The Scottish Conspiracy Against American Liberty: The Case of South Carolina

Did a Scottish conspiracy to crush colonial liberty provoke the American Revolution? Nonsense, you will likely say. But evidence from the 1760s and 1770s shows that colonial anger at the actions of the British government was paralleled by a rise of anti-Scottish sentiment. Some colonial leaders, who called themselves Whigs, claimed that Scots dominated the government in London and were conspiring to undermine the people's liberties, to enslave them in fact. Whigs, who later called  themselves Patriots, used the term "enslave" freely, despite the fact that many of them were themselves slaveowners. "Liberty or Slavery" was a common Whig motto.   

The Scottish conspiracy theory, like so many things political in the colonies, originated in British politics. In the early 1760s, disgruntled English Whig politicians claimed that George III’s former Scottish tutor, John  Stuart, Earl of Bute was the gray eminence behind the alleged conspiracy. 

George selected Bute as his Prime Minister in 1762, two years after he became king. English Whig politicians concocted the conspiracy theory while Bute was in office. He didn't last long in the job. King George discharged him in 1763. Yet Whigs continued to accuse Bute of plotting behind the scenes to “enslave” the English people. They accused him of influencing policy through an affair with the king's mother. 

Bute's critics portrayed him as a boot. The "Boot" became a common and convenient symbol of tyranny in Britain and its empire. American Whigs used it during the Stamp Act Crisis in 1765 and right up to the beginning of the revolution in 1775. 

The Scottish conspiracy theory gained additional traction in America in the early 1770s as a result of a judicial decision in London. The judge who made the decision happened to be a Scot, Lord Mansfield. He was educated in England, trained in law, and became one of the top English judges, Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench. In the widely reported Somerset Case in 1772, Mansfield ruled that slavery had no basis in English law, in either precedent or statute. 

The Somerset decision sent shock waves through the colonies, especially the southern colonies, where the wealth of the elite relied on enslaved African labor. Nowhere was the Somerset ruling more resented than in South Carolina, where enslaved Africans made up a majority of the population. Many planters feared Parliament might extend Mansfield's ruling to the entire empire. The fear had little basis in reality. Mansfield's ruling was narrow and applied only to England. 

Abolition of slavery in the British empire occurred, of course, but not for more than sixty years. In the 1770s, the anti-slavery movement in Britain was still in its infancy. Parliament was filled with MPs and Lords who derived much of their income from the slave trade and colonial plantations. Abolitionism was beginning to have some impact on the British  consciousness, but it did not have enough influence on Parliament to achieve abolition of the slave trade, let alone slavery itself. The sugar planters of the West Indies seem to have understood this, because they did not use it as a reason to defy the home government. 

Slave owning colonists in the American colonies, especially in South Carolina, did not understand the reality of British politics. Or they pretended not to. They panicked at the news of the Somerset decision. Their fear that it might be applied to the colonies led them to embrace a solution that aligned them with northern activists challenging Parliament’s power to tax the colonies. 

The solution had already been articulated by Charleston merchant Christopher Gadsden. Since the late 1750s Gadsden had been arguing that Parliament had no right to legislate for the colonies on any domestic matters. In the northern colonies the rallying cry of those opposing British policies was "No Taxation without Representation.” That cry was adopted in the South as well, but it was not the main issue that united southerners against Britain. The central issue in South Carolina, although never articulated directly, was “No Representation, No Slavery.” The political elite decided that the best way to protect its domestic institutions (read: chattel slavery) was for South Carolina to control its own destiny. That decision was a crucial step in the unification of the thirteen colonies into what became the United States. 

By the early 1770s, antislavery views in the northern colonies were gaining adherents. Some of the men who would sign the Declaration of Independence in July 1776 had previously denounced human bondage. But in the interests of colonial unity, northern antislavery figures muted their criticisms and accommodated southern opinion. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin had both condemned slavery, but in 1775 they argued that slavery, like taxation, was a domestic issue for Americans to deal with. The British Parliament had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of the colonies. They must be sovereign, and they must unite to achieve sovereignty. The issue of slavery would have to wait until that was accomplished. 

To salve their consciences, many American Whigs predicted that slavery would be abolished after independence was achieved. That was safely in the future. In 1775, colonists north and south proclaimed that the British government was determined to enslave them, while also threatening the institution of slavery. And the architects of this policy were Bute, Mansfield, and other villains, including ones implanted in the heart of the colonies. The cartoon of 1775 below, Virtual Representation, illustrates the colonial Whig view. The man in tartan pants with the gun is Lord Bute. Next to him is Lord Mansfield in his judicial robes. The gun is pointed at colonists. Britannia, at far right is coming to the rescue, but is about to fall into a pit, presumably dug by the Scots. On the far left are two French Canadians, a soldier and a monk, who are supporting Bute and Mansfield. Why? In 1774, Parliament had passed the Quebec Act giving French Canadian Catholics freedom of religion. Many American colonists viewed this with alarm. They believed it was part of the British strategy to subdue the thirteen colonies, in this case by enlisting French Canadians to fight them. 

In retrospect the view that Bute, Mansfield, and other Scots in Britain and the colonies were engaged in a conspiracy to eliminate American liberty and abolish American slavery -- a disconnect and an oxymoron -- seems preposterous. To many people in the colonies, however, the Scottish conspiracy theory seemed plausible. It was politically useful to American Whigs and they had the claims of English Whigs to support it. 

British Whigs were the political descendants of the parliamentary faction that had opposed royal absolutism in the turbulent seventeenth century. The monarchs in question belonged to the House of Stuart. The Stuarts were a Scottish dynasty. They had ruled Scotland for centuries before James VI & I became king of England on the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. 

American colonists claimed to be defending liberties secured by the seventeenth century struggles against the heirs of James I: Charles I, Charles II, and James II. In the wake of the conflicts, many people in Britain and its colonies associated the Scottish name Stuart with authoritarianism. Lord Bute's given name, John Stuart, surely did little to help his chances of political success.

By the time of the American Revolution, Stuart monarchs no longer ruled Britain and had not for sixty years. Their immediate successors, the Hanoverian kings George I and II, had favored Whig politicians during their reigns, from 1714 to1760, a period often called The Whig Supremacy. The rival Tory Party all but disappeared. 

Things changed when George III ascended the throne in 1760, aged nineteen. He believed that Whig oligarchs had gained too much power and had corrupted British politics. He was eager to reduce their influence and end the successful but hugely expensive war with France and Spain. His current Whig ministers wanted to continue the war. George removed several of them from his government. Among them was the popular William Pitt, who had led Britain to victory in the Seven Years War (French and Indian War in American history). 

Pitt had become a hero in the colonies as well, as the names of numerous towns and streets in the USA attest, from Pittsburgh to Pittsboro to Pittsfield. Charleston, South Carolina named a street after him (I lived on it) and erected a statue of him in gratitude for his efforts to abolish the Stamp Act of 1765. The statue originally stood at the intersection of Broad and Meeting Streets. It is now located in the Charleston County Judicial Center. It is missing his outstretched arm. Ironically, a British cannonball knocked it off during their siege of the city in 1780. 

English Whig claims of “Scots tyranny” merged with growing colonial resentment of Scottish influence and economic competition in British America. Ever since the Act of Union, Scots had been free to settle and trade in England and its colonies. Thousands took advantage of the opportunity and migrated to greener pastures. Scottish merchants and traders descended on London and every corner of the empire. 

Many people in England resented this invasion by their former enemies. English writers and cartoonists portrayed Scots as lean and hungry, a plague of locusts eager to feast on the land of milk and honey. The poet Charles Churchill described Scotland as a land where half-starved spiders fed on half-starved flies. In his dictionary, lexicographer Samuel Johnson defined oats as a grain which in England is fed to horses and in Scotland is fed to the people. Scots were uncouth, uncivilized, impoverished -- and historically traitorous. The last is a reference to the Jacobite Rebellions which were designed to restore the Catholic Stuart monarchs to the throne of Britain. The rebellions broke out in Scotland, and Highland clans provided most of the Jacobite soldiery. The last of the revolts penetrated into central England before being crushed in 1746. Most adults in England could remember the panic and fear it generated, and they told their children.    

[English Anti-Scottish Cartoons: Sawney in the Boghouse and London: A Flight of Scotsman] 

In America, Scots flocked to South Carolina and Georgia in particular, lured by the prospect of quick riches. They became merchants, planters, doctors, and shopkeepers. The Crown also appointed Scots to many colonial offices, a trend that accelerated after the defeat of the last Jacobite Rebellion in 1746 and the accession of George III in 1760. From the perspective of the British government improving opportunities for Scots in the empire was a means of keeping them loyal. Americans were not the only ones struggling to achieve unity in the late eighteenth century. We tend to forget that Great Britain was also a new country, not much older than the United States. “British” was a new and fragile national identity. 

Many Charleston creoles resented the new Scottish ascendancy in trade and government. They accused Scots of favoring one another and benefiting unfairly from British colonial and trade policies. Merchant Christopher Gadsden was one of the most vocal critics of the Scottish invasion. In 1767 Gadsden built a huge wharf in Charleston, one of the largest in any American port. During its construction of his wharf, Gadsden remarked that he was going to "fill the foundation with imported Scotchmen, who are fit for nothing better." The statement reflected Gadsden’s disdain for Scots, in particular Scottish merchants, who he viewed as the undeserving beneficiaries of British trade policies. 

About the same time, Gadsden was developing the area near Boundary Street. He called it Middlesex and named one of the streets after John Wilkes, Whig MP for the county of Middlesex. Gadsden admired Wilkes for his spirited defense of English liberties, which took an anti-Scottish slant. He became famed for his attacks on Lord Bute in his journal The North Briton. Wilkes became a hero to many colonists in the 1760s, despite notoriously rakish behavior and obscenity charges stemming from his satirical poem, An Essay on Woman. 

Gadsden’s hostility toward Scots may have initially developed as a result of his service as a militia officer during the Cherokee War of 1760. At the request of South Carolina, the British government sent a Highland regiment to help quell the Cherokee uprising. Gadsden was angered that the government gave command of the campaigns to Scottish officers. Gadsden believed that a South Carolinian should have been in command. 

Peter Timothy, printer of the South Carolina Gazette, was another prominent Whig who resented the success of recent Scots arrivals. His animosity was directed in particular against a rival Scottish printer, Robert Wells, who had arrived in the early 1750s. Wells printed and imported books, and established a flourishing bookstore. In the late 1750s, he started a rival newspaper. Timothy resented the competition, and claimed that Wells benefited from an unfair advantage. Interestingly, Wells supported the protests against the Stamp Act in 1765, but later became a staunch defender of the British government. He also became known for his belligerent Scottishness. He used to dress his son William Charles in a tartan jacket and Scottish bonnet to demonstrate his national pride. Poor William suffered harassment from other young boys of the town as a result. Robert was also the object of Whig harassment. In 1775, he left for Britain, declaring he could not live under the "Lilliputian" regime in South Carolina. 

When Timothy complained that Wells benefited from an unfair advantage, one of the persons he blamed was another Scot, who like Bute, also happened to to be named John Stuart. He had come to Charleston from Scotland in 1748. After mixed success as a merchant, including some slave trading, he married Sarah Fenwick, daughter of a wealthy planting family. He became a planter and built the house that still bears his name, the Colonel John Stuart House on the western end of Tradd Street. 

During the Cherokee War of 1760 Stuart served in the South Carolina militia. He developed a good relationship with some of the people he was fighting, including Cherokee headman Attakullakulla, the Little Carpenter. In 1762, the British government, eager to prevent war, appointed him as Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern Department. In that capacity he tried to keep the peace between the backcountry settlers and the southern Indian nations. 

It was partly at Stuart's instigation that the British government established the Proclamation Line in 1763, which declared the land of the Appalachians and beyond was to be reserved as Indian land. Stuart argued that shady land speculators and white settlers encroaching on Indian land constituted the main danger to peace. He made powerful enemies trying to prevent fraudulent land deals, including one in which planter William Henry Drayton tried to swindle the Catawba nation out of thousands of acres. 

In the spring of 1775, Drayton and his other enemies revenged themselves by charging that Stuart was conspiring with the British government to incite Indian attacks on the colonists. In fact, he was trying to prevent the southern Indian nations from going to war. This fabricated tale enraged many people in the city. Stuart had to flee Charleston with a liberty mob at his heels. He ended up in Florida, where he continued to advise the Indians. In 1776, he tried but failed to prevent a disastrous Cherokee attack on the settlers of the southern backcountry. He died ion Florida in 1779. 

Into this hornet's nest sailed another suspicious Scot, the last royal governor of South Carolina. Lord William Campbell was the 4th son of the Duke of Argyll, Scotland's most powerful aristocrat. In 1763, he had been stationed in Charleston as a navy captain, and had married the daughter of a local planter, Sarah Izard. The Campbells arrived in June 1775 aboard the ship Scorpion. Prior to their arrival, a rumor had spread that the ship was carrying 14,000 stand of arms to be distributed to Loyalists, slaves, and Indians. 

The rumor was baseless, but people were disposed to believe it. The Whigs "uncovered" another conspiracy around the time Campbell arrived. They arrested some "suspicious" slaves who, after "rigorous interrogation" confessed the existence of a plot for a slave revolt to help the British. The alleged organizer was a wealthy free black, Thomas Jeremiah. After a mockery of a trial, the tribunal of five white men found him guilty. He was hanged and his body burned a few days later. Campbell was appalled by the proceeding and attempted to pardon Jeremiah, only to find he was powerless. 

When the Whigs spread the news of Campbell's efforts to save the condemned man, a liberty mob surrounded his  house at 34 Meeting Street and threatened to drag him out into the street and force him to hang Jeremiah himself. Campbell fled Charleston to a British navy ship a few weeks later, bringing an official end to British rule in South Carolina. In fact, it had ended months before. 

Many Scots in the southern colonies became Loyalists once the revolution began. One of the most interesting and insightful explanations of Scottish loyalism was offered by Charles Webb of St. Paul’s Parish, a few miles southwest of Charleston. Webb was himself a Loyalist, but not a Scot. In July 1775, the parish committee reported him to a justice of the peace for “malicious expressions" against the Whigs, who he said were "greater rebels than ever the Scotch were.” This was an obvious reference to the Jacobite rebellions in Scotland. Webb pointed to a key reason why many Scots in America supported the British government: many of them or their families had suffered severe punishments after the crushing of the rebellions. He was not surprised, he said, that the Scots were “such loyal subjects, for a burnt child would dread the fire.” They had learned from experience the folly of fighting the British monarch. This was true, but Whig attacks on Scots in America also contributed to this result. 

Further Reading: 

Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)

Jim Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and Slaves in the Revolutionary South, 1775-1782. Columbia: University of South Carlina Press, 2008.

Robert G. Parkinson, Thirteen Clocks: How Racism United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, and the University of North Carolina Pres, Chapel Hill.

Alfred W. Blumrosen and Ruth G. Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies & Sparked the American Revolution (Naperville, Illinois: Source Books, 2005)

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821.

The Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972-2003. Volumes dealing with the 1760s and 1770s.

Stanly Godbold, Jr., and Robert Woody, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983.

Daniel McDonough, Christopher Gadsden and Henry Laurens: The Parallel Lives of Two American Patriots. Susquehanna University Press, 2000.

Kelcey Eldridge. A Forgotten Founder: The Life and Legacy of Christopher Gadsden (MA thesis). Clemson University, 2018.

Richard Walsh, Charleston's Sons of Liberty: A Study of the Artisans, 1763–1789. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959. 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2011, 2014. 

If you enjoyed this post and would like to become a follower of my blog, just click on the blue "FOLLOW" button on the right side of the first page. Below there you can also find my previous posts. Thanks! 

Truth: The First Casualty of War -- and Politics

That war and truth have never coexisted happily is something a cliché nowadays. The phrase "Truth is the first casualty of war"  has been knocking about for centuries. The idea, if not the exact words, has been attributed to various figures from the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus to Hiram Johnson, a 20th century US senator. 

People continue to debate who said it first, but the oldest traceable expression of the idea came from the pen of another Johnson, the 18th century lexicographer and essayist Samuel Johnson: "Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages." [The Idler 11 November 1758]

[Image: Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds. Johnson as nearsighted]

Johnson's sentence not only contains the basic accusation -- war annihilates truth -- but an explanation: interest dictates lies and credulity encourages belief in them. "Interest" could be the interest of the country, but more likely, the interests of political leaders. "Credulity" refers to a public willingness to believe the leaders' claims without verifiable proof. 

Johnson's main target was journalists. With the emergence and expansion of newspapers and journals in the 18th century, the tribe of "scribblers" had multiplied. Their chief employment was "inventing new amusements for the rich and idle." 

The most necessary qualities of these new journalists was "contempt of shame and indifference to truth." War provided the scribblers with new opportunities to showcase their skills and make a living. Johnson's claims about journalists may seem unduly harsh, but his basic contention about war and truth has been proven correct again and again. 

But as he knew, war is not unique in abusing the truth. He also coined the phrase "politics is the last refuge of the scoundrel." Even in peacetime, politics is a kind of war: a fight for power. In the heat of political battle falsehood is a routine tactic. "Interest dictates" and "credulity encourages" lying. 

Credulity is essential to the success of political lies. To paraphrase the English poet Arthur Hugh Clough, credulity gives the lie wings to fly. Without credulity the lie would go nowhere and die. With it the lie can go "viral," especially in the world of social media.

History abounds with political liars, some successful, some not. The most glaring examples, like Hitler or Stalin, can be misleading. Their whoppers were so big we can easily overlook the more modest liars of today, in politics and other realms, like advertising.

Recent figures such as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have had a long history of playing fast and loose with the truth before emerging as leaders of their countries. In spite of that, they attracted huge support from the credulous, thanks in large part to a media that either spread their lies or allowed them to fly without serious scrutiny. 

Ask yourself, how could these mega-fibbing clowns be elected leaders of two great democracies? How could a deluded lightweight with crackpot ideas manage to succeed Boris Johnson as Tory leader and Prime Minister? I mean, Liz Truss?

We can't blame the meteoric rise of Truss on British voters. They had no say in the matter. A majority of Tory Party members, less than 100,000 people "elected" her as the leader of a nation of nearly 70 million. That almost makes the US Electoral College look like a democratic way of electing a president. 

It is true that her own Tory MP's pushed Truss out of the job in a few weeks, making her the shortest serving prime minister in British history. But she had enough time to do huge damage the British economy and help her old employers, Shell Oil, make record windfall profits. [Image: Liz Truss announcing her resignation]

Truss, like Boris, is a shameless opportunist who says whatever she thinks will achieve power. If her intelligence matched her lust for power, she would be a formidable force. If.

Why did so much of the media treat these amoral and incompetent characters as if they were credible leaders? What interests were directing their rise to power? Why were so many people credulous in the face of their lies, bogus promises, and fantasies? 

More importantly, perhaps, is there any prospect of change? Or are we condemned to an endless parade of charlatans and fools ascending what Benjamin Disraeli called the "greasy pole" of power?

A brief glance at what claims to be accurate media does not arouse a sense of optimism. Many media figures today are little different from the sort of scribblers Samuel Johnson denounced. Actually, they may be far worse and far more dangerous, as are the "interests" behind them. 

Consider Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the general run of FOX "news" reporters. Multiply them by hundreds of others like them on TV, radio, and social media. Consider the scribblers write for tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, The Daily Mail, and The Daily Express. Have a nice day. 

If you enjoyed this post and would like to become a follower of my blog, just click on the blue "FOLLOW" button on the right side of the first page. Below there you can also find my previous posts. Thanks! 

Patriotism and Scoundrels: The Context of Donald Trump

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Samuel Johnson. 

Dr Johnson, as he is generally known was one of the great literary critics and essayists of the 18th century. He is best known for his highly successful Dictionary of the English Language (1755). He was also the subject of the first modern biography, James Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791). Johnson was in many respects a conservative, but he was also a harsh critic of slavery.

According to his friend and biographer, James Boswell, Johnson made the remark about patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel during a conversation with friends at a meeting in Soho. He was not condemning patriotism as such. In his dictionary, he had defined patriotism in a positive sense. He was attacking those who sought to exploit patriotic feelings for personal or political advantage. His quotation has lasted because it anticipated and exemplifies a major problem of our age of mass voting and mass communications. As democracy has advanced, so has the number of scoundrels trying to leverage patriotic and nationalist sentiments to gain power. They are usually referred to as populists due to their attempts to harness and exploit the angers of the masses. 

The arrival of cheap daily newspapers and other inexpensive publications in the late 19th century provided a platform for demagogues appealing to the new voting public. The simultaneous spread of pseudo-scientific nationalist and racialist views provided them with a popular agenda. By the 1920s, radio and film became additional platforms for rousing patriotic outrage against the "enemies" of the nation, which fascists and others on the extreme  right increasingly defined in narrow ethnic and racialist terms. From the 1950s, these patriotic scoundrels were able to use television to spread their malign messages. In our time, social media has opened up another major outlet for populists. 

Obvious examples of patriotic scoundrels from the 20th century include Hitler and Mussolini. The USA has produced scores of them, notably Father Coughlin, Senator Joe McCarthy, and more recently, Donald Trump. They have all to varying degrees exploited the same cliché-ridden formula. They promise to "make our nation great again" and "protect it against its enemies within and without."  

These well-known demagogues are just the tip of the patriotic scoundrel iceberg. It includes a huge cast of less well-known historical and contemporary figures. The lesser known purveyors of patriotic bile enable the more visible ones by spreading and often creating their message. Focusing so much of our attention on a phenomenon like Hitler lulls too many of us into thinking that only leaders wearing swastikas and heiling are dangerous. 

The rabidly anti-Semitic Karl Lueger, pictured below was the mayor of Vienna in the early years of the 20th century. He looks innocent enough but he and other racists inspired Adolf Hitler. Trump's acolytes have included Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and many others.

It is depressing to reflect that 250 years after Samuel Johnson's famous quip, charlatans and demagogues continue to deceive the public almost effortlessly with "patriotic" rhetoric. 

Perhaps, as some say, education is the answer. It wouldn't hurt. But humans can be exceedingly slow learners. Perhaps the fault lies not in the scoundrels but in people so easily and willingly deceived by the nonsense they spout. That is depressing.    

If you enjoyed this post and would like to become a follower of my blog, just click on the blue "FOLLOW" button on the right side of the first page. Below there you can also find my previous posts. Thanks! 

"A Vile Country": Dr Johnson on Scotland and Scots

The writer Samuel Johnson, AKA Dr. Johnson (1709-1785), is best known today for his celebrated Dictionary of the English Language. First published in London in 1755, it is often called "Johnson's Dictionary." The dictionary was warmly received and proved highly influential in shaping the modern English language. (Image: Johnson in 1775, by Sir Joshua Reynolds)

Some of Johnson's definitions were witty. His definition of lexicographer poked fun at himself: "a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the significance of words."

Other definitions conveyed his prejudices. An example is monsieur: "a term of reproach for a Frenchman." Johnson, in common with many English folk at the time, had no love for the French, with whom they were often at war. 

The English were almost as contemptuous of the people of Scotland, with whom they had been united in 1707 into a new country, Great Britain. The Union was an uneasy one for many years. 

Several rebellions arose in Scotland seeking to restore the exiled Catholic Stuarts to the throne of both kingdoms, occupied since 1714 by the German Hanoverians, Georges I and II.

The last and most dangerous of these "Jacobite" Risings began in 1745. An army made up mainly of Highlanders led by Prince Charles Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") defeated a Hanoverian army at Prestonpans. 

The Jacobites quickly seized Edinburgh, and marched into England. They came within striking distance of London at Derby before turning back and facing final bloody defeat at Culloden Moor in April 1746. It was the last battle fought on British soil. (Image: Battle of Culloden, by David Morier, 1746)

The Highland army's incursion into central England had terrified and outraged many English people, including Johnson, himself a sentimental Jacobite. 

The English viewed the Highland Scots with their plaids and Gaelic language as uncouth, dirty, and savage. The romantic Highlander of the novels of Sir Walter Scott would not appear until decades later. The cartoon below, "Sawney in the Boghouse," gives an indication of how contemporary Englishmen viewed the barbaric Highlander. 

Johnson shared these views. Perhaps it is not surprising that he used his dictionary to convey them. His definition of oats is classic: "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland is used to support the people."

Here, Johnson was parroting the conventional English view of the Scots as an impoverished and oppressed people, who might, if given their way, reduce the English to the same level. That view had some merit: Scotland was poorer than England, and its political system was more authoritarian at that time. 

Yet the idea that Scots could impose an authoritarian system on England was far fetched. Incidentally, many American colonists shared that view, which contributed to the drive for independence. 

The American cartoon below, from 1775, shows Scots Lord Bute and Lord Mansfield tyrannizing Americans. backed up by the Catholic Church (the monk) and the British army. 

It was a conspiracy theory worthy of QAnon. Bute had been out of politics for ten years by this point. Chief Justice Mansfield had no say over colonial policy, but he had declared slavery in England illegal in 1773, which made him a tyrant for American slaveholders. 

Johnson eventually softened his views on Scotland and its people, though he always enjoyed a dig at them. His circle of friends came to include some Scots he admired, including poet James Beattie. His best friend in his later years was Scots lawyer James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck. (Image: James Boswell, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1785)

In 1763, Boswell went to London, hoping to get a commission in a Guards regiment and enjoy the capital's culture (and women). He was quickly exposed to anti-Scottish sentiment. 

In his journal he recorded how he went to Covent Garden Theater one evening to see a comic opera. Just before the overture began, two Highland officers entered, the crowd began to chant, "No Scots! No Scots! Out with them!" 

Boswell was outraged. The officers had just returned from the successful siege of Havana. At that moment, he wrote, "I hated the English. I wished from my soul that the Union was broke and that we might give them another Battle of Bannockburn.... The rudeness of the English vulgar is terrible."

After this encounter, it may come as some surprise that Boswell sought out the acquaintance of two Englishmen men famed for their anti-Scottish prejudices: John Wilkes and Johnson. 

Except for their antipathy to Scots, the two can hardly have been more different. Wilkes was a libertine radical and a demagogue. Johnson was straight-laced, pious, and socially conservative.  

Wilkes was "very civil" to Boswell when they met. He even invited Boswell to call on him. Boswell's first meeting with Johnson was less auspicious: 

Johnson: I understand, Sir, that you are from Scotland.

Boswell: I am indeed, but I cannot help it.

Johnson: That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help. 

This was how one of the most famous friendships in British history began. Johnson and Boswell became boon companions, eating, drinking, and conversing together. 

"Bozzy" would later write a biography of his friend, The Life of  Samuel Johnson (1791). Many critics consider it the greatest biography ever written in English.

The pair spent many an evening in animated conversation with other members of Johnson's circle. The "Club" as it is sometimes known, was the idea of Johnson's friend, painter Joshua Reynolds. (Image: A Meeting of the The Club. Johnson is second from left, Reynolds is third, with ear trumpet.)

 

Its members included some the greatest minds of the day including actor David Garrick, orator Edmund Burke, and writers Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Sheridan. Scientist Joseph Bank and historian Edward Gibbon also attended meetings from time to time. Another Scot, Adam Smith, was a later member. Johnson never liked him because he contributed little to the conversation. 

Boswell recorded many of the exchanges at these meetings. On occasion, Johnson's prejudices against Scotland rose to the surface. A famous such occasion was when the group was discussing "noble prospects" or beautiful views. Johnson quipped, "the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England."

Here, Johnson, joking or not, was reflecting a very real concern in England at the time. Many people complained that a plague of greedy, half-starved Scots was invading their country, snapping up plum jobs and rich heiresses. People often compared the Scots immigrants to a plague of locusts, as reflected in this cartoon of 1796, "A Flight of Scotchmen":

The poet Charles Churchill, a collaborator with Wilkes, wrote a pastoral in which he characterized Scotland as a land where half-starved spiders preyed on half-starved flies. 

The comparative poverty of Scotland was a subject Johnson often returned to in conversation. During a discussion on the danger of invasion in Scotland, he asked: "What enemy would invade Scotland, when there is nothing to be got?"

Warning an Irish friend against uniting in a union with England: "Do not make a union with us, Sir. We should unite with you only to rob you; we should have robbed the Scots if they had anything of which we could rob them."

Scotland, unlike England at the time, provided a basic primary education to most children in a system of parish schools. Johnson was not impressed: "Knowledge is divided up among Scots like bread in a besieged town, to every man a mouthful, to no man a bellyful." Learning in Scotland, he concluded, was widely diffused, "but thinly spread." 

Boswell, irked by Johnson's refusal to concede the existence of highly educated Scots, mentioned Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench. Johnson denied that Scotland derived "any credit from Mansfield, for he was educated in England. Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young."

Asked by a Scot what he thought of Scotland, Johnson replied, "it is a very vile country, to be sure, Sir." Taken aback, the Scot retorted that God had made it. "Certainly, he did," Johnson agreed; "but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. S-------; and God made hell."

Arthur Lee of Virginia once remarked that he could not understand why some Scots had settled in a barren part of America. Johnson thought the answer obvious: "Why, Sir, all barrenness is comparative. The Scotch would not know it be barren."

Having Boswell as a close friend gradually softened Johnson's views on Scots if not Scotland. In 1773, Bozzy convinced Johnson to make a trip to Scotland, including a tour of the Hebrides, or Western Isles. 

Johnson complained about some things, notably the weather, roads, and some of the inns and food. But he praised much as well, especially Scottish hospitality: 

"At the tables where a stranger is received, neither plenty nor delicacy is wanting.... he that shall complain of his fare in the Hebrides, has improved his delicacy more than his manhood.... If an epicure could remove by a wish, in quest of sensual gratifications, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland."

The Hebrides in particular impressed Johnson.. The pair visited Skye, Iona, Mull, and other islands. Johnson recorded feelings of awe on his visit to Iona, where Irish missionaries established the first Christian foothold in Scotland in the 6th century.

After returning to London, both men wrote accounts of their journey. Still in print and quite readable today, the books inspired many others to make similar trips. One could argue that they (and Walter Scott) helped lay the foundations of later Scottish tourism. 

Johnson later told Boswell that the trip "was the pleasantest part of his life..." High praise indeed for a man who wrote that "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." Perhaps Bozzy made a difference after all.

Further Reading:

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London, 1791)

____________, Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763 (New Haven, 1950)

____________, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson(1785)

Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755)

_____________, A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland (London, 1775)

 

 

    

Francis Barber: the Slave who became Samuel Johnson's Heir

Samuel Johnson  (1709-1784), often referred to as Dr. Johnson, is best known for his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), and the classic biography of him by his friend James Boswell, The Life of Dr. Johnson. (Below: Portrait of Johnson by Joshua Reynolds)

Among Johnson's many other writings is a long essay, Taxation No Tyranny: An Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress  (1775). As the title indicates, Johnson rejects the American colonists' complaint that they were being oppressed by taxes levied by the British parliament. 

Among other things, Johnson argued that the Americans' claim that there should be "No Taxation without Representation" was unfounded. The colonists had voluntarily resigned the power of voting in British elections by leaving Britain, but retained "virtual representation" in Parliament, as did British people who had no right to vote. If the colonists wanted to take part in British politics, he suggested, they could move to England and buy an estate. 

This argument was unconvincing then and hasn't improved with time. Taxation No Tyranny has contributed to the common view of Johnson as an arch Tory. In some respects he was, but the reality is more complicated, and far more interesting. Another of Johnson's arguments is far more powerful -- and liberal. It may be summed up in the line "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" 

Here Johnson hit the colonial argument for liberty at its most vulnerable point. The colonists claimed that the British government was trying to enslave them while holding hundreds of thousands of people in the most oppressive form of bondage. 

Johnson, unlike most influential Britons in the 1770s, considered slavery an abomination. He once proposed a toast to "the next rebellion of the negroes in the West Indies." He also argued that if the Africans were freed and given some land, they would likely prove better citizens than their masters.

Johnson did more than talk the talk. Years before he essentially adopted a former Jamaican slave, Francis Barber, and educated him. Barber entered Johnson's household as a boy in 1752. Johnson's wife Elizabeth had just died, plunging Johnson into a deep depression. Barber's owner sent Barber to serve as Johnson's valet. 

Barber  (1742/3-1801), originally named Quashey, was still a slave at that time, but his owner freed him two years later. After gaining his freedom, he worked for an apothecary, briefly as a sailor in the Navy, and then as Johnson's assistant. Barber married Elizabeth Ball, a white woman with whom he had two children. In his will, Johnson left Barber a substantial legacy in money along with his books and papers, and a gold watch. 

The portrait above, which some art experts attribute to Johnson's friend Joshua Reynolds, hangs in Johnson's house today. Whether it is a portrait of Barber or not is disputed. Some experts think it is a portrait of Reynolds' manservant. 

Johnson's house, just off Fleet Street in Gough Square, is open to the public daily. It is well worth visiting to learn more about Johnson and Barber.

Further Reading: Michael Bundock, The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave who Became Samuel Johnson's Heir (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015)

London's Fascinating Fleet Street: Printers, Prisons, Publishers and Pubs

London's Fleet Street starts at the bottom of Ludgate Hill, a street atop which sits St. Paul’s Cathedral. Fleet Street derived its name from the nearby River Fleet, which today runs underground beneath Farringdon Street and New Bridge Road. 

Fleet Street was once the center of England's printing trade and later became a metonym for its newspaper industry. 

Just north of Fleet Street beside the River Fleet, lay the Fleet Prison which incarcerated people for debt from medieval times until the 19th century. Alas, it is no longer there.

Just south of Fleet Street Henry VIII erected a royal residence, Bridewell Palace. After his death his heir Edward VI gave it to the City of London. The City Fathers used it for a house for punishing “disorderly women” and a school for young lads, an interesting juxtaposition. One can only wonder about the curriculum. 

The boys moved out later and Bridewell became a general house of correction. Eventually all such establishments became known as “bridewells.” All that is left of the palace is the gatehouse, which boasts a relief portrait of Edward VI, a king whose main claim to fame was dying young and being replaced by Bloody Mary.

One of the most popular spots on Fleet Street is just a short walk down a lane on the north side of the street: Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. The pub, as its sign tells you, was “Restored in 1667,” the year after the Great Fire of London. It seems to have been untouched since. It’s dark, with all sorts of little nooks and crannies for drinking, plotting, and whatever. And lots of history.

Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Conan Doyle, Tennyson, and other literary figures are among those claimed as "regulars." Dr. Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame lived at nearby Gough Square and is said to have popped in here occasionally with friends, such as his biographer James Boswell and the writer Oliver Goldsmith.

Goldsmith is buried next to nearby 12th century Temple Church, built as the spiritual home of England's crusading Knights Templar. The church gained some recent fame from the novel and film The Da Vinci Code.

Another nearby church, St.Bride's, has a fascinating history as well. An earlier church was destroyed during the Great Fire of London in 1666. 

Sir Christopher Wren, who designed nearby St. Paul's and many other rebuilt churches after the fire, designed the current St. Bride's. Its steeple and name later inspired the layered wedding cake! 

St. Bride's was once known as The Printer's Church because Fleet Street became the center of the city's printing industry. It is now known as the Journalists' Church and contains an altar dedicated the memory of journalists killed covering various conflicts around the world. The crypt contains remains of a Roman street and a small museum.

Johnson’s house at Gough Square is open to the public. It is well worth a visit. Johnson was a fascinating, idiosyncratic fellow. Pictured below is his house and a statue of his cat Hodge.

Inside the house is a portrait that some believe to be of Francis Barber, a former slave who Johnson basically adopted and educated at his own expense. At his death, Johnson left Barber a large sum of money.

To the west of Gough Square are many buildings related to the law. The ancient law schools and courts are nearby. At the end of Fleet Street, where it becomes The Strand, stands the massive neo-Gothic pile of the Royal Courts of Justice (Opened, 1882). 

On an island at the end of Fleet Street lies St. Clement Danes church, made famous by the nursery rhyme, “Oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clements.” It sounds nice until you get to the last couplet: “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!” [Image: St Clement Danes]