American Broadside
These Boston printers were thinking continentally
Edward Eveleth Powars and Nathaniel Willis printed the Declaration of Independence in their Boston newspaper, the New-England Chronicle, on July 18, 1776. But they also created a broadside of the text in collaboration with John Gill, a printer whose twenty-year partnership had been severed by the first shots of the Revolutionary War.
Benjamin Edes and John Gill had printed the Boston Gazette together beginning in April 1755. Their final joint issue was twenty years later on April 17, 1755—two days before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The masthead of their newspaper featured a depiction of Britannia, the personification of the mother country, holding a pole topped by a liberty cap in one hand and opening a bird cage with the other. This woodcut was created by Paul Revere, one of the riders who famously alerted people to the advancing British forces on the night of April 16.
Detail, Boston Gazette, January 1, 1770, American Antiquarian Society
Benjamin Edes took their printing press and continued to publish the Boston Gazette on his own beginning in June 1775. He used the same masthead and title. But Edes was not actually in Boston anymore. He printed the Boston Gazette in nearby Watertown. But the British imprisoned John Gill. In September 1775, Edes printed a list in the Gazette of people who had been jailed in Boston. The list included both his son, Peter, and his former partner, John Gill. Peter Edes was charged with having firearms concealed in his house. Meanwhile, British officials accused Gill of “printing Treason, Sedition, and Rebellion.” The news of his imprisonment, first printed in Edes’s Boston Gazette, was published in other newspapers.
After the British evacuation of Boston in March 1776, it took time for the city to recover. Local officials continued to meet in Watertown, so Benjamin Edes remained there with his Boston Gazette until November 1776. John Gill decided to launch his own newspaper in Boston, which he called the Continental Journal, and Weekly Advertiser. Whereas other printers made declarations to their subscribers in the first issues of their newspapers about what they would publish, Gill chose “to omit all pompous representations and promises, respecting his intended publications.” He was well known to people in Boston and—after spending time in British custody—he trusted that his politics were also widely known.
From May through October, the longtime partners Benjamin Edes and John Gill printed news on opposite sides of the Charles River—including the news of independence. Gill published the Declaration on the front page of his newspaper on Thursday, July 18 (the same day as Powars and Willis’s newspaper printing), and Edes did the same on the following Monday, July 22.
Gill also worked alongside his new neighbors on Queen Street in Boston, Powars and Willis, to create a broadside of the Declaration of Independence for people in Boston. The first version of this broadside was simply the text, organized in two columns below the title. Then, the printers added their names and location—not just Boston, but “AMERICA”—at the bottom of the broadside. Compare the broadside on the left, at the Phillips Library, to the broadside on the right, at the Boston Public Library.
These Boston printers were thinking continentally, as suggested by the title of John Gill’s newspaper and Powars and Willis’s choice to print the Declaration under the heading “Grand Council of America” in their newspaper. If not for the added imprint, the decision that Gill, Powars, and Willis made to work together to print the Declaration might have been unknown to scholars. Other broadsides missing this information remain unattributed.
A few weeks later, Gill, Powars, and Willis collaborated on something else for people in Boston to read, with a similar theme to the Declaration of Independence but a very different style. The Fall of British Tyranny: or American Liberty Triumphant was a satirical five-act “TRAGI-COMEDY” first published in Philadelphia a few months earlier. It is attributed to John Leacock, writing under the pen name “Dick Rifle.” The cast was made up of British ministers—from the Earl of Dartmouth as “Lord Hypocrite,” to the Prime Minister as “Lord Catspaw,” to Lord Dunmore as “Lord Kidnapper” in reference to his proclamation of freedom to enslaved laborers who left their masters to join the British forces—as well as revolutionary leaders like George Washington. The drama began with the Goddess of Liberty addressing the Continental Congress:
“HAIL! Patriots, hail! by me inspired be!
Speak boldly, think and act for Liberty,
United sons, America’s choice band.
Ye Patriots firm, ye sav’ours of the land.
Hail! Patriots, hail! rise with the rising sun,
Nor quit your labour, till the work is done.
Ye early risers in your country’s cause,
Shine forth at noon, for Liberty and Laws.”
The initial publication predated the Declaration of Independence, but these words still rang true in the fall of 1776. John Gill, Edward Eveleth Powars, and Nathaniel Willis advertised this publication in their respective newspapers, describing it as “a truly dramatic performance, interspersed with wit, humour, burlesque, and serious matter, which cannot fail of affording abundant entertainment to readers of every disposition.”
Detail, John Gill, Edward Eveleth Powars, and Nathaniel Willis Broadside of the Declaration of Independence, July 1776, Boston Public Library
Where to See It Online: Phillips Library, Boston Public Library
