General Gage Comes to Salem: Interests, Ideologies, Identities, and Family Alliances Collide on the Eve of the American Revolution

abstract:Following the Boston Tea Party and passage of the Port Act, General Thomas Gage, the new royal governor of Massachusetts, moved the seat of government to Salem. Upon his arrival, Gage was greeted by dueling addresses signed by 48 of Salem’s Royalists and 125 of its Whigs. The addresses exhibit contrasting political ideologies; however, the signers’ backgrounds reveal each group embraced views that served its interests. On the one hand, Royalists supported a polity that promoted order, stability, and the rule of law, a system that benefited an interrelated group of old elite families with lucrative kinship ties to the Bay colony’s political establishment led by former Governor Thomas Hutchinson. On the other hand, Whigs demanded a government that protected people’s rights, especially their property rights. This suited artisans, master mariners, and rising merchants determined to preserve meager or recently acquired holdings from Englishmen, whom Salemites asserted had “an interest in laying burthens upon us for their own relief.” The property that Whig signers sought to defend served various purposes. It provided economic security, and it was a source of personal liberty, masculine pride, and a voice in government.