The Adulterer, Part I: Context

            Moved by recent events – too many, I think, to name specifically – and not a little bit inspired by what I consider to be a fairly successful deviation from the accustomed focus of these posts witnessed of these months just passed, I’ve decided to once again follow my present whimsy in what is, for me, a rather unusual direction. For the next several weeks, I’m not going to be discussing a treaty, a constitution, a public address, or a statute. Nor am I going to spend what is most assuredly an inordinate amount of time alternately picking apart or rhapsodizing the polemic scribblings of men who have been dead for longer than the nation in which I was born and reside has existed. I will, of course, return to such things in due time. My particular neurosis, you see, is incurable, though I may from time to time succeed in holding it at bay. This present moment is one of those times, as it happens. And so, with your indulgence, dear reader, I’d like to discuss something which on the surface would appear almost entirely out of place in an orthodox discussion of the documentary history of the American Founding. I’d like to talk about a piece of art – a play, in fact – that was created by a woman.

            Here I shall pause for effect.

            Pausing…pausing…

            Very good.

            Yes, a play. It is, in fairness, a drama whose political overtones are painfully obvious, so you see I have not wholly taken leave of my senses. Its author has also already been a subject of this series, though it was in her role as a political commentator and polemicist. I speak, of course, of one Mercy Otis Warren. Having done so, however, I feel compelled to admit that it is something of a shame that the only women whose work has been heretofore discussed in this forum shall be forced to remain so for the present. I would so like to explore the written efforts of other members of her sex, provided they are in some way relevant to the American Founding, but ready examples are not always so easy to find. I will, rest assured, continue my periodic search for such things. For the moment, however, we shall remain in the capable hands of Mrs. Warren. Hardly a consolation prize, I think – rather more a privilege – for the article to be examined henceforth is a rare and valuable thing.

            First published in 1773, The Adulterer was a compact, five-act drama intended as a send-up of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson (1711-1780) and an encomium to the virtue, the fortitude, and the prudence of her fellow citizens of Massachusetts. Granted, she did not portray these things quite as plainly as that. As per the customs of contemporary satire, all subjects and settings under discussion were given false names. Massachusetts was “Upper Servia” and Hutchinson portrayed as “Rapatio” – because people in the 18^th century, it turns out, liked bad wordplay as much as the creators of Rocky & Bullwinkle.  Rapatio’s various hangers-on, meanwhile, were given foolish-sounding names like “Hazelrod,” “Dupe,” and “Gripeall” and the good people of Servia granted noble Roman monikers like “Brutus,” “Junius,” and “Portius.” Subtlety, in short, was not much in evidence. And yet, in the bold strokes with which Warren painted her heroes and her villains it is possible to discern something of the popular mood in colonial Massachusetts on the very eve of the Revolutionary War. Hutchinson was not the tyrant Rapatio, and the colony he governed not the benighted land of Servia. In 1773, however, this mattered but little.

            While treatises and broadsides like John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1767-1768) or Thomas Jefferson’s A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774) explained at length what certain American colonists thought about British attempts to subvert their accustomed prerogatives, examples of artistic expression like The Adulterer seemed more interested in attempting to articulate how the crisis then unfolding made the citizens of British American feel. If her fellow citizens responded to Warren’s portrait of their plight – and indeed they did – it was no doubt because it felt to them like the truth. Or perhaps it was a matter of aspiration. The ancient Roman past that Warren was so keen to allude to in her dramatic recasting of the plight of Massachusetts was never as noble as 18^th century commentators made it seem. Orators and statesmen like Cato the Younger (95BC – 46BC) and Cicero (106BC – 43BC) may well have been good, honest, noble men who were truly worthy of admiration, but the society from which they emerged was often plagued by corruption, civil war, and a latent quality of authoritarianism. By the same token, colonial Massachusetts could hardly have been considered a bastion of 18^th century Enlightenment thought. Culturally conservative and staid, censorious, and equally characterized by a self-interested merchant class and a petty governing elite, the country of Warren’s birth did not favorably compare to the contemporary ideal of the balanced and virtuous Roman Republic.

            Warren’s intention, therefore, by portraying contemporary Massachusetts using decidedly Roman cultural markers, was perchance not to draw a literal comparison between the two societies. Rather, by using the image of ancient Rome that had come to exist within the discourse of the philosophical Enlightenment – with its self-sacrificing statesmen, carefully-constructed government, and lionization of public service – as a kind of costume for her like-minded countrymen, she perhaps sought to inspire and channel their better impulses towards a useful end. And just as 18^th century students of ancient Rome needed figures like Julius Caesar (100BC – 44BC), Sulla (138BC – 78BC), and Catiline (108BC – 62BC) to represent the forces of corruption, avarice, and the betrayal of republicans ideals, Warren needed her Rapatio to take on the role of traitor and autocrat against which the citizens of Servia could set themselves as defenders of all that was good, and virtuous, and rational. Thus, as good satire often does, The Adulterer portrayed a heightened version of reality that bent the facts to suit its author’s intentions without twisting them so as to appear wholly unrecognizable. The people of Massachusetts, therefore, saw in the good people of Servia a version of themselves to which they might conceivably have aspired. And in Rapatio they saw a version of Governor Hutchinson which many of them doubtless expected was far too near at hand.

Ah, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, as always, let’s have a word or two on some of our principle players, and then several more on the times in which they lived and worked.

            As Warren’s biography was presented upon her first appearance in these pages some months ago, what follows will naturally be somewhat abridged. Of her birth and upbringing, it will suffice to say that she was born in 1732 in Barnstable, Massachusetts, that she was the third of thirteen children born to James Otis, Sr. (1702-1778) and Mary Allyne (1702-1774), that her father was a prominent lawyer and statesman, and that Mercy was accordingly raised in a household that prized literacy and tended towards a high degree of political engagement. Between studying under family tutor Johnathan Russell and aiding her brother James Jr. (1725-1783) with his graduate readings at Harvard, she managed to acquire an education of uncommon depth for a woman in 18^th century Massachusetts. She subsequently put this intellectual cultivation to use, after having married Plymouth lawyer and merchant James Warren (1726-1808), as a fervent supporter, correspondent, and counsellor to a number of local political organizations – the infamous Sons of Liberty chief among them – as they became increasingly concerned by the emerging crisis between Great Britain and its American colonies. In consequence, over the course of the 1760s and early 1770s, Warren maintained regular contact with such soon-to-be-prominent figures as John (1735-1826) and Abigail (1744-1818), and Samuel (1722-1803) Adams, hosted political meetings in her Plymouth home, and even began to put her budding literary prowess to public use with the publication of several highly satirical plays. The first of these, The Adulterer, was published anonymously in preview on March 22^nd, 1772 in the Massachusetts Spy, with a completed edition available the following year.  

            As mentioned above, the antagonist of Warren’s Adulterer, the tyrannical Rapatio, was intended as a pastiche of one Thomas Hutchinson, then Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Since Hutchinson’s life has likewise been related in these pages – in the final entry on one of Benjamin Franklin’s own satirical efforts – the following chronicle will once again strive for brevity.

          
            Born in 1711 to a prominent merchant family in the North End of Boston, Hutchinson graduated from Harvard at age sixteen, became established in business at age twenty-one, and entered politics at age twenty-six. Serving first as a Boston Selectman, he was thereafter elected to the colonial legislature in 1728, lost his seat in 1739 because of his opposition to the use of paper currency, was re-elected in 1742, and defeated again in 1749. These recurrent setbacks notwithstanding, Hutchinson was thereafter appointed to the Massachusetts Legislative Council, granted a seat on the Court of Common Pleas, and became Lieutenant-Governor in 1758 and Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature – in spite of the post having been earlier promised to James Otis Sr. – in 1760. Despite – or perhaps because of – this steady rise within the ranks of the colonial elite, however, the pinnacle of Hutchinson’s professional success proved also to herald the most trying years of his life. Between 1760 and his recall from the governorship in 1774, his every official action seemed to meet with accusations of tyranny and corruption by the increasingly belligerent – and increasingly organized – opposition to the colony’s traditional elite.

            In spite of his personal opposition to the passage and implementation of the Stamp Act (1765), for instance, his efforts to promote a moderate response by the colonial legislature earned him the epithet of traitor among his countrymen. This perception was hardly allayed by his first official act as Governor in 1771. Commensurate with instructions from London, the colonial legislature was to be relocated from Boston to Cambridge – away from the influence of the former city’s radicals. This met with yet another firestorm of criticism, which in turn evolved into a lengthy and passionate public debate between Hutchinson and his opponents over issues of executive authority, taxation, and parliamentary supremacy. The results were effectively twofold. First, Hutchinson’s ardently Tory-leaning positions left him increasingly isolated from his fellow countrymen in Massachusetts. Second, by effectively tying his own personal unpopularity to the efforts of Parliament to assert its sovereignty over the colonies, British colonial authorities observed that their chosen magistrate seemed only to have succeeded in further radicalizing elements of the colonial population who were otherwise moderate in their views. When a packet of latter written by Hutchinson to a correspondent in Britain – in which he expressed opinions unfavorable to the Massachusetts radical position and promoted increased executive authority at the behest of the colonial legislature – subsequently found their way into print, it didn’t take long for the colonial legislature to begin drafting a request for his immediate recall. This request was eventually granted in the aftermath of the so-called “Boston Tea Party” of December, 1773, and Hutchinson sailed for London in June, 1774.

            At this point it perhaps also bears remembering – to some degree of detail – that much of what transpired in the lives of Warren and Hutchinson that is of particular interest to the forthcoming discussion took place against a backdrop of political tension and civil unrest. From where these condition arose is – I hope – well-known at this point. Nevertheless, a brief overview of events in the Thirteen Colonies through 1773:

            By the conclusion of the Seven Years War (1754-1763), Great Britain’s national debt had risen to a new and entirely unprecedented extreme at the same time that its military establishment had also grown tremendously. Eager to both retire the staggering obligations they had accrued and see to the continued employment of hundreds of army officers from well-connected families, the government of Prime Minister George Grenville (1712-1770) hit upon a controversial solution. Revenue was to be raised from Britain’s possessions in America through legislation like the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765), the stated purpose of which would be to fund the continued defense of said possessions by the surplus officers and their respective commands. While these measures effectively side-stepped the issue of either raising taxes in Britain itself or establishing a standing army in a nation whose political culture was violently opposed to the very idea, the response from Britain’s subjects in America was far from sanguine. A tax on sugar or on revenue stamps notwithstanding, it was the apparent violation of their accustomed rights that the colonists took particular issue with. Inculcated with many of the same core political and cultural values as their cousins in Britain, Americans from Massachusetts to Georgia vociferously objected both to the stationing of military personal in their home countries during a time of peace and to the levying of taxes by a legislature in which not one of them enjoyed direct representation. The Grenville Ministry, though otherwise willing to grant the primacy of these convictions, meanwhile reacted poorly to what they perceived as a challenge to the supremacy of Parliament and the loyalty it felt British subjects in America owed to the Crown. The result, in the immediate, was something of an impasse.

            For their part, colonial governments in America agreed amongst themselves to the need for a collective response to British intransigence. The resulting Stamp Act Congress of 1765 – during which delegations from nine colonies met in New York City for the purpose of crafting a strategy of resistance – generated a series of joint petitions intended to convey the shared objections of Britain’s American subjects to both Parliament and King George III (1738-1820), as well as plans for a non-importation agreement intended to secure the repeal of the hated statutes. While British authorities were alarmed by the decidedly unauthorized nature of the New York meeting, the complaints of British merchants which resulted from a total American boycott of their manufactured goods eventually succeeded in pressuring the vulnerable government of the Marquess of Rockingham (1730-1782) into replacing the Sugar Act and nullifying the Stamp Act. That this latter action was accompanied by a formal declaration by Parliament that it nevertheless possessed the unequivocal right to make law for the colonies in all cases, however, did not appear to bode well for the colonies. The subsequent passage of the Townshend Acts (1767) – a series of taxes on goods like paper, paint, and lead – seemed amply to bear this out. Colonists again widely rejected the premise of being taxed by a legislature in which they did not enjoy representation, and found additional fault in the notoriously corrupt Board of Customs Commissioners established in Boston to see the taxes collected and the heavy-handed tactics of the Admiralty Courts assigned to prosecute alleged violators. Smuggling became rampant, riots more and more common, and the attitudes of both sides seemed daily to harden.

            In the midst of these tensions, newly-appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Hillsborough (1718-1793) made the arguably fatal decision to deploy military force as a means of ensuring colonial cooperation. First, the warship HMS Romney was stationed in Boston Harbor as a means of countering continued attempts to circumvent customs duties via the smuggling of taxed goods. Second, in response to the harassment regularly suffered by customs officials and the popular ire generated by the attempted prosecution of local residents accused of violating the Townshend duties, four regiments of the British Army under General Thomas Gage (1719-1787) were garrisoned in Boston beginning in October of 1768. While two of these regiments were removed shortly thereafter in 1769, the two that remained proved more than capable of arousing the suspicion and resentment of the city’s civilian population all on their own. The events of March 5, 1770 paid fatal heed to this conviction. Following an altercation between an apprentice wigmaker and a British sentry outside the Custom House on State Street, a confrontation between a growing mob of incensed Bostonians and a hastily-assembled patrol of British regulars ended in bloodshed when the soldiers fired into the crowd. Three people were killed instantly, one died the next morning, and another passed away two weeks later. Thomas Hutchinson, then acting-Governor of Massachusetts, arrived on the scene shortly thereafter and struggled to reassert order. Eventually the crowd was dispersed, the British soldiers arrested, and charges of murder drawn against them. The trial that followed – one of the most closely-watched in the history of Massachusetts, and during which Boston lawyer John Adams acted for the defence – ended in acquittal for six of the eight accused and guilty verdicts on charges of manslaughter for the remaining two.     

            The already tenuous relationship between the people and government of Massachusetts and the Crown and Parliament of Britain took on an increasingly volatile aspect in the years that followed what quickly became known – thanks in no small part to the agitations of Boston radicals like Samuel Adams – as the Boston Massacre. While, soon after his ascension to the post of Prime Minister in 1770, Lord North (1732-1792) oversaw the repeal of most of the import taxes that had so aroused the anger of Britain’s American subjects, his government’s conviction that a tax on tea should remain – and that Parliament still possessed the inherent right to levy taxes upon the colonies of British America – did little to avert this potentially fatal trajectory. Indeed, it was the continuation and expansion of duties on tea that precipitated the next major episode in the series of events leading to outright war between the Thirteen Colonies and the Kingdom of Great Britain. Eager to aid the financially-struggling East India Company, and desirous of colonial recognition of its claimed right to tax, the North Ministry devised the Tea Act (1773) as a means of accomplishing both objectives simultaneously. Under its terms, Company tea could be exported from British warehouses duty free, shipped directly to ports in North America, offloaded by authorized co-signees in the colonies, and sold at a price deemed low enough to undercut the cost of smuggled Dutch tea. As the established Townshend duty on tea would remain in force, the relative savings compared to the contraband product would theoretically ensure the tacit public acceptance of Parliament’s acclaimed right of taxation.   

  

            In point of fact, however, the residents of the various British American colonies were not so easily distracted by the lure of a good bargain. Conscious of the political implications of the Tea Act, associations of merchants – whose business as importers of legal goods was being undercut – and smugglers – whose role as supplier of untaxed goods was similarly threatened – organized to harass Company co-signees and prevent the Company product from being offloaded or sold in American ports. In some cases this campaign resulted in tea being returned by ship to Britain, while in others it simply meant that the offending product was left to rot on ships anchored in American ports. Thomas Hutchinson, now fully the Governor of Massachusetts, sought to avoid the former outcome by order Company ships to remain anchored in Boston Harbor while prevailing upon local merchants to see reason. On December 16^th, 1773, a small group of Bostonians took matters into their own hands. Disguised as Native Americans, a contingent of men boarded the Company ships and threw over three hundred chests of tea – the entire shipment – into the harbor. This “Boston Tea Party” subsequently inspired similar acts of defiance in other American ports where Company tea remained unloaded, enjoyed a full-throated defence from radicals like Samuel Adams, and brought about the harshest reprisals yet seen from a British Parliament now utterly convinced that America was on the verge of insurrection.