DAY ONE (morning):

• Assemble and erect gallows in middle of town
• Make effigies to represent stamp master, two hated loyalists
• Cart effigies through town to gallows
• Hoist effigies by neck 15 feet high
• Make fire under gallows
• Burn effigies to ashes
• Choose deputies of town
• Choose committee to instruct deputies on Stamp Act

DAY TWO (evening):

• Gather crowd, march to house of hated loyalist No. 1
• Shatter windows
• Break doors to pieces
• Damage partitions of house
• Ruin furniture
• March to home of hated loyalist No. 2
• Tear house to pieces
• Demolish furniture
• Ravage cellar
• Destroy all provisions, wine, etc.
• March to home of stamp master
• Threaten his home if he doesn’t resign
• Receive promise of resignation
• Return to first two homes to continue destruction

DAY THREE (morning):

• Listen to stamp master’s public resignation
• Wait for loyalists to sail to England, advertise land/home for sale

These events were reported in detail (not as a to-do list) in the Supplement to the Boston News-Letter on September 5, 1765 (see photo excerpt), and shed light on the terror campaign that colonists launched to fight the Stamp Act. I converted the report to a to-do list to emphasize the devastation and because, well, everyone loves lists. Newspapers spread the word of mobs, violence and boycott, which effectively prevented enforcement of the Stamp Act and lead to its repeal. More on the Stamp Act crisis and its newspaper coverage in chapter one of Reporting the Revolutionary War.

According to Bell, “the repeal bill was rather legalistic and far less stirring than the Congress’s July Declaration of Independence, but it contained the same basic argument.”

Below is an early news report of Rhode Island’s independence as it appears on page two of the May 20, 1776, issue of the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury. The transcript of the repeal can be found on Bell’s post. Click the image below to enlarge and click here to view the entire second page of the New-York Gazette issue.

In addition to handling thousands of historic newspapers, I have worked with all kinds of historic document experts, conservators and librarians. I have attended many of the nation’s largest rare book and paper shows where literally tens of thousands of historic documents are handled per day. I have even browsed through the historic newspaper vault at the Library of Congress. But the times I’ve seen people use white gloves I can count on one hand.

White gloves mostly appear in media, film and television for dramatic effect. The truth is, if you care about the historic document and its preservation, white gloves should NOT be worn. They can actually do more harm than good.

While historic document dealer Nathan Raab recently authored an article on the topic for Forbes magazine, I have relied heavily on the research of paper conservation expert Dr. Cathleen A. Baker and University of Utah preservation librarian Randy Silverman. Baker and Silverman authored a five-page investigation of the origins of the white glove myth and the potential hazards associated with their use. Titled “Misconceptions about White Gloves,” the article appeared in the December 2005 issue of International Preservation News.

According to the article, awkward mobility, loss of feeling, impaired sensations and a sanitary illusion are all one gains by handling books and paper with white gloves. “Wearing gloves actually increases the potential for physically damaging fragile material through mishandling, and this is especially true for ultra thin or brittle papers that become far more difficult to handle with the sense of touch dulled. Measures must be taken to reduce collection risks through instruction and example, we submit, but not through the use of gloves.”

Before you handle historic documents next, remember a simple hand washing with soap and water is all you need.

As curator and publisher of RagLinen.com, I’m thrilled to announce here the news of my forthcoming book, Reporting the Revolutionary War: Before It Was History, It Was News (Sourcebooks, November 2012). In 400 full-color pages, the book tells the story of the American Revolution via newspapers of the period. Below is a brief description of the project. Stay tuned to RagLinen.com, our Facebook page, our Google Plus page and Twitter for updates and more exciting details.

Considering the combined impact of traditional and social media on 21st century politics, it is difficult to imagine a time when media were more important. However, 250 years ago, newspapers were the fundamental form of media and arguably more important than any other time in history. Just as social media is helping to ignite and organize the Arab Spring, printed newspapers fanned the flames of rebellion in colonial America, provided critical correspondence during the Revolutionary War, sustained loyalty to the cause and ultimately aided in the outcome. Reporting the Revolutionary War offers readers an unprecedented look at colonial newspapers, which detailed the biggest battles and milestones as well as several forgotten events of the American Revolution.

Through vivid eyewitness accounts, battlefield letters and breaking news compiled from hundreds of newspapers – printed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean – the story of the American Revolution is unlike any version that has been told. It is raw and uncut, full of intense action, drama and suspense. From start to finish, these frontline newspapers deliver incomparable insight about America’s founding and combine to reveal one of the most real and comprehensive narratives of the Revolutionary Era, loaded with amazing characters, better-than-fiction plot twists and the perfect climax. This is history in its purest form.

Author/Editor Todd Andrlik is among the nation’s leading authorities on 18th century newspapers. He built one of the most significant private collections of American Revolution era newspapers, containing the earliest printed reports of practically every major event and battle, which he is making public for the first time ever with this book.

Coming together to help put the original newspapers accounts in context are 37 top historians — including professors, scholars, authors and park rangers — who have contributed more than 60 fascinating essays. These essays chronicle the impact these papers made on America’s War of Independence.

In addition to the 400-page, full-color book, Todd Andrlik and Sourcebooks are launching a sensational multimedia package complete with website, digital archive of 300+ Revolutionary newspapers, interactive app, video, audio and educational lesson plans. With Reporting the Revolutionary War, we are bringing the 18th century to the 21st.

Considering the combined impact of traditional and social media on 21st century politics, it is difficult to imagine a time when media were more important. However, 250 years ago, newspapers were the fundamental form of media and arguably more important than any other time in history. Just as social media is helping to ignite and organize the Arab Spring, printed newspapers fanned the flames of rebellion in colonial America, provided critical correspondence during the Revolutionary War, sustained loyalty to the cause and ultimately aided in the outcome.

Through vivid eyewitness accounts, battlefield letters and official dispatches, American Revolution era newspapers were filled with raw, breaking news, full of intense action, drama and suspense. Americans maintained “Liberty or Death! Join or Die!” attitudes with blood as well as ink on their hands. It was a printer’s revolution and these frontline newspapers delivered the 18th century equivalent of Facebook and Twitter.

Mark Twain wrote “of the wide difference in interest between ‘news’ and ‘history;’ that news is history in its first and best form, its vivid and fascinating form; and that history is the pale and tranquil reflection of it.” For that, we look to contemporary newspapers to better understand events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre.

By 1770, incidents between Patriots and Loyalists were becoming more common and more tragic in Boston.

On February 22, 1770, to disperse a crowd of boys who were attacking a shop in his neighborhood, loyalist sympathizer and customs informant Ebeneezer Richardson fired his gun from his window, killing 10-year-old Christopher Seider, who was bending over to pick up a rock when he was shot.

On March 2, at John Gray’s ropewalk, an unpleasant exchange between a British soldier and journeyman ropeworker incited a nasty street brawl that grew in numbers with dozens of soldiers and ropeworkers soon exchanging blows. These street fights helped trigger the event known as the Boston Massacre three days later, on the frigid evening of March 5.

Following a clash between an angry patriot mob and a British sentry standing outside the Custom House on King Street (now State Street), Captain Thomas Preston marched eight troops from the nearby-stationed 29th Regiment to reinforce the soldier. The crowd swelled to several hundred and their harassment intensified, hurling snow balls, ice chunks and stones while yelling insults and instructions to “fire if you dare, God damn you, fire!” Despite Preston’s orders not to fire, the soldiers’ muskets were unloaded on the mob, killing five men — three instantly and two of mortal wounds. News of the tragedy raced through the colonies and Patriots scrambled to compile their version of the event in a pamphlet titled A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre.

While the lengthy narrative dominated the pages of the pamphlet, a more concise “Report of the Committee of the Town of Boston” taken from a March 12 town meeting, was printed first. John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren and other committee members authored the report, which was published in March 20, 1770, Essex Gazette (as shown), printed about 15 miles north of Boston, in Salem, Massachusetts. According to the report, a servant was forced to fire a gun upon the people from the Custom House, which was depicted in Paul Revere’s engraving of the event. Read the original report below.

Excerpts from this article appear in the March/April 2012 issue of Patriots of the American Revolution magazine. Look for more American Revolution newspaper accounts in Andrlik’s forthcoming book Reporting the Revolution (Sourcebooks, November 2012). Coming together to help put hundreds of original newspapers accounts in context are 38 top historians — including professors, scholars, authors and park rangers — who have contributed more than 60 fascinating essays to the book. These essays chronicle the impact these papers made on America’s War of Independence.

Same old, same old?  I couldn’t help but identify similarities and connect some dots between this 18th century essay, published in the 1766 January 23 edition of THE PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL, at the height of Stamp Act resistance and the beginning of the American Revolution, to today’s debt ceiling/default crisis.  Perhaps this 18th century newspaper article can shed some light and perspective on the potential consequences of massive debts and default.

To the PRINTER

IT is of great importance that the lovers of liberty be convinced, that if Great-Britain should push matters to the last extremity to execute the Stamp-act, we shall be able to maintain our ground, and she obliged to desist; for such a conviction will tend strongly to animate the courage of all to struggle chearfully[sic] with temporary difficulties, as they will see that we are not engaged in a desperate cause. This may apologize for my attempting to shew, in addition to what was said in my former letter, how the credit of the government will be affected, if their American commerce be lost, or stopped for a time.

The credit of states is much of the same nature with that of private men. A merchant or tradesman are said to be in good credit, when his visible gains are greater than his expenses, when he makes punctual payments, and the wares he fells may be depended upon as to their goodness and value, and when those who deal with him can have a reasonable assurance that he will make a profit by the commodities they intrust him with: and if it should happen otherwise, that he has a remaining substance sufficient to answer all demands. Such men will be trusted with near as much as they are worth and some times more, at the lowest price for the goods they buy, and the lowest interest for the money they borrow. So a nation may be said to be in good credit, when it has ample revenues, and is not incumbered with debts, or if that should be the case, has at hand effectual and equitable means to discharge them; when her public expenses do not exceed what can easily be raised without overburdening the people with taxes, or if they do exceed at any time, she is able to make abundant provision for them; and when the subjects have a reasonable assurance that the government is well able to fulfill punctually all her contracts with them. Hence it is easy to see that the credit of a state is to be kept up in the same way that private men maintain theirs, viz. by securing to itself the means of doing justice to particulars, and always doing it with the strictest honour; any chicane or appearance of disability will necessarily have the same effect here as among individuals. Indeed states are more concerned to keep up a good opinion of their integrity than private men; because those that trust them have only their honour and interest to depend upon for payment. —— Let us now-see whether Great Britain will be able punctually to fulfill her engagements with her subjects, if her intercourse with America be cut off; and but a very superficial view of the present state of the nation will be sufficient to determine this point. For it well known that their public debts are swelled to an enormous size; above one hundred and thirty millions have been borrowed to defray the expenses of the various wars they have been engaged in, for which their standing revenue has been insufficient. Of this prodigious sum but a small part has been occasioned by the defence[sic] of America. Almost every considerable branch of the revenue is appropriated to the discharge of the interest of the several loans, as it becomes annually due. The sinking fund, which is made of the surplusages[sic] that arise from those taxes and impositions that produce more than the sums charged on them, is expected to pay off the principal after a certain number of years. As the government has been able hitherto to perform punctually all its bargains with the subjects, because these branches of the revenue have produced money enough to answer all demands upon them, or if at any time they have happened to be deficient, it has been easy to provide for that deficiency, public credit has been unshaken; men of property have been ready to advance their money, whenever a vote of parliament has called for it, because they had a reasonable assurance that the interest voted would be regularly paid, and the principal be secure. Not it is plain that if the parliament becomes unable to fulfill its contracts with the subjects, all confidence in them must expire: but whenever those branches of the revenue are by any accident so lessened as to become not sufficient to pay the interest of the sums charged upon them, and no new ways of raising money occur, every one must see it will be impossible for them to fulfill their contracts any longer. Now this will infallibly be the event if they loose their trade to this continent. For the whole revenue will be affected, and many of its most considerable branches exceedingly reduced, yea entirely ruined.

Now some of the principal articles of the revenue that are mortgaged for the payment of the national debt are these, a poundage on goods exported and imported, that is, a subsidy of one shilling in the pound on all commodities imported into, or exported out of the kingdom, except some few articles allowed to be imported & exported duty free, the duty on candles, coals, and cinders, the malt tax, that on all spirituous liquors & the duty on tobacco. But if the exports out of the kingdom are lessened to the value of two or three millions (which will be the case if exportation to this continent cease) the aforesaid subsidy on goods exported must be lessened in proportion to that prodigious sum. So if above a million of the manufacturers of Great-Britain are turned out of employ, and reduced to the most distressing poverty (which I have shewn in my last will be a consequence of the loss of the American trade) the consumption of candles, coals, and cinders, malt, sprituous[sic] liquors, and tobacco will be prodigiously lessened, because a great part of the consumers will be unable to pay for them. But these duties produce more or less always in proportion to the encreased or diminished consumption of the articles mentioned. Hence they will soon prove insufficient for the payment of the sums charged upon them. Therefore the government will have no other way to fulfill its obligations to the subjects but by contriving new taxes to supply the deficiency so arising; but in so great and general a decay of trade that method will be plainly impracticable. The revenue then must prove unequal to the annual demands upon it; whenever this happens, the subjects must be deprived of what is justly due to them; the proprietors of the public funds will sell out as fast as possible, for every one will try to save himself as well as he can in the general ruin; this will occasion stocks to fall away suddenly to nothing. Transferable annuities with all the security the government can give will be little valued, and all confidence in parliamentary faith destroyed. But almost all the monied men in the nation are more or less interested in those funds, and many have lent their whole fortunes to the public, supposing the principal always secure, and that the interest would be punctually paid; the latter would be reduced to beggary, and every one of the former would be sufferers, as the nation is more or less deeply indebted to them. Such an event as this must involve the government in the utmost confusion and distraction; all orders of men would be affected, and a kind of universal bankruptcy ensue. It is not possible to conceive the rage and indignation that would boil in every breast. To see multitudes of families by their confidence in the public faith tumbled in an instant from affluence and splendor to the lowest depths of penury and distress, while all are feeling the effects of the general ruin, will inflame even unprejudiced spectators against the government that betrayed them; much more than the unhappy sufferers. In short it appears to me highly probable that such a catastrophe would be very near unhinging the constitution itself, and reducing them to as chaotic a state, as the earth was at first, when it was without form and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.

It would exceed the limits of this paper, to paint all the consequences of a loss of the public credit; it is plain they would be terrible and lasting. If parliamentary faith is once violated, it will be the work of ages to recover the lost confidence of the subject; none will be willing to advance their money on securities given by the government, through the necessity that calls for it be ever so urgent, unless such an enormous interest is allowed, as will attone[sic] for the risk they run. Great-Britain, unless she is perfectly infatuated, will certainly take a special care to maintain her public credit; but it is obvious from the deduction given above, that this cannot be done without preserving her trade to America. In a very few years such growing deficiencies in the revenue must arise, if our intercourse with her is stopped, as will highly perplex the Ministry and Parliament, distress many individuals, and raise a general alarm throughout the nation. Multitudes will see that it is impossible for them to live without us, and whatever besotted orders may have been given respecting the seizure of our ships, they will be forced, in spite of their utmost resolution, to recall them; or if a fit of madness should size the bulk of the nation, so that they determine to put all to the risque rather than not compel us to submit, we may rest assured that their public credit cannot long survive such a determination, but if that once fails, Great-Britain will not be in a condition to attempt any thing very formidable against us. We have therefore all the assurance, that the nature of the thing admits, that if we are but unanimous, steadily refuse the stamps, transact all business as usual without them, cultivate a spirit of frugality and industry, and persist in the noble resolution of declining all commerce with our mother country, we shall in a few years at farthest compleat[sic] our deliverance from the present meditated scheme of oppression, and effectually establish our liberties for the future.

PHILELEUTHERUS.

Advice is received that the Congress resolved upon independence the 4th of July; and, it is said, have declared war against Great Britain in form.

With this, the people of England learned for the first time that America had officially declared itself independent.  According to history.com, news of the Declaration arrived in London on Saturday, August 10, 1776, and, at approximately 1300 words, took some time to typeset.  The London Gazette also published an August 10 to 13, 1776, issue, but it lacked any mention of the Declaration.  As the official court organ, and perhaps to avoid royal embarrassment, the Gazette also refrained from printing the entire text of the Declaration while other “Mother Country” newspapers jumped at it, including the London Chronicle (Aug 17 – first in Europe), Edinburgh Advertiser (Aug 20), Edinburgh Evening Courant (Aug 21), Belfast News-Letter (Aug 27), etc.  Click the article image to enlarge and read the first British news of America’s July 4th independence, as reported in the London Chronicle, August 13, 1776.

This past weekend, a similar slogan jumped out at me as I was reading the 1774 September 5 Massachusetts Gazette, which is loaded with fascinating content related to the Powder Alarm, and the forced resignations and Massachusetts turbulence caused by the Massachusetts Government Act.  It was one short paragraph, two sentences long, under the dateline “BOSTON, September 5,” that stood out on the third page of the issue:

The spirit of the people, was never known to be so great since the first settlement of the colonies, as it is at this time. People in the country for hundreds of miles, are prepared and determine[d] to “DIE or be FREE.”

“Die or be free” was published by a handful of newspapers throughout the colonies in late 1774 (RI, CT, MA) and then again after Lexington and Concord in 1775 (CT, NY, VA, PA, MA, RI, MD). It also appeared as early as 1769 in the masthead of Solomon Southwick’s Newport Mercury: “Undaunted by Tyrants – we’ll die or be Free”.

As research for his forthcoming book 1775, Derek W. Beck uncovered photos of Dr. Joseph Warren’s skull, which support the idea that Warren was shot facing his enemy, at close range, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. As Beck summarizes:

“Dr. Joseph Warren was shot in the face, looking at his assailant, and given the exit wound, he undoubtedly died instantly. He made no final speeches. He was not shot in the back of the head while retreating. Whether he rallied a few steadfast Yanks to give a final volley into the oncoming British is unknown, but Dr. Warren certainly died facing the swarm of redcoats as they poured over the Breed’s Hill redoubt toward him.”

J.L. Bell also writes about Warren’s death and Beck’s photographic discovery on his Boston 1775 blog. According to Bell:

“After the doctor was killed at Bunker Hill, the British forces put his body in a shared grave, and then after the siege of Boston—on 4 Apr 1776, in fact—the Americans dug him up again… Physicians, including Warren’s brother John, examined this skull in some detail in 1776 to be sure the body was actually his; eventually Paul Revere identified his dental work.”

As Rag Linen’s contribution to the conversation, below are two newspaper reports of great significance and insight to the subject matter of Warren’s death. The top photo, from the 1775 June 29 New England Chronicle (printed in Cambridge, MA, at Harvard College, 3.5 miles west of Breed’s Hill), is a first report of Warren’s death. The second photo, from the 1776 April 25 New England Chronicle (printed in Boston), is the news of Warren’s reinterment and identifying his body by two false teeth. The last paragraph is the latter report is difficult to read so I provided a transcription below.

The last paragraph, difficult to read because of an archival repair to the paper, is transcribed below:

Though the Body (which our savage enemies “scarce privileged with earth enough to hide it from the birds of prey”) was disfigured, when taken up, yet was sufficiently known by two artificial teeth, which were set for him a short time before his glorious exit.

From the same issue, below is an excerpt containing a variety of local news, including the adjournment of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, which was meeting in Concord. The right column also includes details of “Parties of Minute Men” who captured 29 Tories and forced them to “behave better”.