On his voyage to New York, Jack wrote long letters to Margaret and to Doctor Franklin, which were deposited in the Post-Office on his arrival, the tenth of March. He observed a great change in the spirit of the people. They were no longer content with words. The ferment was showing itself in acts of open and violent disorder. The statue of George III, near the Battery, was treated to a volley of decayed eggs, in the evening of his arrival. This hot blood was due to the effort to prevent free speech in the colonies and the proposal to send political prisoners to England for trial.
Jack took the first boat to Albany and found Solomon working on the Irons farm. In his diary he tells of the delightful days of rest he enjoyed with his family. Solomon had told them of the great adventure but Jack would have little to say of it, having no pride in that achievement.
Soon the scout left on a mission for the Committee of Safety to distant settlements in the great north bush.
"I'll be spendin' the hull moon in the wilderness," he said to Jack. "Goin' to Virginny when I get back, an' I'll look fer ye on the way down."
Jack set out for Philadelphia the day after Solomon left. He stopped at Kinderhook on his way down the river and addressed its people on conditions in England. A young Tory interrupted his remarks. At the barbecue, which followed, this young man was seized and punished by a number of stalwart girls who removed his collar and jacket by force and covered his head and neck with molasses and the fuzz of cat tails. Jack interceded for the Tory and stopped the proceeding.
"My friends, we must control our anger," he said. "Let us not try to subdue tyranny by using it ourselves."
Everywhere he found the people in such a temper that Tories had to hold their peace or suffer punishment. At the office he learned that his most important letters had failed to pass the hidden censorship of mail in England. He began, at once, to write a series of articles which hastened the crisis. The first of them was a talk with Franklin, which told how his mail had been tampered with; that no letter had come to his hand through the Post-Office which had not been opened with apparent indifference as to the evidence of its violation. The Doctor's words regarding free speech in America and the proposal to try the bolder critics for treason were read and discussed in every household from the sea to the mountains and from Maine to Florida.
"Grievances can not be redressed unless they are known and they can not be known save through complaints and petitions," the philosopher had said. "If these are taken as affronts and the messengers punished, the vent of grief is stopped up--a dangerous thing in any state. It is sure to produce an explosion.
"An evil magistrate with the power to punish for words would be armed with a terrible weapon.
"Augustus Caesar, with the avowed purpose of preserving Romans from defamation, made libel subject to the penalties of treason. Thenceforward every man's life hung by a thread easily severed by some lying informer.