One of the most violent of the tracts of this year was The American Alarm, or the Bostonian Plea, by a British Bostonian (Boston, 1773,—Stevens's Nuggets, no. 3,257). Joseph Reed was writing to Dartmouth on the condition of affairs (Reed's Reed, i. ch. 2); and as respects the feelings farther south, see Gov. Wright's letters from Georgia to Dartmouth, in the Georgia Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. iii.
[246] Pownall (b. 1722; d. 1805), who knew America well from residence and official station, proved a man of great forecast, and a prudent, conciliatory friend of both countries. We have his speech in Parliament in 1769 (Haven in Thomas, ii. 604, 649), and know how impatient Parliament was of his wisdom (Smyth, Lectures on Mod. Hist., Bohn's ed., ii. 384-85). We see his admirable spirit in his correspondence (1772) with James Bowdoin (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., v. 238).
Pownall had first published his Administration of the Colonies (London, 1764) at the very outset of the dispute, and it was enlarged in 1765. In an appendix to the edition of 1766 he made a strong statement of his views in opposition to the right of Parliament to tax America, and he reprinted this in a fourth ed. (1768), and also issued it separately. In the fifth edition (1774) he added a second part, giving his plan of pacification. The last edition was in 1777 (Sabin, xv. nos. 64,841, etc.; Carter-Brown, iii. nos. 1,425, 1,470, 1,537, 1,636). In 1780 Pownall published a tract that has acquired some fame, as a forecast of the future republic (Harper's Cyclo. of U. S. Hist., ii. 1,151), entitled A Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe on the present state of affairs between the old and new world (London, 1780). Somebody undertook what was rather fancifully called A Translation of this tract into plainer language (London, 1781,—Brinley Catal., no. 4,109), but it did not meet with Pownall's approval. In 1783 he published a Memorial addressed to the sovereigns of America (Lond., 1783,—Sabin, xv. nos. 64,824, etc.). On his tracts, see Shea's Hamilton, p. 261. There is a portrait of Pownall at Earl Orford's in Norfolk (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Nov., 1875), and an engraving of it published in 1777, of which there is a reproduction in the Mag. of Amer. Hist., Nov., 1886, with an account of the governor by Robert Ludlow Fowler. The painting in the gallery of the Mass. Hist. Soc. is said to have been painted from this engraving. Cf. Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 63.
[247] First in a Philadelphia paper, Sept. 29, in a letter dated London, Aug. 4.
[248] We have full reports of the Boston meetings. The newspapers give us the accounts of the earlier irregular conferences, and the town printed the reports of the first regular town meetings in The votes and proceedings of the freeholders and other inhabitants of the town of Boston, in town meeting assembled, according to law, the 5th and 18th days of Nov., 1773 (Boston, 1773). It was reprinted in London by Franklin, with a preface. The call of the committee for the later meetings exists in Mr. Bancroft's collection, in the handwriting of Joseph Warren (Frothingham's Warren, 255), and was circulated in broadside. The reports of the meetings of Nov. 29th and 30th exist in the original minutes in the handwriting of William Cooper among the papers in the Charity Building in Boston, and have been printed by Dr. Green in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. (xx. 10, etc.). The prepared record was printed in a broadside dated Dec. 1, 1773, and a copy is preserved in the Boston Public Library. It represents the meeting as called "for consulting, advising, and determining upon the most proper and effectual method to prevent the unloading, receiving, or vending the detestable tea sent out by the East India Company, part of which has just arrived in this harbor." Hutchinson wrote from Milton, Nov. 30, to his son, one of the consignees of the tea, who had taken refuge in the Castle, that the proclamation, warning the meeting to dissolve, which he had just sent into Boston, might "possibly cause [him] to take [his] lodging at the Castle also" (P. O. Hutchinson, i. 94). The full report of these meetings was also printed in the Boston newspapers, and particularly in the Boston Gazette of Dec. 6th, whose report was reprinted in one of Poole's Mass. Registers, and in the Boston Journal, Dec. 15, 1849.
Of the meeting of Dec. 16, 1773, and the raid of the "Mohawks" upon the tea-ships, an account was printed in the Boston Gazette of Dec. 20th (Buckingham's Reminiscences, i. 169), and in the Boston Evening Post of Dec. 20th (Bay State Monthly, April, 1884, p. 261), and the spread of these accounts as they were copied through the country can be followed in the postscript of the Penna. Gazette of Dec. 24th. The speech of Josiah Quincy, Jr., at the meeting, as reported by himself and sent back to his wife after he had reached England, is the only harangue of this critical stage of the controversy in Boston of which we have any detailed account (Life of Quincy, 2d ed., 124; Frothingham's Warren, 39; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Dec. 16, 1873). The conclave which planned the raid was held in Court Street (Drake's Old Landmarks of Boston, 81; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Dec., 1871, for an account of the punch-bowl around which the conclave was held). There are a number of contemporary journals and statements respecting these riotous proceedings. The letter of the Mass. Ho. of Rep. to Franklin, Dec. 21, is preserved in the Lee MSS. (Harvard College library, vol. ii. no. 14), and is printed in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. (xxxiv. 377). There are details in the Andrews letters (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., viii. 325), in Newell's diary (Ibid., Oct., 1877), in the Jolley narrative (Ibid., Feb., 1878, p. 69), in John Adams's diary (Ibid., Dec., 1873, and his letter, Dec. 17, to James Warren, in Works, ix. 333). A copy of the testimony of Dr. Hugh Williamson before the Privy Council, Feb. 19, 1774, copied from his own draft, and relating the destruction of the tea, was transcribed from the original in 1827, while in the possession of Dr. Hosack, and is included in the Sparks MSS. (lii. vol. iii.). Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xxxiv. 373, etc.
All this and other documentary evidence can be found in Force; in Niles's Principles and Acts (1876), p. 96; in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., Dec. 16, 1873; and in Francis S. Drake's Tea Leaves: being a collection of letters and documents relating to the shipment of tea to the American colonies in the year 1773, by the East India tea company. Now first printed from the original manuscript. With an introduction, notes, and biographical notices of the Boston tea party (Boston, 1884). The only considerable narrative of an actor in the "Mohawk" raid is G. R. T. Hewes's Traits of the Tea Party (N. Y., 1835), which was written out for him by B. B. Thacher. Cf. also Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party, with a memoir of Hewes (N. Y., 1834); Loring's Hundred Boston Orators (p. 554). The last survivor was Capt. Henry Purkitt, who died March 3, 1846. A picture of David Kinnison, also called the last survivor, is in Lossing's Field-Book of the Revolution (i. 499). Of Samuel Phillips Savage, the moderator of the meeting of Dec. 16th, there is a portrait owned by Mr. G. H. Emery, engraved in Drake's Tea-leaves.
Hutchinson gives his view of the transactions in the third volume (pp. 422-441) of his Massachusetts. (Cf. Ryerson's Loyalists, i. 383.) There is among the Bernard Papers (vol. viii. p. 229), in the Sparks MSS., a paper giving the story as those in authority transmitted it to the home government.
Among the later American sources, see Frothingham's Warren (ch. 9), his Rise of The Republic (ch. 8), and his paper in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. (Dec. 16, 1873): Tudor's Otis (ch. 21); Wells's Adams (ii. ch. 28), Ramsay's Amer. Rev. (i. 373); Holmes's Annals (ii. 181); Palfrey's New England (iv. 427); Barry's Mass. (ii. ch. 15); Bancroft's United States (orig. ed., vi. ch. 50); Lossing's Field-Book (i. 496); and his paper in Harper's Monthly (iv. 1); Snow's Boston; the Mem. Hist. of Boston (iii. 46-51); Essex Inst. Hist. Coll. (xii. 197); Niles's Register (1827), from Flint's Western Monthly Rev. (July, 1827).
The first accounts of the destruction of the tea which reached London (Jan. 19, 1774) were printed in the London newspapers of Jan. 21st and in the Gentleman's Mag. (1774, p. 26), copied in Carlyle's Frederick the Great (vi. p.524). Cf. Mahon (v. 319); May's Const. Hist. Eng. (ii. 521); Massey's England (ii. ch. 18); McKnight's Burke (ii. ch. 20); Fitzmaurice's Shelburne (ii. ch. 8). Lecky, in his Eng. in the Eighteenth Century (iii. p. 371), speaks of the speech of George Grenville, reported by Cavendish, as particularly worthy of attention. Cf. Parliamentary History and Force's Amer. Archives (4th ser., i. 133).