As usual, Congress began with notice of receiving and reading several letters (those from generals were then sent to the board of war and ordinance). Gunning Bedford, Esq., was “promoted to the rank of muster-master general” (basically the person in charge of the military rosters or “musters”), which then leave a vacancy for a deputy muster-master general.

Congress heard a report from a committee that had considered several military matters from South Carolina. Members were added to standing committees. Congress approved a commissioner position to settle debts from the Canadian campaign related to carriages and goods. Some British officers, contrary to their pledged parole, had escaped in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

In the day’s correspondence, John Adams officially informed Horatio Gates that he had been appointed “Dictator in Canada for Six Months” (on the Roman model) to address the Canada matter (and while he was at it, Adams also inserted a recommendation Nathan Rice to serve under Gates). Elbridge Gerry wrote to both Elisha Porter and Joseph Trumbull on various matters. To Porter, he confided vaguely that “[t]hings are on well in the Colonies with Respect to Independency, Confederation &c &c, & the Question relative to the former is to be agitated in Congress the 1^st July next.” To Trumbull, he expressed confidence that “[t]he middle Colonies will I think soon be vigorous.”

President John Hancock caught up on various bits of business, including supplying General Washington with the extensive series of resolves concerning the Canadian campaign approved the preceding day, while informing him of Gates’ appointment. But as nearly as I can tell, Hancock has not yet informed Washington of the resolution for independence still pending before Congress.

Perhaps the more extraordinary event of the day, though, was the passage of what’s come to be called a “Tory Act,” the third passed by Congress in 1776. It is difficult to discern what, if anything, immediately triggered it. The journals do not indicate any memorial or committee report. The journal abruptly moves from notice that a Canada commissioner would be elected on Thursday to this:

Resolved, That no man these colonies charged with being a tory, or unfriendly to the cause of American liberty, be injured in his person or property, or in any manner whatever disturbed, unless the proceeding against him be founded on an order of this Congress or the assembly, convention, council, or committee of safety of the colony, or committee of inspection and observation of the district where he resides; provided that this resolution shall not prevent the apprehending of any person found in the commission of some act destructive of American liberty, or justly suspected of a design to commit such act and intending to escape, and bringing such person before proper authority for examination and trial.

Equally interesting is the next line, as given in the rough (but not transcript journal, for some reason): “ordered to be published.”

I have mainly steered away from consideration of American (and British) newspapers and periodicals in these posts, just because that would take us into a multitude of rabbit holes. But for a superb example of what scholarship along those lines can be, see Robert G. Parkinson’s brilliant The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution. It is a dense and heavy-duty book that, among many things, traces how newspapers reprinted articles across the colonies/states, thereby leaving a trace of shifting popular opinion (and anxieties). That meant that Parkinson didn’t just cite or quote a single article; instead, he tracked down each reprint as well – and that makes for long footnotes!

In this case, the resolution was indeed printed the following day, on page 3, column 1 at the top of the Pennsylvania Gazette. You can see it for yourself on the Library of Congress website, and you can see too what other kinds of news was attracting attention. If you do, first, you’ll have to get used to the “long S,” and second, you’ll also notice that the Gazette editor also took some eye-catching punctuation liberties, by putting into all caps A TORY, OR UNFRIENDLY TO THE CAUSE OF AMERICAN LIBERTY. The closing lines are also of some interest: “Extract from the Minutes,/CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary.”

As far as I can tell, despite the newspapers’ great interest in all matters from Congress (and other ruling assemblies), not very much was shared (or leaked) – although just above is a June 14 notice concerning restrictions on exporting “salted beef or pork.”

And yet this notice was also squinched into three dense columns of information, including political news and advertisements – and then it was reprinted in numerous newspapers.

We shouldn’t leave this notice, however, without some consideration for its content – and its threat. As much of popular opinion was moving decidedly in favor of independence, much was not – and some was strongly opposed, all conducted among and between “Americans.” It would sometimes get brutal and ugly, not simply on the battlefield but among neighbors. (J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America gives glimpses of how this might go, as suspicion and greed sometimes combined in unruly ways.) Congress’ notice seemed to be designed to keep some kind of orderly lid on otherwise nasty and chaotic popular mob violence.

Countdown to Semiquincentennial: Number 12, June 18, 1776
By Michael G. Ditmore