In today’s technologically advanced and politically divided world, virtual skirmishes, battles, and full-blown wars play out in real time across our social media platforms. Response times between combatants are often measured in minutes or seconds, fast enough to ensure that brains aren’t always engaged before thumbs leap into the fray. 250 years ago, subscribers to the Maryland Gazette had to wait at least seven days to read the next salvo fired off in an exchange of public letters written by adversarial authors. After reading the local Committee of Inspection’s piece in the July 26, 1770 issue and Williams and Company’s reply on August 2, no doubt many of Anne Catharine Green’s regular customers eagerly awaited her August 9 edition. And it didn’t disappoint.
Ten members of the Committee of Inspection wrote that “to prevent any Fears amongst the Friends of American Liberty, that there is the least Danger of Defection here” from the nonimportation Association still in effect across most of the colonies, they thought it necessary to respond to the prior week’s piece by Thomas Williams. Williams had alleged that breaches of the boycott agreement were numerous and often conducted right under the Committee’s collective noses, that the Association was “tottering,” and that the Committee was guilty of “Partiality” in trying to enforce it.
The Committee men wrote off Williams’s attack on them as an attempt to deflect attention and blame away from himself, his business partners, and their own misdeeds. Williams and Company didn’t have a reputation for enthusiastic support of the Association; instead, the merchants eagerly circulated word about boycott breakdowns elsewhere, news that “could give Pleasure to the Enemies only of the Association.” When criticized for buying molasses from a Rhode Island ship captain, the Williamses had answered with “disingenuous Shuffling and extraordinary Prevarications.” Despite these strikes against the merchants, the Committee members insisted that they treated the partners “with great Lenity, in Hopes of their Amendment.” In return, the Williamses “endeavored to render the Committee merely nominal, by persisting they have no Right to make the necessary Inquiry, and of consequence to reduce the Association to a dead Letter.”
The Committee of Inspection addressed two allegations of wrongdoing by several of its own members levelled by Thomas and Joseph Williams. The first involved the secretive nighttime landing of mysterious packages delivered to Samuel Chase. The second concerned hypocritical business dealings in violation of the Association by Joshua Johnson, Thomas Harwood III, John Brice III, and Thomas Johnson.
Delving into the second bundle of accusations first, the Committee asserted that imported goods received by Committee members Harwood, Brice, and Thomas Johnson (as well as nonmembers Lancelot Jacques and Thomas Hyde) “were landed before any Committee, who thought themselves impowered to Act, was appointed,” and that Harwood and Brice had tried their best to have their items examined before selling any. Although some banned articles were included in the shipments “either by mere Mistake, or from the Inattention or Fault of the Tradesmen, yet the Publick may be assured, on an Examination into those Cargoes, soon after our Nomination as a Committee, all such Articles have been rejected, and are engaged to be sent back” to England. Regarding the complaint that Joshua Johnson overcharged for his own stock of imported goods, seeking 120 or 125% on the prime cost, the Committee found his asking price to be on par with “the common and usual Price for Three Years next before the Association, and therefore no Breach of it.”
The Committee next laid out the results of its investigation into Samuel Chase’s receipt of unidentified goods landed after dark behind Charles Carroll’s house one Saturday in June 1770. The large package turned out to contain a “Sopha,” a gift to Chase from Rev. Bennet Allen. The “Air of Secrecy given to the Transaction by Mess. Williams is false,” according to the Committee. The package was landed near Carroll’s Point, carried through the streets by Chase’s workers, and opened up before witnesses at Chase’s home, where the sofa was placed in a public room and used the past several weeks. Rev. Allen had promised to send for the sofa in 1768, a full year before the nonimportation Association went into effect, but the Committee didn’t know when he’d actually placed the order. They weren’t going to rule on the propriety of receiving the imported sofa until their colleague Chase got more details on the timing of the order from Allen.
In closing, the Committee members asked “the Publick, whether there is any just Foundation for the general Charge set up in your last Gazette against the Committee for Partiality and fraudulent Conduct, in Breach of the Association.” They contended that internal investigations of their own actions cleared them of any suspicion of wrongdoing. By contrast, “Williams and Co. are the First Notorious Offenders pointed out to us by the Voice of the Publick; as such we noticed them in our former Publication, and we doubt not, all those who are Friends to the Association, and the Liberty of America, will treat them with the Contempt they deserve, and break off all Correspondence and Connexion with them.”
Finally, in response to Thomas Williams’s criticism that they “were ashamed to set their Names” to their first report in the newspaper, the ten Committee members identified themselves individually this time: Brice Thomas Beale Worthington, Thomas Johnson, Samuel Chase, John Hall, William Paca, Nicholas Worthington, Nathan Hammond, John Brice III, Joshua Johnson, and Thomas Harwood III.
Read the August 9, 1770 issue of the Maryland Gazette starting here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc4800/sc4872/001281/html/m1281-1090.html\
Glenn E. Campbell
HA Senior Historian
