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A rare & desirable Loyalist newspaper... Criticizing Hancock on his patriotic oration on the Boston Massacre...
A rare & desirable Loyalist newspaper... Criticizing Hancock on his patriotic oration on the Boston Massacre...
Item # 687429
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April 21, 1774
(was $3,245) RIVINGTON'S NEW-YORK GAZETTEER; or, the CONNECTICUT, HUDSON'S RIVER, NEW-JERSEY, and QUEBEC WEEKLY ADVERTISER, New York, April 21, 1774
* Pre-American Revolutionary War
* Colonial New York City
* Extremely rare publication
* James Rivington - Loyalist
James Rivington, the famous printer of this newspaper, had an interesting career.
He began this newspaper in 1773 initially with an impartial stance which shifted as a revolution loomed and public opinion polarized, until by late 1774 he was advocating the restrictive measures of the British government with such great zeal and attacking the patriots so severely, that in 1775 the Whigs of Newport resolved to hold no further communication with him. The Sons of Liberty hanged Rivington in effigy. On May 10, 1775, immediately after the opening of hostilities, the Sons of Liberty gathered and mobbed Rivington’s wife's home and press. Rivington fled to safety while his office & press were destroyed, the lead type converted into bullets. Another mob burned Rivington's house to the ground.
In 1777 once the British occupied New York he returned with a new press and resumed the publication of his paper under the title of Rivington's New York Loyal Gazette, which he changed on 13 December 1777, to The Royal Gazette, with the legend “Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty”.
Page 2 has over a full column address: "To John Hancock, Esquire" which is an analysis & response to Hancock's famous oration on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. It is likely this content would only be found in a Loyalist newspaper.
This letter is terrific.
The writer makes it clear that Hancock's views are way out of line, that despite the court of law finding most of the soldiers not guilty, Hancock believed they should have been guilty of murder.
A few bits include: "...subject of your oration was the commemoration of the cruel and bloody massacre, as you stile it, committed on the fifth of March, 1770, by Capt. Preston & a party of soldiers...You...profusely, loaded those persons with epithets due only to the most abandoned & profligate of mankind...On my part, it is freely confessed, that the party of soldiers headed by Capt. Preston killed five men...all the depositions so procured were instantly ordered to be printed, together with the representation of the bloody tragedy, with most inflammatory notes...were most industriously scattered...This procedure certainly was very irregular and unfair...Pulpit declamation was made subservient to the cause...many of the Ministers...instead of preaching the gospel of truth, love and charity, arraigned, tried & condemned the unhappy prisoners with a ferocity exactly fitted to the character of a gladiator..." with so much more. The full text is shown here.
Page 2 also has a report from New York on the tea which had arrived there on the ship Nancy, which ultimately would be turned back to England with its tea still on board. Three days later another ship in New York harbor would have its 18 chests of tea thrown into the harbor.
Four pages, a few ink stains near the bottom of page 1, very nice condition.
Category: Revolutionary War
No Longer Available
