“the Americans I hope will not suffer themselves to be thrown off their Guard, but continue to support their present glorious League, and maintain the Congress, as the surest, perhaps the only means of preserving that Unanimity of Counsels so formidable to their Enemies”
“No Sporting Club, but agitates and divides upon the American Question. Even the twangling Crew of Ballad Singers brawl in tumultuous Discord, the doleful Tale of wrong'd America – hare are two of the Lines that I have heard– ‘O may the Inventor of that wicked Bill / Lose his Head by an Axe on Great Tower Hill’”
Enclosing a newspaper with the British Prime Minister’s most recent speech in response to the Boston Tea Party, nineteen-year-old John Laurens writes a passionate letter from Switzerland, to his father, Henry Laurens, then living in Westminster, England. The younger Laurens expresses his hope that Lord North’s overtures would not weaken American resolve and unity.
The British Parliament responded to the Boston Tea Party with a series of four Coercive Acts, which the Americans dubbed the “Intolerable Acts.” King George III gave his royal assent to these acts in late May and early June 1774.
