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”.

Without any mention in the issue, the 1775 April 6 edition of Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy — featuring the famous serpent “Join or Die” cartoon in the name plate — was his last from Boston.  As the colophon states, it was printed at the “South-Corner of MARSHALL’s-LANE, leading from the MILL-BRIDGE into UNION STREET,” Boston.

In the colophon, Thomas also boasted having “the greatest CIRCULATION of any in New-England.”  While the average subscriber base of New England newspapers was closer to 600 in 1775, the Patriot Boston Gazette and Massachusetts Spy saw their numbers skyrocket during the Revolutionary crisis. The Spy claimed one of the largest circulations in colonial America with 3500.

On the eve of war, 10 days after his last Boston issue, Thomas moved his presses a safe distance from Boston — 42 miles west to the country town of Worcester.

During his rush of packing and moving, Thomas apparently only had time and funds to order two advertisements in other Boston newspapers.  The first ran in the 1775 April 10 issue of the Boston Post-Boy.  The second published a day after Thomas’s actual move date, 1775 April 17, in the Boston Evening-Post.  The second ad, pictured below, “begs the continuance of the favors of his good Customers.”

Unfortunately, Thomas’s begging didn’t work.  By 1780, the circulation of the Massachusetts Spy sank to between 300 and 500, a total circulation loss of about 90 percent in five years. Click here for more details and sources of 18th century newspaper circulations.

Thomas’s advertisement in the Evening-Post also claimed the move from Boston to Worcester was temporary. “As soon as the tranquility of this unfortunate Capital is restored, he intends returning to this Place and serving them as usual.”   That never happened.

According to the American Antiquarian Society, which Thomas founded in 1812, “after the war, Thomas continued to live and work in Worcester. In partnership with former apprentices, he owned several printing offices and bookstores, as well as paper mills and a bindery, employing over one hundred and fifty people. Thomas published newspapers, broadsides, sheet music, periodicals, pamphlets, and a yearly almanac. He produced over four hundred book titles for both adult and juvenile readers, including the first dictionary printed in America and the first American edition of Mother Goose’s Melody (1786). Thomas was Worcester’s postmaster from 1775 to 1801. He joined the Order of Freemasons in Worcester in 1793 and became Grand Master of Massachusetts in 1802. In that year, at the age of fifty-three, Thomas retired to pursue his interests in the history of the young nation and in the origins of printing.”

***Speaking of revolutionary printing, a colonial-era print shop will be opening April 15, 2011, on Boston’s historic Freedom Trail. Rag Linen is honored to have a seat on the new shop’s executive board. For more details about the Printing Office of Edes & Gill, visit bostongazette.org (we also designed their website).

The below advertisement was published in the bottom right-hand corner, page three, of the 1775 April 17 issue of the Boston Evening-Post, which turned out to be its second to last issue.  Published by Thomas and John Fleet, the Evening-Post concluded its run on April 24, 1775, with this passage: “The unlucky transactions of the last week are so variously related, that we shall not at present undertake to give any particular account thereof.  The Printers of the Boston Evening Post hereby inform the Town that they shall desist publishing the papers after this day, till matters are in a more settled state.”

In the summer, representatives from towns in Suffolk County, met together, and agreed to a set of resolutions drafted by Dr. Joseph Warren. These “Suffolk Resolves” proclaimed the Intolerable Acts to be unconstitutional and recommended sanctions against Britain. They also urged the people of Massachusetts to form their own government, and prepare to fight in its defense.

After the vote, Paul Revere saddled his horse and carried the Suffolk Resolves to Philadelphia. His mission was urgent. The Continental Congress was in session and waiting for news from New England. Revere left Boston on September 11, 1774, and reached Philadelphia on September 16, nearly 350 miles on rough and winding 18th-century roads in the unprecedented time of five days. The next day, Congress agreed to a ringing endorsement of the Suffolk Resolves — a decisive step on the road to revolution. Paul Revere started home again on September 18, and was in Boston on the 23rd, with news that greatly encouraged resistance in New England.

The response that Paul Revere brought back to Boston, as printed in the New-Hampshire Gazette, is pictured below. Mention of Paul Revere, particularly with reference to a famous ride like this one, is extremely rare.

Later in the issue, in an extract of a letter from Newcastle, Sept. 25, we learn “Paul Jones’s squadron spread terror on the English coast wherever he appeared, the inhabitants burying and removing their most valuable effects and getting ready to depart as soon as he landed. It is amazing that this daring adventurer should have continued on our coasts for a month terrifying the people and capturing their property, without the least attempt to disturb him. Two fifty gun ships would have taken the whole of his squadron. Surely the British ministry are fast asleep!”