Gage Proclaims Pardon — and Punishment
Whereas, the infatuated multitude … have at length proceeded to avowed Rebellion … it only remains for those who are invested with supreme rule … to prove that they do not bear the sword in vain.
That was how General Thomas Gage began his proclamation to the American colonists. He went on to describe the bad things the rebels had done, and then encouraged them to change their ways. First, he promised that those who stopped opposing the British government would be pardoned — except for Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who had gone too far:
I do hereby, in His Majesty’s name, offer and promise his most gracious pardon to all persons who shall forthwith lay down their arms, and return to their duties of peaceable subjects, excepting only from the benefit of such pardon, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose offences are of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment.
Then, he warned that anyone who continued to support the rebellion in any way would be considered “Rebels and Traitors”, and he proclaimed martial law, meaning that the military would basically be the government for the time being. He concluded by calling on loyal colonists to
stand distinct and separate from the parricides of the Constitution, till God in his mercy shall restore to his creatures in this distracted land that system of happiness from which they have been seduced—the religion of peace, and liberty founded upon law.
American Archives, Series 4, 2:968-70
Notes
Gage was the royally-appointed governor of Massachusetts and commander-in-chief of British forces in North America.
Words you may not be familiar with, or that don’t mean quite the same thing that they used to:
- infatuated: foolish
- flagitious: wicked, villainous, atrocious
- condign: deserved or suitable
- parricides: people who murder their parent or close relative (Gage was saying that those who opposed the British government were murderers of the British constitution)
- distracted: disturbed