As governor of colonial Massachusetts between 1760 and 1769,
Francis Bernard was charged with shoring up British imperialism
during the first period of sustained American opposition to the
authority of the King-in-Parliament. The documentary record of the
middle years (1766 and 1767) of Bernard's troubled administration
reveals a governor at odds with his American charges and
discomfited by the knowledge that his British masters did not
appreciate his predicament.
As a commentator on the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765-66, Governor
Bernard was a candid and self-effacing narrator with a penchant for
revelation and a talent for dramatization.
Bernard's correspondence of 1766 and 1767 illuminates two major
causes of the Revolution. The writings demonstrate why British
policymakers were prepared to take a firmer line with the Americans
and send British Regulars to Boston in 1768, and why many Americans
convinced themselves that the British government was predisposed to
ignore their aspirations and grievances. "The Papers of Francis
Bernard" provide historians with enlightening details as well as
hard evidence of how British imperialism was negotiable in the
decade before the War of Independence.
Distributed for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts
General
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