milton mansion. Newspapers published most of these quoted passages in late 1775. By then, the Massachusetts Whigs were convinced that Hutchinson and his crowd had been conspiring against their self-government, and these letters seemed to confirm that.

TOMORROW: A letter from London.

“No one justifies the burning of the Gaspee”

The first Boston newspapers to report the 11 June 1772 attack on H.M.S. Gaspee were Richard Draper’s Boston News-Letter, which supported the Crown, and Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, which didn’t.

The 11 June News-Letter told readers that a Rhode Island mob had “dangerously wounded the commander, Lieut. [William] Duddington, and used the Company cruelly” before burning his schooner.

The same day’s Spy said nothing about Dudingston’s injury and stated only that the attackers “bound the men.” It also added in editorializing italics:

To what a dreadful dilemma are the people reduced!—They must suffer themselves to be plundered, or——

However, over the next several weeks the Boston newspapers appear to have reported as little as possible about the Gaspee affair. They stated the facts with a bit of spin, but, after that initial Spy comment, they didn’t use the event as fodder for political arguments. Likewise, neither Samuel Adams nor his cousin John mentioned the Gaspee in their surviving writing from that summer.

“No one justifies the burning of the Gaspee,” the Rev. Dr. Ezra Stiles of Newport (shown above) insisted to a fellow minister the following year. The closest to a defense of the event he could offer was, “But no one ever thought of such a Thing as being Treason.”

That sounds a bit like the Costanza Defense: ‘Storming a government ship—assaulting a naval officer—destroying an entire schooner—was that wrong? Because if we’d known that sort of thing was frowned upon…’

Crowds had in fact attacked British government ships before, as in the Liberty riots in Boston in 1768 and Newport in 1769. In those instances, local press and politicians decried the violence but argued that it was a natural response to seeing the Customs service overreaching.

That argument was harder to make in the case of the Gaspee. The June 1772 attack did grow from the ongoing conflict between merchants ready to break imperial trade laws for higher profits and the royal authorities determined to enforce those laws (and augment their salaries by doing so). But otherwise the locals’ actions looked bad.

Storming the Gaspee wasn’t a spontaneous reaction by waterfront workers. It was obviously a carefully planned operation, with three boats full of armed men rowing out to the schooner after it had run aground.

The men who boarded the Gaspee were the aggressors, not on the defense. They wounded an officer and burned a ship of the Royal Navy, pride of the British people. That action was impossible to spin into a dignified political protest against Parliament’s unjust new laws. It looked much more like racketeers using violence against legal authorities to protect their personal profits.

Boston’s Whigs made sure their destruction of East India Company tea in December 1773 looked different. They protected the Customs officials and others aboard the ships from personal violence. They forbade participants from taking any tea for their own gain and publicly punished one man who tried.

Before that Boston Tea Party, the owners of those three ships were worried that mobs would ruin their valuable property. Instead, leaders of the action ensured that their crew hurt nothing but the tea itself. They even replaced a lock they had broken open—and made sure the press reported on that restitution.

As with the Crown’s frustrated response to the Gaspee attack, the main lesson that American Whigs took from the event was what not to do in future.

TOMORROW: When the royal government gave the Whigs an opening.

Rhode Island and the Royal Commission of Inquiry

Yesterday I pointed to the upcoming sestercentennial of the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee, a Royal Navy ship patrolling Narragansett Bay for smugglers.

Some of Rhode Island‘s leading merchants were involved in some way in destroying that ship, including the Browns, the Greenes, Abraham Whipple, and the notorious Simeon Potter.

The organized attackers wounded a British military officer, Lt. William Dudingston, and destroyed a British warship. Some authors, especially from Rhode Island, view it as a prelude or even the first battle of the Revolutionary War. But as I wrote yesterday, it seems significant that this event, for all its bellicosity, didn’t lead to a broader crackdown and war.

One big reason is that the Crown had far less leverage in Rhode Island. That colony was one of only two in North America (the other being Connecticut) where citizens elected their governor via the legislature. In the other colonies, London chose the governor, and usually he arrived with no local allegiances or favors owed.

Furthermore, the Rhode Island legislature chose judges for each year. Elsewhere, the royal government appointed judges for life. And elsewhere those appointed royal governors also appointed sheriffs and justices of the peace.

Rhode Island’s unusual charter left the Crown with only two groups of officials who owed their position and thus their full allegiance to London: the Customs service and the Royal Navy. And of course those arms of government had limited local popularity, as shown by the fact that Rhode Islanders had just burned a naval schooner enforcing the Customs laws.

To investigate the attack, therefore, Lord North’s government set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry. The five officials appointed to it were:

• Peter Oliver, chief justice of Massachusetts.
• Robert Auchmuty, judge of the vice-admiralty court in Boston.
• Daniel Horsmanden, chief justice of New York.
• Frederick Smythe, chief justice of New Jersey.
• Joseph Wanton, governor of Rhode Island (shown above).

The first four men were already strong Loyalists. Wanton wasn’t yet in that camp, and he was also the only man with local knowledge. When Adm. John Montagu used testimony from an indentured servant named Aaron Briggs to demand an investigation of John Brown, Simeon Potter, and others, Wanton responded by collecting evidence that undercut what Briggs said. The commission’s investigation led nowhere.

Royal authorities in Massachusetts and London learned from the frustrations of the Gaspee inquiry and put those lessons into practice after the next big attack—the Boston Tea Party of December 1773. They didn’t wait for local authorities, even the more numerous and powerful Crown appointees, to identify individual malefactors. Instead, Parliament adopted the Boston Port Bill to pressure the whole town, installed a more forceful governor, sent in troops, and eventually tried to rewrite the provincial constitution.

Thus, for the Crown the main lesson of the Gaspee affair was what not to do.