Description:

Boston Massacre 1770 - In the wake of the Boston Massacre, a Boston paper publishes Arthur Lee's letter foreshadowing same. Letters leading to the Tea Party are also included.


The 14 May 1770 edition of The Boston Evening Post (Printed by T. & J. Fleet), 4pp, 9.75" x 15.5". Light marginal wear, usual folds, ownership signature at top left corner.

The front page bears a transcript of one of Lee's many political essays written under the pseudonym, "JUNIUS AMERICANUS," one of more than 170 political essays he authored during his time in London serving as an agent for Massachusetts in London in the late 1760s and early 1770s. His essays criticizing British imperial policy, while published in Britain, were intended for audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, and they were reprinted in over 30 colonial American newspapers and did much to galvanize public opinion to support resistance to imperial revenue measures.

Written only days after the Boston Massacre, Lee comments on the disorder in Boston created by the presence of regular British troops in the town, in an address to Massachusetts governor Francis Bernard (who unbeknownst to Lee at the time had left office): "...What still heightens the misfortune is, that our gracious Sovereign and his Ministers have formed such an idea of the present state of the town, as to induce a necessity of this navel and military force, for the aid of the civil Magistrate, in the preservation of its peace and good order. Your Excellency can witness for the town, that no such aid is necessary. Loyalty to the Sovereign, and an inflexible zeal for the support of his Majesty's authority, and the happy constitution, is its just character: and we may appeal to the impartial world, that peace and order were better maintained in the town, before it was even rumoured that his Majesty's troops were to be quartered among us, than it has been since..." Little did Lee know that things had come to a head in Boston only days before when a company of regulars fired on a mob that had been harassing the soldiers and pelting them with ice balls. The incident did much to inflame passions against the quartered troops and became a cause c̩l̬bre among American Whigs.

The issue also includes letters promoting the continuing non-importation agreements against British imports: "We have the pleasure of informing the public, that 360 persons ‰Û_ have already signed the Agreement voted by the Town [Salem, Massachusetts] last Tuesday, against drinking Tea, &c." More fine content.

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