 | The history of printing in America, with a biography of printers, and an account of newspapers ... |  |
MEMOIR OF ISAIAH THOMAS,
BY HIS GRANDSON
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN THOMAS.
"On the 5th of June, 1632," says Governor Winthrop,
"arrived in Boston the ship William and Francis, Mr.
Thomas master, with about fifty passengers—whereof Mr.
"Welde and old Mr. Batchelor (being aged 71) were with
their families and many other honest men." This Mr.
Thomas, master, was, I believe, Evan Thomas, who in 1639
or 1640 settled in the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
The first notice of him upon the colony records is of
September 1st, 1640. "Evan Thomas, having a wife and
four children, is allowed twenty bushels of corne at harvest."
He was admitted a freeman of the colony in 1641,
and a member of the Artillery Company in 1652. Evan
was a successful vintner, paying into the colony treasury
from twenty to forty pounds a year for licence or duty or as
his proportion of the "rents of wine." We are sorry to
have discovered any stain upon his escutcheon; but we find
on the General Court record this entry, October 17th, 1654.
"Lieut. Hudson and Evan Thomas having been ffined for
selling beere above two pence the quart and also fforfeited
bond for appearance at the Court of Assistance to
answer the same; this court upon their pet, thinkes meet to
Occasionally, like more modern merchants and vintners,
Evan seems to have dabbled in speculation outside of his
regular line of business. In the Suffolk Registry of deeds,
vol. 2d, p. 192, is recorded a receipt by Isaac Allerton Senior
(one of the principal men of Plymouth colony and its
first assistant) dated New Haven, Nov. 29th, 1653, for
one hogshead and four barrels of mackerel from Evan
Thomas, vintner, of Boston, to adventure for half profits.
Evan died August 25th, 1661.
It is the family tradition that Peter Thomas, the grandfather
of Isaiah Thomas, was the grandson of Evan. Peter,
the eldest son of George and Rebecca Thomas, was born
In Boston February 1st, 1682. He married Elizabeth Burroughs
the daughter of the Rev. George Burroughs, who
in August, 1692, was hung at Salem as a witch. The only
evidence of his guilt consisted in the fact that though of
rather small stature and frame he had remarkable physical
strength. The thorough research and careful judgment
of Mr. Upham leave him as man and Christian minister
withoutstain or reproach. He was the victim, not of fanatacism,
but of malice and perjury. Peter was a merchant
and acquired a good estate. He owned a store and carried
on his business on the town dock.
Peter's fourth son was Moses Thomas, soldier, mariner,
trader, farmer, and schoolmaster. Without the consent
or knowledge of his father, in 1740 he enlisted as common
soldier in the expedition against Cuba. His father, after
futile efforts to procure his discharge, secured him the
position of clerk of one of the officers. He was one of the
few who escaped the sword, and the more wasting pestilence
of that disastrous expedition. On his return he sailed on
years, he was a school master at Hampstead, Long Island.
Weary of teaching the "young idea how to shoot," he
bought and cultivated a farm at Hampstead. Soon tired of
this he became a trader and kept a store in the village. He
was not an exception to the adage; he gathered no moss.
It was while living in Hampstead, that he met, fell in love
with, and married Fidelity Grant. Fidelity was a native of
Rhode Island. Her father was a merchant of that colony,
trading to Philadelphia and the West Indies. Dying and
leaving his business in a very unsettled condition, his
widow, taking the daughter with her, went to the West
Indies and thence to Philadelphia to settle his estate.
They had relatives in Hampstead, and on their return
went there to reside. Moses remained at Long Island
some three or four years after his marriage and then returned
to Boston. Trying many things, holding fast to
none, he wasted a few years in Boston, and then went to
seek fortune in North Carolina, where he died in 1752.
His father, an active, stable, frugal merchant, a solid
man of Boston, not relishing the roving life and infirm purpose
of his son, made a will in which he cut him off with
five shillings. Though the father survived the son, he
died without altering his will, and the widow and children
of Moses were left entirely destitute. Two children, born
at Hampstead, had been left with the relatives of their
mother at that place. The relatives had become much attached
to, and desired to retain them. The circumstances
of the mother obliged her to acquiesce. We shall not appreciate
the sacrifice required of this young mother of
twenty-six years, unless we understand how entire the
separation was. In 1752, and till after the revolution, there
part of the continent. Opportunities for the private conveyance
of letters seldom occurred, the mother could not
afford the expense of visiting her children, and the result
was that, for many years together, she did not hear from
them.
Three children born after the return to Boston remained
under the mother's care. She had the energy and business
capacity wanting in the father. She had no money, but
she had friends ready to help her in the best way, by enabling
her to help herself. Women then engaged in active
outside business more frequently than now. It was a quite
common thing for widows, especially of printers, innkeepers,
and traders, to take up and carry on the husband's trade,
and not uncommon for them to set up business of their own.
The friends of this young widow loaned her money with
which to open a small shop.
Putting her children to board in the near country, she
devoted herself to their support. By industry and frugality
she was able to do this and something more. Little by little
she laid by enough to purchase a small estate in Cambridge.
This, she ultimately lost. Having a large price offered for
it in Continental paper, and having faith that these paper
promises would sooner or later be transmuted into silver
and gold, she sold house and land and, the story is short,
was one of the thousands of victims of paper money. She
was however never reduced to want, but lived to a good old
age to witness the success of her son and to share the fruits
of it.
Isaiah Thomas, the youngest son of Fidelity and Moses,
was born January 19th, 1749, old style. At the age of six
years he was brought home to Boston. If he was ever in
that six weeks "schooling" was all he ever had, and poor
at that. The mother meant the boy should have the common
school education of the time, be taught to read, write,
and cipher, and be trained to some mechanical pursuit.
There was in Boston in 1755, Zechariah Fowle, a printer
and pedler of ballads and small books; it was the custom
of that day to hawk about the streets new publications.
Mr. Fowle, having no children desired to take Isaiah.
He promised the mother that he would treat the child
as his own, give him a good school education, instruct
him in the art of printing, and if, when arriving at the age
of fourteen, the boy did not wish to remain with him, he
should be at liberty to choose another place and trade. The
lad had been with him about a year, when Mr. Fowle persuaded
the mother to have him bound to him as an apprentice.
The writer has before him the original indenture
of apprenticeship, bearing date June 4th, 1756. Its principal
provisions it may be well to give, not only as an illustration
of the usages of the time, but to enable us to judge
how far, in his dealings with the boy, the covenants of the
master were kept. After fixing the time the apprenticeship
was to continue—to the age of twenty-one—the conditions
of the service to Fowle and his wife and heirs are thus
stated: "During all which said time or term, the said apprentice,
his said master and mistress, well and faithfully
shall serve; their secrets he shall keep close; their commandments
lawful and honest everywhere he shall gladly
obey; he shall do no damage to his said master, etc., nor
suffer it to be done by others without letting or giving
seasonable notice thereof to his said master, etc.; he shall
not waste the goods of his said master, etc., nor lend them
game or games he shall not play; fornication he shall not
commit; matrimony during the said term he shall not contract;
taverns, alehouses or places of gaming he shall not
haunt or frequent; from the service of his said master, etc.,
by day nor night he shall not absent himself; but in all
things and at all times he shall carry and behave himself
towards his said master, etc., and all theirs, as a good and
faithful apprentice ought to do, to his utmost ability during
all the time or term aforesaid." The covenants of the master,
if not so comprehensive are equally plain and explicit.
"And the said master doth hereby covenant and agree for
himself, his wife and heirs, to teach or cause to be taught
the said apprentice, by the best way and means he can, the
art and mistery of a printer, also to read, write and cypher;
and also shall and will well and truly find, allow unto, and
provide for the said appprentice, sufficient and wholesome
meat and drink, with washing lodging and apparrell, and
other necessaries meet and convenient for such an apprentice,
during all the time or term aforesaid; and at the end
or expiration thereof shall dismiss the said apprentice with
two good suits of apparrell for all parts of his body, one
for the Lord's day, the other for working days, suitable to
his degree."
Mr. Fowle had a small printing office and shop on Middle
street, near Cross street. His printing apparatus consisted
of one press, one font of small pica of about three
hundred and fifty pounds, about two hundred pounds of
English and one hundred pounds of double pica. The
library of the office was made up of a "tattered dictionary
and an inkstained Bible." The master was a singular man,
irritable and rather effeminate. With little industry, and no
himself and wife. He was in debt for his press and types
when he began business, and he seemed to be equally careful
not to increase nor diminish the debt.
Having got the boy into his power, the master, as the
apprentice always charged, put the lad to all the servile
work he had strength to do, and when such work was wanting
set him up to the type cases. Such statements are to
be taken with some grains of allowance, especially when
made as to a master on whose ignorance and want of capacity
the boy early learned to look with contempt. The
call upon the boy for services which he regarded as menial
was not unusual in the relation of master and apprentice
at that period. The boy, if a member of the master's
family, was expected to do the "chores."
Mr. Thomas has left in print, and in brief memoranda
before me, a few anecdotes which may enable us to see
something of the interior of that little printing office, and
to learn with how small help and aid he grew up to
manhood. In order that the child, of seven years, might
reach the boxes to set types, he was mounted on a bench
eighteen inches high and of the length of a double frame,
which contained cases of the roman and italic. His first
essay with the composing stick was on a ballad called the
Lawyer's Pedigree, the licentious character of which gives
us an idea of the taste and sense of the master and his interest
in the moral welfare of the boy. The child set the
types for this ballad (double pica) in two days, "though he
knew then only the letters and had not been taught to put
them together and spell."
The skill of the master and his capacity to teach the "art
and mistery of printing" are well illustrated in the following
as he fondly believed a favorite child of the Muses, composed
a poem on the proposed expedition of the British and
Provincial troops against Ticonderoga and Crown Point.
Unable to write legibly, the poet recited his verse to a friend
whose pen put it into black and white. It was sent to
Mr. Fowle to be printed as quickly as possible. Fowle
began to set the types, the boy at work near him. He
had set but a line, when he discovered the absence of
punctuation in the manuscript. The hurried Muse had
made no stop from beginning to end. The master was in
sore distress. He had a friend to whom he used to apply
for aid and direction, but this friend could not be found.
His genius suggested to him a mode of relief quite original.
He went to his shelves of ballads, took one that he thought
would answer his purpose, and, placing it by the side of his
manuscript, put at the end of every line of the barber's
poem the same point that was in the ballad. That the
subject, composition and metre of the poem did not even
faintly resemble those of the ballad seems to have given
him no pause. Young and ignorant as the pupil was, he
viewed the proceeding with surprise. He tells us that
with the mechanical part of his work the master had but
little more acquaintance than with the rules of punctuation.
The master never taught the child to read, write, or
cypher, nor caused it to be done by others. His only essay
at teaching was a weekly lesson, on the Sabbath, in the
Assembly's Catechism. This was by rote merely. "I recollect,"
said the pupil, "his putting me the question from
the catechism 'What are the decrees of God;' I answered
I could not tell, and then, boy-like, asked him what they
were. He read the answer from the book. I was of
Poor boy! very likely, and as many wiser boys and wiser
men before and since.
For three years, from 1758 to 1761, Mr. Fowle had a
partner, Samuel Draper, a good printer and kind man,
from whom the lad got some valuable instruction in the
art. During the partnership the business was not confined
to ballads and pamphlets, but some books were printed,
as Janeway's Heaven on Earth, Watts's Psalms, and a large
edition of the Youth's Instructor, a spelling book in general
use at the time. The spelling book and Watts, the
boy fully mastered, the "Heaven on Earth" he failed to
attain. Fowle and Draper did not get along very smoothly,
and to the sorrow and loss of the boy the partnership was
dissolved. Thomas was then about twelve years old, and
from this time seems to have had the principal charge of
the business of the office. He did the work in his own
way, corrected the press as well as he could, and when the
form was ready, Fowle having no other help, assisted him
at the press.
At this period there were few persons in Boston who
could "cut" on wood or type metal. Thomas Fleet, the
printer of the Boston Evening Post, was also a rival of Fowle
in the printing of ballads. Fleet had a negro who illustrated
his ballads by cuts. Young Thomas was induced to
try his hand in decorating those printed by Fowle. He
"cut" about an hundred plates, rude and coarse indeed,
"but nearly a match," he says, "for those done by the
negro."
The young printer found friends outside of the office.
Among those whom he held in grateful remembrance was
been a printer of the firm of Rogers and Fowle, who printed
the first edition in America of the New Testament in
the English language. The work had to be done secretly,
and to bear the imprint of the London copy from which
it was reprinted, to avoid prosecution from those who in
England and Scotland published the Bible by a patent from
the Crown, or cum privilegio, as did the Universities of Oxford
and Cambridge.
Rogers's printing office was destroyed by fire and he lost
most of his property. With the little that was left, he,
in his old age, set up a little shop opposite the (now old)
South Church. Thomas used to go frequently to his store,
and the old printer was very kind to him, gave him some
of the books which he had printed, and what Mr. Thomas
used to say was of much more value to him, "he admonished
me, diligently to attend to my business, that I might
become a reputable printer. I held him in high veneration
and often recalled his instructions, which on many occasions
proved beneficial to me."
This entrance upon the way and work of life is not promising,
but the spirit, energy, and strength of will of the
boy will make way for him. There is in him the germ of
a noble manhood, and in the school of early struggle and
narrowest fortune he will develop it. The printing office,
as the history of our country has abundantly shown, is one
of the best of schools, and printing the most encyclopedic
of arts. In helping to diffuse knowledge the printer acquires
it; in lighting the torch for others, he kindles his
own. Self-developed, he will be strongly developed. We
are apt in our day to over-value the facilities of culture;
there may be too much dandling and nursing. Vigor and
the ink-stained Bible, the spelling book and Watts's
Psalms; there is food enough in these for large and vigorous
growth.
Thomas continued in the service of Mr. Fowle ten or
eleven years. In this time he had acquired the elementary
branches of learning, could think for himself, write good,
plain English, with a dash of satire in it, put his thought
in type without writing, and make, so he told the writer,
tolerable verses for the poet's corner. He made the most
diligent use of the means and opportunities within his
reach to learn the art of printing. He was esteemed at
the age of seventeen an excellent workman. He loved
the art, and had an earnest desire to go to London to
perfect himself in it. In his old age he used to say that if
he could live his life over again, and choose his employment,
it would be that of a printer. He evinced quite early a
strong taste for reading, and a fondness of theatrical entertainments
—private they must have been for there was then
no theatre in Boston. Tall and handsome in person, of
attractive manners, neat and careful in his dress, the young
printer impressed favorably the men, and most favorably
the women, with whom he was brought in contact. He
had fitted himself to do useful work in the world, and there
was work for him to do.
At three different times in early boyhood his life was
in imminent peril. On one of the occasions (1756), he was
playing with a young boy in a woodshed, where there was
a large cistern of rain water, left at the time uncovered.
The boy pushing young Thomas with a stick, he fell back
into the cistern. His companion was too much frightened
to assist or even to give notice of what he had done. Meantime
the shed a tallow chandler's shop. An aged negro. Boston
Peckens, at work in the shop, somehow or other discovered
that the boy was in the eistern and came to his reseue.
By means of the pole with a book on the end of it used to
draw the bucket of water from the eistern, he brought him
to the surface and took him out. He was insensible, but
with the help of rubbing and other appliances was restored.
Thomas, greateful to his kind preserver, used to express his
deep regret that the old man died before it was in his
power to give him any substantial proof of his gratitude.
About a year after this, the lad was standing at an
oyster board on the town dock, before it was filled up.
A man called for oysters. The oyster vender, having
no bread, the buyer asked the lad to go to a shop and
get him a biscuit; and the weather being unpleasant,
went on board the oyster vessel to eat his oysters.
The boy returning with his biscuit tried to jump on
board. Not springing far enough he fell into the water.
It was dark, and he was nearly drowned before he was discovered.
The gentleman impatient for his biscuit came
no deck to look for his messenger. He heard a noice in
the water and the first thing be saw was the biscuit, by
which he judged the boy was not far off. He was soon
found, taken up and carried home.
The third of these accidents, in 1758 or 1759; so connects
itself with the manners of the time that it may be well to
state it with some detail. Nowhere in the British dominions
was the fifth of November, the anniversary of the
discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, celebrated with more
zeal and zest, and mock pomp and ceremony, than in the
good town of Boston. Strife and rivalry had for sometime
should have the more august celebration and soonest
put to rout the procession and parade of the other. The
line of division between the North and the South was
the old Mill creek, now Blackstone street. Collections
were levied upon the inhabitants on the morning of the
day; asked for, but few thought it quite safe to refuse.
The money was spent in part for the pomp and circumstance
of war, and largely for liquor. The principal
effigies of the pope and the devil, the supposed instigators
of the plot, were placed upon a stage mounted on
cart wheels and drawn by horses. At the front of the stage
was a large lantern of oiled paper, four or five feet wide
and eight or nine feet high. On the front was painted in
large letters, "The devil take the pope;" and just below
this "North end forever" or "South end forever." Behind
the lantern sat the pope in an arm chair, and behind the
pope was the devil standing erect with extended arms, one
hand holding a smaller lantern, the other grasping a pitchfork.
The heads of pope and devil were on poles which went
through their bodies and the stage beneath. Boxed up
out of sight sat a boy whose mission was to sway the heads
from side to side as fancy suggested. The devil, without
consideration for his home climate, was clad in tar and
feathers "from top to toe," "from head to foot." Other
effigies were sometimes seen, suspended from gallows, of
persons who had incurred the indignation and hatred of the
mob, as the Pretender, Admiral Byng, Earl Bute, and Lord
North. Ancillary devils and popes were drawn or carried
by men and boys, as various in size as the men and boys
who bore them; some even on shingles and bits of board.
Assembling about dusk, North end and South end under
great and small, lighted, and through a speaking
trumpet the order was given to "move on." With this the
noise and tumult began, the glowing of the conch shells, whistling
through the fingers, beating with clubs the sides of the
houses, cheering, huzzaing, swearing, and rising above all
the din the cry "North end forever" or "South end forever."
The devils on the stages were not the only or chiefest
proof that the under world was let loose. The procession
that first reached the Mill creek gave three cheers and
rushed on to meet their foes. As they approached the
strife began; clubs, stones, and brickbats were freely used,
and though persons were not often killed, bruised shins,
broken heads and bones, were not infrequent.
It was on one of these "peaceful nights" when the North-enders
had been as far south as the elm tree, soon after so
well known as the Liberty Tree, and were on their return,
masters of the situation, though now and then receiving
a complimentary brick from South-enders secreted
in lane or passage way, that our little printer, with a large
bump of curiosity and a small one of caution, pressed
through the crowd to read the labels of the lanterns. A
brick aimed at the lantern, lighted on this head and struck
him to the ground. The chances were for the little fellow
to be trampled to death by the rushing crowd, but as his
good fortune or a kind Providence would have it, the first
man whose foot struck him, hearing his groans lifted him
up, and persons coming around with lights, one of them
recognized him, took him in his arms, and carried him to
his master's house. A surgeon being sent for, it was found
that no bone was broken, and in a few days he was able to
return to his types. Such is in substance the account given
for the refinement of manners of what was then the most
cultivated town of British America, and is worth perhaps
the passing notice of those who are continually asking "why
the former days were better than these."
In 1766, between 17 and 18 years of age, the apprentice
had what he called a "serious fracas" with his master. I
can throw no light upon the cause, merits or demerits, of
the quarrel. Thomas left Boston secretly, taking passage
for Halifax, with the hope of finding his way from Halifax
to London, to acquire a more perfect knowledge of printing.
In this he was wholly disappointed. So far from obtaining
the means of going to England it was difficult to earn
his daily bread. He found work and wages to pay board
and lodging with one Anthony Henry. Henry was a good-natured,
heavy moulded Dutchman, who had been a printer
in his youth, but left his master and came to Halifax as fifer
in a British regiment. There being no printing office in
the province, Henry got discharged from military service
and set up the business. It might not seem the easiest
thing in the world for a fifer to find means to purchase
press and types. But there was a pastry cook in Halifax,
of African descent, who had acquired a snug little property.
Henry married her, endowed himself with her worldly
goods, and with them purchased printing materials and built
a house. Some three years after the marriage the pastry-cook
died without issue. The relict was left in comfortable
condition. He was a cheerful, good natured fellow,
not very skillful in his art, and loving his ease. He was
at the time of Thomas's arrival the printer and publisher
of the Halifax Gazette, and government printer. The master
indolent, and the young man ambitious and willing to
his hands. He is found quite competent to the task. He
remodelled the paper as well as he could with the means
he had, and went to work.
Thomas was fresh from the debates of Boston, and brought
with him the Boston notions of liberty. The Gazette soon
after his arrival was printed on stamped paper. Thomas
could not brook this, and a paragraph appeared in its columns
stating that "the people of the province were disgusted
with the stamp act." The paragraph gave great offence
to the loyal government of that loyal province, and Henry
was called to account for printing sedition. He had not
even seen, the paper in which the seditious paragraph was
published, and pleaded ignorance, saying that the paper in
his absence was conducted by his journeyman. He was
reprimanded, and threatened with the loss of the public
printing if anything of the kind should again be found in
his columns.
The young patriot could not keep quiet, and, soon after,
a paragraph of the same import appeared. This time the
master pleaded that he had been confined to his house by
sickness, and made a most humble apology. The young
journeyman was sent for by the secretary of the province.
He was probably not known to the secretary, who sternly
asked him what he wanted.
A. Nothing, sir.
Q. Why came you here?
A. Because I was sent for.
Q. What is your name?
A. Isaiah Thomas.
Q. Are you the young New England man that prints
for Henry?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. How dare you publish in the Gazette that the people
of Nova Scotia were displeased with the Stamp Act.
A. I thought it was true.
Secretary. You had no right to think so. If you publish
any more of such stuff you shall be punished. You may
go, but remember you are not in New England.
T. I will, sir.
Not long after the interview the year's stock of stamped
paper for the Gazette, some six reams only, arrived from
England. It was soon discovered that the paper had been
denuded of the stamps, and in the next Gazette was a notice
that "all the stamped paper had been used, and as no more
could be had the paper would in future be published without
stamps."
A few days later a vessel came from Philadelphia bringing
the newspapers published in that city, among others the
Pennsylvania Journal in full mourning for the passage of
the Stamp Act. Thick black lines surrounded the pages
and were placed between the columns. A death's head and
cross-bones were over the title, and at the bottom of the
last page was the figure of a coffin, beneath which was
printed the age of the paper with the statement that it had
died of a disorder called the Stamp Act. Thomas wished
to do the like with the Gazette. To do it directly was a
little too hazardous. As near an imitation was made of
the Journal as possible, and the Gazette appeared with this
notice. "We are desired by a number of our readers to
give a description of the extraordinary appearance of the
Pennsylvania Journal of the 30th of October last (1765).
We can in no better way comply with their request than
this day's Gazette." The publication made no small stir in
the town, but led to no immediate action.
One morning soon after, an effigy of the stamp master
and one of Lord Bute were found suspended on the public
gallows, behind the citadel. The officers of the government,
who had prided themselves upon the good behavior
of the province, were dismayed. Somehow or other a suspicion
prevailed that the young printer from Boston might
have some knowledge of the matter. A sheriff thereupon
went to the printing office and told Thomas he had a precept
against him and meant to take him to prison unless
he gave information of the persons engaged in the transaction.
The sheriff stated some circumstances which had
convinced him that Thomas himself had been engaged in
these seditious proceedings. Thomas making no reply to
the kind suggestions, the sheriff ordered him to go with
him before a magistrate. In the simplicity of his heart
he was about to go, when it occurred to him that the
action of the sheriff might be merely intended to alarm
him into an acknowledgment of his privity with the seditious
acts. He thereupon told the sheriff that he had not
the pleasure of knowing him, and demanded to be told
by what authority he acted. The sheriff replied that he had
sufficient authority. On being requested to show it, the
officer was evidently disconcerted, but answered he would
show his authority when necessary, and again ordered the
"printer of sedition," as he was pleased to call him, to go
with him. Thomas replied that he would not obey unless the
sheriff produced his precept or proper authority for taking
him prisoner. After further parley the officer left him
with the assurance that he would soon return; but Thomas
plan concerted for the purpose of surprising him into confession.
There was too old a head on those young shoulders
for such a trap.
Such, in substance, is the narrative Mr. Thomas left us
of his sojourn at Halifax. He has not in this history disclosed
the circumstances of extreme poverty to which he
was reduced. He used to say, not without satisfaction in
the contrast with his affluent condition in later life, that
his linen was reduced to one check shirt, and that the
only coat he had he sent to a tailor to turn, and the tailor
ran away with it.
Henry had no little liking for his young and quick-witted
journeyman, but it became plain that he must part with
him or with the government business, and Thomas, after
seven months' residence, left Halifax in a New England sloop
bound for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The compensations
of life are greater than men think. In what school
or university could a boy of eighteen years have got so
much or so valuable training, discipline, and self-reliance, as
this young printer got in that obscure newspaper office in
Halifax.
On his arrival at Portsmouth the people were celebrating
with great enthusiasm the repeal of the Stamp Act. His
presence at Portsmouth was suspected by his Boston friends
by remodelling and improvement in the newspaper on
which he worked, which must have been either the New
Hampshire Gazette, printed by Daniel and Robert Fowle,
or the Portsmouth Mercury, printed by Furber and Russell.
Mr. Fowle learns that he is in Portsmouth, and goes to his
old master, who fails to recognize him. He returns to his
1766, on the day of the funeral of Jonathan Mayhew, whom
the whole town followed to his grave, he has fresh trouble,
but the difficulty is compromised and he lives with him
once more. He remains but a few weeks and then, with
the full consent of his master, leaves his service finally.
Young as he was he seems to have thought of setting
up for himself. On the look out for place and opportunity,
he receives an invitation from a captain of a vessel to go
with him to Wilmington, North Carolina, where, he was assured,
a printer was wanted. With all the new facilities
of intercourse it would require no little pluck now for a
youth of eighteen to leave Boston and go to North Carolina
to establish himself in business; especially if he had neither
friends there nor money. But the young man had more
courage than prudence or stability. Industrious, enterprising,
and fearless, he had yet to acquire the steadiness of
will and purpose which afterwards characterized him and
assured success.
A violent storm compelled the captain to put in for a
while at Holmes Hole at the Vineyard. From this port
he went to Newport, and took in, as a passenger, Martin
Howard who, during the excitement of the Stamp Act, had
been hung in effigy at Newport, his house destroyed and
his person injured. Howard was afterwards appointed
chief justice of North Carolina, and used to say he had no
quarrel with the "Sons of Liberty" at Newport, for they
had made him chief justice of North Carolina, with a
thousand pounds sterling a year. On the voyage the young
printer got acquainted with the future judge, who advised
him (advice costs nothing) to set up a press in Wilmington,
and promised him his countenance and support. On going
captain of the ship, to a lady who kept a coffee-house in
the town, and who seems to have been greatly impressed,
if not charmed, by the young New England man. The
good lady proposes to him a partnership in business, he to
print and publish a newspaper, she to keep the coffee house,
and the profits of the two concerns to be equally divided
between them. Whether the partnership was to be further
extended does not appear. Under the advice of Mr.
Howard, and other gentlemen, young Thomas waited upon
Lieutenant Gov. Tryon, then acting governor of the colony,
afterwards famous and infamous in the history of the revolution.
The governor encouraged him to remain, and
flattered him that he should be favored with a part of the
government printing. It may be doubted whether Mr.
Howard or the governor knew much of the young man's
opinions or recent history.
There was, as before suggested, a somewhat formidable
difficulty in his setting up the business of printing in Wilmington
or elsewhere. He had not press, or types, or
money to buy them. But something in the young man
won confidence and credit. There was at Wilmington a
printer, Andrew Stuart, who had fallen into disfavor and
was about to leave the town. He had a press and three
small fonts of letters for sale. Some gentlemen of Wilmington
offered to advance money on a long credit to enable
Thomas to make the purchase. Stuart, sensible that
Thomas could not get a press and types elsewhere, asked
about three times as much for them as they cost when new.
After some chaffering he came down to about double the
cost price. Finding that Thomas could raise the money
he insisted upon including in the sale a negro woman and
and child, when the seller insisted upon adding to the sale
his household furniture. This broke off the negotiation,
and when Stuart relented it was too late. Thomas had
become discouraged at the aspect and business look of the
place. The little money he had was gone, and his desire
to go to England revived. Though a merchant of Wilmington
offered to send to London for printing apparatus by
the first opportunity, neither this, nor the landlady's tender
of partnership, had power to detain him.
To reach England being still his prevailing wish, he engages
as steward on board the brig in which he came as a
passenger from Boston, and which was now to sail for the
West Indies, with the hope of readily finding his way from
the West Indies to London. The change of relation from
passenger to steward seems to have worked a sudden change
in the feelings of the captain of the brig. Thomas finds
the labors of his new position hard and disagreeable. Twice
he is sent in a boat up the river with slaves fresh from
Africa to procure lumber. The captain requires him to
attend him on shore with a lantern and to wait on him as
a servant. The young man's pride, and he had a good
stock of it, revolts at this treatment, and he determines that
he will not go with him. The will with him was apt to
find the way. He rose soon after midnight, "dressed himself
in his long clothes" and sat on the quarter deck wishing,
like Paul and his fellow voyagers, for the day. He
recollects at the moment a letter of recommendation which
had been given him by a gentleman in Newport to Robert
Wells, a printer in Charleston, South Carolina. He leaves
the brig with the first break of dawn and goes in search of
a vessel bound for Charleston. He finds a packet that is
captain of the brig and asks for a dismission from his service,
which the captain very reluctantly grants. After the
dismission, the captain was again quite friendly, and assisted
him in procuring some provisions for the voyage. He had
been employed some ten days in the service of the brig
without visiting the lady of the coffee house. He goes to
see her and meets with the same kind reception as before.
The project of the partnership is renewed, and he is to go to
Charleston, work till he could provide materials for his
printing house, and then return to Wilmington to put his
plan into execution. He goes on board the packet. As
it was about leaving the wharf, the lady sends by her maid
a present of stores for the voyage. She lived but a few
steps from the wharf, and he must needs step on shore and
thank her for the kindness. As he is conversing with her,
he sees the packet under way, and leaving his thanks half
paid, he runs to the wharf, but the vessel had gone. He
hastens to a lower wharf, but is too late. He meets the
captain of the brig, who befriends him in his distress, takes
his own boat with two men and after rowing an hour, the
weather being calm, overtakes the packet and puts him
on board.
The packet had a slow passage down the river. After
its arrival at Fort Johnson it was detained a week by head
winds. The provisions were exhausted and a contribution
was called for to get a new supply. Thomas was obliged
to borrow a dollar to make up his share. The captain had
to send back a boat thirty miles to procure the supplies.
On their arrival they set sail and had a quick passage to
Charleston. The young man's mortification does not end
here. He has no money to pay his passage; he leaves his
In the space of two hours he had visited all the printers in
Charleston in fruitless search of work. They were, however,
very kind to him. One of them, Mr. Couch, invites
him to dine with him and to make his house his home,
working as he pleased "till he could better himself."
Soon after he receives an offer of small wages from
Mr. Wells and accepts it. Applying himself closely and
diligently to his work, after ten days he asks of his employer
seven dollars and goes in search of the packet to
redeem his chest. He is dismayed to find that the packet
had already returned to Wilmington. Upon further inquiry
he learns that his chest is stored in the warehouse
of the owner of the packet. He pays his passage money
and the dollar he had borrowed, and is as happy as if a
fortune had poured her full horn into his lap. His skill
in his art and steady application won the good will of Mr.
Wells, who raised his wages. He continued in his service
till he left Charleston.
Mr. Robert Wells, an excellent printer and good man,
was the publisher of the South Carolina and American
General Gazette. He kept also what was for the time an
extensive bookstore, supplying the wants of both the Carolinas.
He was a loyalist aud supported the government, but
the friendly relations between him and young Thomas were
never disturbed. The young man had an opportunity to improve
in his art and freedom of access to books which he
had never before enjoyed. Little is known of his sojourn
at Charleston. His promise to the fair keeper of the Coffee
House seems to have been too easily forgotten. The present
of supplies for the voyage and the half uttered thanks are
the last we hear of her; she passes into the silence. Some
his memory; the arrival and inauguration of the statue to
William Pitt; the burning at the stake of two negroes,
man and woman, for the crime of poisoning their master,
with the multitudinous sea of upturned black faces; an
election of members of the assembly with candle light processions
and temporary hospitals for the inebriated; the
meeting with several Bostonians who had left their native
town, as he expresses it "for the sin of being in debt."
While at Charleston, in December 1769, Mr. Thomas
was married to Mary Dill, daughter of Joseph Dill of the
isle of Bermuda. The connection was not a happy one, and
he was separated from her a few years afterward. He had
a plan of going to settle in the West Indies; it was nearly
perfected, but his health failing, after a short tour among
the Southern Colonies, he came back to Boston in the
spring of 1770.
The condition of Boston in the early months of that
year is matter of familiar history. It was then a town of
not more than twenty thousand inhabitants, intelligent,
wealthy, energetic, self reliant, loving the mother country
when the mother country did not meddle with their affairs.
The political controversies which had sprung up (from
seeds long in the soil) soon after the close of the seven
years war, had now for seven years been enlarging their
scope and increasing in intensity and bitterness. Discussion
had served only to widen the differences of opinion
and policy. The growing claim, a natural growth, of the
colonies for self government, was met by a larger claim for
power and restraint on the part of parliament and the
crown. Upon this town, sensitive and jealous of its rights,
the British ministry had, in the autumn of 1769, quartered
before, was brought to white heat by the personal collisions
of the populace and soldiers. What history has called,
without much propriety, the "Boston Massacre," was a
probable, natural result of the attempt to overawe such a
people by military force. There was not room on the
little peninsula, physical or moral, for soldiers and people.
Such was the excited state of the capital, and such indeed
that of the province of Massachusetts Bay, when Mr.
Thomas came back, to begin life for himself. With his
temperament and convictions he could not long keep out
of the thickest of the fight; and no suggestion of fear, or
foreboding of loss or peril to himself, ever held him back.
In the July following, Mr. Thomas formed a partnership
with Mr. Fowle. We must, I think, find in this fact some
mitigation of the judgment he has passed upon his old
master. The firm commenced business in Salem street
by issuing, in July 1770, the first number of a small newspaper
called the Massachusetts Spy. This number was
distributed gratuitously through the town. The paper
was to be published three times a week, twice on a quarter
sheet and once on a half sheet. The frequent issue of the
paper, a new thing in Boston, was not to meet the commercial
or business needs of the town. It was thought it
would meet the wants of mechanics and other classes of
people who had each day but little time to read, and to
whom the news and instruction of the paper would be convenient
in small doses. The second number of the paper
was published on the 7th of August 1770. The publication
was continued in this form for three months. The
partnership of Fowle and Thomas was then dissolved,
Thomas buying of Fowle the same press and types on
by Fowle nineteen years before, had been paid for
by borrowing the money of a relative who was content to
let the principal lie, if he was paid punctually the interest.
Thomas became the owner by giving to the creditor new
security for the payment of the loan. He moved his office
to School street, and changed the publication of the Spy
from three times to twice a week, each number a half sheet.
He continued the publication in this way for three months
more, and then dropped it to make preparations for the
weekly publication of a larger newspaper than had before
been printed in Boston. On the 7th of March 1771, from
his printing office, now changed to Union street, the new
weekly appeared, printed on a whole sheet royal size folio
of four pages; but not Cowper's folio of four pages," happy
work which not even critics criticize." In the new form
the paper had to start with less than two hundred subscribers.
After the first week the number rapidly increased,
till, at the end of two years, the subscription list was larger
than that of any other newspaper in Boston.
The new sheet bore the name of the Massachusetts Spy.
The title was between two cuts, on the left the Goddess of
Liberty, on the right two infants culling flowers from a
basket. Nothing could be ruder, less artistic, than these
prints; but that on the left had its meaning for the time,
soon after made clearer by the motto from Addison's Cato.
"And make our lives in thy possession happy,
"Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence."
It was with the publication of this paper that our printer
really entered upon his own career of life. It was in this
country and to connect his name with its history. With
it, though its place of publication was changed, he was
connected for thirty years, and, after many trials and reverses,
it laid the foundation of his fortune.
Mr. Thomas was printer, publisher, and editor. A number
of writers however supplied the paper with political
essays. Some of the earlier essays were intended to be especially
adapted to that class of citizens who had made up the
majority of the early readers of the Spy. "Common sense
in common language," said Mr. Thomas, "is necessary
to influence one class of citizens as much as learning and
elegance of composition to produce an effect upon another:
the cause of America was just, and it was only necessary
to state this cause in a clear and impressive manner to
unite the American people in its support." We incline to
think that elegance of composition, rhetoric, and eloquence,
are as agreeable to one class of citizens as to another.
Whether this be so or not, the distinction suggested by
Mr. Thomas was not kept up. The Spy circulated throughout
the continent, and its writers addressed alike all classes
of the people. At the start the publisher opened the
columns of the paper to Whigs and Royalists, but the controversy
had become too warm for such a course; it
satisfied neither party. Overtures were made by friends
of government to induce the printer to enlist the Spy in its
defence. They were of course rejected, and Mr. Thomas
gave the paper without reserve to the cause of the people.
In an early number there is a pretty explicit statement of
the relation of rulers and people. "Rulers are made for
the people, not the people for the rulers. The people are
bound to obey the rulers, when the rulers obey the laws;
are bound to be dutiful children. Rulers were instituted
to be servants to the people, and ministers of
God for good; but if instead of servants they become
masters, and instead of ministers for good they are
ministers for evil, they are no longer rulers according
to their institution. Rulers are appointed to be the representatives
of God among men; and when they imitate him
in righteousness the people are under the strongest obligations
to give them great honour and reward. The people
always have a right to judge of the conduct of their rulers,
and reward them according to their deeds."
The Spy soon became a power in the Massachusetts Bay,
for it was conducted with vigor, zeal, and entire devotion
to Whig principles. The government hoped to buy the
young printer; he was not in the market. It tried to drive
him; he could not be driven. It tried to alarm him; he
was without fear. It tried to suppress him; but he baffled
and defeated every attempt to this end and gained new
strength and influence by every conflict.
The proposal to make the Spy a loyalist paper having
failed, the next step was to force compliance or deprive
the printer of his press and types. His creditor was an
officer of the Crown, and, though a worthy man, was pushed
on to demand payment of the debt contrary to his verbal
agreement. Thomas had given a bond payable in one
year, with an assurance that the principal should not be
called for if the interest was promptly paid. Thomas,
though without property, had the confidence and credit
of his friends; he borrowed the money and paid the old
debt by contracting a new one. The plan of suppression
failing, the most paltry attempts were made to annoy
was a refusal to permit him to obtain from the Custom
House an account of the arrivals and clearances of the
port of Boston. The printer of the Massachusetts Gazette,
and News-Letter, acknowledges that he had refused Thomas
a copy of the list, under the influence of the Custom
House officers. Thomas also charges Governor Hutchinson
with attempting to get work out of his hands and give
it to a tool of his own, and with saying of the Spy "Long
ago would I have stopped the press could I but have persuaded
the council to join with me." "A man" the editor
adds "whom we could not more disgrace than by saying
he is, and how he became the g——r of this p——e."
The Spy has among its contributors several able and
pungent writers who did not put on their gloves when
they wrote. Among the early contributions was a series
of essays signed Centinel, extending to over forty numbers,
the first with a motto from the ballad of Chevy Chase.
Will rue the hunting of that day."
I have not been able to discover the writer of these
essays. John Adams evidently knew the author, but he
gives no clue. The question puzzled Governor Hutchinson.
They are written with much learning and marked
ability. In vindicating the liberties of the people of the
province the writer does not confine himself to the
charter, or their rights as English subjects, but lays for
them deeper and broader foundations in the natural rights
of man. The manner is clear, incisive, bitter, without the
least recognition of the doctrine that the powers that be
are ordained of God.
But the boldest of the writers for the Spy was Joseph
Greenleaf, over the signature of Mutius Scævola. In the
Spy of November 14th 1771, he declares that Hutchinson
is not the legal governor of the Province, that he is an
usurper and ought to be dismissed and punished as such.
We give one or two brief extracts. "An Englishman
should never part with a penny but by his consent, or the
consent of his agent or representative, especially as the
money thus forced from us is to hire a man to tyrannize
over us, whom his master calls our governor. This seems
to me to be Mr. Hutchinson's situation, therefore I cannot
but view him as an usurper, and absolutely deny his jurisdiction
over this people, and am of opinion that any act of
assembly consented to by him in his capacity as governor
is ipso facto null and void and consequently not binding
upon us. * * * * * *
"If the pretended Governor or Lieutenant-Governor by
being independent on us for their support are rendered incapable
of completing acts of government, it is time we
had a lawful one to preside or that the pretended governors
were dismissed and punished as usurpers, and that
the council, according to charter, should take upon themselves
the government of the province." The article
caused no little stir and excitement in the Bay.
The Evening Post of the next Monday says, "it is said
the piece referred to, from its nature and tendency, is the
most daring production ever published in America." The
Post refers to, without venturing to print it.
The paper was printed on Thursday. On Friday afternoon
Governor Hutchinson convened his Council. The
Council, after deliberating upon the matter till sundown,
adjourned to the next day, when they met again, and after
for. The messenger of the Council appeared in Mr.
Thomas's office and told him that his presence was required
in the Council chamber. Mr. Thomas replied that "he
was busily employed in his office and could not wait upon
his Excellency and their Honors." An hour later the messenger
again appeared and informed him that the Governor
and Council awaited his attendance, and by their direction
he (the messenger) asked whether Mr. Thomas was ready
to appear before them. Thomas answered that he was
not. The messenger went to make report, and Thomas
went for legal advice—the tradition is, to John Adams.
He was instructed to persist in his refusal to appear before
the Council, that they had no right to summon him before
them. The messenger was sent a third time and brought
this order. "The Governor and Council order your immediate
attendance before them in the Council chamber."
T. I will not go.
Mess. You do not give this answer with the intention
that I should repeat it to the Governor and Council?
T. Have you anything written by which to show the authority
under which you act?
Mess. I have delivered to you the order of the Governor
and Council as it was given to me.
T. If I understand you, the Governor and Council order
my immediate attendance before them?
Mess. They do.
T. Have you the order in writing?
Mess. No.
T. Then, sir, with all due respect to the Governor and
Council, I am engaged in my own concerns and shall not
attend.
Mess. Will you commit your answer to writing?
T. No, sir.
Mess. You had better go, you may repent your refusal
to comply with the order of the Council?
T. I must abide by the result.[1]
Upon the return of the messenger with this unexpected
and firm refusal, the Governor and Council deliberated
whether they should not commit the printer for contempt.
Two difficulties were suggested. First, he had not appeared
before them; if he had, his answers might have been
construed as contempt of the Council. The other was yet
graver and went to the root of the matter, that the Council
could not compel his appearance before them to answer
for any crime or misdemeanor; the judicial tribunals alone
having jurisdiction and cognizance of criminal offences.
If these considerations had had their just weight before,
instead of after, the refusal, the Governor and Council would
have escaped the mortification of being baffled and defied,
by a young mechanic of twenty-two, on a question of law
and right. So a more careful examination of the article
itself would have disarmed it of its force. For the ground
upon which Governor Hutchinson is denounced as an
usurper is that he receives his salary from the Crown and
not from the Province. The fact itself was well known,
and as to the conclusion the Governor and Council might
well have said valeat quantum, it is worth what it is worth.
In judging of the conduct of Thomas we are not to forget,
that he had often heard from his master how his
brother Daniel Fowle, a few years before, had been
imprisoned by the General Court among thieves and
communicating with his family, for an alleged libel upon
the General Court; and how James Franklin had been
imprisoned and forbidden to publish his paper for the same
reason.
Governor Hutchinson was, it would seem, too good a
lawyer not to have seen that the Governor and Council had
no legal power in the matter. When, in 1774, notice was
given him that the House of Representatives proposed to
present to the Council articles of impeachment against
Chief Justice Oliver, he replied that "he knew of no crimes,
misdemeanors, nor offences, that were not cognizable before
some judicatory or other; and he knew of no criminal case
of which the Governor and Council, as a court of judicature,
could take cognizance."
Defeated in their attempt, the Governor and Council
ordered the Attorney General to prosecute the printer for
a libel. Great efforts were made to accomplish the object.
The Chief Justice (Lieutenant Governor Oliver) at the following
term of the Court in Boston, in his charge to the
Grand Jury, dwelt largely on the doctrine of libels, the licentiousness
of the press, and the necessity of restraining
It. The Attorney General drew up an elaborate bill of indictment
against Isaiah Thomas for a libel, but the Grand
Jury refused to find it; they said "ignoramus." Foiled in
this second method, the Attorney General was directed to
file an information against Thomas. The fact became
known, and the legality of the course was so bitterly attacked,
and with such force of argument and authority, that
it was thought best to drop the matter. The effort to
prosecute in Suffolk failing, one other expedient was suggested.
The Spy was circulated throughout the province.
and in the view of the law it was as truly published in
Essex as in Suffolk. Let the printer be indicted in Essex,
where the people are as yet more faithful and loyal to his
Majesty, and his Majesty's faithful servants, the Governor
and Council of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Mr.
Thomas states that the fallacy of this argument was made
apparent. The legal view was perhaps sound enough, but
the prosecution was not instituted. The Governor and
Council had learned prudence, or had become satisfied that
Essex also was growing seditious.
While these measures were being taken against the
printer, the Governor and Council proceeded with more
rapid steps against the writer of the article, Mr. Greenleaf.
A written order was served upon him to appear on the
10th of December before the Governor and Council to be
examined touching a certain paper, called the Massachusetts
Spy, published the 14th of November 1771. Greenleaf
paid no heed to the summons, and on the 12th of December
an order appeared in the Boston Newsletter, the Court Gazette,
dismissing him from his office of Justice of the Peace
for the county of Plymouth. The order was as follows:
"At a Council held at the Council Chamber in Boston,
Tuesday Dec. 10th, 1771.
His Excellency having acquainted the Board, at their last
meeting, that Joseph Greenleaf Esq. a Justice of the Peace
for the county of Plymouth, was generally reputed to be
connected with Isaiah Thomas in printing and publishing
a newspaper called the Massachusetts Spy, and the said
Joseph Greenleaf having thereupon been summoned to attend
the Board on this day, in order to his examination
touching the same, and not attending according to summons,
Joseph Greenleaf be dismissed from the office of a Justice
of the Peace, which advice was approved of and consented
to by his Excellency; and the said Joseph Greenleaf is dismissed
from the said office accordingly.
A true copy from the minutes of the Council.
These attempts to restrain the Spy were not merely abortive,
they kindled the editor to greater zeal for the country's
cause, and to intenser hatred of its oppressors.
But bitter as was the tone of the Spy, it is a striking fact
that the tone of English papers and of prominent English
statesmen upon the course of the Ministry toward the colonies
was as severe and relentless as that of the Colonial
press and statesmen. In the Spy of September 10th, 1772,
appeared an address to the King, signed Akolax. Upon
its appearance the Governor and Council ordered the
Attorney General to prosecute the printer in what manner he
thought best. The notice Thomas took of this was to republish
in the Spy of Oct. 10th, 1772, an address to the King
copied from the (English) Middlesex Journal. He calls attention
to the fact that the latter address, far more disloyal
in its tone and spirit, had passed unnoticed not only in
England but on its republication in a neighboring province.
He thereupon charges that the purpose and order of the
Governor and Council to prosecute him were malicious,
closing a bitter article with the words "we may next have
padlocks on our lips and fetters on our legs, or fight our
way to constitutional freedom." The original letter, and
the republication from the Middlesex Journal, were alike offensive
to the officers of the Crown. Mr. Thomas was informed
Hutchinson had remarked that to secure a verdict against
him stronger ground would be taken than in the case of
Mutius Scævola. What this stronger ground was, must
be left to conjecture. It would seem as if no weapon had
been left unused. The difficulty was insuperable. He
could not find a grand jury to indict or a petit jury to
convict.
For some two years before these events men had seen
the noble mind of James Otis o'erthrown, and
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh."
of the addresses to the King that Mr. Otis called upon
Mr. Thomas and desired to have a private conference
with him, in what he called his sanctum sanctorum, a
private room up two flights of stairs, and adjoining the
printing office, which the tories called the "sedition
foundry." Being seated, Mr. Otis called for two sheets
of paper. He doubled each sheet, and after putting them
together indented them at the top. On one of the sheets
he wrote his own signature, and requested Mr. Thomas to
sign the second. He folded the latter carefully, put it in
his pocket, leaving the other with Mr. Thomas, and, assuring
him he should hear from him, went out.
After the publication of the letters to the King and the
report that Thomas was to be prosecuted Mr. Otis came
again, apparently composed and in the possession of his
reason. He said to Mr. Thomas that he had heard of the
publication of his address and of the impending prosecution.
The address he had not read. Mr. Thomas gave it
reading it once he went over it again paragraph by paragraph,
repeating at the end of each there is no treason in
that. When he came to a particular passage, he paused,
read it again and again, and after pondering upon it some
time exclaimed, "Touch and go, by G—d." Having
read the address entirely through again, he assured Mr.
Thomas that the whole of it was defensible, and in case
the prosecution should take place, he would come forward
in his defence without fee or reward, or would point out to
his counsel the ground of defence, which, in his opinion,
ought to be assumed. On taking leave he said "James
Otis still retains some knowledge of law." This is what
Hutchinson would have called "one of the flashes of our
firebrand."
The character of the Spy, its bold, defiant tone, and the
attempts at prosecution successfully baffled, drew attention
to the young printer in all parts of the continent. In
North Carolina, the loyalists caused the Spy to be burned
by the common hangman, and the printer to be burned in
effigy. On the other hand applications were made to Mr.
Thomas from the Whigs in different parts of the continent
to set up presses, one even coming from Quebec. The
hostility of the loyalists of the Province was bitter in the
extreme. After the passage of the Boston Port Bill and
the arrival of additional troops he was frequently threatened
with violence. A British officer, whom he had befriended,
informed him that his assassination even had been proposed.
The following incident illustrates very well the state of
feeling among the soldiers. A countryman, Thomas Ditson
Jr. of Billerica, was charged with attempting to purchase
of a soldier his musket, and thus enticing him to
that a plan had been laid to entrap him and that he was
innocent of any bad intention. Col. Nesbitt of the 47th
Regiment gave Ditson a mock-trial, then stripped him of
his clothes and, coating him from head to foot with tar and
feathers, carted him through the streets. The soldiers, with
the Colonel at their head, halted before the office of the
Spy; the music playing the rogues march, and some of the
soldiers crying out, the printer of the Spy shall be the
next to receive this punishment. Other illustrations of
the state of feeling towards the printer of the Spy abound.
In the Boston Evening Post of September 19th, 1774, is
printed a circular letter, which was scattered among the
forces, addressed "to the officers and soldiers of His Majesty's
troops in Boston." After giving a list of the authors
of the rebellion, Samuel Adams, Bowdoin, Hancock, and
others, it says "The friends of your King and Country and
of America hope and expect from you soldiers, the instant
rebellion happens, that you will put the above persons to
the sword, destroy their houses and plunder their effects.
N. B. Don't forget those trumpeters of sedition, the printers
Edes and Gill, and Thomas."
It would not be easy to over estimate the services Mr.
Thomas rendered the country as the editor and printer of
the Spy. He gave the paper and he gave himself without
reserve to the cause of freedom. He well understood
that if the cause failed he would be one of the earliest
victims. He led no man to risk and peril he did not incur
himself. Reading the Spy now in the quiet of the library,
and in the quiet of peace, one would find much in matter
and manner to criticize. But revolutions are not fed and
nurtured upon milk and water, or even the clear milk of
for life or all that makes life worth the living.
Rev. Dr. John Eliot in an article in the collections of
the Historical Society of 1799 (vol. 6), avers that a more
violent class of politicians filled the Spy with their speculations
than the Whigs who wrote in the Boston Gazette.
Referring especially to the articles signed Centinel, which
we have already noticed, he says any one who reads them
will now see that the same spirit and principles lead to a
dissolution of all Society, and are, like more modern publications
on equality and the rights of man, direct attacks on
all authority and law. We have read them without reaching
this conclusion. Allowance must be made for the
difference of things in 1771, and 1799. It is doubtless
true, speaking in general terms, that the writers of the Spy,
as compared with those of the Gazette, assumed more radical
ground and claimed, at an earlier date, for the colonists
not only the rights of Englishmen but the rights of man.
Perhaps the position of our printer cannot be better indicated
than in the superscription of a letter now before
me, addressed, April 4th 1775, by John Hancock from the
Provincial Congress then sitting at Concord; "To Mr.
Isaiah. Thomas, Supporter of the Rights and Liberties of
Mankind."
The Spy early took the ground which the controversy
ultimately assumed, and which gives to it its highest dignity
and its most profound interest in the history of human
progress. When the Spy entered upon the controversy, the
gulf, at first narrow between the parties, had been widened
and deepened. Substantially the question had become
this, the unlimited power of Parliament on the one hand
and the rights of self government on the other. The distinction
hold upon the popular mind. While the power of regulating
commerce was in abeyance, or the laws to enforce it
so readily and so commonly evaded, the Colonies were
content. The moment they should have been brought into
full activity submission would have been at an end. Indeed
it was through the partial exercise of this power to regulate
trade that the Colonies had suffered their heaviest practical
grievances.
All revolutions outgrow and leave behind them the
issues on which they are started. When the power of
Parliament to regulate the trade of the Empire began to
be fully understood, when the colonial statesmen saw what
had been already the restrictions its exercise had imposed
upon the commerce and manufactures of the Colonies and
their growth and expansion, when they understood clearly
that in the future the interests of the Colonies were to be
subordinated to those of the mother-country, and her wealth
and prosperity to be secured at the cost of their own, they
began to see that it was this very power they had most
reason to dread and to contest.
The course pursued by Parliament and the Crown had
brought the Colonies into concert and union of action and
to a sense of their power and strength, and when that
began to be felt, the question of separation was one of time
only. The Colonies found, as Montesquieu expresses it, that
"they had grown to be great nations in the forests they
were sent to inhabit."
Governor Pownal had said truly, that "it was essential
to the preservation of the empire to keep the Colonies disconnected
and independent of each other, that they must
cohere in one centre (the mother country), and that they
of coherence with each other above that whereby they cohere
in this centre." Coherence and Union of their own
motion he deemed utterly improbable, and so great in fact
were the differences of the colonies in their settlements,
in their charters and frames of government, in their manners,
religion, culture, trade and domestic policy, that
Franklin, who best understood the subject, said, that nothing
but the oppression of the mother country would ever
unite them. In seeking for a policy and institutions fitted
to their then condition they were led to look beyond
their rights as colonists to their rights as men.
But to return to the Spy. If it be true, as I think cannot
fairly be denied, that its doctrines struck at the roots
of the power of Crown and Parliament, insisting that the
time of swaddling clothes had long since past, it was only a
little early, possibly a little premature, in assuming the
position to which the colonies were finally brought. That
in times of revolution extravagant doctrines should be advanced
by some of the writers in its columns, history would
lead us to expect. It must be admitted also that the tone
of the Spy was bitter, sarcastic, sometimes fierce, defiant
and exasperating to the last degree; but in this regard it
but showed "the age and body of the time, its form and
pressure." One has but to glance at the newspapers to see
how the questions at issue engrossed the public attention,
how little space is given to, how little apparent interest is
taken in, the news of the day, and how the columns are
crowded with elaborate essays upon questions of abstract
right and law. Never was a people better instructed in
matters of right and duty. The questions of natural right
were more easily understood, and touched and moved more
the Spy had signal advantage.
In doing justice to the Spy we would do no injustice to the
Boston Gazette, with which Mr. Eliot compares it. The
articles in the Gazette, perhaps, as a general rule indicated
more literary culture in the writers; their historical and
legal arguments were more elaborate and finished. It
would be a mistake to suppose that the articles in the Gazette
were less personal, bitter and inflammatory, than those
of the Spy. There was for example a series of papers in
the Gazette, beginning December 20th 1772, entitled
Needham's Remembrancer written by Josiah Quincy Jr.,
the noblest Roman of them all. Nothing in the columns
of the Spy is more bitter, not to say ferocious, than
some of these articles. As the discussion and controversy
went on the writers for the Gazette, as well as those of the
Spy, are from to-day expanding the claims of the colonies
for self government, and narrowing and restricting the
powers of Parliament and Crown—rising rapidly to the
plane on which the controversy was finally placed. It was
self-government to which our fathers were tending, it may
be at the first unconsciously, but nevertheless tending.
History, from 1763, is a prophesy of the result. It was becoming
necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bands which connected them with another, and to assume
among the nations of the earth the separate and equal
station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God
entitled them.
Mr. Thomas would have been the last person to question
the merits of the Boston Gazette. He was a rival, but
a generous one. "During the long controversy" he remarks
"between Great Britain and her colonies no paper
country or more ably supported its rights than the Boston
Gazette."
We can hardly help glancing at the future fortune of
the Gazette and its principal proprietor, Benjamin Edes.
After the Revolution it lost its great contributors and its
tone and policy were changed. It bitterly opposed the
adoption of the constitution of the United States and the
administration of Washington. The paper declined in
power, interest and popular favor, till, after a long struggle,
in 1798, it was discontinued for want of support. One cannot
but be touched by the old man's farewell address.
"The Editor of the Boston Gazette, after repeated attempts
to prosecute his professional occupation in the declining
period of his life, is at length obliged to relinquish his exertions
and to retire to those melancholy paths of domestic
embarrassments to which misfortune has consigned him.
While thus passing the gloomy valley of old age and infirmity,
his consolation still rests on that staff which can
support a mind conscious of its own rectitude; and though
he often feels the thorns and briers on the road, goading
him in his passage, yet he patiently suffers under these afflictions,
hoping that ere long he shall arrive at that
peaceful abode 'where the weary are at rest.' The cause
of Liberty is not always the channel of preferment or
pecuniary reward. The little property which he acquired
has long since fell a sacrifice; the paper-evidences of his
services were soon consumed by their rapid depreciation,
and the cares of a numerous family were too powerful to
be resisted, though he fed thom with property at four shillings
and sixpence in the pound, which he faithfully and
industriously earned at twenty shillings."
Mr. Buckingham, in his very interesting reminiscences
of printers and editors, thus speaks of the unfortunate old
man. "In 1801, I had occasion to call on him at his
printing room and found him at work on a small job at the
case, while an elderly female (probably one of his daughters)
was at the press striking off shop bills. The venerable
form of the old man setting types "with spectacles on
nose," and the singular sight of a woman, beating and pulling
at the press, together with the aspect of destitution
that pervaded the whole apartment, presented a scene well
adapted to excite sympathy, and to make an impression on
the mind, which the vicissitudes of fifty years have not effaced.
At length the infirmities of age overcame his
physical powers and the curse of poverty lay heavily on
his spirit. Oppressed with years and sickness, neglected
and forgotten by those who enjoyed the blessings he had
helped to secure, he died in December 1803 at the age of
eighty years."
July 1st 1773, nearly two years before he left Boston,
Mr. Thomas sent out the prospectus of the Royal American
Magazine, to be issued monthly. The vessel containing the
types for it was cast ashore on Cape Cod, and the first
number (for January 1774) was not in fact issued till
Febry. 6th 1774. After six months, "on account of the distresses
of the town of Boston," Mr. Thomas suspended the
publication. It was however purchased by Joseph Greenleaf,
the Scævola of the Spy, and continued till March
1775. A singular feature of the magazine, considering
the relation of both Thomas and Greenleaf to Governor
Hutchinson, is thus stated by the editor. "To complete
this plan will be added (to begin at the end of the first
number and to continue until the whole is finished, printed
with copper plate prints, exclusive of those particularly
for the magazine) Governor Hutchinson's History
of the Massachusetts Bay; which when finished will be
worth the cost of the magazine."
The magazine is illustrated by nineteen engravings, the
most of which are by Paul Revere. The first number has
the well known view of the town of Boston, with the
several ships of war in the harbor.
The last year Mr. Thomas was in Boston, he began the
publication of an Almanac. The first number in styled
"Thomas' New England Almanac, or the Massachusetts Calendar
for the year of our Lord Christ 1775." Its imprint is
"Massachusetts Bay, Boston. Printed and sold by Isaiah
Thomas at the printing office, the south corner of Marshall's
Lane near the mill bridge." The Almanac was published
by Mr. Thomas from 1775 to 1803, and from 1803 to 1819
inclusive, by his son Isaiah Thomas Jr. There is nothing
in these Almanacs calling for especial notice. They aided
in making the publisher well known, and some fortunate
prophecies or guesses as to the weather gained for it something
of the reputation of "old Probabilities." They contained
a good deal for useful matter which found its way to
places where books were little read. In a number before
me, that for 1790, are published the tariff of 1789, the proposed.
Amendments to the Constitution of the United
States, the Federal Register, headed by the President of
the United States, "His Highness George Washington
Esquire," and the Judiciary Act of 1789. In that of 1791
is the whole of Franklin's Way to Wealth.
To resume our story. It was not alone as editor and
printer of an influential journal that Mr. Thomas was able
the most active of Sons of Liberty. Wherever work
difficult and hazardous was to be done, he was to be found.
The meetings of the patriots are frequently held at his
office. After the workmen have retired, the master remains
to print hand-bills that are posted throughout the
town before morning, to startle the timid and rouse the
lethargic. For the five years following his return to Boston
his life was a daily warfare. The tone of his paper, its
sharp criticisms not only upon the provincial civil officers
but upon the conduct and bearing of the military, excited
against him hostility personal as well as political. Threats,
as before stated, of violence, of assassination even, are frequently
made; whether to alarm only cannot now be determined.
His friends did not so regard them. They knew
he was on the list of the proscribed, and believed he would be
among the earliest victims. He sent his family to Watertown
to be safe from the perils to which he was daily exposed.
For a few days before the battle of Lexington his
friends insisted upon his keeping himself secluded. He
went to Concord to consult with Mr. Hancock and other
leading members of the Provincial Congress. He opened
to them his situation, which indeed the Boston members
well understood. Mr. Hancock and his other friends advised
and urged him to remove from Boston immediately;
in a few days, they said, it would be too late. They
seemed to understand well what a few days would bring
forth. He came back to Boston, packed up his presses
and types, and on the 16th of April, to use his own phrase,
"stole them out of town in the dead of night." Thomas
was aided in their removal by General Warren and Colonel
Bigelow. They were carried across the ferry to Charlestown
nights after, the royal troops were on their way to Lexington,
and the next evening after, Boston was entirely shut
up. Mr. Thomas did not go with his presses and types to
Worcester. Having seen them on their way he returned
to the city. The conversation at Concord, as well as his
own observation, had satisfied him that important events
were at hand.
He went out on the night of the 18th of April, to assist
in giving notice that the troops were crossing the Charles
river. He returned, but was out again by daylight.
Crossing the ferry with Dr. Warren he went into a public
meeting at Charlestown and urged the arming of the people,
and was opposed by one Mr. Russell "on principles of prudence."
As one of the minute men, he engages in the
fight which was the beginning of the end. At night he
goes to Medford. On the morning of the 20th, he makes a
flying visit to his family at Watertown, and then starts on
foot for Worcester. He is constantly met on bis journey
by bodies of armed men on their way to Cambridge,
anxious to learn even the minutest details of yesterday's
fight. After traveling on foot some miles, he meets with
a friend who procures him the loan of a horse. Late at
night, weary and travel worn, he arrives at Worcester to
begin life anew; a good head and stout heart his only
capital. Worcester was one of the places where Mr.
Thomas had been invited to set up a press. The necessity
for a Whig paper in this stronghold of the loyalists had
beea felt by Colonel Bigelow, the patriot blacksmith soldier
and statesman, and the other leading Whigs of the
town and county. Mr. Thomas made an agreement to do
so early in 1775, but without any purpose of giving up the
were all that were left as the fruit of five years' toil and
peril. A sum exceeding three thousand dollars (and a dollar
meant something then, though soon to lose its meaning)
was due him from subscribers, scattered over the continent.
In times of peace most of this would have been collected.
It was now worthless. Paper it was hard to get at any
price, and the printer's means of purchase, present and
prospective, were cut off. The list of Worcester subscribers
was less than two hundred, town and county.
Things were at a stand still. On the 24th of April, 1775,
Samuel Adams and John Hancock were at Worcester, on
their way to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia.
They were there, some days, waiting the arrival of their
colleagues and a military escort. We have no report of the
interview between the patriot printer and the patriot statesmen.
But on the journal of the Committee of Safety of
the Province is this entry, April 29th, 1775. "Letters from
Colonel Hancock now at Worcester were read, whereupon
voted that four reams of paper be immediately ordered to
Worcester for the use of Mr. Thomas, printer; he to be accountable."
Though the letter requesting that paper be
sent to Mr. Thomas has been lost, a very interesting one
wrritten from Worcester by Mr. Hancock, on the evening
of his arrival, has been preserved. It is addressed to the
Committee of Safety. I have space for a brief extract only.
"Boston must be entered, the troops must be sent away
or (blank). Our friends are valuable but our country
must be saved. I have an interest in that town; what can
be the enjoyment of that to me if I am obliged to hold it
at the will of General Gage, or any one else. I doubt not
your vigilance, your fortitude and resolution." One cannot
and read, with delight, that letter before it was put on its
way to Watertown.
On the third of May the Spy reäppears at Worcester.
In his address to his readers the editor says: "I beg the
assistance of all the friends of our righteous cause to circulate
this paper. They may rely that the utmost of
my poor endeavors shall be used to maintain those rights
and privileges for which we and our fathers have bled;"
words that on the 30th of May, 1775, were something more
than rhetoric. The place of publication was not however
definitely settled. Mr. Thomas was directed by the Committee
of Safety to bring his press to Concord. He goes
there to find that the Provincial Congress had adjourned
to Watertown. He goes to Watertown, and is advised by
leading members of the Congress that it will be best to
remain at Worcester for the present, to do the printing for
Congress, the army and Committee of Safety, at that place
establishing a post, what we should call an express, between
Worcester and Watertown and Cambridge, to transmit
orders and return the work when done. Following this
course, on the 8th "of May the Provincial Congress
appoints a committee to transcribe the narrative of the
proceedings of the King's troops on the 19th ult., together
with-depositions thereof accompanying, to be transmitted
to Mr. Thomas for immediate publication."
On the 12th of May the Committee of Safety "voted,
that Mr. Isaiah Thomas have sixty reams of printing crown
paper and eight reams of printing demy paper supplied to
him by the committee of supplies; they taking his obligation
to be accountable to the Colony for the amount
thereof."
Mr. Thomas did account for the paper sent him to the last
penny. Though the Congress and the Committee of Safety
assumed to direct his movements, I cannot fiud that he ever
received any favor from them, or sought any. They supplied
him twice with paper, and he paid for it by his work.
In his day of extremest want he would not feed from the
public crib. In the summer, Samuel and Ebenezer Hall
moved from Salem and set up a press in Stoughton Hall,
Cambridge. Mr. Edes also escaped from Boston and set
up a press at Watertown. After their removal, the printing
of the Congress and the Committee of Safety passed
into their hands. There was no further occasion for the
risk and expense of sending their work to Worcester.
With some view and for some purpose, which I have not
been able to discover, in the latter part of May, Mr. Thomas
started on foot for a journey to New York. So well was
the printer of the Spy known, so familiar was his story,
that innkeepers on the way would receive no pay for meals
and lodging, nor boatmen for carrying him across the
ferries. From New York he went to Philadelphia to see
the members of the Continental Congress. Some of its
leaders were personally known to him. He returned to
his labors deeply impressed by their wisdom and patriotism,
more ready and willing than ever to work for the "righteous
cause" to which they were devoting themselves.
Materials are wanting for a connected and detailed narrative
of Mr. Thomas's life during the Revolution. The
Spy is indeed the weekly record of thought and opinion,
but he seldom speaks of matters merely personal. A few
incidents only can now be gathered, up. In May, 1775, the
Provincial Congress established a system of post-riders and
post-offices to continue until other provision was made by
establishing the system Mr. Thomas was appointed Postmaster
for Worcester. In the fall of 1775 the Continental
Congress established a post-office department for all the
colonies; that which had existed under the Crown having
been broken up by the disorders of the times. Dr. Franklin
was appointed Postmaster, with power to establish such
post routes and appoint such deputies as he should think
proper. He selected Mr. Thomas for the office at Worcester.
His commission was several times renewed by
Franklin's successors. It was in the year following (1776)
that Franklin was at Worcester, and Mr. Thomas first
became acquainted with the man to whose history and
character his own, in a humble way, had many points of
resemblance.
We get some glimpses of Mr. Thomas in the autumn of
1775 and spring of 1776 from the recollections of Benjamin
Russell, better known as Ben Russell, afterward the distinguished
editor of the Boston Centinel, who in August
1775 was carried by his father to Worcester and indentured
as an apprentice to Mr. Thomas. The stories which old
men tell of their youth are seldom spoiled from lack of
condiment. Those of Mr. Russell were always racy. His
master, Mr. Bussell used to say, was not at that time in
very affluent circumstances. During the first year, he
with a fellow apprentice slept in a garret over the printing
office on the rags that were taken from time to time for
the paper maker. Not only his apprentices but the master
himself frequently made their meals at the office on
bread and milk, bought by the pennyworth at a time.
Mr. Thomas remained at Worcester editing and printing
the Spy till the spring of 1776, when he leased for a
William Stearns and Daniel Bigelow, two young gentlemen
of the Bar of Worcester, intelligent and patriotic, but
with no experience in editing, much less in printing a
newspaper.
With the small remaining part of his printing materials
he went to Salem, with the view of starting business, but
"obstructions arising" he sold his press and types and
gave up the plan. The nature of the obstructions will be
understood when we learn that three writs of attachment
were served upon his press and types in a single evening;
and that he was compelled to sell them to pay his debts.
In the year 1777 he leased again the Spy and his press at
Worcester to Antony Haswell. His family, in 1776 and
1777, were living on a small farm in Londonderry, New
Hampshire. They must have been dark years to him.
How he was employed I have not been able to learn. I
only know that he was always industrious, and that, somehow
or other, he got through them and supported his family.
There was at least one bright day for him in their calendar.
While on a visit to Worcester, July 24th, 1776, he read from
the porch of the South Church, to an assembly consisting
of almost the entire population of that and adjoining towns,
the declaration of independence. He may well have had a
just pride in the reading of that declaration. He could not
fail to see it was grounded on principles he had been among
the earliest to espouse and defend. The declaration was
received with every demonstration of joy and confidence.
The King's arms were taken from the Court House and
burned to ashes. The sign was removed from the King's
Arms tavern, and a joyful celebration had there in the
evening, when twenty-one patriotic toasts were given, and
leased to Stearns and Bigelow with the press and paper, in
describing the affair to Mr. Buckingham said, "we were
all so happy we did not know exactly what we did, but we
gave full vent to our patriotic feelings till a late hour in
the evening. "We were a little surprised in the morning to
find that about a dozen of us had enlisted as private soldiers
in the army; a recruiting officer being then in the
town." Mr. Thomas however got him released on the
ground that he was not sixteen years of age.
In the spring of 1778, Mr. Thomas returned to Worcester,
took possession of his press, and resumed the publication
of the Spy. Worcester was thenceforth to be his home;
in it he was to pass the remainder of his long life. He
was very fortunate in the place of his residence. There
were disadvantages in doing business so far from the seaboard,
but saving this, all else was propitious. Worcester
was one of the largest and most beautiful of the inland
towns of Massachusetts Bay, indeed of the New England
Colonies. The village was then, and for half a century
later, on one broad, beautiful street, in a lovely valley environed
by hills of gentle ascent and well rounded summits.
The view as you entered the village from the east
was charming. The long broad street arched with graceful
elms; the neat, many of them elegant and spacious, mansions
standing back from the way with grass plats or flower
beds in front, and shrubbery at their sides, and the general
air of comfort, refinement and taste, delighted all travelers.
The town was some six miles square, and agriculture its
chief pursuit; but it was the shire of the county and in its
central village. Within a mile's compass, were gathered
the county officers, eminent lawyers, and a number of merchants
country. It had several large inns, like the
Kings Arms, well known throughout the Bay and places
of much resort, not only during the terms of the courts, but
at all seasons of the year.
John Adams, when its village schoolmaster, has, in his
diary, given us some pleasant sketches of society in Worcester
some twenty years before our date, and of his taking
tea with the Putnams, Greens, Chandlers, and Macartys
of the village; a custom not yet obsolete. Then,
as ever since, Worcester was distinguished for its agreeable
and cultivated society, for the number of its eminent
men and attractive and accomplished women. Some
members of the older families who had adhered to the
crown had left in 1778, but there were new accessions
among the Whigs, the Lincolns and Allens, Waldos and
Salisburys, to fill their places. But the fact of greatest importance
in this new home of the young printer is that it
was alive and growing. As well bury a young man at
once as plant him in a place that is torpid or retroceding,
where the spirit of enterprise and thrift has died out. Few
young men are capable of resisting its repressing and
becalming influences.
It was a hard time to begin business anew. All business
was disordered by a paper currency daily depreciating;
materials and labor were difficult to be procured; subscriptions
to his paper hard to be got and harder to be
collected. Mr. Thomas however started with new resolution
and courage which carried him through the war even,
with some small measure of pecuniary success. In a few
months after his return he was so fortunate as to purchase
some new types, which were taken in a vessel from London
personal collisions, insults and threats, to which he had
been subjected by the officers and soldiers, and their allies
in Boston, the tone and temper of the paper, while equally
patriotic and firm, were more temperate and impersonal.
Many of the loyalists had left the province; those who remained
were quiet and inactive. Though Mr. Thomas
was the editor, many able writers among the patriots contributed
to the columns of the Spy. It did an excellent
work, not merely by giving accurate information of the
progress of the war but in keeping up the hope and trust
of the people. The "trumpeter" gave no uncertain sound.
In 1780 Mr. Thomas was drafted as a soldier. He must
go ro procure a substitute; there was no money commutation.
He was felt to be an useful soldier at home that
could not be spared from his press; and his apprentice Russell
readily consented to go in his place. Russell's term was
but six months and he never was in battle. He joined the
army at West Point and was one of the guard who attended
Major Andre to the place of execution. Upon his return,
Mr. Russell thought that in consideration of his service he
ought to be discharged from his apprenticeship, and
Thomas, though reluctant to part with so good a workman,
consented. Mr. Thomas from his return to Worcester in
1778 seems to have gained ground slowly but steadily.
The circulation of his paper was extended, and he added to
his income a little by job printing. From 1781, and especially
after the peace of 1783, his progress was more
marked and rapid. New types and better paper were
procured for the Spy, and it was enlarged to five columns.
It was, says Mr. Buckingham, a most competent judge,
well conducted and filled with excellent matter. Besides
the whole of Robertson's History of America, Gordon's
History of the Revolution, and large extracts from Guthrie's
Geography, and other British publications, enriched its
pages and made it more valuable than any paper published
in Massachusetts."
To the business of editing and publishing a newspaper
he added that of printing, publishing and selling books, at
the first however in a small way.
For the two years from March 1786 to March 1788 the
publication of the Spy was suspended, and in its place was
printed, in octavo form, the Worcester Magazine. The
reasons for the suspension were these. In March, 1785,
the General Court laid a stamp duty of two thirds of a
penny on newspapers and a penny on almanacs. This
law revived the memories of 1765, and was so odious that
it was repealed before it went into operation. In July,
1785, an act was passed imposing a duty on all advertisements
in newspapers printed in the state. This act was
thought by Thomas and other printers to be a still greater
grievance. "A shackle," says the Spy, "which no legislature
but ours, in British or United America, have laid upon
the press, which when free is the great bulwark of liberty."
The act was very unpopular (the only excuse for it was
that government must be supported), and was repealed.
In April, 1788, the Spy reappeared. "The printer has once
more the pleasure of presenting to the public the Massachusetts
Spy or Worcester Gazette, restored to its constitutional
liberty (thanks to our present legislature) after a
suspension of two years."
The Worcester Magazine was after all the Spy with a
new name and form without the advertisements. The
In it will be found, with much other interesting matter,
very full accounts of the Shays rebellion, and of the proceedings
and discussions leading to the formation and
adoption of the constitution of the United States. Mr.
Thomas, though appreciating and sympathizing with the
sufferings of the people, was a firm supporter of the government.
In a position with his postriders to obtain early information
of the plans and movements of the rebels, he
was able to render important aid to the authorities in Boston.
He was not by nature rebel or radical. He had a
strong love of liberty, of the state and personal, but it was
liberty regulated by law.
In the Spy and Magazine Mr. Thomas supported the adoption
of the constitution of the United States. Popular
opinion in the county was against it. We observe that
he is very careful to publish everything that Washington
said or wrote on the subject, and this not only from the
unbounded reverence he had for the man but from a
sense of the vast influence his voice and judgment would
have in determining the question. It is not perhaps too
much to say, that the weight of that influence turned
the scale. The knowledge that Washington approved of
it, the general expectation that he would be called to
administer it, conciliated and drew to its support men
whose prepossessions were all against it, who found it
difficult to reconcile such large central power with local
independence and home government. Washington, it is
well known, felt a deep interest in the action of Massachusetts.
On the last page of the last number of the magazine
is a letter of his to a gentleman in Boston (General Lincoln),
in which after speaking of the candid and conciliatory
been taken, he says: "The adoption of the constitution in
Massachusetts will, I presume, have great influence in obtaining
a favorable determination upon it in those states
which have not yet decided."
No man felt more quickly the invigorating influences
of the adoption of the national constitution and the putting
into operation the national government than Mr. Thomas.
His business was rapidly built up and extended. He embarked
in the art or mystery of making and selling books
in all its branches. He conducted it with great enterprise,
skill and judgment, and as the fruit of these with great
success.
He built a large paper mill and made his own paper, he
printed books, he established an extensive bindery, and he
sold at wholesale and retail his own publications and all new
works from the presses at London. His business extended
to almost every part of the Union. At one time he had under
his control, and that of his partners, sixteen presses constantly
employed, seven of them in Worcester. He had
five bookstores in Massachusetts, one in Concord, New
Hampshire, one in Albany, New York, and one in Baltimore.
His business at Worcester alone would be regarded
as extensive even in this age of the multiplication of books.
Viewed with reference to the time and place, a village then
so far in the interior and with so few facilities of communication,
it affords striking proof of his business capacity.
In 1788 Mr. Thomas established a printing and bookselling
business in Boston, taking with him as partner a
former apprentice, Ebenezer T. Andrews, under the firm of
Thomas and Andrews. This store was in Newbury street
under the sign of Faust's head. It speaks well for Mr.
persons who had learned their art and trade with him. A
large and successful business was carried on by the firm of
Thomas and Andrews. They published from 1789 to
1793, inclusive, the Massachusetts Magazine, a monthly devoted
to letters and the arts, and illustrated by engravings.
It was quite popular and useful in its day; and an examination
of it now may serve at least to mark the progress
we have made in general culture and in art. The store
and printing office in Boston were but a branch of his
business. Mr. Thomas remained at Worcester, and his
principal establishment was there. It may give some
further idea of its materials and resources to state that his,
for that day, splendid editions of the Bible, in folio (with
fifty copper plates) and quarto, were carried through in a
little more than twelve months. He was in fact one of the
largest book publishers of his time on either side of the
Atlantic. As editor of a newspaper and almanac, as
printer, publisher and seller of school books, Bibles, law
books, and books of general literature, the name of Isaiah
Thomas became throughout the country a household word.
His work was remarkable for elegance and accuracy.
Rev. Peter Whitney, the historian of Worcester county,
says, "his editions of the Bible are found upon examination
the most correct of any now extant." The celebrated
Brissot (de Warville), the famous Girondist leader, in his
travels in the United States in 1788, says: "Nous allâmes
diner à Worcester à 48 miles de Boston; cette ville est joue et
bien peuplée; I'imprimeur Isaias Thomas I'a rendue célèbre
dans tout le continent Americain. Il imprime la plupart
des ouvrages que paroissent; et l'on avouer que ses editions
sont correctes et bien soignees. Thomas est le Didot des
me, says: "Being one day in the Doctor's library, I opened
an elegant folio Bible and said, this is a most splendid edition.
Yes, he said, it was printed by Baskerville, the
greatest printer in England, and your countryman Mr.
Thomas of Worcester is the Baskerville of America." As
England produces now in the art of printing no superior to
Baskerville we shall have to give considerable force to the
addition "of America." The remark no doubt had something
in it of personal kindness. Mr. Thomas had known
Franklin for many years. He had been appointed postmaster
by him, and Franklin had visited him at Worcester.
It would have been enough to have secured Franklin's regard
that Mr. Thomas was so good a patriot; his skill in
printing was another bond of sympathy. Dr. Franklin, like
all printers who have become eminent, retained a great
affection for the art. Mr. Thomas saw him for the last
time in 1788, when a number of printers and booksellers
met at Philadelphia to form, some rules for the benefit of
the trade. Mr. Thomas and Benjamin Franklin Bache,
the grandson of Franklin, were of the number. After the
first meeting Mr. Thomas had a long conversation with
Dr. Franklin upon the objects of the meeting. Dr. Franklin
manifested a deep interest in the matter. Unable to go
abroad from the state of his health, he desired to have the
next meeting at his own house. The convention of course
felt itself greatly honored by such a request, and the Doctor,
though (suffering constant pain from the calculus, entered
freely into the plans and discussions of the meeting. He was
then in his eighty-third year, suffering constant bodily pain,
but with a mind as vigorous, a wisdom as large and practical,
and manners as easy and winning, as in the noon of life.
The man for whom Mr. Thomas had, if possible, a yet
higher reverence, Washington, visited Worcester in the
course of his New England tour in the autumn of 1789.
The Spy of October 22d 1789 has a notice of his brief visit.
"Information being received on Thursday morning (October
22d) that his Highness would be in town the next
morning, a number of respectable citizens, about forty, paraded
before sunrise on horseback, and went as far as
Leicester line to welcome him, and escorted him into
town. The Worcester company of artillery, commanded
by Major Treadwell, were already assembled; on notice
being given that his Highness was approaching, five
cannon were fired for the five New England States; three
for the three in the Union; one for Vermont which will
speedily be admitted; and one as a call to Rhode Island to
be ready before it be too late. When the President General
arrived in sight of the meeting house, eleven cannon
were fired; he viewed with attention the artillery company
as he passed, and expressed to the inhabitants his sense of
the honor done him. He stopped at the United States
Arms and breakfasted, and then proceeded on his journey.
To gratify the inhabitants he politely passed through the
town on horseback, dressed in a brown suit, and pleasure
glowed in every countenance; eleven cannon were then
fired. The gentlemen of the town escorted him a few
miles, when they took their leave."
E. Smith Thomas, a nephew of Isaiah Thomas, was then
one of his apprentices. "A boy of fourteen," he writes
many years afterwards, "I was presented to Washington
by my distinguished kinsman, Isaiah Thomas. I can never
forget his words or my feelings on the occasion. 'Young
man,' he said, 'your uncle has set you a bright example of
our highest duty to our country."'
Smith Thomas went to live with his uncle, to learn the
art of printing, in 1788. In the reminiscences of his life
and times, puhlished in 1840, we find some notices of his
kinsman. Speaking of the Spy, he says: "Mr. Thomas was
a pungent writer, possessing a clear and strong style, with
the most biting sarcasm." This is extravagant. "He was
constantly aided by the powerful pens of General Ward,
Dwight Foster, Edward Bangs, and others, so that his
paper, which was a small weekly sheet, was always well
filled with matter calculated to confirm the patriotic in
their course and prevent the wavering from going over to
the enemy." (He had then built his extensive printing
office, bookstore and bindery.) "Few gentlemen passed
through Worcester without calling to see the proprietor and
his establishment, who never failed to treat them with the
most marked politeness. In his person Mr. Thomas was
tall and elegantly formed, in his dress fashionable to a
fault, in his manners elegant, with a mind stored by a most
extensive acquaintance with the best authors whether in
literature or science." With fair allowance for the relation
of the parties and the impression the accomplished
master makes on the apprentice, and the teacher on the
pupil, the description conforms to the general recollection
of Mr. Thomas's contemporaries.
Into the cultivated society of the town, the self educated
printer and bookseller made easy way, and in intellectual
culture and manners found himself among equals. When
his business had expanded, and his income enlarged, he
built what was for the time a spacious and elegant mansion,
and generous hospitality.
Mr. Thomas was a supporter of the administration of
Washington and of the Federal party. He was not, according
to the standard of his times, a bitter partizan, but
those were times when men had strong convictions and
expressed them clearly, not to say fiercely. We have seen
with what ardor and at what peril and sacrifice he maintained
the liberties of the colonies—indeed liberty everywhere.
The experience of the war and of the seven years
of confusion and disorder which followed it, taught him
the necessity of a strong, stable, efficient, national government.
He believed the constitution had been so framed and
adopted, and should be so administered, as to give the
country such a government. Under such a government
he lived to see his country free, prosperous, happy. In
his preface to his edition of the Bible, in 1791, he says: "The
general state of our country must afford satisfaction to
every benevolent mind. Evidences of increasing prosperity
present themselves on every side to our view. Abroad,
our national character is rising to dignity and eminence,
at home, confidence is established in our government, the
spirit of patriotism appears to be the actuating principle
with the distinguished characters of our age, and the
greatest exertions are making for the public good. The
civil and religious rights of men are generally understood,
and by all enjoyed. The sciences which open to the minds
of men a view of the works and ways of God, and the arts
which tend to the support, the convenience, and the ornament
of society, begin to receive proper encouragement
from the administration of state and national governments;
and by the application and enterprise of individuals are
a good education are daily becoming more general, and
the present spirit of industry and economy, which pervades
all classes of men, furnishes the brightest prospects of
future prosperity and welfare. While a general solicitude
prevails to encourage the Arts and to promote national
honor, dignity and happiness, can any be indifferent to
those improvements which are necessary to secure to all
the free and independent exercise of the Rights of Conscience?
The civil authority hath set an example of moderation
and candor to all Christians, by securing equal
privileges to all; and it must be their ardent and united
wish, independently of foreign aid, to be supplied with
copies of the sacred Scriptures—the foundation of their religion
—a religion which furnishes motives to the faithful
performance of every patriotick, civil and social duty,
superior to the temptations of ambition, avarice and selfishness;
which opens prospects to the human mind that will
be realized when the relation to civil government shall be
dissolved, and which will raise its real disciples to their
highest glory and happiness, when the monuments of
human genius, art and enterprise, shall be lost in the general
dissolution of nature."
In 1802 Mr. Thomas relinquished his business in Worcester
to his son, who bore his name and shared his tastes.
Though he had acquired an ample fortune he was not a
man to remain idle. He was not merely a printer of books
but a reader, and early began the collection of a library.
Amid the cares of a vast business he always found some
time for reading and study. He was strongly attached to
the art to which, for nearly half a century, he had been
devoted. There was no history of printing in America,
that many of the facts would be irrecoverably lost. He
had known personally the leading printers of his time and
had heard the story of many earlier printers from their
successors. No person then living had so much knowledge
of the subject, not to be found in books—the unwritten history.
But he spares no labor or expense in gathering the
materials for his work. The collection of newspapers for
the purpose, with those he already possessed, made the
largest collection in the country. The modest view of
Mr. Thomas was not so much to write the history as to
collect and preserve the materials for a history. He
"makes no pretence to elegance of diction" but is content
with a plain, unadorned statement of facts;" yet there are
some of the biographical sketches whose easy, simple and
attractive style, reminds us of the greatest American printer,
writer, statesman and thinker.
The result of his researches and labors was the History
of Printing, published in 1810, in two volumes octavo.
Upon the value of this contribution to the history of the
country I will not enlarge. Its general accuracy and
fidelity have been recognized by historians, students, and
antiquarians.
In his business as printer and bookseller, in gathering
the materials for his history of printing, having a deep personal
interest in the annals of a country whose course he
had watched, not idly, from colonial dependence to national
greatness, a lover and reader of books, touched early by
the gentlest of infirmities, bibliomania, he had collected a
library especially rich as to the fountains and springs (fontes
et origines) of American history. His researches had
taught him the value of such a collection; his observation
our history were drying up, how rapidly the monuments
of the past were crumbling and wasting away. He saw
and understood, no man better, from what infinitely varied
and minute sources the history of a nation's life was to be
drawn; that the only safe rule was to gather up all the
fragments so that nothing be lost.
It was in the light of this experience, and with a view to
garner up and preserve the materials of our history, that
he conceived the plan of the American Antiquarian Society,
of making his own library the basis of its collections, and
of giving to the cause of good letters a liberal share of the
fortune he had acquired in their service. It was in January,
1812, that his intent and purpose of founding the society
were first suggested to his friends, the Rev. Dr. Bancroft
and Dr. Oliver Fiske of Worcester. In the spring and
summer of that year, in consultation with them and other
friends, a plan was matured, and on the 12th of October a
petition was presented to the legislature of Massachusetts
for an act of incorporation. The petition was signed by
Isaiah Thomas, William Paine, Levi Lincoln, Nathaniel
Paine, Aaron Bancroft, and Edward Bangs. This was in
the war, when political strife was bitter, but the cause of
letters brought together men who were antipodes in
political faith.
On the 19th of October Mr. Thomas went to Boston to
wait upon the committee to whom the petition had been
referred, and on the 20th a bill was drawn. It passed the
House the 23d, the Senate the 24th, and was approved by
Governor Strong, and became a law the same day. The
petition, in stating the objects of the society, has one line
which is the key to the society's history, "to assist the researches
persons incorporated were among the most eminent citizens
of the commonwealth in all the walks of cultivated life.
The society was organized at the Exchange Coftee House
in Boston on the 19th of November 1812, and Mr. Thomas
elected president.
At the beginning the annual meetings were held in Boston.
On the first, Oct. 23d, 1813, a public address was delivered
at the Stone Chapel by the Rev. Dr. Jenks. In 1814 an
address was delivered in the same church by Dr. Wm.
Paine, and the society was escorted to and from the Chapel
by the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.
The library given by Mr. Thomas, consisting of about
three thousand volumes, was kept for eight years in his
mansion on Court Hill; he, constantly, we might say daily,
adding to its collections. In the fall of 1820, it was removed
to Antiquarian Hall, erected for the society by
Mr. Thomas at a cost of ten thousand dollars. The first
volume of the Collections and Transactions of the society
was also prepared aud published at his expense.
His interest in the society never abated. He was at
work for it diligently and happily to the very close of his
ilfe. He was reëlected president till his death. By his
will he gave funds for the support of a permanent librarian,
and for incidental purposes, amounting in the whole to
twenty-four thousand dollars. His entire gifts to the society
in books, land, building, and legacies by his will, would
not fall short of fifty thousand dollars. His was among
the early examples in our country of giving in a man's
lifetime, and so giving his own, "Defer not charities till
death," says Lord Bacon," for certainly, if a man weigh it
rightly, he that doth so is rather liberal of another man's
his lifetime exceeded those by his will. Indeed, I incline
to the opinion that he gave away in his life more than he
accumulated. Since Mr. Thomas's death, the society has
gone on quietly, without parade, successfully accomplishing
the purpose, gradually becoming more and more clearly
defined, of collecting and preserving the materials of
American history. It has published four volumes of Collections
and Transactions, which, where original, are marked
with precise learning and thorough research; and, where
republications, by careful editing and annotations. It is
not too much to say they are most valuable contributions
to our history. The library has rapidly increased, so that
it has now over fifty-three thousand volumes, reckoning ten
pamphlets as a volume. Thanks to the munificence of its
present president and other friends, it has now a new library
building, and land for its extension, and well invested funds
to the amount of eighty thousand dollars.
The services of Mr. Thomas to his country and to letters
were appreciated and recognized by his fellow citizens.
So far as I can learn, he had no aspirations for political life
or official service. The party to whose principles he constantly
adhered was in the minority at Worcester during
most of his active life. Had it been otherwise, he had
neither taste, nor perhaps any peculiar aptitude, for public
service. Beside this, though just and kind to others, he
liked to do his own thinking, and the free use of lips and
pen; and such men are apt to find the post of honor in a
private station. In that station he wielded a large influence,
and few men of his day were more widely known.
He was made a member of many scientific, historical and
philanthropic societies throughout the country; among numerous
Philadelphia, the New York Historical Society, the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Massachusetts
Historical Society. He received the honorary degree of
Master of Arts from Dartmouth College, and that of Doctor
of Laws from Alleghany College, Pennsylvania.
He died on the 4th of April 1831. His funeral took
place on the 7th, when a very interesting address on his
life and public services was delivered by Isaac Goodwin
Esq. of the Worcester Bar.
This imperfect memoir, the materials for which have
been collected with much tribulation, has shown, I hope,
that, in three things especially, Mr. Thomas rendered valuable
service to his country—as the editor and printer of a
newspaper which was an able and fearless advocate of the
rights of the colonies and of man, as the author of the History
of Printing, and as the founder and benefactor of the
American Antiquarian Society.
In the relations of townsman, neighbor, friend, we have
estimates of his life and character by those who had the
fullest opportunity and capacity to judge. The late Governor
Lincoln, and this is laudari ab laudato viro, in his
pleasant reminiscences of the Worcester Fire Society, thus
speaks of Mr. Thomas. "With a strong and vigorous mind
and a cultivated intellect, enterprise, energy and industry in
early life gave him wealth, and possessed of this, he lived in
courtly style, and with beneficent liberality.* * *He was
a public spirited citizen, generous in his contributions to all
worthy objects, and a most efficient coöperator with others
in promoting the growth, improvement and prosperity of the
place. The city is full of memorials of his good deeds."
Perhaps a higher tribute was paid to him by his counsellor
said that" Young men, just entering into active life, and engaging
in the untried and perplexing mazes of business,
seldom looked to him in vain for advice, for patronage, for
assistance."
William Lincoln, the accomplished historian of Worcester,
familiar with every detail of its record, says: "while
his private charity relieved the distresses, his public munificence
promoted the improvements of the town." After
an enumeration of his benefactions to the municipal corporation
he adds," few local works for the public good were
accomplished without the aid of his purse or efforts."
Mr. Lincoln closes his interesting memoir of Mr. Thomas
with eulogy not more beautiful than it is just. "The incidents
of the life of Dr. Thomas have occupied broad
space in these poor annals. His memory will be kept
green when the recollection of our other eminent citizens
shall have faded in oblivion. His reputation in future
time will rest as a patriot on the manly independence which
gave, through the initiatory stages and progress of the revolution,
the strong influence of the press he directed to the
cause of freedom, when royal flattery and favor would
have seduced, and the powers of government subdued its
action; as an antiquarian, by the minuteness and fidelity of
research in the History of Printing; as a philanthropist, on
the foundation and support of a great national society
whose usefulness, with the blessing of Providence, will increase
through distant centuries."
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