How History Unfolds on Paper: Important Americana from the Eric C. Caren Collection, Part X

The Pennsylvania Evening Post
Philadelphia: Benjamin Towne, Saturday, July 29, 1775. Printed newspaper. Bifolium. pp. 327-330. Disbound, untrimmed along other edges; separated along spine; creasing from old folds, small scattered holes along same; toned; offsetting; faint ink stamp at top of first page.

A scarce issue of this Pennsylvania newspaper, reporting important information on the outbreak of the American Revolution. Printed three months after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the front page reports on the British reaction to the hostilities. The first article recounts Captain John Derby's delivery to England of official American accounts of the battles, and reprints an excerpt from a London newspaper dated May 30, "Captain Darby...arrived...and has brought papers dated the 25th of April last, which mention an engagement having happened on the nineteenth of the same month with the Bostonians, who killed and wounded one hundred and sixty of the regulars..." This is followed by a notice from Arthur Lee, colonial agent in London, informing the public that the official affidavits attesting to the veracity of the battles can be found at the Lord Mayor's residence "for their inspection."

Having received no dispatches from General Gage (it would not reach Whitehall until June 10), the news of the confrontation was met with incredulity by Lord North's government, whose official statement is printed below, "A report having been spread, and an account having been printed and published, of a skirmish between some of the people in the province of Massachusetts-Bay, and a detachment of his Majesty's troops, it is proper to inform the public that no advices have as yet been received in the American department of any such event..."

In London, reaction to the hostilities was swift as intimated by two reports printed on the third and fourth pages, "the news of the commencement of the American war threw the people in England, especially the city of London, into great consternation, and occasioned a considerable fall of the stocks: That the ministry (knowing nothing of the battle till they saw it published in the London papers)...pretended to believe that there had been none..." On the fourth page, "When the accounts...of the battle were published, Lord North was thunderstruck...the people were much surprised at the account, the merchants distressed on account of their property..."

The newspaper's reaction to this is printed in fiery language beginning on the first page, "To what does this shuffling state production amount? Is the American MASSACRE less true because no accounts of it have been received at the Secretary's office? Is this time to talk of departments when HUMAN BLOOD, when the blood of our BRETHEREN is poured out like water by a detachment of his HIS MAJESTY's troops?...Shall we adopt their language, and call a BLOODY MASSACRE a trifling SKIRMISH? Or are we not to believe that either massacre or skirmish has happened, because the American DEPARTMENT hath not as yet received those advices from General Gage..."

On April 22, the Second Provincial Congress of Massachusetts appointed a nine-member committee to gather testimony from soldiers and others who had participated in or witnessed the battles. In a race to ensure the colony's account reached England before the British narrative did, Richard Derby, Jr., a member of the Congress, arranged to outfit one of his ships, the Quero, placing it under the command of his younger brother, John Derby. The younger Derby departed on April 28, four days after the British vessel Sukey departed with General Gage's report, and arrived in England an astonishing two weeks before the British vessel. Derby, who refused a meeting with the British government, secretly departed the country after his delivery and returned to America, as reported within.