Very Rare. ESTC records no copies in the UK and Huntington, New York Public Library and University of South Carolina only in the USA. The last copy recorded on Rare Book Hub was in 1904 at Henkels (estate of Moses Polock) a presentation copy from John Drayton to John Gadsden (the copy now at South Carolina) described as “Very rare. Unknown to Rich, and is not in Sabin’s Dictionary.” The only copy before that on Rare Book Hub is the Brinley copy sold in 1880 for $14 (“This collection is RARE.”) Reprinted with an introduction by Robert M. Weir at the University of South Carolina Press in 1977.
A very rare - “surprisingly neglected” - collection of political writings produced during the controversy surrounding the Townshend Acts. First published in the South-Carolina Gazette but re-printed by William Henry Drayton while in exile in London. Drayton used these articles to call for an independent judiciary and the appointment of native South Carolinians as officials (rather than imported British colonial officers) in order to calm a more radical revolutionary response which might further inflame tensions in America.
This remarkable collection of articles reflect the intense and fiery debates surrounding the taxation of imported goods into America (including “printed Books and Pamphlets” p.3) dictated by the Townshend Acts of 1767 which led to considerable unrest in the American colonies and ultimately paved the way to the Revolutionary Wars. Many of the articles are by William Henry Drayton but he also included contributions by supporters and even those that opposed him (including Christopher Gadsden, John Mackenzie, and William Wragg).
The fact that the articles were written for a newspaper gives them a striking immediacy and frequent references to “a number of printed hand-bills industriously circulated about…” (p.58) illustrates just how much print had become an important and powerful weapon in the fight against British oppression. In his introduction to a modern edition of this book, the editor, Robert M. Weir, notes:
“Considered in the light of this recent scholarship, the essays in The Letters of Freeman, Etc. constitute **perhaps the single most significant group of comparable size which might be chosen from the scores of locally written items of a political nature to appear in the South-Carolina Gazette between its founding in 1732 and the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775.”** (x)
Weir continues by stating: “For what it tells us about the process, The Letters of Freeman, Etc. merits the attention of of every student of the American Revolution” (xxxvi)
Drayton writes, in his preface to the collection (dated London, January 26th 1771):
“When the fury of popular clamour and violent partiality subside, reason of course regains her seat, her voice will be heard. This reflection induced Freeman to collect and to re-publish the following letters. that in thus creating for them a longer existence, than what usually falls to the lot of fugitive political pieces, delivered through the channel of a news-paper: he may thereby preserve them as vouchers of the propriety of that political conduct, which drew on him the censures of those men, from whose ideas of patriotism unconstitutional schemes started into action; and of those, who thought that the public welfare was promoted by creating distress to a few individuals…”
The scarcity, design and imprint of the books suggests that it may well have been privately printed for Drayton in London as a record “of longer existence” of the debates of this period. The book is printed on noticeably thick paper and does not have a printer or publisher in the imprint. The two small woodcut devices on the title-page - a cap of liberty and a quill - are similar in design to the tools used by Thomas Hollis on his famous bindings.
“In view of its importance, The Letters of Freeman, Etc. has been surprisingly neglected. To be sure, scholars have long known that Drayton opposed the nonimportation movement, that he consequently became involved in a polemical duel fought in the pages of the Gazette, and that these exchanges could be made to yield information about events of the period. Virtually every account of the crisis refers to the debate, but careful and detailed analyses of these writings are rare. In part, the reasons for the oversight can probably be found in the circumstances of publication. **Drayton edited Freeman in London; it therefore has never appeared in most standard bibliographies of American works, and scattered items in the Gazette have been awkward to use.”** (Weir ix) Added to this, the great scarcity of the actual physical printed book must have also made it difficult for scholars to access it.
