Nothing beats the speed of gossip, and apparently the Virginia Gazette on this day had plenty of it to share.
A few of the stories were quite serious, relating to events in both Virginia and Massachusetts. They closed out with a local story that had a more humorous edge to it…though it’s likely that the people involved had a hard time seeing the humor in it all.
When the US Postal Service first began, it couldn’t even be called that, since there wasn’t a US yet. There was, of course, a postal service, but it was the Crown Post and it was subject to interception and investigation, and we really couldn’t have that and a revolution, now could we?
In fact, there were competing services to the Crown Post, but there were also gaps in that service and general inefficiencies. For instance, most services transported parcels at a lower rate than letters. So, people worked around the rule by attaching letters to small, mostly empty parcels just to save money. One service, run by a man named Benjamin Mumford, carried both Royal Mail and that of his own service, which was cheaper than the King’s rates.
About the artwork: that’s a picture of a 2006 stamp issued commemorating Ben Franklin’s tenure as the first Postmaster General. It’s marked “B. FREE FRANKLIN” because that’s how he often signed his name while in that position. Why? Because as the Postmaster General, he had franking privileges and didn’t have to pay his own postage. It was a privilege he took great advantage of.
If you’re going to be in rebellion, you may as well do something rebellious.
Thus was (presumably) the reasoning behind Ben Franklin putting forth a resolution that the Colonies would effectively ignore a ban on the importation of weapons and gunpowder to the Colonies.
And while we’ve mentioned numerous times that the Congress doesn’t seem to do a lot more than form various Committees, again we need to stress that these were serious men, who gave serious thought to whatever they presented to the larger group, because they knew that any votes had to be unanimous. They took the job with great gravity, and in fact worked long hours. And in Philadelphia in the summer time…that is no joke, my friend. I mentioned it in a Baltimore context during the show, but remember that these cities aren’t very far apart, and thus have similar climates.
(Note: it’s in the alt text for the image, but in the interest of broader accuracy and general transparency, we know that this artwork isn’t the symbol for an American abolitionist society but rather a British one. But this is one of those cases where the story works better than the truth, and we found it to be a powerful image that underlines the intent of the tale. In short, let it go this once, OK? –CC)
It might come as a surprise to you that societies dedicated to the elimination of slavery in America came about as early as this, especially inasmuch as we had other things on our mind, such as the largest army in the world putting us in their sights. It might also come as a surprise that the one that came first in America, exists still, but with a different focus. Tune in and learn their story.
A quick note on the cover art: this may be the first time I (Claude) happened to match the side banner with the background of the webpage exactly.
As we’ve noted in the past, Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke were good friends who worked together to come up with a solution that would get the Colonies and the Crown back into each others’ good graces.
Now that we think about it, Franklin was good friends with many people on both sides of the Atlantic, and now we’re wondering if he was just one of those guys to whom you take an instant liking without knowing quite why.
At any rate, by this point the two men had to concede that it was far too late to prevent further escalation, and they were right. Burke took the time to address Parliament on this day, and let them all know just what a mistake they’d made.
Benjamin Franklin was pretty good at diplomacy, but even when given several years to try, he was unable to bring about peace between England and the Thirteen Colonies.
From December 1774 through February 1775, he and some of his British friends tried to put together a map to peace, but unfortunately both sides were too entrenched to even consider compromise. Franklin finally went home on this day in 1775, but he left one final impression that we’ll learn about tomorrow.
Among the casualties of the early days of American History are all the friendships that were damaged by people being on opposite sides of the political fence. Good thing we’re all past that sort of petty nonsense nowadays, amirite?
Sigh.
We’ve talked in the past about John Adams and his former friend Daniel Leonard, who sparred in print under pen names and never quite repaired their relationship. Today we talk about Benjamin Franklin and Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament who was good friends with Franklin, though perhaps not publicly. Today marks the likely last day that the two men ever saw each other, as Franklin was on the final trip to England of his lifetime. Sadder still, Burke was actually sympathetic to the Colonist cause, though he wasn’t entirely convinced that they’d win a war.
On the other hand, hardly anyone was convinced that Britain would be defeated, so there’s that.
Today we review two different pieces of correspondence—one local, the other trans-Atlantic—in which the letter writers are clearly coming to the conclusion that things are not going well between the British and the Colonies, and that preparing for war is probably inevitable at this point.
And that’s interesting on its own, but we also wanted to call your attention to the cover art for today’s episode. The person in the picture is Josiah Quincy II, who is discussed in the episode as a “side” character of sorts. The painting is by Gilbert Stuart, who is pretty famous for painting hundreds of American politicians and public figures, and perhaps most famous for the “unfinished” portrait of George Washington that served as the model for the one-dollar bill. There aren’t a lot of portraits of Quincy extant, but this one (which was painted after Quincy’s death in April 1775) gets a lot of attention from Stuart scholars because it provides a very candid representation of Quincy’s strabismus, or misalignment of the eyes. (It’s possible that he simply had amblyopia but we don’t know for sure nowadays.) Most people agree that it actually gives Quincy a little extra dignity and esteem.
As noted previously, the First Continental Congress composed a Petition to the King asking him for some relief from the Intolerable Acts. The petition arrived in London in mid-December, which turned out to be some bad timing for a number of reasons.
Benjamin Franklin was in town for diplomatic purposes, and he composed a letter to Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress, which summed up the problem: not only was the Petition but one among many, many other documents, it appeared that Parliament didn’t much care what the Colonies thought. And that’s the kind of thing that makes for bad relationships.
Benjamin Franklin, like many of our Founding Fathers, was interested in repairing the relationship between the Colonies and England, at least early on.
What’s more, he thought that others in similar positions would be of a similar mind, so he was rather dismayed to learn that this wasn’t the case; in fact, when a sheaf of letters written by Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver made their way into his hands, he was rather dismayed to learn that they were badly misleading Parliament with regard to the situation in the Colonies.
So Franklin leaked the letters to the Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, saying they could be read but not copied. But Franklin didn’t heed his own advice: “Three people may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” The letters got out anyway, and they were published in the Boston Gazette a few months later. For his efforts, Franklin was humiliated in a Privy Council hearing and stripped of his title of Postmaster General of the Colonies. On the other hand, this was the event that tipped Benjamin Franklin firmly over to the cause of liberty.
