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The fourth volume of The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson covers a twenty-month period extending from the acquittal of the soldiers standing trial for the Boston Massacre in November 1770 through the return of the General Court from Cambridge to its traditional meeting place at the Town House in Boston in June 1772. Some historians refer to this interval as the "quiet period" in the events leading up to the Revolution, but one would have had trouble convincing Thomas Hutchinson of the accuracy of that phrase. He continued to butt heads with Samuel Adams. No longer acting governor after March 1771, but governor-in-chief in his own right, Hutchinson was now free to use the patronage at his disposal to reward his political adherents and divide the opposition. Even though John Hancock ultimately declined the offer, Hutchinson attempted to separate him from the political tutelage of Samuel Adams, by dangling the prospect of a socially prestigious seat on the Governor's Council before the young merchant. At the same time, the Hutchinson also sought to sow seeds of suspicion and resentment between the Massachusetts House of Representatives and their new agent, Benjamin Franklin. Adams had long resisted Hutchinson's claim to summon the General Court to meet anywhere he chose, but in the spring of 1772, cooperation with Hancock enabled Hutchinson to end a long-standing impasse and return the Court to Boston without surrendering any his gubernatorial prerogative. Despite this seeming success, Hutchinson could have no idea of the crises that lay ahead in 1773 (the publication of his private letters and Parliament's efforts to aid the financially troubled East India Company) that would effectively end his governorship.Distributed for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts

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Thomas Hutchinson was the leading spokesman in colonial America for opposition to the Revolutionary movement. His logical and cogent prose as well as the stature he gained through his long and varied public service to Massachusetts gave weight to his arguments and insured a wide audience for his ideas in both England and the colonies. Because of his Loyalist sympathies, however, his letters have until now languished unpublished in the Massachusetts Archives.This first volume of the only fully annotated edition of his correspondence begins with his emergence on the political stage in 1740 and covers the events of the French and Indian War, his controversial appointments as lieutenant-governor and chief justice, and the Stamp Act riots (including the looting of his own home).Distributed for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

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