Broadside; Great Britain Declares an American Insurgency
Boston: Edes & Gill, 1775. Letterpress broadside (7 1/2” X 9 3/4”), reprinting (in the first week of April), “The Address of the Lords and Commons to his Majesty, on the present State of America, &c” an extract in 2 columns, with a 2 line title, from The London Gazette of 11 February, 1775. Hard evidence in extravagant prose, a report from Parliament to King George III (Feb. 7th with attachments to Feb. 11th), in which Parliament finds that the province of Massachusetts Bay is in outright revolt against the Crown (“a rebellion at this time actually exists”). It makes provisions to quell the insurrection by urging action (initially a march on April 18, to arrest John Hancock and John Adams in Lexington, and to confiscate the colonial arsenal in Concord), and by supporting a declaration of war with the dispatch to the colonies of reinforcements (4,500 additional troops arrived on June 17). Chips to the blank margins, and only the blank margins, paper toned to tan, else very good, complete and never repaired, welcome condition for American paper of this vintage. 8 other copies of similar versions of this broadside, printed in New York and Philadelphia, are recorded (1 of them in private hands, the other 7 institutionalized just where you might expect them to be, in the high profile university and national libraries), but this is the only known copy of the one printed by Edes & Gill in Boston (identified by type match, and now registered with the American Antiquarian Society for their National American Imprints Project). The 2 month delay from the text’s appearance in The London Gazette approximates the time it took for a merchant ship carrying copies of the newspaper to load items of higher priority than newspapers and sail to Boston (or Salem, or Marblehead). Very good. Item #264
Price:
$65,000.00