Poetry Wars. Colin Wells
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the politicization of the carrier’s address had the specific effect of reinforcing an ideology in which political liberty was inexorably linked to print culture. As explicated in particular by Michael Warner, this is an ideology in which the workings of the print public sphere were identified so fully with freedom of speech, and freedom of speech with the protection of all other liberties, that the Stamp Act’s tax on printed documents was immediately and broadly understood as an assault on freedom itself: “Print had become so central to the routines of colonial life and had come so completely to be seen within the same concepts with which the political itself was thought, that the most literate classes could successfully claim that the entire realm of the public was at stake.” Against this backdrop, many colonial printers, for whom the tax also constituted a direct economic hardship, rebranded their papers as organs of anti–Stamp Act propaganda, transforming the carrier’s address into a mode of political protest.21
There is limited evidence as to who, exactly, these early newsboy poets were. Later examples of the genre, in which the author’s identity is known (as in the case of Philip Freneau and several members of the Connecticut Wits, who frequently penned carrier’s addresses in the 1790s and 1800s) suggest that the newsboys were usually either editors or close associates of editors, and it is reasonable to assume that this was also likely the case in 1765. In at least one known example, however, the newsboy poet appears to have been an actual newspaper carrier, and named as such in the title of the verse, New Year’s Ode, for the Year 1766, Being actually dictated, by Lawrence Swinney, Carrier of News, Enemy to Stamps, a Friend to the Constitution, and an Englishman every Inch. In this poem, the carrier laments the effects of the Stamp Act on his own, already strained, economic condition—“I’m in Debt to the Doctors, / And never a Farthing to Pay. / … / … / And but little Hay for my little Horse, / And if Famine should stamp him to Death, / More than half my Fortune is gone!”—before ending on a decidedly political note: “What Shall I say for the Boys of New-York? / Happy New Years to the Sons of LIBERTY.”22 Such examples as this, while relatively rare, lent credibility to the fiction of the newsboy as the representative of a public that felt powerless in the face of imperial authority but was willing, nonetheless, to voice its collective protest.
This is the context in which carrier’s addresses in particular, and anti–Stamp Act verse more generally, emerge as one of the many forms of politicized social ritual that characterized the period of the imperial crisis. As cultural historians of the period have shown, Stamp Act protests were highly stylized rituals for acting out symbolic narratives about the heroes, victims, and villains of the tax. The stories communicated through such rituals might be tragic or mock tragic, as in the “funeral” parades for Liberty performed in city streets, or they might center on divine or human retribution, as in the various effigy dramas in which stampmen were figuratively beaten or hanged. Similarly, poems protesting the Stamp Act constituted symbolic performances in their own right, within which fictional representatives of the vox populi roused audiences to unified resistance or addressed the king or Parliament on the people’s behalf. Like staged rituals, poems of protest could be turned into public events by being read aloud; as printed documents, however, they were not subject to limitations of time and place. A poem could be delivered by post to a neighboring town or colony, where it could be recited before an audience or reprinted, in turn, by the local newspaper editor, creating a virtually unlimited number of “revivals” of the original dramatic performance.23
As in staged protests, the Stamp Act appeared in most poems from the time as a grand symbolic or cosmic struggle, whether between liberty and tyranny or between moral innocence and malevolence. Many Stamp Act poems lent an especially threatening tone to the general mood of defiance in the colonies, as in the opening lines of the 1766 New Year’s broadside from the Boston Gazette: “May LIBERTY and FREEDOM! O blest Sound! / Survive the Stab, and heal the deep’ned Wound; / May Tyrants tremble! And may villains fear! / And spotless JUSTICE, crown the happy Year.” At the same time, it was not the case that the implicit narrative projected by most Stamp Act verses tended inexorably toward rebellion or revolution. Even poems like this one, which hints strongly at some form of violent retribution, concludes with a humble petition that the king will hear the pleas of the people and redress their grievances: “May GEORGE the Great, with open’d Ears and Eyes, / Observe our Injuries, and hear our Cries; / Redress the Grievance; and vouchsafe to give / Joy to us FREEMEN, who like BRITONS live.”24
Stamp Act poetry as a whole reflected this uneasy tension between expressions of moral outrage, tending toward a logic of rebellion, and an equally powerful desire for reconciliation with the Crown. This latter wish, in fact, is the common denominator in nearly all Stamp Act poems, including several that engaged in a distinct fantasy that by appealing directly to the king about their suffering under the act, the people could convince him of his error. This is the case of one poem, whose title—A New Collection of Verses Applied to the First of November, A.D. 1765, &c. Including a Prediction that the S---p A-t shall not take Place in North America—goes so far as to predict that the king will experience just such a change of heart before the act even takes effect. Indeed, over the course of several hundred lines, the poem presents this narrative in religious terms, beginning with a public fast in anticipation of the dreaded day: “November! gloomy Month! approaches fast / When Liberty was doom’d to brethe [sic] her last, / All, All her Sons agree to fast that Day, / To mourn, lament, and sigh, and hope,—and pray / That Almighty GOD of all below, / Some Pity would to suffering Mortals show.” This collective prayer is heard by an angel called “the Guardian of America,” who flies to London (not to Parliament, importantly, but to St. Paul’s Cathedral) and declares from the top of the dome that a “rape” against Liberty has been committed, and that those responsible will be rightly judged for their crimes: “—A Rape! A Rape! / In this Life, Misery shall be your Shame, / And bitter Execrations load your Name. / Impartial Pages shall report your Case, / And curse your Memories with just Disgrace.” After a lengthy speech in which the Guardian of America chastises Mother Britain for refusing to hear her children’s pleas, Britain relents, and the angel returns to announce, “The King and Parliament have heard my Voice: / … / The Stamp’s repeal’d!” And the repeal, importantly, leads not merely to a return to the status quo ante but to something more closely resembling a transformation of the social order itself, as members of all classes, races, and religions join in celebration:
The Lads commix, and Sectaries combine
In Love and Union to the Powers divine.
Old Light and New forget to disagree,
And each enjoy the Fruits of Charity.
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The Sick forget to groan, the Poor to beg;
The Cripple dances on his wooden Leg.
The Blacks rejoice, the Indians gravely smile;
The daily Labourers forget their Toil.25
Beyond depicting the rejoicing public as a decidedly humble body of poor, disabled, and racially marginalized figures, the conclusion is significant for the celebration itself, which might well cause this poem to be mistaken for one of the many verses published after the repeal of the Stamp Act. Yet this collection was published well before the news of the repeal ever reached America, which helps explain, in turn, how poets could come to see themselves as agents in the historical process. For at least a brief moment between the repeal of the Stamp Act and the imposition of the new Townshend duties, the literary fantasy that the king could be convinced of his errors seemed to be confirmed in reality. Indeed, actual celebrations of the repeal of the act in 1766, with fireworks and the tolling of bells, seemed to mimic the happy ending imagined in such poems, and carrier’s addresses published in the wake of the repeal included reminders of their successful defiance during the crisis: “When SLAV’RY to our Shore had crept, / And other TYPES in Silence slept; I, dauntless for my Country’s Good, / The ARBITRARY ACT withstood: / I brought your News, the Rest neglect you, / A certain sign, I most RESPECT you.” As the pun on “types” makes clear, this is a statement about one newspaper’s commitment to the resistance,