Gage, Thomas | "a Copy of an infamous Thing"

Gage, Thomas

The following is a Copy of an infamous Thing handed about here Yesterday, and now reprinted to satisfy the Curiosity of the Public. As it is replete with consummate Impudence, the most abominable Lies, and stuffed with daring Expressions of Tyranny, as well as Rebellion against the established, constitutional Authority of the American States, no one will hesitate in pronouncing it be the genuine Production of that perfidious, petty Tyrant, Thomas Gage. By his Excellency The Hon. Thomas Gage, Esq; Governor and Commander in Chief, in and over his Majesty's Province at Massachusetts-Bay, and Vice Admiral of the same. A Proclamation. [Watertown: Benjamin Edes, June 14, 1775]

Broadside (390 x 165 mm) on paper. Twelve lines of heading, text in two columns, docketed on verso "Genl. Gage's Proclamtn 1775"; a few light stains, a few tears neatly closed on verso. Matted and housed in half red morocco slipcase gilt, chemise.

A Patriot reprinting and repurposing of Thomas Gage's notorious Proclamation of martial law in Massachusetts, issued on 12 June 1775, less than two months after the battles of Lexington and Concord—and just days before Bunker Hill.

"On 5 May the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts Bay resolved that as General Gage had 'utterly disqualified himself to serve this colony as Governor … he ought to be considered and guarded against as an unnatural and inveterate enemy to this country.' Against this background of open opposition to the King, Gage wrote to Dartmouth on 12 June; 'I see no prospect of any offers of Accomodation and have issued a Proclamation for the Exercise of the Law martial'" (BL, American War of Independence 50).

At the outset of his Proclamation Gage acknowledges that a state of open rebellion exists in the colony that is ostensibly under his authority, and then proceeds to characterize the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord as cowardly guerillas. Feigning magnanimity, and "to spare the Effusion of Blood," the Governor offers a royal pardon "to all Persons who shall forthwith lay down their Arms and return to the duties of peaceable Subjects, excepting only from the Benefit of such Pardon, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose Offences are of too flagitious a Nature to admit of any other Consideration than that of condign Punishment."

Despite its assurances of "Protection and Support, to all who in so trying a Crisis, shall manifest their Allegiance to the King, and Affection to the parent State," Gage's Proclamation did nothing to endear the Governor to the colonists; rather it simply stiffened the resolve of the Boston revolutionaries. In fact several printers reprinted the official broadside proclamation (which was produced by the Loyalist Margaret Draper) as patriotic propaganda—none more effectively than the present broadside by Benjamin Edes with its mocking preamble, which was possibly from the pen of Joseph Warren.

Abigail Adams expressed the prevailing sentiment in a 16 June 1775 letter she sent to her husband, John, then serving in the Continental Congress at Philadelphia: "Gage's proclamation you will receive by this conveyance. All the records of time cannot produce a blacker page. Satan when driven from the regions of bliss, Exhibeted not more malice. Surely the father of lies is superceded.—Yet we think it the best proclamation he could have issued" (Adams Family Correspondence, ed. Butterfield, 1: 218). For his part, Samuel Adams wrote to his wife from Philadelphia, 28 June 1775, "Gage has made me respectable by naming me first among those who are to receive no favor from him. I thoroughly despise him and his Proclamation. It is the Subject of Ridicule here …" (Letters of Delegates to Congress, ed. Smith, 1:552).

Very rare: just four other copies are known, at Boston Public Library, the Rosenbach Library, the New York Public Library, and in a private collection, the last being the only other copy we can trace in the auction records.

REFERENCE

Celebration of My Country 54; ESTC 17448; Evans 14185; Ford, Massachusetts Broadsides 1815; Revolutionary Hundred 31

PROVENANCE

Bonhams, 16 October 2013, lot 2168