For the Congress in general, see the histories of Gordon, Pitkin (i. ch. 9), Bancroft (vii. 353, viii. 25, 51), Grahame (iv. 407), Hildreth (iii. ch. 31); Greene's Hist. View, 89; Frothingham's Rise, etc., 419; Thaddeus Allen's Origination of the Amer. Union; Lecky (iii. 465); Ryerson (i. ch. 23); and the histories of the original States. Also, see lives of the members, etc.,—Franklin (by Sparks, Bigelow, Parton), Washington (by Marshall, Sparks, Irving), Sam. Adams (by Wells, ii. ch. 37), John Adams (by Adams, i. 212, ii. 408, x. 163, 171, 396, and his Familiar Letters, 83), R. H. Lee (i. 140), Schuyler (by Lossing, i. 316), Jefferson (by Randall, i. ch. 4, by Parton, ch. 19), Jay (by Jay), Madison (by Rives, i. 105), Geo. Read (by Read, 110), Gouverneur Morris (by Sparks, i. 46), Rutledge (by Flanders, ch. 8); lives of John Alsop and Philip Livingston (Mag. of Amer. Hist., i. 226, 303); Silas Deane's letters in Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., ii.; diary of Christopher Marshall; Mag. of Amer. Hist., by John Ward, ii. 193; Poole's Index, p. 295. A memorial of the inhabitants of Newport to the Congress is in the R. I. Hist. Mag., July, 1855. Sam. Adams wrote, Nov. 16th, from Philadelphia to Bowdoin: "The petition of Congress has been treated with evident contempt. I cannot conceive that there is any room to hope for the virtuous efforts of the people of Britain" (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xii., 227). Walpole (Last Journal, i. 439) describes the effects of the action of this Congress in England.
The most significant controversial reply in England to the action of Congress came from a man of whom William S. Johnson (Beardsley, p. 71) was reporting to his American friends that he "was not much above an idiot" in appearance, but could repay one for his unfavorable appearance when he spoke,—Dr. Samuel Johnson, who published in 1775 his Taxation no tyranny, an answer to the resolutions and address of the American Congress, passing through four editions in that year. Macaulay says of it: "The arguments were such as boys use in debating societies. The pleasantry was as awkward as the gambols of a hippopotamus." Cf. Johnson's works, all editions; Boswell's Johnson; Bancroft, orig. ed., vii. 257-8; Smyth's Lectures, ii. 399; Fonblanque's Burgoyne, 110; Sabin, ix. 36,303, where (36,304-9) are various tracts which appeared in answer. Cf. Cooke Catal., no. 1,315. One of the most prominent of these replies was an anonymous Defence of the resolutions and address of the American congress, in reply to Taxation no tyranny. By the author of Regulus. To which are added, general remarks on the leading principles of that work, as published in the London Evening Post of the 2d and 4th of May; and a short chain of deductions from one clear position of common sense and experience (London, 1775,—Sabin, iv. 15,523). The next year the same writer published A letter to the Rev. Dr. [Richard] Price. Moore's Sheridan (ch. 3) gives an outline of an intended answer to Johnson.
A sort of semi-official response to the Declaration, made on the part of the government, appeared in the Rights of Great Britain asserted against the claims of America, which is usually ascribed to Sir John Dalrymple, though by some to James Macpherson. It appeared in seven or eight editions at London in 1776, and also the same year at Edinburgh and Philadelphia, and was translated into French (Sabin, v. 18,347). Dalrymple is said also to have been the writer of an Address of the people of Great Britain to the inhabitants of America, published anonymously by Cadell, at London, in 1775. This was a conciliatory effort at coöperation with certain placating measures, which the government sought to promote, and copies of the tract in large numbers are said to have been sent to America for distribution (Sabin, v. 18,346; Sparks Catal., no. 709; Stevens, Nugget, no. 3,106).
A Portuguese Jew, Isaac Pinto, living in Holland, took up the line of argument used in the Rights of Great Britain, and "employed a venal pen", as Franklin expressed it, "in the most insolent manner, against the Americans" (Sparks Catal., no. 2,075; Diplom. Corresp. of the Rev., ix. 265). Pinto's tracts were addressed to Samuel Barretts of Jamaica, and were called Lettre ... au sujet des troubles qui agitent actuellement toute l'Amérique Septentrionale, and a Seconde Lettre (both La Haye, 1776,—Sabin, xv. 62,988-89). The English translation, Letters on the American Troubles, appeared the same year in London (Sabin, xv. 62,990). Pinto was answered in Nouvelles observations, and a Réponse followed, also La Haye, 1776 (Sabin, xiii. 56,095, xv. 62,991).
Almon published in 1775 an Appeal to the justice and interests of the people on the measures respecting America, and the same year a Second appeal; and later, by the same author, A speech intended to have been delivered in the House of the Commons in support of the petition from the general Congress at Philad. There has been much difference of opinion as to the writers of these tracts, the names of Arthur Lee, C. Glover, Lord Chatham, and Franklin having been mentioned. (Cf. Cooke Catal., iii. no. 1,033; R. H. Lee's Life of A. Lee, i. 19.)
[316] "Massachusettensis", a Tory writer, brought out his first letter in the Mass. Gazette, Dec. 12, 1774, and continued them at intervals till April 3, 1775. The evidence that their writer was Leonard is presented in Bancroft, orig. ed., vii. 231; by Lucius Manlius Sargent in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., July, Oct., 1864, or vol. xviii. 291, 353 (from the Boston Transcript). The letters were separately published in New York, 1775, as The present political state of the province of Mass. Bay in general and the town of Boston in particular, and again as The origin of the Amer. Contest with Great Britain, or the present political state, etc.,—both giving the writer as "a native of New England" (Haven in Thomas, ii. p. 660). What is called a second and third edition (London, 1776) purports to follow a Boston imprint, and is called Massachusettensis, or a series of letters containing a faithful state of many facts, which laid the foundation of the present troubles, ... by a person of honor upon the spot. (Cf. Sabin, x. p. 219.) There was also an edition in Dublin, 1776 (Hist. Mag., i. 249). Lecky (iii. 419) speaks of these letters as showing "remarkable eloquence and touching and manifest earnestness." Trumbull, in the first canto of his M'Fingal, had early assumed that Leonard was the author. See, on Leonard, Sabine's Amer. Loyalists and Ellis Ames in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xii. 52.
John Adams, on the patriot side, began Jan. 23, 1775, a series of letters in the Boston Gazette, to counteract the effect of those of "Massachusettensis", and used the signature "Novanglus." The fight at Lexington broke off further publication for either disputant. Almon printed an abridgment of these papers in the Remembrancer, and they were later (London, 1783, 1784) published as A history of the Dispute with America, and were included finally in C. F. Adams's ed. of John Adams's Works (vol. iv.,—see also ii. 405, x. 178-79).
Both series were reprinted together in Boston in 1819, with a preface by Adams, who then still considered Sewall his adversary. Cf. Edmund Quincy's Life of Quincy, p. 381; Frothingham's Rise of the Repub., 393.
Of the Boston newspapers, Fleet's Evening Post was used indiscriminately as the organ of the patriots and their opponents, and expired April 24, 1775; the Boston Newsletter passed under governmental control, and alone continued to be published during the siege of Boston; the Massachusetts Gazette was the chief organ of the government; the Boston Gazette, devoted to the patriots, and more temperate than the Massachusetts Spy, which was later removed to Worcester. The most important Massachusetts journal outside of Boston was the Essex Gazette. (Cf. B. F. Thomas's Memoir of Isaiah Thomas, prefixed to the Amer. Antiq. Society's ed. of Thomas's Hist. of Printing [also see ii. 294]; J. T. Buckingham's Specimens of newspaper literature; F. Hudson's American Journalism; Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 130.)
Rivington published in New York the principal paper in the Tory interests, known as the Gazetteer, 1773-1775, and later as the Loyal and then Royal Gazette. The footnotes in Moore's Diary of the American Revolution and Thomas's Hist. of Printing will show the newspapers of the other colonies.