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Tag: Daniel Leonard

250 and Counting: January 23, 1775

Cover Art for January 23, 1775: A portrait of Mercy Otis Warren

Awhile back we talked about a Loyalist who wrote an opinion piece under the pen name “Massachusettensis” (which we may have mocked a little bit but it’s just the Latin word for the Colony/State). His rhetoric angered John Adams to the point where he felt compelled to respond in kind, and he did so using a pen name of his own: Novanglus.

We’ll learn about Adams’ first response to Massachusettensis, but we’ll also discover that there may be another reason this particular essayist caught Adams’ imagination.

Also on this day, Mercy Otis Warren opens a new play whose plot may lie a little too close to real life.

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250 and Counting: January 9, 1775

Cover art for January 9, 1775: A portrait of Daniel Leonard, a British Loyalist who wrote under the pen name "Massachusettensis."

Daniel Leonard was the son of a prominent family in the ironworks industry. He lived in Taunton, Massachusetts until shortly after he accepted a position working for the Royal Governor of the state, at which point he became unpopular enough that he was forced to move to Boston, which was under British occupation at the time.

It makes sense, then, that Leonard put pen to paper and wrote essays to be published in the Boston Gazette under the pen name “Massachusettensis.” (What doesn’t make sense, 250 years later, is why he chose such a peculiar name. At least, not to us.) He began writing these pieces in December 1774 but it was the one published on this day in 1775 that finally set John Adams to writing replies under a pen name of his own. This back-and-forth continued for about three months, until a major event escalated the tensions between the Crown and the Colonies to the point where the exchange of essays became moot.

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