The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson: January-October, 1770

The Boston Massacre occasioned a flurry of letter writing for Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts. So frequent was the correspondence to and from Hutchinson that this volume covers only the first ten months of 1770, beginning with the rising tide of violence in January and February as patriot leaders began to use increasingly coercive methods to enforce compliance with the nonimportation agreement. Prior to this edition, Hutchinson’s letters, one of the best sources for Boston history in the decade and a half leading up to the Revolution, had never been published. Readers can now read a firsthand account of these tumultuous events from the rarely heard Loyalist viewpoint.