The Boston Gazette was a newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts, in the British North American colonies. It began publication December 21, 1719 and appeared weekly. It should not be confused with the Boston Gazette. The Boston Gazette was probably the most influential newspaper ever in American history. The Boston News-Letter, the first successful newspaper in the Colonies had begun its long run in 1704. In 1741 the Boston Gazette incorporated the New-England Weekly Journal and became the Boston-Gazette, or New-England Weekly Journal. Contributors included: Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Phyllis Wheatley. Publishers, and men acting their behalf, included:
victim. Boston Gazette, 19 March 1770. Engraving by Paul Revere. The paper's masthead vignette, produced by Paul Revere shows a seated Britannia with Liberty cap on staff, freeing a bird from a cage. Motto: "Containing the freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestic" This issue is often reprinted. "After the Revolution 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."
acquired a packet of about twenty letters that had been written to Thomas Whately, an assistant to Prime Minister George Grenville. Upon reading them, Franklin concluded that Massachusetts Lieutenant GovernorThomas Hutchinson and his colonial secretaryAndrew Oliver, had mischaracterized the situation in the colonies, and thus misled Parliament. He felt that wider knowledge of these letters would then focus colonial anger away from Parliament and at those who had written the misleading letters. Franklin sent the letters to Thomas Cushing, the speaker of the Massachusetts assembly, in December 1772. He specifically wrote to Cushing that the letters should be seen only by a few people, and that he was not "at liberty to make the letters public." The letters arrived in Massachusetts in March 1773, and came into the hands of Samuel Adams, then serving as the clerk of the Massachusetts assembly. By Franklin's instructions, only a select few people, including the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence, were to see the letters. Alarmed at what they read, Cushing wrote Franklin, asking if the restrictions on their circulation could be eased. In a response received by Cushing in early June, Franklin reiterated that they were not to be copied or published, but could be shown to anyone A longtime opponent of Hutchinson's, Samuel Adams informed the assembly of the existence of the letters, after which it designated a committee to analyze them. Strategic leaks suggestive of their content made their way into the press and political discussions, causing Hutchinson much discomfort. The assembly eventually concluded, according to John Hancock, that in the letters Hutchinson sought to "overthrow the Constitution of this Government, and to introduce arbitrary Power into the Province", and called for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver. Hutchinson complained that Adams and the opposition were misrepresenting what he had written, and that nothing he had written in them on the subject of Parliamentary supremacy went beyond other statements he had made. The letters were finally published in the Boston Gazette in mid-June 1773, causing a political firestorm in Massachusetts and raising significant questions in England.
American Revolution
For years before the first shots were fired at Lexington Green, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, Josiah Quincy, James Otis, Edes and Gill were writing article after article in the Boston Gazette, rebelling against royal authority. Adams wrote so many articles, under so many pen names, historians don't even know exactly how many he wrote. It was the Boston Gazette that hired Paul Revere to create his famous engraving of the Boston Massacre. The British officials hated the Boston Gazette. British officers placed the paper's name on a list of enemy institutions to be captured, and if possible, laid waste. Those trumpeters of sedition, Edes and Gill, were to be put out of business once and for all. The Sons of Liberty met at the Boston Gazette. It was there that they darkened their faces, disguising themselves as Mohawk Indians before setting out to dump British tea into Boston Harbor at the Boston Tea Party. Samuel Adams practically lived at the Boston Gazette.
