Radio Script #224
Little Talks On Common Things
April 25, 1954
Ourl ng the past week we have observed the 179thann I versary of the fi rst shots fired in the American Revolution. Lexington and Concord are names known to every American schoolboy. Phrases like “Listen my chi Idren and you shall hear”, and “One if by land and two if by sea”, were memorized by rrost of us older folk many years ago.
I was I nterested therefore to encounter on Iy a few weeks ago a conte”l>orary account of the his~rlc events of April 19,1775. The story in the Essex Gazette of April 25,1775 — six days after the battles of Lexington and Concord — Is so interesting that I want to read it to you Just as it was printed in this 179 year old newspaper. This was of course a patriot paper and sure to take the colonial side. But even al lowing for that, it Is amazingly factual.
Now Just make believe you are an 18th century inhabitant of Salem or Gloucester or Marblehead sitting in front of your big kitchen fireplace whi Ie some member of the fami Iy reads aloud from the Salem Gazette which has just arrived. This is what you hear.
“Last Wednesday, April 19, the troops of His British Majesty commenced hosti lities upon the people of this province, attended with circumstances of cruelty not less brutal than our venerable ancestors received from the evilest of savages of the wi Iderness.
“On Tuesday evening a detachment from the army consisting of 800 to 900 men commanded by Lt. Col. Smith, embarked at Boston on board a number of boats, and landed at Ph I pps I Farm, a I I ttle way up the Char les Ri ver. They proceeded on their way to Concord, about 18 mi les from Boston.
”The people were soon alarmed and began to assemble In several towns before daylight, In order to watch the motion of the troops. At Lexington, six miles below Concord, a company of mi11tla Qf about 100 men mustered near the meeting house. The troops came insight of them Just before sunrise. ‘Disperse, you rebels’, ordered Col. Smith. ‘Throw down your arms and disperse’.
“I mmed I ate I y one or two off i cers dl scharged the i r pi sto Is, fo II owed I nstantaneously by the firing of muskets by four or five of the soldiers, whereupon there seemed to be a discharge from the whole body of troops. Eight of our men were ki lied and ni ne wounded.
“The enemy renewed the I r march to Concord, where they destroyed several carriages, carriage wheels, and about twenty barrels of flour, al I belonging to the Province.
“When about 150 of our men went toward a bridge, of which the enemy were in possession, the latter fired and ki lied two of our men. Our men returned the fire and ob Ii ged the enemy to retreat back to Lexi ngton 1 where they met Lord Pe rcy with I a rge re I n forcemen ts and two pieces of cannon.
“The enemy, now havl ng a body of about 1,800 men, made a ha It 1 picked many of thel r dead and took care of the I r wounded. After th I s ha I t of more than two hours at Lexl ngton, the enemy found I t necessary to make a retreat, carrying with them many of their dead and wounded, who were put into chaises and on horses that were found standing in the road. The troops continued their retreat from Lexington to Charlestown with great trepidation. Notwithstanding their fiel.dpieces, our people continued pursuit, flrlnq at them until they got to Charlestown Neck.
liThe enemy set fl re to houses and pi Ilaged them. They broke down doors, smashed windows, and carried off cloth! ng and other va I uab Ie objects. It appeared to be their design to burn and destroy all before them. The savage barbarity exercised upon the bodies of our unfortunate brethren who fell is almost incredible. Not content with shooting down the unarmed, aged and inflrm, they disregarded the cries of the wounded, killing them without mercy and mangling thel r bodi es in the most shocki ng manner.”
That last paragraph Is typical. In every war since the beginning of recorded history each side has accused the other of atrocities, and in every Instance there has been some grain of truth behind the charges. Cruelty and bruta Ii ty, man’s i nhumani ty to man, are a Iways the accompan I ments of war.
One of the most interesting features of this article in the old Salem Gazette I sits accep tance of a s tate of war. On Ap r I I 19, 1775 the colon i es had not declared war on anybody, nor had anyone declared war on them. They had not even proclaimed themselves independent. That would come nearly fifteen months tater, on July 4, 1776. They were sti II dependent provinces of the Brltlsh crown. Yet, boldly and bluntly, the Salem paper called the troops of their own king “the enemy” and the colonial mi Iitia as “our men”. Since the Boston Massacre in 1770, and especially since the Tea Party In 1773, tension had steadi Iy I ncreaseduntl I the I nc I dents at Lexl ngton and Concord c:ou I d on Iy be I nterpreted as war. They were, as Ra Iph Wa Ido Emerson wrote nearly a century later, “shots heard ’round the wor I d” •
Th rough one man Ma I ne had a connect I on wi th the Revo I uti onary events In Boston. When a few years ago I told you about my prized possession of a facsimiIe copy of the Boston Gazette for March 12, 1770, I had no idea that the Gazette’s editor, Benjamin Edes, had any connection with Maine. Some of you wi II recall that I told you hew the Gazette of March 12, 1770 carried the detailed story of what came to be called the Boston Massacre, which had happened in the street behind the old State House just one week earlier, on March 5.
Benjamin Edes was Boston’s most rabid patriot printer. Week after week his Journal stirred up resistance against British restrictions — the tea tax, the stamp act, the embargo acts, and the others. I t was in the prl ntl ng office of Benjamin Edes that a band of men gathered early on the ewning of December 14, 1773, disguised themselves as Indians, boarded the ships carrying the hated tea, “tied up at the wharves, and dumped the tea into Boston Harbor.
When British troops took Boston under martial law, following the Battle of Bunker Hi” in 1775, Edes moved his press to Watert~n, where he continued the Gazette until the Britl sh evacuated Boston and it was safe for patriot printers to work there agarn.
The connection with Maine is this. Benjamin Edes had a son Peter, who learned the printer’s trade with his father. Born in 1756, Peter was 19 years old when, ten days after the Battle of Bunker Hili, he was arrested by the British garrison for having firearms concealed in his house. He was confined in Boston Gaol for a hundred days, a long with other members of known patri ot fami lies, and recei ved rather harsh treatment. When he was re leased he Jol ned his father in Watertown, returned with him to Boston after the evacuation, and helped him put out the Gazette unti I 1784. In that year Peter set up his Q>ln printing plant in Boston.
We now know that Peter Edes had already considered coming to Maine. He came very near entering a partnership to publish Portland’s first paper, indeed the first newspaper in Maine. When the first issue of the Falmouth Gazette and Weekly Advertiser appeared on January ” 1785, pub I Ished by TltCOrrD and Waite on Middle Street, It carried an announcement that Peter Edes had decided not to enter on the proJect with Thomas Waite, but would remain in Boston, and in his stead Benjamin Titcomb had becorne Waite’s partner to publish the Fa I rrouth Gazette.
Peter Edes did leave Boston soon afterward, hotever, going to Rhode Island, where he started the Newport Hera Id in 1787. That was by no means Rhode Island’s first newspaper. As early as 1733 James Franklin, brother of Benjamin Franklin, had printed the Rhode Island Gazette. In 1758 Benjamin Franklin hi mse I f had been pub I i she r, though not res i dent p rl nter, of the Newport Mercury. It was the assets of that paper, recently defunct, which Peter Edes took over and rechri stened the Newport Hera I d.’
Peter Edes came to Augusta in 1795. Why he came there is not certain, but a good surmise is that his opposition to the separation of Maine from Massachusetts was we II known, and Augusta merchants and I and owners who he I d the same view wanted a newspaper which would espouse the anti-separation cause, The Plymouth Company also was ardently opposed to separation, and they may very possibly have backed Edes financially at the outset of his Augusta project. That project was Augusta’s fi rst newspaper. Actually in 1795 there was no town of Augusta. It was then part of Hallowell, which town had two princIpal settlements, one at the present site of Hallowell, called the f-bok, and the other at the site of modern Augusta, cal led the Fort.
The year before Edes arrl ved at the Fort, a newspaper ca lied the Eastern Star had been started at Hallowell. It lasted only a few months, but was immediately succeeded by the Tocsin which, when Edes came on the scene, was loudly shouting the claims for separation.
The first issue of Augusta’s first newspaper, the Kennebec Intelligencer, came from the press of Peter Edes on November 14,1795. Prompt delivery was assured to out-of-town subscribers because in 1794 regular mail routes had been estab I i shed by stage lines from Port I and to Ha II owe II and from the Hook to Norridgewock, to Wiscasset, to Farmington and to Winslow.
After the death of his father Benjamin Edes, the famous Boston printer of the Revolution, Peter took his mother to live with him at Augusta, and she lies buried in Augusta’s oldest cemetery.
In 1800 Peter changed the paper’s name to the Kennebec Gazette, and changed it again to the Herald of liberty in 1810. On this program we have often observed that the War of 1812, especially its embargo acts, caused great hardship In Maine, and saw especially flagrant inflation of prices. That experience was a cripp ling b low to Peter Edes. After twenty years as Augusta’s pri nter and pub I isher, he deci ded to seek’ greener pastures.
In the autumn of 1815 Peter made a deal with Ephraim Ballard to move press and equi pment to Bangor. The four ton load was too heavy for the new Augusta bridge; so it was taken across part at a time. From the eastern end of the bridge Ballard’s six-ox team moved it all to Bangor for $143, taking three full weeks to go and return.
To the eyes of Bangor’s nine hundred people, on Noverroer 25, 1815, appeared that community’s fIrst newspaper, which Edes called the Bangor Weekly Register. In that first issue Edes proclaimed the paper’s non-partisan policy.
“The RegiSTer gl ves no prede Ii ction to either pol i ti ca I party; its col umns equa Ily I nvite the we II-written productions and credltab Ie statements of bOTh. The object of this paper is to be a faithful chronicle of the passing events and current news, and not a receptacle of parTy obloquy and personal abuse. Payment of $2 a year will be made easy in any produce of the country. II Pete r soon found that money was no eas I er I n Bangor than In Augus ta. He complained because the men who had induced him to come to the Penobscot town had not kepT their promises. “We were told”, he wrote, “that we could expect at least 600 subscribers from outlying towns. From Buckstown, Belfast and Castine we have a I together on Iy six subsc’ribers. So great is the ri va I ry between Bangor and Buckstown that inhabitants of the latter place promise us plenty of subscribers if we wi II establish a paper there.”
But Peter was all through with yielding to blandishments which might turn out like the promi ses years before to anothe r prl nter, young Benjami n Frank I in of Phi ladelphia. In his autobiography Franklin write of Governor Keith, who made those promi ses, one of the most sti nging con demnat i ons ever put into pri nt of such a man: “Having little to give he gave expectations~Il”
Financial difficulties forced Peter Edes to sell the Bangor Reqister in 1817. His son had become a printer in Baltimore, and there the aging Peter went to make h is home. He he Iped hi s son get out the Ba Iti more paper, q uarreled with him violently about politics, and when the son died suddenly in 1832, Peter returned to Bangor to the home of his daughter, where he resided for eight years unti I his own death in 1840.
Such was Peter Edes, the first printer of two of Maine’s principal cities,Augusta and Bangor, son of another printer, Benjamin Edes, in whose Boston offices the memorab Ie Boston Tea Party had been conce i ved.
Year: 1954