Upload
others
View
0
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
O’Donnell 1
Struensee’s Ghost: Narratives of Pascal Paoli and Ebenezer Richardson in Philadelphian Newspapers, 1767 – 1776
In Copenhagen, January 1772, a revolution occurred in Denmark. The country rejected German
culture and embarked on a new programme of re-discovering and redefining the Danish people.1 The
Revolution was precipitated by the arrest of Count Johann Friedrich Struensee. Since 1771, Struensee had
been the court favourite, Royal Secretary, and personal physician to the Danish King, Christian VII. He
was eventually executed in April 1772 for treason and lèse-majesté, convicted of signing the King’s name
without due authority.2 He had become a particularly noisome figure in Danish politics by heedlessly
pursuing a modernising agenda of abolishing traditional privileges in favour of enlightened rule. And like
other attempts in European courts, these ‘rational’ innovations were not greeted enthusiastically.
Struensee first surrounded himself with a select group of cronies then systematically isolated himself from
the court, along the way incurring the wrath of merchants, burghers, and industrialists. Struensee finally
pressed his enlightened reform too far when he ordered the dissolution of the Royal Guards. By 1772
Struensee was protected only by the Queen, with whom he was having an illicit sexual relationship, and
the King, who had long suffered from a deteriorating and dissociative mental illness –thought either to be
schizophrenia or porphyria and probably not caused by excessive masturbation as Struensee himself
diagnosed.3 When Struensee’s ministry was toppled, the old court party made the Queen Dowager Juliana
regent, and the King’s half brother Frederick her Prime Minister – this was the Revolution.
Events in Copenhagen were particularly interesting to Britain because after the arrest of the
Count, Queen Caroline Matilda, sister to George III, was sequestered in Kronborg and bullied into a
confession of adultery, technically a capital offence. After a tense standoff she was eventually rescued by a
British man-of-war, but the affair soured British perceptions of Denmark. More worryingly, early but
unconfirmed reports suggested that Danish forces were moving against British interests in the country,
1 Stewart Oakley, The Story of Denmark (London; Faber and Faber, 1972), p. 156. In a notable absence Ove Korsgaard does not even mention Struensee as a factor in reasserting Danishness. Ove Korsgaard, The Struggle for the People (Copenhagen; Danish School of Education Press, 2008). 2 The South Carolina and American General Gazette, 23 April 1772. Virginia Gazette, 16 April 1772. 3 Johan Schioldann, ‘”Struensee’s Memoir on the Situation of the King” (1772): Christian VII of Denmark’, History of Psychiatry, 24:2 (2013), 227 – 47, (pp. 231).
O’Donnell 2
threatening to seize assets and impound ships. And Prussia was even rumoured to be mobilising forces to
protect the tranquillity of Europe because ‘something [was] rotten in the state of Denmark.’4
The story of the Danish Revolution unfurled in American newspapers in a confused fashion.
Reports veered between aggressive indictments of the Danish treatment of the British princess,5 to calls
for calm and moderation.6 Most conflicting of all was that two dramatically different accounts of
Struensee’s arrest appeared in the same issue of nearly every American newspaper. The first presented the
regency of Juliana as the result of a popular protest; the other was deeply suspicious of the Queen
Dowager and presented the Revolution as a palace coup. Both of these accounts appeared one after the
other without an editorial voice to reconcile the dissonance.7 And it this feature of eighteenth-century
newspapers, the burden of narration as the responsibility of the reader, that I wish to explore for this
paper.
The facts in both cases focused on the arrest of Struensee, but each was radically different. In the
account of the popular revolution Struensee was publically seized at a masked ball, and his arrest was
greeted by a crowd.8 This was in practice a political fairy tale in which a greedy minister was removed to
restore pristine liberty. The second account was much less spectacular. Rather than a public denunciation
followed by popular support, the Revolution was conducted in private in the early hours of the morning.
Juliana convinced Christian that Struensee and the Queen were plotting, and so both were arrested in
their rooms. Unlike the happy ending of the first account, this version of events concluded remorsefully
that the Queen Dowager had always had her eye on the Danish throne. She had in fact made numerous
attempts on Christian’s life when he was a boy, including one incident in which she had him pushed from
a bridge.9
4 The South Carolina and American General Gazette, 23 April 1772. Virginia Gazette 30 April 1772. 5 Hester W. Chapman, Caroline Matilda: Queen of Denmark, 1751 – 75 (London; Jonathan Cape, 1971), p. 144. 6 Pennsylvania Packet 27 April 1772. 7 New York usually received the freshest advices from Europe, but the packet to New York and South Carolina was detained at Falmouth in Cornwall delaying news of the revolution. The news was first reported in Massachusetts before there was a strident refutation of Caroline Matilda’s infidelity, but in each case there was mention of a popular revolution and the fact that Struensee was arrested in his apartments. For the notice about the delayed packet see: The New Hampshire Gazette 10 April 1772. For the early New England reports see: Massachusetts Spy 3 April 1772. Boston News-Letter 3 April 1772. Boston Post Boy 30 March 1772. Further south, the later reports included both the popular and actual accounts of Struensee’s arrest discussed below. New-York Gazette 13 April 1772. Pennsylvania Packet 13 April 1772. Virginia Gazette 16 April 1772. The South Carolina and American General Gazette, 23 April 1772. 8 The South Carolina and American General Gazette, 23 April 1772. 9 The South Carolina and American General Gazette, 23 April 1772. Virginia Gazette, 16 April 1772.
O’Donnell 3
The paper today is about the American Revolution, and specifically about how stories within
newspapers helped to propel the dissolution of Britain and its colonies, but I wanted to start with the
American reportage of Struensee’s arrest to highlight three important themes. First, the conflicting
accounts of Struensee’s arrest are illustrative of the news gathering techniques of colonial newspapers.
Second, the political fantasy first spread by Juliana and her supporters allude to the potential political
power of telling a story. Third, the story of Struensee would superficially seem capable of being useful to
Anglophone narrators as a warning to all who would interfere with proper governance, and yet the Count
was such a complicated character that he was ultimately useless as the protagonist of a popular narrative.
Ultimately I wish to argue that that although American newspapers appear to blandly report excerpts
from letters mechanically organised by order in which they arrived, these disjointed notices had the
capacity to acknowledge virtuous acts, incite discontent, and, most importantly, to animate crowds into
action; however, not every narrative would suffice, and audiences were selective about the heroes and
villains they followed. They had to appear unreservedly good, or irredeemably bad, and in fact it was this
simplicity which gave them their power as a model for emulation or a cautionary example.
The two characters I have chosen, Pascal Paoli and Ebenezer Richardson, have, I believe, been
eclipsed from the history of the American Revolution, but they were both very successful at embodying
important narratives about the colonial experience of the imperial crises. The Corsican rebel Pascal Paoli
is interesting because he reveals that there was a global consciousness to the American Revolution. Paoli
became a symbol for the tireless pursuit of liberty, a rallying call for ceaselessly opposing tyranny in
whatever forms it appeared. Meanwhile, Ebenezer Richardson, the child murderer, became the
manifestation of the evils of tyrannical government. The rumours that circulated about Richardson
allowed Americans to give a concrete form to the evils they decried in the polemical press. Through
Richardson, the jeremiads of Revolutionary writers were no longer disembodied threats or abstract fears,
but the product of tyrannical government replete with observable consequences. Together these two
narratives provided simple lessons for an American audience involved in a political crisis with Britain that
provoked a series of complex rationales and conflicted sentiments. Uniting these two narratives was a
comforting image of the American colonies as a persecuted guardian of liberty in a corrupt and
degenerating world.
O’Donnell 4
‘Containing the Freshest Advices’: Constructing Newspaper Narratives
Looking first at how narratives are constructed, it may on initial inspection appear as if the
presentation of two contradictory accounts meant that eighteenth-century newspapers were examples of
primitive or underdeveloped journalism, essentially lacking the sophisticated organisation of today’s
papers; however, I would argue that it’s not really very helpful to think of eighteenth-century newspapers
as a primordial versions of today’s media; they were a step in the evolutionary process, but they were a
discrete entity in themselves. As an information technology, eighteenth-century newspaper had their own
special and internal logic, and understanding this special arrangement can reveal how readers interacted
with newspapers.
There were no professional journalists working at the time, so the vast majority of news
originated as letters collected by editors, who would then print relevant excerpts. Importantly they were
not stories or articles in the way we think of newspapers today, but rather a collection of items extracted
from longer pieces. This gathering process had a very important effect upon how the news was presented.
If we take the traditional 4 page format of a colonial paper, it followed a fairly predictable pattern. The
front page was usually devoted to a pseudonymous political essay that would declaim eloquently on
events. The second page was given over to foreign intelligences, starting from the furthest afield (for
example, Constantinople or St Petersburg) and then move toward London. The third page would be
devoted to local news, usually starting in the Caribbean, the South, then New England, the middle
colonies and finally Philadelphia. The last page was devoted to current prices for commodities, ship
clearances, and advertisements. Organisation of news items within these broad categories was arranged by
‘freshness’ so as opposed to the hierarchical approach of contemporary newspapers in which certain
articles are given precedence over others – i.e. major headlines at the front, sports to the back –
eighteenth-century news was organised from oldest to newest. So in the case of Struensee, the fantasy
account was first because it was sent out the quickest, the actual account second because it was slower
entering the Atlantic newspaper network.
O’Donnell 5
And yet despite the disjointed and mechanical presentation of news items, I would argue that
there were sustained narratives which informed the selection process of articles. Moreover, these
editorially constructed narratives were understood by ordinary colonial audiences, who responded not just
privately amongst themselves – an action largely lost for historians – but importantly in public and as a
collective. Narratives within newspapers had the power to convene huge crowds without any explicit
invitation to do so.10 The revolutionary capability of American newspapers is strongly represented in the
historiography; however, these accounts tend to focus on newspapers as a forum for popular
participation in print culture or a platform for polemical and partisan material, rather than as a device to
tell a story.11 Newspapers were a tool for communication, and critical to understanding them both as
objects in and of themselves and the society which created them, is to investigate the messages conveyed
within them. Among the myriad of items vying for the attention of the reader – advertisements,
commercial notices, receipts, poems – I believe that the items which described a central figure over the
course of weeks, months, or even years have been so far overlooked for historical analysis, especially in
terms for how audiences responded to these stories. These narratives had an expository and moralising
role that framed events in order to define a specific problem or recommend a particular solution.12
There have been previous engagements with the narratives at play in the American media. The
most powerful, though rarely referred to as a narrative by its proponents, was the idea that there was a
conspiracy against liberty. Traditionally told the conspiratorial tale characterised Parliament as actively
10 I am indebted to Elizabeth Maddock Dillon for her suggestion of the use of the word ‘convene’ for this context. 11 As a forum for popular participation see: David Paul Nord, Communities of Journalism: A History of American Newspapers and their Readers (Urbana, IL; University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 6, 200 – 12. David Copeland, ‘Newspapers in the Americas’ in Function of Newspapers in Society: A Global Perspective (Westport, CT; Praeger, 2003), pp. 103 – 126. Uriel Heyd, Reading Newspapers: Press and Public in Eighteenth-Century Britain and America (Oxford; Voltaire Foundation, 2012), pp. 69 – 70. For the idea of the newspaper as a platform for polemical material see: Jeffrey Smith, Printers and Press Freedom: The Ideology of Early American Journalism (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 13. Jeffrey Pasley, The Tyranny of the Press: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, VA; University of Virginia Press, 2001), p. 37. Charles E. Clark, ‘Early American Journalism: News and Opinion in the Popular Press’ in A History of the Book in America, ed. Hugh Amory and David D. Hall (Chapel Hill, NC; University of North Carolina Press, 2007), pp. 347 – 65, (p. 362). 12 Roland Barthes highlights the sequential, expository role of narrative. Roland Barthes, ‘An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative’, New Literary History 6:2 (1975), 237 – 72. Hayden White argues that in any narrative of events there is a moralising rationale which informed the manner in which the information was communicated. Hayden White, ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’ in The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD; The John Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 1 – 25 (pp. 24 – 5). As such Elizabeth Bird and Robert Dardenne argue that journalists need to be conscious of the contextual narratives that surround a news story in order to understand what else may be communicated by any particular article. S. Elizabeth Bird and Robert W. Dardenne, ‘Myth, Chronicle and Story: Exploring the Narrative Qualities of News’, in Social Meanings of News: A Text Reader (Thousand Oaks, CA; Sage Publications, 1997), pp. 333 – 350. For the definition of framing in a rhetorical sense see: Robert Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication (1993) 43:4, 51 – 8 (p. 52).
O’Donnell 6
working to undermine the liberty of the colonists, and so all legislation or official proclamations made by
that body were interpreted either in reconciliation with the colonies or in opposition to them.13 The 1773
Tea Act was the most explosive example of this story at work. The act led directly to the outbreak of war,
but its original intention was to allow the East India Company to export tea directly to America and was
designed to help the ailing company remain fiscally solvent; however, the colonists saw it as another move
to impose Parliamentary authority. As will be seen in the story of Ebenezer Richardson, conspiracy was
certainly an idea that could incite a crowd to action, but I would argue that concentrating solely on
conspiracy eclipses the numerous other narratives that animated the revolution. A more recent
engagement with narrative was undertaken by Phyllis Whitman Hunter, who wrote a tantalising article on
the appropriation and adaptation of foreign intelligence by Americans into their own gallery of heroes and
villains, but Hunter stopped short of exploring the effect that this appropriation had on popular politics.14
Which brings me back to Struensee, because if newspapers could create powerful stories, why did
Struensee fail as a narrative? For Anglophonic audiences Struensee bore a number of very important
similarities to the perennial bogeyman of British politics, the Earl of Bute. Immediately following
Struensee’s execution Bute was threatened; verbally in a piece by the prodigious essayist Atticus, and
graphically in the cartoon Struensee’s Ghost (fig. 1).15 Bute was the spirit incarnate of the corrupting
influence that self-interested ministers could have on the pristine and perfect constitution of the British
Empire. The Earl was so reviled that despite the fact that he had not had wielded any effective power
since 1763, he was repeatedly burnt in effigy and invoked in print as the figurehead of the dishonest
ministries throughout the 1760s and 1770s. And Struensee was so very much like Bute. Both men were
personally haughty and dismissive – which hurt their political careers. Like Bute, Struensee was a foreign
influence on the court –in fact Struensee could speak no Danish. Both held positions of power due to an
intimate connection with the King. Bute was George’s tutor; Struensee had been Christian’s physician.
And both were rumoured to have had sexual relationships with powerful women of the court. Bute with
13 Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 115 – 7, 129 – 30, 150 – 8. Gordon Wood, ‘Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Casuality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century’, William and Mary Quarterly, 39: 3 (1982), 401 – 441, (p. 411). Timothy H. Breen, American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People (New York, NY; Hill and Wang, 2010), pp. 260 – 1. 14 Phyllis Whitman Hunter, ‘Transatlantic News: American Interpretations of the Scandalous and Heroic’ in Books between Europe and the Americas: Connections and Communities, ed. Leslie Howsam and James Raven (Basingstoke; Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 64 – 82. 15 Oxford Magazine April 1772. Pennsylvania Journal, 12 August 1772.
O’Donnell 7
the Princess Dowager of Wales, Struensee with Caroline Matilda. 16 Yet despite early exceptions Struensee
failed to join Bute in the rogue’s gallery of British popular imagination. I would argue that this is because
even in the reports of the popular demonstrations of joy that surrounded the Count’s arrest, British
contributors noted that Struensee had been responsible for many positive rational innovations in an
otherwise despotic country. Similarly, there were many profession of sympathy for the condition of
Caroline Matilda; American merchant William Pollard described the news of the Danish Revolution as the
affairs of ‘the poor Queen of Denmark’. 17 Ultimately, despite the superficial similarities between Bute and
Struensee, there were too many unsettling details about the Danish Revolution. Bute was used to tell a
story about pristine liberty corrupted by greedy ministers, but Struensee and his efforts were too nuanced
to be a good fit. However, where Struensee failed both Paschal Paoli and Ebenezer Richardson were
successful.
The Uncorrupted Patriot and the Parracide: The Popular and Instructive Narratives of Paoli and Richardson
The saga of Corsica and Paschal Paoli would become an important feature for American
newspapers during 1768, 1769, 1770. As a brief potted history, the island had long opposed any sort of
external authority. For over two hundred years Corsica resisted first Genoese then French control. Paoli
was elected as the General for the Island in 1755 and helped write a constitution that created a
representative government which was notable for its commitment to the idea of popular sovereignty.18
Paoli fled to Britain after Corsica’s defeat in 1769 at the Battle of Ponte Novu. He was received at
Harwich by none other than John Wilkes – the two had long been linked in print. During his time in
London, Paoli re-established his close friendship with James Boswell, a man who had written a popular
puff piece about the General, and he was maintained by a pension granted by George III. Though he was
intimately connected to the luminaries of London society, Paoli never became the prominent figure in
16 Oakley, p. 153. John Brewer, ‘The Misfortunes of Lord Bute: A Case-Study in Eighteenth–Century Political
Argument and Public Opinion’, The Historical Journal, 16:1 (1973), 3–43. 17 William Pollard to William Plummon, 12 May 1772, William Pollard Letterbook, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. 18 Dorothy Carrington, ‘The Corsican Constitution of Pascal Paoli (1755 – 1769)’, English Historical Review 88:348 (1973), 481 – 503.
O’Donnell 8
British politics that early reports speculated he would. Following the French Revolution Paoli made a
triumphant return to an independent Corsica in 1790, but was then subsequently chased off the island
after falling afoul of Revolutionary politics. He died in London in 1807 still actively promoting Corsican
independence.19
In America, Paoli’s fame dramatically escalated between 1768 and 1770, greatly augmented by a
steady stream of British intelligence about the island which highlighted similarities between Corsica and
Britain. Even before Genoa relinquished control to the French both the Pennsylvania Chronicle and
Pennsylvania Gazette repeated sympathetic excerpts from British papers about the plight of the Corsicans.
Paoli was introduced to American audiences through pro-war anti-Gallic stories of impending French
domination in the Mediterranean and all the fears for the fate of the British navy that such a strategic
situation implied.20 In Philadelphia, Paoli had inadvertently contributed to his own warm reception after
flattering remarks by the General. He said ‘that the greatest happiness was not in glory, but in goodness;
and that Penn in his American colony, where he had established a people in quiet and contentment, was
happier than Alexander the Great after destroying multitudes at the conquest of Thebes.’21 Paoli was
portrayed as a man forced into war, and not himself a warlike man, and this irenic concept was firmly
ingrained in the Quaker colony. When Corsica began directly resisting the French in earnest, his celebrity
was dramatically increased, and beginning in 1769 with the first reports of the French conflict, there was a
veritable Paoli-mania in the colonies. Paoli’s name was appropriated in a number of different ways, some
more auspicious than others. Two ships were named for Paoli. One was a ship from Bristol; the other
was a sloop which shuttled between Halifax and Philadelphia. 22 One of the penmen of the Revolution,
Daniel Dulany, actually named his racehorse Paoli, although horse did not finish the race.23 Philadelphian
merchants Hudson and Thompson imported a consignment of linen handkerchiefs that added Paoli to
the roster of traditional images like John Wilkes, maps, and various landscapes.24 On a more popular level,
just outside of Philadelphia a township was named for the General Paoli tavern. The place is still called
19 James T. Boulton and T.O. McLoughlin, ‘Introduction’, in James Boswell, An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. (xix – xx). Marie-Jeanne Colombani, ‘Paoli, (Filippo Antonio) Pasquale (1725–1807)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21244, accessed 24 Feb 2013]. 20 Pennsylvania Chronicle 11 May 1767. Pennsylvania Gazette 21 May 1767. 21 James Boswell, Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to that Island and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli, ed James T Boulton and Timothy O. McLoughlin (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 203. 22 PG 5 October 1769. PG 19 October 1769. 23 PG 2 November 1769. 24 PC 4 September 1769.
O’Donnell 9
Paoli, and the tavern survived until it burnt down in 1906.25 Finally in 1769 George McIntosh, the
popular Bostonian crowd activist, named his son Pascal Paoli McIntosh (a common naming convention
with notable examples including Benjamin Franklin Bache, George Washington Carver, John Wilkes
Booth).26
William Polk suggests that the appeal of Pascal Paoli was that he was from a place that could be
romanticised by Americans because very few people were familiar with Corsica itself. Polk points to the
fact that Paoli was painted by the American Henry Benbridge in the style of a British general,
incorporating the Corsican into a special British aesthetic, as opposed to Corsican rusticity.27 Except
Paoli’s popularity was more than just the ability to project internal desires upon a foreign culture, instead
the simplicity of Paoli’s narrative allowed the General to be presented as uncomplicatedly good. Unlike
Struensee, there were no troubling details in 1769. The incorruptible Corsicans resisted the tyrannical
Genoese and French, and Britain unequivocally allied itself with the island – or at least that was the
substance of message in American newspapers. Commentators constructed Corsica as an essential
battleground in a very literal sense. Liberty hinged on Corsican independence. News articles compared
Corsica to the role Germany had played during the Seven Years War. So in September 1768, a
commentator argued that ‘As America was heretofore conquered in Germany, it is now intended that England
shall be conquered in Corsica’. This sentiment was retooled three months later to ‘As America was
heretofore conquered in Germany, it is proposed, in case of another war, to conquer France in Corsica.’28
Meaning that if the Corsicans defeated the French, then Britain would be able to conquer France. While
this may have been a little bit of hysteric hyperbole, there was a strong identification with the island that
linked the future of Britain with the future of Corsica.
Americans subscribed to the importance of the story of Corsica as well. In its short run, the
American Magazine included news about Corsica in every one of its 9 issues that year. The avowed aim of
the magazine was a repository of information; therefore, the editor aggregated news stories about Corsica
to preserve for future generations. The first issue included a long description of the Corsican people
25 The United States Dictionary of Places (New York, NY; Somerset Publishers, 1988), p. 432. 26 Arthur M. Schlesinger, ‘Patriotism Names the Baby’, New England Quarterly, 14:4 (1941), 611 – 8, (p. 613). 27 William R. Polk, The Birth of America: From Before Columbus to the Revolution (New York, NY; Harper Perennial, 2006), p. 276. 28 PC 23 January 1769. PC 19 September 1768.
O’Donnell 10
because they made up a ‘considerable part of the foreign intelligence of our newspapers’. The piece then
appropriated Corsicans as American heroes, comparing them to ‘our Indians’ because ‘every man [was]
his own general’.29 This comparison to Native Americans was not pejorative or incidental, but a
favourable reminder that Paoli represented a people who had always resisted tyrannical impositions. This
was a comforting model because by 1769 the colonies were locked into a tense battle of wills against a
British Parliament who intended to impose its authority on them. Toasts were endlessly repeated which
celebrated the Corsicans active pursuit of liberty. In New York men assembled to mark the anniversary of
the Stamp Act repeal and toasted ‘Success to that uncorrupted Patriot General Paoli, and the brave
Corsicans.’30 In Boston on the King’s birthday ‘Paschal Paoli, and his brave Corsicans’ were remembered
alongside ‘The Cantons of Switzerland’, ‘The distressed Poles’, and of course ‘The Farmer of
Pennsylvania, and all American Patriots’.31 In Philadelphia there was a gathering to celebrate Paoli’s
birthday with a meal and the ringing of church bells. Toasts included calls for ‘Paoli to meet with equal
Renown, but a happier fate than the younger Brutus’, ‘the glorious Spirit of Corsica [to] animate America
to the latest Posterity’, and for ‘The Spirit of Paoli to every American.’32
The easy fit of the narrative of Corsican autonomy and Paoli’s undaunted resistance of
corruption meant that it was very easy to invoke the General to promote a huge platform of American
ideals. Paoli was not just lauded on the page. He was celebrated publically and concretely. But a reader
didn’t need to be engaged in a military battle with tyranny to emulate Paoli, they could defend the cause
of liberty in a practical way. For the colonists, this was as simple as wearing homespun. Cloth produced in
the colonies from domestic sources. This link was made explicit in a letter from London, which chided its
recipient in Annapolis, Maryland, for the lack of support for liberty. The writer argued that while the
women of England were demonstrating their commitment to liberty by offering assistance to Paoli
monetarily, the same commitment to liberty was lacking in America where women were unable to
encourage domestic manufacturing through their patronage.33 And in Harvard, graduates were lauded for
their decision to wear domestic manufacturing. The commitment to homespun would ‘rival the honours
of a Cato, a Brutus, and a Paoli, and render them equally remarkable in the annals of the same with Rome,
29 The American Magazine January 1769, pp. 9 – 11. 30 PG 23 March 1769. 31 PG 22 June 1769. 32 PG 13 April 1769. PC 17 April 1769. 33 PG 25 May 1769.
O’Donnell 11
and with Corsica’.34 All of a sudden the equivocation of Corsica to Germany seems less ridiculous when
compared to linking the fortunes of the Corsican struggle against French imperial control to the
promotion of American homespun. For a moment, so successful was the Paoli narrative that he became a
ubiquitous and formless rallying call for liberty, and yet one in which the American struggle against
Parliamentary taxation impositions existed on global stage.
Ultimately however, Paoli would disappoint his audience. By accepting a British pension in 1770
there was a real concern that he had betrayed and abandoned his worthy cause, and invocations of Paoli
disappeared for a few years; however, the memory of Paoli persisted. In February 1775, just before the
outbreak of actual violence between America and Britain, a commentator inserted a letter from Paoli in
the Pennsylvania Ledger. The letter was a historic declaration by the General that he would continue to
oppose Genoa despite offers of gold or privileges. The preamble in the newspaper justifying the letter’s
inclusion stressed that irrespective of whether Paoli still practiced the virtuous rejection of wealth or
honours, it was the principles rather than the man that should be praised. The contributor asserted that
the ‘noble ardour and sentiment it breathes, I could wish to see infused into the breast of every
American.’35 Later in the same year the Pennsylvania Magazine included the poem Corsica by Anna Laetitia
Barbauld (neé Aikin), which praised Corsican masculinity and its example for British patriots. The editor
appended an introduction which highlighted the special applicability for Americans because the Corsicans
were fellow strugglers for liberty.36 Unlike Struensee, a cohesive narrative about Paoli was established for
American audiences. He was invoked as indicative of hardy resistance against corrupt tyranny. Even after
the man himself became tainted, his image endured as a virtuous example of the quest for liberty. This
was not a narrative that was peripheral or supplementary, but central to the entire idea of America as
physically removed from the corruption of Europe. In that way, the eventual sad decline of Paoli was in
fact not a refutation of his story, but almost a reminder of the pernicious influence of European courts,
Britain included. Through the narrative of Paoli’s struggle against the Genoese and French, the colonies
saw in themselves their role as the guardians of liberty.
34 PC 5 December 1768. 35 Pennsylvania Ledger 18 February 1775. 36 Pennsylvania Magazine July 1775, p. 319.
O’Donnell 12
Ebenezer Richardson on the other hand was not a positive role model, but a warning about the
ill effects of arbitrary government. On the 22nd February 1770, a group of children set up a board outside
of Theophilus Lillie’s shop in Boston. The board was painted with the presumably unflattering image of
Lille and three other merchants who had been accused of breaching the city’s non-importation agreement
by landing British manufactures. This was related to the campaign for American homespun for which
Paoli had been conscripted. Richardson was not a popular man in Boston. He had a reputation as an
‘infamous informer’ for the hated British customs service. He had been heard publically remarking that he
hoped that the British soldiers would ‘Cut up the d___d Yankees’, and he had a particularly haughty and
dismissive attitude.37
On the afternoon of the 22nd, as Richardson was returning home, he took umbrage with the
caricature of the merchants, and began to harangue a passing charcoal wagon in an attempt to convince
the driver to tear down the board. The driver said he would not involve himself, so Richardson stormed
toward his house a few yards distant from the board. On his way he passed a group of three men, and
Richardson in high dudgeon began to loudly accuse the gentlemen of perjury in their witness against the
four accused transgressors of the association. The men confronted Richardson on his door step, and by
this time the boys, who had been harassing Lillie, gathered around Richardson and jeered at him for being
an informer. Richardson’s wife came out of the house with the intention of scattering the children, but
the boys were only provoked to further mischief and began to throw rubbish at the couple’s house. The
rubbish started off as light but the situation soon escalated, the rubbish became heavier, and the
Richardsons were driven inside the house. At this point Ebenezer attempted to retaliate. He produced a
gun and threatened the young crowd, but this only excited them further and the hail of rubbish
intensified. The crowd smashed windows and jeered loudly, until finally Richardson responded by firing
buck shot through the window. The projectiles hit both Sammy Gore and Christopher Seider. Gore was
wounded in the hand and thigh, but Seider, who was 11 at the time, was hit in the chest. The young boy
was carried to a neighbour’s house, but died later that evening. When the boy died an angry mob seized
Richardson from his home and carried him before the magistrates. According to reports over a thousand
37 Paine’s Minutes of the trial Legal Paper of John Adams p. 416.
O’Donnell 13
people were present at Richardson’s examination, and the magistrates had to intervene in calming the
crowd down for fear that Richardson would be torn apart before he made it to prison.38
The public response to the murder was spectacular. Phyllis Wheatley quickly memorialised Seider
as the ‘first martyr for the common good’, and his funeral was attended by nearly 5,000 people.39 In fact
even the dramatic events of March 5th, known as the Boston Massacre, in which eleven men were killed
or wounded by British soldiers in King Street, only served to reinforce Richardson’s villainy. In the
account of the ‘massacre’ Richardson was referenced twice. First, when the sailor Robert Patterson was
struck in the arm by the British soliders, it was revealed that he had also been at Richardson’s house on
the 22nd and some buckshot had gone through his trousers. More damning, there was a vague insinuation
toward the end of the report that the Customs service was involved in both the Boston Massacre and the
Richardson shooting.40 In either case, Richardson was firmly and permanently linked with the massacre.
Richardson was found guilty of murder on 20th April 1770, but before passing sentence the court
was adjourned until the following month. Returning in May the sentence was again suspended until
September because of illness on the bench, during this time the Lieutenant Governor Thomas
Hutchinson (another hated figure in Boston politics) appealed to the King for a pardon. Hutchinson
claimed that he had troubling legal questions about the effect of the boisterous galleries on the jury. The
pardon was granted by the King in February 1771, but, delayed by transatlantic communication and court
recesses, notification of the pardon did not reach Richardson until March 1772. Rather problematically
the notice of the pardon came through on 3rd March, two days before the second anniversary oration for
the Boston Massacre. Boston crowds had not forgotten Richardson. In fact at the event marking the
massacre a handbill was distributed which reminded audiences that Richardson had still not being hanged.
In remembering the dead of the massacre, the handbill invoked the evil nature of Richardson and the
seemingly bankrupt morals of the ministry.41
So, for his own protection Richardson was kept in prison for the days surrounding March 5th,
and he was eventually released on March 10th 1772. The day had been selected because the city would be
38 PG 15 March 1770. PC 19 March 1770. 39 Robert C. Kuncio, ‘Some Unpublished Poems of Phillis Wheatley’, New England Quarterly 43:2 (1970), 287 – 97, (p. 297). 40 PG 15 March 1770. PC 19 March 1770. PJ 22 March 1770. 41 Americans! Bear in Remembrance (Boston, 1772), Evans 12302.
O’Donnell 14
distracted by its annual town meeting at Fanueil Hall. And Richardson escaped Boston without being
detected. But upon learning of his release colonial audiences were outraged, and one commentator
dramatically exclaimed ‘O tempora! O mores! May he not adopt the language of Cain and say, Whosoever
meeteth me will slay me! Tell [of Richardson’s release] in Britain, publish it in Ireland, and may America
remember it forever!’42 Richardson’s murder of a young boy, his work as a customs informer, and his
escape from justice, all made him an uncomplicated villain. He was the manifestation of corrupt
government, and as such he became a useful, albeit ultimately elusive, proxy for the violence that America
wished it could inflict upon those iniquitous and oppressive institutions of the British Empire that
prevented the colonies from practicing their peaceful loyalty to the King.
Following his release from prison, Richardson recurred from time to time as a rumour and a
shadowy figure, though not any less real or corporeal than when he had killed Seider. A year after his
release in 1773 there were stories that the Board of Customs in Philadelphia had given Richardson a
commission in the service. To avert public outrage a notice was purposely distributed through the Boston
Post-Boy denying the rumour.43 Further linking Richardson to the Customs service, one article noted with
derision that the Board of Commissioners had attempted to hold a number of public holidays and
festivals, but ‘few people in the whole city of Philadelphia, besides Ebenezer Richardson, have ever
troubled their heads about their celebration, or have even heard of them.’44 But beyond snide reports,
Richardson still provoked such a strong response from Philadelphians that when the report of a man who
looked like Richardson circulated the city, a large crowd of ‘many well-wishers to peace and good order’
quickly assembled with the intention of tarring and feathering him. An anonymous commentator noted
that ‘Philadelphia is now, and forever must be too hot, to hold this Parracide’.45 Unlike Paoli, who was
invoked as a model for emulation, Richardson was so reviled that any mention of him could summon an
angry mob intent on laying hold of him. In Boston, Richardson was cited as a motivating factor for the
attack of John Malcolm on a Mr Waddel. Malcolm was dragged from his house, stripped naked and tied
to the liberty tree. And even as Malcolm lay fettered to the symbol of America’s liberty, a report circulated
42 L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, Legal Papers of John Adams, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA; The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965) II, pp. 396 – 411. PG 3 May 1770, 12 March 1772. PC 9 March, 30 March 1772. Pennsylvania Packet 9 March 1772. 43 PC 17 May 1773. Boston Post-Boy 14 June 1773. 44 PJ 10 November 1773. 45 PJ 20 October 1773.
O’Donnell 15
that Richardson was in town, and again another crowd went looking to exact punishment, but they could
not find him.46 Finally in 1776, Richardson transcended local politics to became one of the symbols that
British Prime Minister Lord North has no intention of amicably settling disputes between America and
Britain. The essayist Sincerus asked ‘Has the court resolved to cast [Governor] Bernard, Hutchinson and
daughter, Richardson the murderer, [or] crazy John Malcolm out on the common? I tell you nay!’ 47 For
Sincerus, so as long as Britain protected the creatures of bad government like Richardson, the colonies
could never be reconciled with the metropolitan.
Underpinning both of these narratives was the desire for good governance. The stories of Paoli
and Richardson are suggestive of a populace worried that their perfect system of governance was
adulterated by greedy individuals, and at times this fear was palpable enough to promote crowd action.
Effectively, these stories point to a deep anxiety about the failure of government, but a failure that could
be fixed with popular intervention. American colonists were fed a steady diet of news items that when
viewed in toto confirmed that they were right to oppose Parliament. They were invited to envision their
struggle as part of a global campaign to protect liberty, and the entire proceedings had an emotive
immediacy because the crisis was happening on their own door stop. The simple stories of Paoli and
Richardson, were reinforced consistently by repetition in a cohesive media environment. There were very
few dissenting opinions published in the years approaching the Revolution.48 And even beyond the page,
46 PJ 9 February 1774. PJ 16 February 1774. 47 Pennsylvania Evening Post 13 February 1776. 48 There has been a recurrent theme in Revolutionary historiography which has looked at the limitations imposed upon dissenting opinion within colonial printing. Philip Davidson wrote a seminal piece describing the concerted effort of propagandists during the Revolution. Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution 1763 – 1783 (Chapel Hill, NC; University of North Carolina Press, 1941), pp. 3 – 30, 173 – 245, 269, 298. Arthur Schlesinger continued this theme in his investigation of revolutionary newspapers. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764 – 1776 (New York, NY; Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), p. 5, 33, 90. Leonard Levy looked at the ability of the anti-British patriot governments to use the courts and the threat of seditious libel as a way of controlling and advancing the patriot message. Leonard Levy, Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History: Legacy of Suppression (New York, NY; Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 64 – 87. Leonard Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights (New Haven, CT; Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 120, 124. For Jeffery Smith, access to the press was governed by the personal prudence of the individual printer, but he argued that the influence of Franklin and his idea of impartiality were critical to the developing attitude toward printing revolutionary material. Jeffery A. Smith, Printers and Press Freedom: The Ideology of Early American Freedom (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 36 – 7,136 – 7, 164 – 5. Jeffrey Pasley moves further from the control of printers, and aligns himself more with Davidson’s position that it was a cohort of elite gentlemen who insisted upon printing mainly patriot material, in turn printers recognised the commercial benefit of supporting the patriot cause. Jeffrey Pasley, The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, VA; University of Virginia Press, 2001), pp. 32 – 40. For Charles Clark, following the Stamp Act there was an intensification of public debate in which a patriot majority confronted a loyalist minority. Neutrality was disregarded, and many printers, through either personal commitment or business sense, chose to embrace the revolutionary cause. Charles Clark, ‘Early American Journalism: News and Opinion in the Popular Press’, in A History of the Book in America: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, ed by Hugh Amory and David D. Hall, (Chapel Hill, NC; University of North Carolina, 2007), pp. 347 – 66, (pp. 355 – 62).
O’Donnell 16
the lessons of Paoli and Richardson were performed by a consenting audience. Newspapers were not
solely responsible for the dissolution of the bonds between Britain and America, but when situated within
an increasingly homogenising and normative print culture, and integrated into an active and responsive
crowd culture, newspapers and the narratives within them must have seen at best reasonable and
persuasive, and at worst intimidating and coercive.
O’Donnell 17
Fig. 1. ‘Struensee's ghost, or, Lord B-te & M-n-----d in the Horrors’, Oxford Magazine April 1772, p. 145.