On this day 250 years ago, Mercy Otis Warren’s play The Group was published in the Boston Gazette. The play is a thinly disguised satire of leading Tories in Massachusetts that was widely circulated and praised (although I have to say as much as I have studied Massachusetts in 1775, it is quite hard for me to decipher many of the allusions in the play).
Sources: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29224/29224-h/29224-h.htm;
Also on this day 250 years ago, a detachment of 100 men from the 4th Regiment of Foot with two artillery pieces and 300 extra muskets sailed the short distance down the coast from Boston to the town of Marshfield. Tories in Marshfield had requested protection by the Redcoats from belligerent Patriots in Plymouth and other nearby towns who were threatening the Marshfield Tories for their refusal to participate in the Continental Association boycott of trade with Britain. The British soldiers set up barracks and distributed muskets to Tories in the town. With this occupation, Marshfield joined Boston as the only towns in all Massachusetts subject to British rule, although it would not last long.
Source: https://historicaldigression.com/2011/01/10/the-almost-battle-of-marshfield/; https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3278509&seq=46
Elsewhere on this day in Massachusetts, in a propaganda war of Patriot versus Loyalist pamphlets, John Adams writing under the pseudonym “Novanglus” published his refutation of arguments made by an anonymous Tory writing “under the signature of Massachusettensis”:
“A small mistake in point of policy” says he, “often furnishes a pretence to libel government and perswade the people that their rulers are tyrants, and the whole government, a system of oppression.” This is not only untrue, but . . . repeated, multiplied oppressions have placed it beyond a doubt, that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties; not to oppress an individual or a few, but to break down the fences of a free constitution, and deprive the people at large of all share in the government and all the checks by which it is limitted.
“I. To the Inhabitants of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay, 23 January 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-02-02-0072-0002. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, December 1773 – April 1775, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977, pp. 226–233.]
And on that day in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Provincial Convention convened to adopt the Articles of Association to preserve “our Just Rights and Liberties”, and separately a meeting of the people of the City and County of Philadelphia elected a Committee of Inspection and Observation. Along with well-remembered Founding Fathers John Dickinson and Thomas Mifflin, the people of Philadelphia elected an immigrant from Germany and baker named Christopher Lutwick to the Committee. This remarkable man would go on to become a soldier, recruiter and spy but most importantly the “Baker General” of the Continental Army, and may have done more to keep the Army fed than any other person. He deserves to be better remembered for his commitment and contributions to American Liberty.
On This Day In The Revolution 