An Important Boston Tea Party Broadside is Reprinted

The Connecticut Journal, and the New-Haven Post-Boy, January 28, 1774. New Haven: Thomas Green and Samuel Green. 4 pp., 8 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. This issue of The Connecticut Journal contains a report from Boston that includes the text of a handbill distributed and posted there over the pseudonym "Joyce Junior." In their choice of persona, the Boston Sons of Liberty paid tribute to Cornet George Joyce, an officer of the parliamentary New Model Army of the seventeenth century. Joyce was credited with having captured King Charles I in June 1647. The regicide "Joyce Junior" had made earlier appearances in Boston, including at the annual "Pope Night" in November when rival gangs of boys seek to capture one another's carts displaying figures of the pope and the devil. Another version appeared during the controversies that preceded the Boston Massacre in 1770.In 1774, "Joyce Junior" was John Winthrop Jr. (1747-1800), the son of Harvard professor John Wainwright Winthrop (1714-1779) and the great-great-great-grandson of Massachusetts Bay founder John Winthrop (1588-1649). More handbills appeared from "Joyce Junior" over the coming months, including one disavowing the tarring and feathering of John Malcom in Boston. In general, the "Joyce Junior" handbills tried to portray the Boston Tea Party and its aftermath as the result of principled resistance and not mob action. Excerpts"Boston, January 20."Saturday morning the following was posted up in the most public parts of this town, viz."'Brethren, and fellow citizens;"'You may depend, that those odious miscreants and detestable tools to ministry and governor, the Tea Consignees (those traitors to their country, butchers who have done, and are doing every thing to murder and destroy all that shall stand in the way of their private interest) are determined to come and reside again in the town of Boston."'I therefore give you this early notice, that you may hold yourselves in readiness, on the shortest notice, to give them such a reception, as such ingrates deserve. "JOYCE, jun."(Chairman of the committee for taring and feathering.)" * If any person should be so hardy as to tear this down, they may expect my severest resentment. J. jun.'"The several committees of this town we hear never had so much business upon their hands as at present. Three of them in their several departments it is said, sat late last Friday evening; And the committee of correspondence the evening before."The country road committees we are informed keep a very good look out, to prevent teas coming into town by land. While the night-look-out committees, are equally industrious in seeing none are landed in this and the neighbouring sea ports."One of the tea commissioners it is said narrowly escaped a tarring and feathering one day last week-presumptious men to think of gaining a footing in this town again-so says every man high and low, rich and poor." (p1/c3-p2/c1)"We are informed, that one John Cook, of Salem, skipper of a schooner belonging to Mr. George Bickford, of the same place, accepted of the infamous employment of transporting from Cape Cod to Castle William, the East India Company's detestable tea, saved out of the wreck of Capt. Loring's brig."Mr. Bickford is now a patient at Essex hospital, and we are assured, that a company of natives, dressed in the Indian manner, armed with hatchets, axes, &c. have already paid him a visit; but he being under inoculation, they deferred proceeding to extremities. What punishment is to be inflicted on the Skipper is yet uncertain; but it is judged by the expressions of indignation at his conduct, that he will not escape with impunity." (p2/c1)Historical BackgroundParliament passed the Tea Act to aid the East India Company with its excessive stock of tea for which it had no market. King George III gave his assent to the act on May 10, 1773. The act permitted the East India Company to export tea to the American colonies directly. (See website for full description).…