Arsonist: The Most Dangerous Man in America

by Nathan Allen

  The Life of Furio. In Croatia. His Descent. Education, at school, Colledge, at the Bar. Historians relate that he was greatly slandered, by a story of a Bastard of a Negro, his Wrath at Plymouth, at Boston he heads the Trade, brings Actions, fails, is chosen Representative, quarrells with the Governor, Lieutenant, Council, House, Custom house officers, Gentlemen of the Army, the Bar, retails prosody, writes upon Money, Prov. sloop.

  These are the notes for satirical pieces that John Adams intended to write later but never did; apparently he changed his opinion of Otis. But at the time, Jemmy Otis seemed inscrutable to the young, impressionable John Adams. The reference to a “Bastard of a Negro” actually refers to Joseph Otis’s involvement in the criminal trial involving a neighbor’s slave girl in 1750. But by 1763, Jemmy’s enemies were circulating the story with his name attached as the antagonist. “Furio” is probably a reasonable example of the opinion held of Otis by members of the bench and bar in early 1763. But part of the problem for Adams was doubtless that he was no sophisticated insider in early 1763; he did not know about the machinations of Boston politics and the ugliness of the exercise of power. Otis was fighting demons that did not yet exist for Adams. And the young Adams was also confused because it seemed as if Otis was attacking other members of the small group of highly influential men who controlled the province: the tight little club of Harvard graduates who worked with each other in the court and council rooms, who owned successful merchant businesses and farm land, who were part of the elite clique of provincial aristocrats. Adams saw the world much as Hutchinson did: there are differences of opinion amongst the group in power, but those differences could not be permitted to challenge the power of the group. Adams also still believed in the feudal constructs of deference and status. Disagreement was fine, polite disagreement in public was acceptable, but public feuds with other members of the group defied the ideas of deference and status.

  Membership into the broader group in power was somewhat fluid; merchants came and went; new representatives from unknown families occasionally appeared on the scene. But the demons Otis was fighting included an increasingly powerful and indomitable ruling class determined more by heredity than merit, repeated attempts by the small ruling class to usurp power from the broader group in power, and a general apathy – or so it seemed – to these problems. Adams shared that apparent apathy; Jemmy’s “Monopolizers of offices, Peculators, Informers, and generally the Seekers of all kinds” did not alarm Adams in 1763. In some ways, John Adams would always be a bit less savvy and a bit more aristocratic than his revolutionary peers.

  ***

  a little paper war

  Efforts to influence the debate through the media had previously occurred, but Otis’s tactic using the media to pressure office holders and directly influence policy was revolutionary and increasingly powerful; by early January of 1763, both the Court Party and the Popular Party had begun to aggressively engage the media to influence public debate. “Media” in 1763 consisted mostly of newspapers and pamphlets, though it could be argued that hanging someone in effigy, lengthy courtroom summations, and giving speeches were similarly media events. Sometimes articles and pamphlets were published anonymously, sometimes with fictitious names, and sometimes with the author’s real name. Sometimes people and places were named in print, sometimes fairly transparent allegory was used, and sometimes the piece was purely theoretical and philosophical. Pieces were often written quickly; newspaper articles were written longhand in just a few hours and delivered to the printer. Typically there were few or no revisions or editorial input. Sometimes it took months to compose a pamphlet, and yet some were dashed off in a few days. Often, an author would publish two or three articles in quick succession, expanding on ideas, correcting mistakes, clarifying issues. Articles by different authors were also often published in quick succession, debating points in the other’s article, responding to questions and challenges, and incorporating events of the day. This media world was extremely fluid and fast-paced, and perhaps most unusual in such small circles of paper and pamphlet readers, many did not know the authors behind the anonymous or fictitious bylines.

  On February 14, 1763, two letters started their six week cruise from Boston to London. In one, Hutchinson expressed despondency to Bollan: “I have no news to write. I am out of humor this fortnight by an infamous piece in one of our papers wrote by young Otis. …Whether he has abused you or me the most I am at a loss. I have the satisfaction that people in general are very angry with him. I have no remedy but patience.” In the second letter, Jemmy apologized to Jasper Mauduit for failing to secure his brother Israel’s appointment as a lobbyist and for including Mauduit’s name in “a little paper war.”

  “A little paper war” was an understated designation for one of the most ferocious and explosive public political battles ever witnessed in the colonies. In a letter to Edmund Quincy, Andrew Belcher described it as a “Bear Garden,” and Samuel Mather gave a more straitlaced description to his son in a letter dated June 30, 1763, “The News Papers for a good many Weeks past have been filled partly with Mr Otis’s wild and abusive Reflections on your Uncle [Thomas Hutchinson] and others; and partly with some satyrical Remarks on his Performances.”

  The genesis of the war was most likely the increasing frustration of the Popular Party due to the Council’s entrenched position against Popular Party efforts and Court Party puppet Judge Ruggles’s control of the House. Further aggravating the sense that the Popular Party wasn’t making progress, the governor had suspended the General Court for most of the year, so it hardly met anyway. Debate in the usual forums was being stifled, and the Popular Party’s message wasn’t being heard; the momentum they had built up over the previous two years was waning, which was part of the Court Party’s plan and an echo of the way in which Jemmy Allen had been relegated to obscurity in the 1750s. The Popular Party decided to reignite debate and hopefully energize its base with an unsigned article, almost certainly authored by Jemmy Otis, in the Gazette of January 17, 1763. The article praised Jasper Mauduit’s work as agent, highlighting his low commission charges and his successes in obtaining reimbursement for the cost of maintaining troops at Louisbourg even though Bollan had advised against seeking such reimbursement. This article appeared at the culmination of the clash in the Assembly over the attempts to include Jasper Mauduit’s brother as London lobbyist. The Court Party had previously either not responded to media attacks from the Popular Party or replied with very reserved, somewhat academic responses that one would expect from those who considered themselves aristocrats instilled with the concepts of deference and status; fighting for popular approval in public forums was beneath them. But in a sign that the Court Party believed they had lost the previous public battles and that public opinion was becoming an increasingly essential component to maintaining power, the response to Otis’s fairly tame January 17th article was immediate and brutal.

  The first attack was a crafty “notice” that appeared in the Court Party’s paper of choice, the Boston Evening-Post. The printer’s notice read: “A.Z.’s piece relating to Mr. Mauduit’s being chose Agent,” and his “Ignorance of public Affairs” was “not prudent to publish till the author discovers himself.” The short, sarcastic notice was the talk of the town. Of course, the “A.Z. piece” was never printed nor ever intended to be printed, but its contents were soon the subject of debate; the printers, John and Thomas Fleet, even had a manuscript at their printing offices that they would reveal to anyone interested, including Jemmy Otis.

  The fake notice was a sly but effective public relations stunt that created tremendous gossip. The Popular Party leaders were incensed by Thomas Fleet’s ploy and a full assault against the Evening-Post and its writers swiftly developed. Jemmy opened the assault with an unsigned article in the Gazette targeted at Thomas Goldthwait, Bernard’s newly appointed Secretary at War, for disparaging Mauduit on the floor of the House, and the following week Jemmy returned to attack Goldthwait as the “cert
ain stuttering, sputtering Military Scribe, a notorious tool” who delivered the offensive “A.Z.” essay to the Evening- Post. The primary target of this article, however, was lieutenant governor Thomas Hutchinson, whom Jemmy identified as the probable author of the “A.Z.” article. Jemmy portrayed Hutchinson as “a tall, slender, fair complexioned, fair spoken ‘very good Gentleman,’” whose “Beauty has captivated half the pretty Ladies, his Finess more than half the pretty Gentlemen.” The attack on Hutchinson’s feudal aristocratic accouterments was vicious and widely considered infamous. Otis had turned aristocratic characteristics from being positive attributes to blights on one’s personality and manliness.

  The “paper war” continued into the spring and grew increasingly malicious with each article, saturating the pages of the Evening-Post and Gazette with the usual allusion and allegory and a new dose of insinuation and slander. The Court Party realized that Jemmy Otis was a formidable opponent, and they were not willing to lose another public battle; the result of the Court Party’s determination to win was to expose the Popular Party’s caucus system and clubs – a secret John Adams discovered in the papers. These early merchant societies and proto-Sons of Liberty groups usually kept their public images low, but the Court Party revealed their existence in gossipy and sarcastic articles; the Court Party was suggesting to the people of Boston that the real danger to liberty was a small group of populists and merchants who controlled Massachusetts politics. The Court Party’s other avenue of attack was leveled at Jemmy Otis personally; while some had previously suggested that only a madman would risk a successful future by expressing seditious and treasonous views, the Court Party writers made a concerted effort to plant those ideas firmly into the public consciousness: sedition, treason, madness. Repeatedly, publically and privately, Otis’s mental health was questioned; the whisper campaign was aggressive and brutal. If the Court Party could not win the argument, they would destroy the person.

  The Evening-Post Court Party writers, particularly “J,” divulged the “Caucas” operations and labeled Otis “Bluster,” Royall Tyler “Pug Sly,” and Thomas Dawes “Adjutant Trowel.” After Jemmy’s disappearance from the public stage in early February, a scathing article by “J” provoked him anew, and he returned in the Gazette of February 28, occupying the entire front page and another column. He began by assailing the Evening-Post and lampooning the “master secretary at war.” Then he confessed that since he supported “Liberty of the Press” he could not protest if others printed scurrilous articles about him and taunted his critics by saying “Go on then Evening Posts, Pimps, Parasites, Sycophants, Predicting Parsons and Pedagogues, I am ready for ye all.” The “Predicting Parson” was probably East Apthorp, the new and heralded Anglican minister of Cambridge. East Apthorp was what Mayhew termed a “Spye” for the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,” the “Foreign Part” being Cambridge. Technically, he was a missionary, but his presence was exactly what the Boston dissenters had hoped Mauduit would forestall. Mayhew was directly referencing Apthorp when he wrote to Mauduit in December 18, 1764, pleading for him to ensure “that no more Missionaries shall be sent to New England.” The Pedagogue was John Lovell, Otis’s friend and master of Boston Latin School who had angered Jemmy by publically criticizing his treatment of Hutchinson. Again, those within the broader group in power were confused and angered by attacks on people they perceived as belonging to their group, and nearly everyone wanted to believe that they belonged to same group as Thomas Hutchinson. And most believed they could curry favor within the group by defending and deferring to the powerful Hutchinson.

  But Otis continued the attacks; he argued against plural office holding, “Projects for keeping the people poor in order to make them humble,” province officers holding commissions at the pleasure of the “junto,” and rumors of plans to keep a standing army in the colonies. And finally, he was speaking of himself when he mockingly invoked those who had the “unparalled impudence” to defend themselves against government infringement. He ridiculed the oligarchy’s attitude by declaring, again referring to himself, that such people “shall be deemed seditious, libellous and traitrous; nay according to one wizard among the Benefactors, blasphemous.” And the oligarchs should demand that “Every art shall be used to blacken the character of the supposed author of such a hint, to ruin his reputation and business, and deprive him, his wife and children, of their daily bread. When all other attempts fail he shall be represented as a mad man, in order if possible, to lay a train to get the guardianship of his person, and the possession of what little estate he may have.” In ridiculing the oligarchs, Jemmy was taunting them to act.

  The vicious whisper campaign continued when “J” in an Evening-Post article of February 21 referred to Otis’s “mad rant” in the papers and opined that “a frenzy had seized the unhappy author.” According to “J,” even Jemmy’s nine year old black servant boy referred to his master with “There goes the crazy Man.” On March 7, the Evening-Post published a character sketch of Jemmy in the form of an allegorical execution of a “Hector Wildfire”; in his speech from the gallows, Mr. Wildfire admitted to being raised on tales of Wat Tyler and Masaniello of Naples and guilty of throwing stones at his father. Mr. Wildfire’s post mortem was described in macabre specificity and concluded by observing that when Mr. Wildfire’s corpse was fed to a pack of dogs, they all became insane. Some readers would know the references to Tyler and Masaniello (whose name is misspelled in the article); both these men led peasant uprisings and the invocation of their names was doubtless intended to insult Jemmy by associating him with men who forged chaos out of order by elevating the needs of the illiterate and unskilled. Tyler and particularly Masaniello were also labeled “mad” and unstable by their opponents. Both peasant revolts were largely successful, and both leaders died for their efforts and were thus elevated to a kind of martyrdom for rebel peasants. The allusion of throwing stones at one’s father reveals the divergent attitudes toward the system of deference; Otis mocked the notion that Hutchinson and the oligarchs existed on an elevated plane whereas the Court Party adherents viewed this as assaulting a superior. And finally, there’s the name – Mr. Wildfire – despite their jollity at mocking Jemmy, they certainly were aware of his intentions. And the oligarchs were not finished; John Lovell, the “Pedagogue” and master of Boston Latin School on School Street, declared that his former friend was “Solomon’s Madman” who “threw about Firebrands, Arrows and Death,” and waved “his Torch in Anger with Design, as he formerly threatened, to put all Things in a Flame.” This time, the oligarchs attacked the man instead of the message. Everyone knew that Otis had threatened to inflame the province, and who but a madman would make such a threat?

  Samuel Allyne wrote a letter to his brother Joseph on February 14, 1763:

  As to News & the political disputes father will give you a circumstantial Acct. of them. I think they run very high but as they dont affect your & my interest we will act as the Dutchmen have done all the war; look on & laugh, however if the[y] come to loggerheads, I shall by all means stand by Squire Bluster as he is an excellent fellow & ought not to be forsaken.

  Like his brother Joseph, Samuel Allyne was interested in business, not politics, so he largely ignored the paper war; but he couldn’t help but label his brother “Squire Bluster.” A month later on March 8, however, the skirmish had evolved into a war and was starting to move from the printing presses to the streets. Samuel Allyne wrote again to Joseph and revealed his increasing anxiety:

  James Otis seems to have many enemies however his friends will stand by him – he was attacked the other day by six yanky officers but they did not strike him tho they threatened it, as had they done it it would have caused them a drubbing from the people of the town.

  Before the Revolution, “Yanky” meant “cowardly.” The “officers” were militia men angered by Otis’s repeated public statements about not trusting full-time soldiers who were directed from London, rather th
an by a colonial legislature. So six militia officers threatened to beat or kill Otis. Did someone send them? Were they paid to deliver the threat? We don’t know, but it wouldn’t be the last time that, in the words of Jemmy’s sister, an assassination attempt would be made. Hutchinson pled ignorance of any plot; as a good oligarch, he portrayed himself as existing above the fray. He wrote a friend on March 9, 1763 that “I am told nobody abroad understands our papers. … I have always told my friends that it was the best way to treat such ribaldry with contempt but they would not bear it no longer and have broke out at once from all quarters and I really pity my enemy. He is indeed the strangest Creature in the world.” An aspiring feudal lord responds with contempt to the man struggling to elevate the peasants.

  The “J” critic was merciless, publishing an article in the Evening-Post of March 14 under the title “Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin,” an omen from the Book of Daniel. Most of the Bostonians engaged in the paper war had studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew at Harvard and were entirely familiar with the omen. King Belshazzar was drunkenly surveying the gold and silver stolen from Solomon’s Temple when a disembodied hand wrote on the wall “Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin,” a prophecy usually left untranslated but roughly meaning “count and weigh your money” and implies “enjoy counting your money today, for tomorrow you will die.” The writing on the wall appeared to King Belshazzar just before he was assassinated. Jemmy and the entire province would have known that the article’s title alluded to an impending assassination, yet the irony is delicious and certainly unintended. While the allusion works as both the article and the omen have unknown authors – the Old Testament hand had no body – it fails in its reference; Belshazzar was a wealthy king who looted the poor, and the omen not only foretold his assassination but also the fall of the Babylonian empire. “Mene, Mene, Tekel Upharsin” would have been more appropriate for an anonymous article by Jemmy had he been interested in making veiled death threats. In the “J” article, the author explains the “Caucas” and its meeting place in “Adjutant Trowel’s long Garrat.” He described Otis’s freedom of the press as nothing more than “a liberty, for every dabbler in politicks to say and print, whatever his shallow understanding, or vicious passions may suggest, against the wisest and best men: -- a liberty for fools and madmen to spit and throw firebrands.” Again, Jemmy is fomenting a peasant revolt and attempting to elevate those from whom the oligarchs should not hear.