WEBVTT NOTE 66. The Tory Press in America 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.120 Volume 3, Chapter 66. The Tory Press in America. While the Whigs were leading an unsuccessful 2 00:00:08.120 --> 00:00:14.680 opposition in England, a small group of Tories, looked on with favor by the royal officials, 3 00:00:14.680 --> 00:00:20.440 were doing the same to the main current in America. Cynically crying out for liberty 4 00:00:20.440 --> 00:00:26.120 – they had never displayed much zeal for anyone's liberty but their own – they 5 00:00:26.120 --> 00:00:33.160 They denounced the rebels and the Continental Congress as a greater tyrant than the Crown. 6 00:00:33.160 --> 00:00:39.140 They could only do this, of course, by blurring any distinction between the coercive invasion 7 00:00:39.140 --> 00:00:46.160 of persons and property and the voluntary methods of boycott or public censure. 8 00:00:46.160 --> 00:00:52.640 Despite their charge of tyranny, the Tories had undisturbed control of several of the 9 00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:55.840 colony's most influential newspapers. 10 00:00:55.840 --> 00:01:01.840 By far the leading Tory journalist in America was James Rivington, publisher of the New 11 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:09.280 York Gazetteer, whose articles circulated throughout the colonies. Rivington was seconded 12 00:01:09.280 --> 00:01:16.720 by Hugh Gaines' New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury. Delighted by Rivington's pen, Governor 13 00:01:16.720 --> 00:01:23.760 Gage distributed four hundred copies of each issue of the Gazetteer to soldiers and Tories 14 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:33.400 The Radical Editors fumed at Rivington, calling him a Judas and a most wretched Jacobitish, 15 00:01:33.400 --> 00:01:40.680 hireling incendiary. Rivington replied in kind. Young James Madison angrily wrote to 16 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:47.640 a friend from Virginia that if we had Rivington twenty-four hours in this place he would meet 17 00:01:47.640 --> 00:01:53.440 with Adequate Punishment In Boston, the Tory press rode high under 18 00:01:53.440 --> 00:02:00.120 the guns of British troops. The two leading newspapers were the Massachusetts Gazette 19 00:02:00.120 --> 00:02:07.620 and Boston Newsletter and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post Boy. One cocky Tory 20 00:02:07.620 --> 00:02:13.960 called upon the British troops to make ready to kill those trumpeters of sedition. The 21 00:02:13.960 --> 00:02:20.120 The editors of the radical papers, the Boston Gazette and the Massachusetts Spy. The British 22 00:02:20.120 --> 00:02:24.360 troops did threaten to tar and feather these leaders. 23 00:02:24.360 --> 00:02:31.080 Tory writers such as William Eddis of Maryland, Grotius and Thomas Truman made their case 24 00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:37.440 in the press. The leading statement of the Tory case was written in a series of articles 25 00:02:37.440 --> 00:02:46.000 by Daniel Leonard as Massachusetts Tensis in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Postboy. 26 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:52.920 Leonard, a renegade liberal, now enjoying the perquisites of the post of Solicitor General 27 00:02:52.920 --> 00:03:00.560 of the Customs Board, attacked the anarchy rampant in the colonies. Confusing invasion 28 00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:08.920 of Person and Property by Violence, with such non-invasive measures as public boycott, Leonard 29 00:03:08.920 --> 00:03:14.520 decried the tyranny as well as the anarchy of the rebels. 30 00:03:14.520 --> 00:03:19.480 Answering Leonard in a running and scholarly debate in the Massachusetts press was John 31 00:03:19.480 --> 00:03:23.480 Adams writing as Novanglis. 32 00:03:23.480 --> 00:03:28.720 Adams pointed to the mass support of the American cause and declared it to be in the great British 33 00:03:28.720 --> 00:03:35.040 The British tradition of resistance to tyranny. He asserted flatly that America is not any 34 00:03:35.040 --> 00:03:40.520 part of the British realm, and warned that Britain was preparing to conquer and crush 35 00:03:40.520 --> 00:03:48.600 the colonies. Adams grounded his defense in natural law, human reason, and the great revolutionary 36 00:03:48.600 --> 00:03:55.320 tradition of the English. My friends, human nature itself is evermore an advocate for 37 00:03:55.320 --> 00:04:02.800 for Liberty, that all men by nature are equal, that kings have but a delegated authority, 38 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:10.360 which the people may resume, are the revolution principles of 1688, as are the principles 39 00:04:10.360 --> 00:04:18.920 of Aristotle, of Livy and Cicero, of Sydney, Harrington and Locke, of nature and eternal 40 00:04:18.920 --> 00:04:19.920 Reason 41 00:04:19.920 --> 00:04:27.080 Particularly active in the drumfire of Tory agitation against the rebel cause was a group 42 00:04:27.080 --> 00:04:34.880 of Anglican clergymen, led by the reverends Thomas Chandler, Miles Cooper, Charles Inglis, 43 00:04:34.880 --> 00:04:41.820 and Samuel Seabury of New York, and Jonathan Butcher of Maryland. Cooper tried to form 44 00:04:41.820 --> 00:04:49.320 from a continent-wide association of Anglican ministers to oppose the rebellion, an organization 45 00:04:49.320 --> 00:04:54.820 the very existence of which would have driven the Americans to fury. The Pennsylvania and 46 00:04:54.820 --> 00:05:00.580 Southern clergy refused to go along, and New York remained at the center of the Anglican 47 00:05:00.580 --> 00:05:06.820 Tory agitation, agitation fostered by the strength of the Anglican church in New York 48 00:05:06.820 --> 00:05:13.000 and York City Affairs. Chandler, Cooper and Seabury turned out numerous pamphlets in late 49 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:20.000 1774, all printed by James Rivington. Many incensed gatherings of Americans in New York, 50 00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:26.760 New Jersey and Maryland publicly burned these tracts. As so many other opponents of natural 51 00:05:26.760 --> 00:05:32.660 rights have done, Seabury in a pamphlet debate with the young student Alexander Hamilton 52 00:05:32.660 --> 00:05:40.100 of King's College confused natural rights with a primitive state of nature. 53 00:05:40.100 --> 00:05:46.980 Not realizing that natural rights theory is a logical and moral rather than an historical 54 00:05:46.980 --> 00:05:55.260 construct, Seabury persisted in identifying it with an historical state of savagery. 55 00:05:55.260 --> 00:06:01.580 The Americans began an effective, even though spontaneous and unorganized, boycott of the 56 00:06:01.580 --> 00:06:08.580 A newly organized Friends of America in New York systematized the boycott and sent letters 57 00:06:11.140 --> 00:06:17.260 to rebel committees throughout the colonies urging a general boycott of the pensioned 58 00:06:17.260 --> 00:06:24.260 servile Wretch and all of his advertisers. Radical meetings pledged no further dealings 59 00:06:24.260 --> 00:06:31.260 with Rivington. By April 1775, twenty-one committees had acted to suspend purchases 60 00:06:31.580 --> 00:06:57.580 In April, a mob in New Brunswick, New Jersey, hung Rivington in effigy. Driven to the edge of bankruptcy by the boycott and threatened by an angry mob, Rivington, not long after, pledged to give no further offense.