Colonial Society of Massachusetts – Serie

The second volume of Thomas Hutchinson's correspondence covers the years 1767 through 1769. In 1767, Charles Townshend's new taxes, in addition to his ambitious plans to improve customs enforcement and render crown officials in the colonies more independent of local assemblies, caused increasing resentment in Boston. To force Parliament to repeal the new legislation, Boston merchants adopted a comprehensive nonimportation agreement, which Hutchinson, in his position as lieutenant governor, regarded as an illegal confederacy devoid of any constitutional authority. Nevertheless, he and other royal officials proved powerless to stop its spread. To make matters worse, in October 1768, British troops arrived in Boston, at the instigation of Hutchinson's superior, Governor Francis Bernard. Hutchinson correctly foresaw that soldiers could be only an irritant and would be ineffective at preventing civil disorder. In August 1769, Bernard sailed for England, leaving Hutchinson as acting governor, with the unenviable challenge of dealing with mounting anger against the occupying troops and growing street violence designed to coerce unwilling importers into compliance with the merchants' agreement.Hutchinson's papers have always been among the most basic sources for historians writing about Boston in the 1760s and 1770s, and the publication of this volume is a valuable step toward making this content widely accessible.

The Boston Massacre occasioned a flurry of letter writing for Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts. So frequent was the correspondence to and from Hutchinson that this volume covers only the first ten months of 1770, beginning with the rising tide of violence in January and February as patriot leaders began to use increasingly coercive methods to enforce compliance with the nonimportation agreement. Prior to this edition, Hutchinson's letters, one of the best sources for Boston history in the decade and a half leading up to the Revolution, had never been published. Readers can now read a firsthand account of these tumultuous events from the rarely heard Loyalist viewpoint.

The fourth volume of The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson covers a twenty-month period extending from the acquittal of the soldiers standing trial for the Boston Massacre in November 1770 through the return of the General Court from Cambridge to its traditional meeting place at the Town House in Boston in June 1772. Some historians refer to this interval as the "quiet period" in the events leading up to the Revolution, but one would have had trouble convincing Thomas Hutchinson of the accuracy of that phrase. He continued to butt heads with Samuel Adams. No longer acting governor after March 1771, but governor-in-chief in his own right, Hutchinson was now free to use the patronage at his disposal to reward his political adherents and divide the opposition. Even though John Hancock ultimately declined the offer, Hutchinson attempted to separate him from the political tutelage of Samuel Adams, by dangling the prospect of a socially prestigious seat on the Governor's Council before the young merchant. At the same time, the Hutchinson also sought to sow seeds of suspicion and resentment between the Massachusetts House of Representatives and their new agent, Benjamin Franklin. Adams had long resisted Hutchinson's claim to summon the General Court to meet anywhere he chose, but in the spring of 1772, cooperation with Hancock enabled Hutchinson to end a long-standing impasse and return the Court to Boston without surrendering any his gubernatorial prerogative. Despite this seeming success, Hutchinson could have no idea of the crises that lay ahead in 1773 (the publication of his private letters and Parliament's efforts to aid the financially troubled East India Company) that would effectively end his governorship.Distributed for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts