(Stamp Act, Repeal) | An apparently unrecorded and unique broadside announcing the repeal of the Stamp Act

(Stamp Act, Repeal)

Glorious News for America. Boston, Friday 11 o'Clock, 16th May 1766. This instant arrived here the brig Harrison … with important News, as follows. [Boston, 16 May 1766]

Broadside (258 x 214 mm). Seven lines of heading, text in single column, docketed on the verso "A Repeal of the Stamp Act on March 18. 1766"; browned, frayed at bottom, chipped at left margin, creasing and minor separations at folds affecting a few letters. Red morocco slipcase gilt, chemise.

An apparently unrecorded and unique broadside announcing the repeal of the Stamp Act. This broadside was printed in Boston on 16 May 1766, the same day that the ship Harrison, owned by John Hancock and "6 Weeks and 2 Days from London," arrived in port with the news.

The broadside reprints a report from the London Gazette, 18 March 1776, that demonstrates that the news of the Repeal was greeted as enthusiastically in Great Britain as it was in her colonies. "Immediately on His Majesty's Signing the Royal Assent to the Repeal of the Stamp-Act the Merchants trading to America, dispatched a Vessel which had been in waiting, to put into the first Port on the Continent with the Account. There were the greatest Rejoicings possible in the City of London, by all Ranks of People, on the Total Repeal of the Stamp-Act,—the Ships in the River displayed tall their Colours, Illuminations and Bonfires in many Parts." The printer appended a brief coda to the London report, describing the reaction in Boston: "It is impossible to express the Joy the Town is now in, on receiving the above, great, glorious and important News."

Five other similar broadsides printed in the American colonies in the spring of 1766 announcing the news of the repeal of the Stamp Act are recorded, each known in only a handful of copies: two printed by Hugh Gaine in New York; one printed in Connecticut by Timothy Green; one printed in Rhode Island by Samuel Hall; and another broadside printed in Boston by a consortium of printers (Richard and Samuel Draper, Benjamin Edes, John Gill, Joseph Russell, and Thomas and John Fleet), dated-lined the same time and day as the present broadside. The Lipman broadside contains the same exact text as Boston broadside issued by a confederation of printers, but it is clearly a different setting of type, with different line breaks, capitalization and other incidentals, and without the ornaments on the other Boston printing. The Lipman copy also does not have any imprint identifying its printer or printers. This version of the broadside is not in Ford, Evans, NAIP, or Shipton & Mooney.

REFERENCE

Celebration of My Country 42