The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson Reviews

• 
  Sean Chick

  I really wish I could rate this higher, for Bailyn's overall argument is superb: the Loyalists were not cruel and traitorous men, but rather practical fellows who could not understand revolutionary passion. The trouble is Bailyn is extremely long winded and dry and seems to fail to understand just how boring Hutchinson's life was. So There you have it, an interesting book but one that leaves the reader cold.
• 
  Greg

  I suspect that for most Americans growing up the idea that the American Revolution was both a "good idea" and "inevitable" came naturally to us. After all, that was pretty much how American history lite was taught then. Moreover, as young people, we were drawn to the idea that facts -- like the choices we faced -- were mostly black/white, right/wrong. Complexities, nuances, and "grey" areas struck us as equivocations, evidence of moral wishy-washiness.
  
  Nor is such thinking limited to the young, apparently! Just listen to and think about the rhetoric employed by people such as Trump and the nationalist-populists here in the US and throughout Europe! "Why, problems are not at all hard to understand IF you free yourself from the limiting vision of "the elite"! Elect and/or support ME and I will cut through this mumbo-jumbo to deliver the real goods. It is really simple, for I am the answer!"
  
  Sadly, this approach has long been attractive to so many, as it SEEMS to offer an explanation for why things are the way they are.
  
  One of the greatest qualities of Bailyn's study of Thomas Hutchinson -- in his day, one of the leading representatives of British officialdom in the pre-revolutionary American colonies -- is that he exposes both the complexities of that time and the way in which people -- on both sides -- preferred to paint the choices and motives of both themselves and their opponents in the simplest, starkest terms.
  
  Bailyn's masterful account -- and this superb historian is best known for his indispensable book, "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution -- takes us deeply into the reality of the 1750s through the 1770s and helps us understand that, especially into the 1760s, there WERE choices and options that were not as stark as they later were painted to be.
  
  It is an interesting irony that it was the triumph of Great Britain -- and of the American colonists who fought beside her -- over the French in the Seven Years' War (usually called the French and Indian War in American history) in 1763 that actually upset the partnership between Britain and her colonies in North America.
  
  While the military victory in what was really a world war -- the struggle in the colonies was only one aspect of the conflict -- represented a triumphant ending to the centuries-long struggle between France and Britain, it left the British crown perilously in need of new revenue to replenish its treasury that had been nearly exhausted by that struggle.
  
  From the British point of view, it seemed perfectly reasonable to expect that the colonies -- which had grown economically prosperous through trade with, and protection by, Great Britain -- would take up their "fair share" of the burden of new taxation for, after all, with the defeat of the French and the surrender of their former vast holdings in North America, Britain was now faced with a much greater territory that she needed to defend on behalf of the colonists from both remaining French forces and hostile Native Indian bands.
  
  Unfortunately, the imposition of new taxes on the colonists was not seen that way by the colonists. As superbly presented in the Teaching Company lecture series -- "Origins and Ideologies of the American Revolution" -- while the colonies had prospered greatly since their founding, they had also been left largely to govern themselves. Up until 1763 the regulations of Parliament had primarily to do with regulating the trade between herself and the colonies -- and also discouraging the colonies from expanding trade relations with other powers, such as France -- and so the colonists had grown comfortable in thinking that they were otherwise free to govern themselves through assemblies they freely elected.
  
  When Parliament now began to enact taxes directly on the colonies for the purposes of raising much-needed revenue, some colonists resisted on the grounds that they had been given no say in the levying of those taxes, thus violating what they saw as their rights as British subjects. Parliament's response was that they -- like other British subjects -- did have "virtual representation" in the Parliament, a theory developed to justify the fact that most people on the British isle had little or no say about who "represented" them in Parliament.
  
  In addition to disagreements over constitutional theory and practice, the flashpoints increasingly came from a) persons who felt they would lose money under the new British taxes (specifically, many merchantmen who had long grown accustomed to avoiding previous taxes by bribing local customs officials to look the other way); and b) inflammatory orators and those whom today we might recognize as "street thugs," people all too willing to take action into their own hands and those attracted to disorders for opportunities to engage in mischief.
  
  I suspect that many -- perhaps most -- will recoil at the thought that some of their noble Revolutionary predecessors might have been ruffians, but that appears to be the case.
  
  What happened in the 1760s and 1770s, when you look at in depth, seems to be, in fact, all too familiar: changed circumstances, various key personnel slow to catch on to the magnitude of such changes, various legitimate points of view on those changes, what they meant, and how they should be responded to, willfulness, ignorance, well-intentioned efforts that fell short or went astray, etc.
  
  Bailyn's book takes us inside the mind of a key British official who, as his extensive surviving letters and political theory arguments make clear, was BOTH a loyal subject of Britain AND a sympathizer to much of the colonial arguments. While continuing to believe that it was to the American colonies long-term advantage to remain within the British Empire -- since he felt the weak colonies would soon be gobbled up by other contenders for the region (such as France or Spain) if they became independent of Britain -- he also strove fiercely, but ultimately vainly, to persuade key officials in Britain that they were repeatedly taking the wrong approach, that the Stamp Act and subsequent Townsend Acts were poorly conceived and would have the opposite effect in the colonies than was intended by the Parliament, and that Britain's stumbles were driving a wedge between the Empire and her colonies in North America.
  
  At the same time, his pleas with the colonists to remain loyal to Britain, and the discovery by and publication of of some of his correspondence in which he candidly discussed the grimly sad options that he felt were developing between the colonies and Britain, were taken by many in the colonies as proof that he was, in fact, a traitor to the cause of the colonists and, moreover, a key figure in buoying up British opposition to meaningful concessions to the colonists.
  
  As one who spent most of my life in politics of one kind or another, so much of this book rings true: good people striving to understand the "other side," but often being unable to do so, key players who are striving more for self-interest and advancement than for a resolution best for all, and multiple mischief-makers who enjoy roiling passions and escalating differences.
  
  I recommend a thoughtful reading of this wonderful book, both for a better understanding of the multiple tragedies entwined with the American Revolution -- for, after all, the true "losers" in the Revolution were the thousands of loyalist colonists who lost everything when they were forced to flee the colonies during or after the war's end -- and for a better understanding into some of the dynamics of our own time.
  
  After all, the kinds of black-white portrayals made during the pre-revolutionary period are very similar to what passes for "political analysis" today, as is the easy dismissal of the "other side's" point of view and their reasons for believing their concerns legitimate.
  
  No wonder so many have believed history to be nothing more than "another turn of the wheel": what goes up must come down, what rises must fall, winners will inevitably become losers.
  
  This perspective is true, however, only when we decide not to think, or inquire, or put ourselves in the other's shoes.
• 
  Frank Stein

  Bernard Bailyn secured his fame in "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution," where he showed that American revolutionaries were mainly inspired by the "country party" in Britain, not classical political philosophy, and that they harbored profound paranoias, not always borne out by the facts, about conspiracies in England against their property and liberty. It almost gave some credence to the conservative and loyalist side of the revolutionary war.
  
  This book looks at the actual loyalist side of the revolution, by examining one of its most reviled characters, Thomas Hutchinson, who was governor of Massachusetts from 1769 to 1774, at the height of the colonial crisis. The publication of his letters to a British MP, Thomas Whately, which seemed to argue for an abridgment of American liberty, made him a byword for perfidy among the colonists, and he ended his life in exile in Britain. This book performs the amazing feet of transforming Hutchinson into a sympathetic character, and makes most of his opponents seem like illogical radicals. Hutchison lived his life scrambling for office: local judgeships and then the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, assembly elections, Lt. Governor, and, finally, governor, but this was merely in line with the English Walpolean tradition of patronage and service. He seemed shocked when his attempt to advance was painted as "corruption" by other ambitious politicians among the revolutionaries. He also didn't understand how protestors of the Stamp Act, which he opposed in his letters to England, could argue that Parliamentary authority could be limited. As he kept pointing out, the very nature of sovereignty was its illimitability. When the colonists finally declared independence, he mocked their Declaration for spouting the same conspiracy theories he thought he bad refuted, and for finally admitting what he had said all along, that sovereignty was singular.
  
  As Bailyn argues, Hutchinson was a traditionalist in a revolutionary age, and a pragmatist in an ideological age. Although he can be faulted for failing to adjust with the times, he gestures to the tragedy of those who grew up in a world that seemed secure, only to find themselves denounced for crimes which didn't exist just years before. Bailyn notes that he wrote the book in the wake of the 1960s unrest in America, but it contains valuable lessons for any age.
• 
  Nathan Albright

  This book won the National Book Award in history, and it is easy to understand why.  Of course, it should be stated at the outset that I am a fan of Bailyn's history [1], and this book is a clear indication of why this is the case.  Bailyn's belief was that the problem presented by the loyalists was one where they represented a view of history that ultimately was supported by no one after the fact.  Loyal to both England and their American colonies, they were left as poor and provincial exiles without a country when the United States declared its independence, and later British historians of the Revolution often disregarded their prescient warnings because it would make the English look bad, leaving their writings unexplored and unexamined except for those who wanted to see in the antidemocratic views of these able officeholders a relevant view to later generations where the Anglo-Saxon identity was being swamped by foreign elements.  In writing a book where Hutchinson is viewed sympathetically and taken seriously, the author demonstrates that the American Revolution is far enough in the past that loyalty and patriotism no longer burn as hot concerning the ablest of the loyalists of Massachusetts as was the case in the past.
  
  This book is certainly a long one at more than 400 pages, and it progresses thoughtfully through Hutchinson's life and (as far as historiography is concerned) his afterlife.  After a preface in which Bailyn provides thanks and appreciations, the chapter itself is divided into none chapters with various supplementary material also worthy of interest.  First, Bailyn begins with a look at the young Thomas Hutchinson as an example of a successful and upwardly mobile provincial bourgeois gentleman (1).  After that, the author examines how he became as early as 1765 the face of opposition to revolutionary elements in Massachusetts and beyond (2).  His time as Lt. Governor of Massachusetts as a defender of law and order, liberty and empire is then viewed sympathetically (3).  Following this the author looks at the revolutionary fury that fell upon Massachusetts in the 1770s which Hutchinson was powerless to stop (4) and his time as a captive of the rising movement for rebellion that destroyed his property and that threatened his family (5).  His failure as governor and replacement in the face of independence is viewed (6), as is his place as a scape-goat of imperial failures where sought to return to England to defend his reputation without success (7).  The book then turns to a more tragic look at Hutchinson's exile (8) and the death of himself and many of his family members as the British war effort failed (9).  The epilogue of the book reflects on the tensions faced by Hutchinson and other exiles whose loyalties left them unable to fully appreciate the cultured life of the English elite, show the family tree of the Hutchinson family, look at the historiography of loyalism, and give some notes on the Hutchinson manuscripts as a whole.
  
  As might be expected, this particular book showcases Bailyn's conspicuous strengths as a historian.  For one, he takes on obscure and often unpopular subjects in colonial history, seeking to find niches where something important has been neglected in much of the relevant historiography.  Then, he makes himself fully aware of the writings by and about the subject he is writing about, in this case the second-to-last royalist governor of Massachusetts.  He shows himself evenhanded in his approach, pointing out the ability of Hutchinson without rancor and with fairness and justice, and also pointing out why he failed to persuade either his revolutionary rivals in Massachusetts or the royalist establishment in England as to his course of action, and how his discretion and characteristic restraint earned him a reputation as someone who was duplicitous and treacherous.  These elements of knowing the holes in a large-scale knowledge of an aspect of colonial history, his ability at working with sources on both sides of the Atlantic, his essential fairmindedness as a historian, and his gorgeous prose and ability to have empathy for characters whose treatment has been the most negative are shown here to great effect, making it little wonder that the work should attract the praise of other readers and critics.
  
  [1] See, for example:
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
  
  
  https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
• 
  Ken

  “A multitude of circumstances, events and personalities shaped this defeat; but ultimately Hutchinson failed, and died in exile grieving for the world he had lost, because, for all his intelligence, he did not comprehend the nature of the forces that confronted him and that at a critical point he might have controlled, or if not controlled then at least evaded. He was never able to understand the moral basis of the protests that arose against the existing order.
  
  Committed to small, prudential gains through an intricate, closely calibrated world of status, deference, and degree – the Anglo-American political world of privilege and patronage and of limited, arbitrary access – he could not respond to the aroused moral passion and the optimistic and idealist impulses that gripped the minds of the Revolutionaries and that led them to condemn as corrupt and oppressive the whole system by which their world was governed.”
  
  ::
  
  “There is no better testimony to the character of the forces that were shaping the Revolutionary movement and that would determine the nature of American politics in the early national period than the failure of so prudent, experienced, and intelligent a man as Thomas Hutchinson to control them.”
  
  B. Bailyn, Epilogue
• 
  Bruce Cowan

  Bravo. Great from hardbound cover to hardbound cover. The book filled in important details and enhanced my understanding of the colonial position of the loyalists and the British parliaments reaction to the revolution.
• 
  Craig Bolton

  The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn (2006)