"A readable and tightly argued political and social biography that
provides numerous insights into Massachusetts' history on the eve
of the revolution."
--"Historical Journal of Massachusetts"
"A candid and readable biography . . . [Walmsley] gives a vivid
account of the descent of a controversial and sometimes
misunderstood figure of the period."
"--Choice"
"Usefully emphasizes the economic and personal influences on the
politics of Massachusetts."
-- "Religious Studies Review"
"A significant addition. Hutchinson definitely needed a more
complete treatment than he heretofore had received and Walmsley has
neatly provided it. A genuine pleasure to read."
--"Charles P. Neimeyer, author of America Goes to War: A Social
History of the Continental Army"
"Given the enduring fascination of the American Revolution, this
fine biography of Thomas Hutchinson should find a wide and
appreciative audience. Historian Stephen Walmsely's persuasive
study of the loyalist governor of Massachusetts Bay portrays an
honorable but unimaginative official who remains true to his
aristocratic conception of duty but helpless to arrest the forces
wrenching his native land away from Crown rule. Putting a human
face on an epic conflict, Walmsley finds hutchinson's radical
opponents motivated less by ideas and principles than by ambition,
greed, and personal animus. Indeed, Walmsley's graphic description
of the mob violence, deployed by the patriots to intimidate
Hutchinson and subvert the rule of law, will leave readers
pondering who were the villains and who the heroes in this superb
reconsideration of the nation's origins."
--"Allen Matusow, Rice University"
Rarely in Americanhistory has a political figure been so
pilloried and despised as Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of
Massachusetts and an ardent loyalist of the Crown in the days
leading up to the American revolution.
In this narrative and analytic life of Hutchinson, the first
since Bernard Bailyn's Pulitzer-Prize-winning biography a quarter
century ago, Andrew Stephen Walmsley traces Hutchinson's decline
from well- respected member of Boston's governing class to
America's leading object of revolutionary animus. Walmsley argues
that Hutchinson, rather than simply a victim of his inability to
understand the passions associated with a revolutionary movement,
was in fact defeated in a classic political and personal struggle
for power. No mere sycophant for the British, Hutchinson was keenly
aware of how much he had to lose if revolutionary forces prevailed,
which partially explains his evolution from near- Whig to
intransigent loyalist. His consequent vilification became a vehicle
through which the growing patriot movement sought to achieve
legitimacy.
An entertaining and thought-provoking view of revolutionary
events from the perspective of the losing side, Thomas Hutchinson
and the Origins of the American Revolution tells the story of the
American Revolution through the prism of one of its most famous
detractors.
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