"MUST BE UNDERSTOOD IF ONE WANTS TO UNDERSTAND THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION": EXCEEDINGLY RARE FIRST EDITION OF SAMUEL SEABURY'S INCENDIARY FOURTH AND FINAL "FARMER" PAMPHLET, ALARM TO THE LEGISLATURE, 1775, URGING AMERICANS TO TURN AWAY FROM OPEN REVOLT AND ABOLISH THE "TYRANNY OF CONGRESS"

(AMERICAN REVOLUTION) (SEABURY, Samuel). An Alarm to the Legislature of the Province of New-York, Occasioned by The present Political Disturbances, In North America: Addressed to the Honourable Representatives in General Assembly Convened. New-York: James Rivington, 1775. Slim octavo, disbound; pp. (1-3), 4-13 (2).

First edition of Seabury's anonymously issued fourth "Farmer" pamphlet, the final work in his scathing pre-Revolutionary series that early provoked a response from Alexander Hamilton and made Seabury a "marked man" for his attacks on the Continental Congress, this culminating work urging rebellious Americans to submit to British rule in order to "prevent the rage of slaughter, and the effusion of human blood," one of the rare copies to survive destruction by enraged patriots, who regularly burned Seabury's pamphlets in public bonfires, and within months of this work's publication destroyed the publisher's press and saw to Seabury's arrest.

Soon after the Boston Tea Party, "pamphlets began to appear defending the English Crown, written by 'A.W. Farmer'… Later it was learned that 'A.W. Farmer' meant 'A Westchester Farmer,' that is, Samuel Seabury. He wrote three more pamphlets and incurred the bitter criticism of the Sons of Liberty. From then on Seabury was a marked man" (ANB). Seabury was "arguably the most accomplished Loyalist pamphleteer… Not unlike Thomas Paine, Seabury made his reputation almost exclusively through his abilities as a prose writer." His four pamphlets, which sparked the brilliant prose of a young Alexander Hamilton, "are among the most trenchant and insightful in the entire Loyalist canon. As one historian of the Loyalists has put it, these pamphlets are 'the most comprehensive and sustained polemical effort by any doctrinaire Tory to repudiate the pre-Revolutionary movement, demolish its constitutional arguments, discredit its methods of protest, and expose its coercive tactics and presumptions'" (Gould, Writing the Rebellions, 60-61).

Seabury expressed "an important segment of American thought and feeling, which must be understood if one wants to understand the history of the American Revolution. Seabury and many other Americans did not approve of British measures, but at the same time they placed much of the blame for the crisis on fellow Americans, whom they charged with tyranny and demagoguery" (Jensen, Tracts of the American Revolution, lviii). From late 1774 to January 17, 1775, the printed date of this final pamphlet, James Rivington published each of Seabury's anonymously issued pamphlets that targeted a specific topic and audience. The first, Free Thoughts (1774), vehemently warned of the tyranny of the Continental Congress and the Continental Association—and inspired Hamilton to respond with his anonymously issued Full Vindication, which was advertised on December 15, 1774. That same day Seabury's second pamphlet, Congress Canvassed (1774), was also advertised. "Seabury gave Hamilton what he always needed for his best work: a hard, strong position to contest… Hamilton had found his calling as a fearless, swashbuckling intellectual warrior… a true child of the Revolution" (Chernow, 58). Seabury, in turn, responded to Hamilton in his third pamphlet, View of the Controversy (1774).

Seabury's Alarm to the Legislature, this final published pamphlet, warned against legislators who would plunge the colonies "into all the horrors of rebellion & civil war." Abolish the "tyranny of the Congress," he wrote, "to prevent the rage of slaughter, and the effusion of human blood." While a fifth pamphlet was advertised in April 1775, it was not published, a casualty of Lexington and Concord, and an attack by the Sons of Liberty on Rivington's press that May. The Sons of Liberty had also destroyed copies of Seabury's pamphlets in public bonfires: "one was even tarred and feathered" (Gould, 62). Ten months after Alarm to the Legislature was advertised, a Connecticut mob of patriots, determined to prove Seabury's authorship, put him under house arrest. Seabury eventually made his way to British lines and, after the Revolution, died in Connecticut in 1796. "Alarm is of special interest because of the two-page list at the end headed 'The Following Pamphlets'… These include tracts on the Whig as well as the Tory side, for example Hamilton's Vindication is listed. The use of these pamphlets as propaganda is shown by the note at the end of the list, 'Large allowance will be made to the Purchasers by the Dozen, of the above articles, to give away'" (Streeter 774). Advertised in "Rivington's Gazette for January 19, 1775" (Adams 184). With two pages of publisher's advertisement at rear. Sabin 78559. ESTC W37163. Church 1127. Adams, Controversy 75-121.1. Evans 14453.

Text fresh with only faint soiling to title page. An exceptional about-fine copy.