Section 1: Resisting British Colonial Rule
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Section 1: Resisting British Colonial Rule
These items all come from the United States’ familiar origin story: resistance to British colonial rule. Some of these forms of resistance are familiar—the satirical print on the burial of the Stamp Act, or Thomas Paine’s impassioned political argument in Common Sense. Paine’s pamphlet was just as important as a piece of nonfiction writing as it was a political polemic; its clear, direct writing exemplified a new prose style. Other forms of resistance represented here may seem less familiar. Why was poetry such a common vehicle of protest? The 1766 broadside printed in German simultaneously includes praise of King George III and a poem denouncing the Stamp Act. Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral(published in 1773) was the first book of poetry published in America by a Black woman. Most of the poems in the book are religious in nature, but Wheatley’s ode “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth” directly attacks slavery, and undercuts the colonists’ complaints of tyranny suffered at the hands of the British by comparing them to her experience of having been stolen from her parents as a child in Africa. The rebus at the far end of the case reminds us that much of the printed resistance to British domination of the American colonies was actually created in Britain, by supporters of the colonial cause. The use of a rebus—an art form often associated with writing for children—to carry a political message illustrates that resistance could take unexpected forms.
This broadside celebrating the repeal of the Stamp Act in May 1766 was likely printed by the German immigrant Anton Armbrüster, who was active in Philadelphia from 1753 to 1768. The Stamp Act was particularly hated by printers, since it imposed a new tax specifically on paper (all paper used in the colonies had to bear an official government stamp, thus the name). The broadside presents what to our eyes is an unusual combination of a striking woodcut and a religious poem at the top with a commentary on current events (the repeal of the Stamp Act) on the bottom half. (It’s difficult to know exactly what to make of the looming volcano in the image at the top, with the word “Freiheit,” or “Freedom,” at right, perhaps being proclaimed by the figure being resurrected from the dead.) Armbrüster may have welcomed the repeal of the Stamp Act, but he was smart enough to try to play both sides, as the large text at the bottom of the broadside declares “God bless our gracious King George.”
Philadelphia den 19ten May 1766 (Repeal of the Stamp Act). Philadelphia, 1766. Attributed to Anton Armbrüster.
The Stamp Act generated passionate opposition among the American colonists when it was implemented in 1765. Many colonists decided to boycott all British imported goods. The British economy depended on revenue from its colonies, so in 1766 Parliament, under pressure from the Marquess of Rockingham, the new Prime Minister, repealed the Stamp Act. This satirical cartoon was printed to celebrate the act’s repeal. But it is a bit disingenuous to describe it as an example of “resistance,” since this print was in fact commissioned by the Marquess of Rockingham himself to help sway public opinion in favor of repeal. Benjamin Wilson’s satire on the “death” of the Stamp Act (which is being carried off in a child’s coffin by a procession of British politicians, including George Grenville and Lord Bute) became one of the most popular satirical prints of the 1760s, on both sides of the Atlantic. The cartoon also celebrates the benefits of resumed trade. The sign on the warehouse proclaims “Goods NOW ship’d for America,” and the three ships in the harbor carrying goods from Britain carry the names “Conway,” “Rockingham,” and “Grafton,” three of the leading politicians who pushed for the act’s repeal.
The Repeal, or, The Funeral Procession of Miss Americ-Stamp. N.p., 1766.
This is the first American edition of Phillis Wheatley’s book of poems. This copy is a recent acquisition, and is the only copy of this book held in an institution not on the East Coast. Wheatley’s book was first published in London in 1773, with the support of several prominent British abolitionists (although Wheatley herself was still enslaved). Poems on Various Subjects has long been critiqued for its excessive piety and formalism. Yet critics today are reading the poems in new ways that call attention to their often pointed criticisms of slavery.
Perhaps Wheatley’s most explicit expression of protest in the book is her ode “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth,” who had been newly appointed secretary of state for the Colonies.
The poem’s third stanza answered a question that the poem imputed to Dartmouth, and likely to other readers: why would an enslaved young woman be writing about freedom? Wheatley’s answer did not pull any punches:
Poem
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?
By explicitly comparing the colonists’ complaints about “tyranny” with her own experience of having been stolen from her parents, brought across the ocean, and sold as a slave, Wheatley used poetry—the most popular literary form of the Revolutionary era—to support the colonial cause while at the same time undercutting the colonists’ complaints by highlighting the difference between colonial oppression and chattel slavery, between taxation without representation and her parents’ loss of their child.
Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Philadelphia: Joseph Cruikshank, 1786.
America to Her Mistaken Mother. London: Matthew Darly, May 11, 1778.
This letter in the form of a rebus was a response to the Carlisle Peace Commission of 1778, which followed the American colonies’ alliance with France. The Carlisle Commission was Britain’s first official attempt to negotiate a peace with the American colonies during the Revolutionary War. Headed by the Earl of Carlisle (who was seen as too inexperienced to be given such an important assignment), the Commission offered the Second Continental Congress a limited form of self-rule, which would have included representation in Parliament. The Congress replied by demanding that American independence be recognized and that all British troops be withdrawn from the colonies. Thomas Paine, Gouverneur Morris, and other prominent patriots attacked the Commission’s proposals in print, and the Marquis de Lafayette reportedly challenged Carlisle to a duel. Yet the Commission also faced significant opposition in Britain as well as in America. This rebus was printed in London, and is an example of the amount of printed material opposed to the war effort that appeared in Britain.
Can you figure out what it says?
Decoded Text
“America, to her mistaken mother:
You silly old woman, that you have sent a dove to us is very plain, to draw our attention from our real interests, but we are determined to abide by our own ways of thinking. Your five children you have sent to us shall be treated as visitors and safely sent home again. You may trust them and admire them, but you must not expect one of your puppets will come home to you as sweet as you sent him. ‘Twas cruel to send so pretty a man so many thousand miles and to have the fatigue of returning back after bobbing his coat and dirtying those red-heeled shoes. If you are wise, follow your own advice you gave to me. Take home your ships [and] soldiers. Guard well your own trifling and leave me to my self, as I am at age to know my own interests without your foolish advice, and know that I shall always regard you and my brothers as relations but not as friends.
I am your greatly injured
Daughter Amerik”
Pictured to the right is an excerpt of Thomas Paine’s impassioned political argument in Common Sense:
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America was first published in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776, and became THE runaway bestseller in Britain’s American colonies. It’s difficult to overstate the impact of Paine’s pamphlet. Additional printings of the book appeared the same week, and after three months it had sold over 120,000 copies of multiple editions produced by printers up and down the East Coast, including this example from Newport, Rhode Island. By the end of the Revolutionary War, over 500,000 copies were in print, all produced in America. Paine’s plain-spoken yet passionate argument for separation from Britain made it one of the most influential American books–in both its politics and prose style–of the late 18th century.
Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, by Thomas Paine, Newport: Solomon Southwick, 1776.
