Copied below is a draft petition to the U.S.P.S Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee. Statutes and Stories welcomes input and signatories on this pending petition.
To Whom it May Concern:
The undersigned stamp collectors, bibliophiles, historians, artists and authors are pleased to make this submission to the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) in honor Isaiah Thomas, an extraordinary American publisher and philanthropist, who we believe is well deserving of placement on a USPS commemorative stamp.
In making this submission we appreciate the limited number of stamps that are issued every year. We also fully appreciate the limited number of publishers[1] that have been honored since the first commemorative stamp was issued in 1893. Nevertheless, we believe that Isaiah Thomas properly deserves to be considered in this esteemed company.
Sestercentennial dates:
As set forth below, the year 2021 would provide an ideal opportunity to commemorate Isaiah Thomas. In 1771, British Governor Thomas Hutchinson attempted to arrest Thomas for libel and sedition for publishing patriotic editorials in his newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy. Fortunately, defiant colonial juries refused to issue an indictment. Alternatively, the year 2025 would be the 250th anniversary of Isaiah Thomas’ flight from Boston with his printing press, immediately preceding the British assault on Lexington and Concord. On April 16, 1775, John Hancock had urged Thomas to “remove from Boston immediately” in anticipation of his arrest and the British lock down of the city. Either anniversary would be in keeping with the Sestercentennial of the Revolutionary War and the Spirit of 1776.
We fully understand that CSAC does not notify the proponent if a particular subject is chosen. Yet, we are more than happy to answer any questions, as the signatories below have access to abundant historical archives about Isaiah Thomas. By way of example, a summary about Isaiah Thomas’ legacy is posted on website of the American Antiquarian Society (which was founded by Thomas after he retired from publishing).[2]
Significant and enduring contributions and impact on American history
Isaiah Thomas easily satisfies all CSAC selection criteria due to his significant and lasting impact on American publishing, literature, culture, education, music, industry and philanthropy during the formative years of our nation.
Isaiah Thomas was of course a heroic revolutionary era newspaper printer. As a member of the Sons of Liberty, Thomas worked closely with revolutionary leaders, including John Hancock, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, and Dr. Joseph Warren.[3] A publishing prodigy, Thomas became the “trumpet of the Revolution” and his Boston printing shop was known as the “Forge of Sedition.”
After the war Thomas went on to become the leading publisher and philanthropist of his generation. After the war “the father of the press in New England” became one of the wealthiest Americans of his day owning a vertically integrated publishing company, with sixteen presses, its own paper mill, bindery, and bookstores in several states. During his lifetime Thomas printed over 900 hundred books, including law books, textbooks, songbooks, and the first ever illustrated bible published in America.
Widespread national appeal, significance, and educational value
Revolutionary Era:
Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831) and his family were abandoned by his father when Thomas was only six years old. The Overseers of the Poor of the Town of Boston could only imagine the impact Thomas would have when they indentured Isaiah with a childless printer, Zechariah Fowle. It is understood that Isaiah learned his alphabet while setting type blocks. By his teens, he was managing Fowle’s print shop and had established himself as a skilled printer.
In 1770, after many years working as a printer’s apprentice, Thomas founded what would become one of the most politically important colonial newspapers, the Massachusetts Spy (also called Thomas’ Boston Journal). His print shop became known as the “Forge of Sedition” because it served as a meeting place for the Sons of Liberty. In the years following the Stamp Act, the unapologetically patriotic publication was considered treasonous by the British, leading royal governor Thomas Hutchinson to order that Thomas be prosecuted for malicious libel in 1771. Thomas continued his work undeterred when the grand jury refused to indict him. It is claimed that John Adams was prepared to represent Thomas if necessary.
Loyalists continued to intimidate Thomas by burning him in effigy. He nevertheless refused to be silenced by Red Coats marching past his office who threatened that he would be the next to be tarred and feathered. When four additional regiments of British troops and royal artillery landed in Boston on July 7, 1774, Thomas was not cowed. He boldly revised the masthead on his paper to display Paul Revere’s depiction of Benjamin Franklin’s famous 1754 “Join or Die” segmented snake battling a giant dragon (symbolizing Britain).
Silversmith and engraver Paul Revere was a lifelong friend and professional colleague of Thomas. The new masthead continued to be displayed on all subsequent editions of the paper until the Spy ceased operations in Boston on April 6, 1775. The Spy later resumed operations in Boston in 1788 with its new motto borrowed from the new Massachusetts Constitution proclaiming that “The Liberty of the Press is essential to security and freedom.”
Thomas reported the first eyewitness account of the battles of Lexington and Concord, after escaping Boston with the assistance Dr. Joseph Warren. Thomas was advised by John Hancock to remove from Boston immediately, which he did on April 16, 1775. He left Boston “during the dead of night” for Worchester with his printing press and family.
Thomas fled to the Tory stronghold of Worcester just as General Gage was preparing to strike through Lexington to destroy colonial munitions in Concord. When Warren received word from highly placed informants that Gates had issued orders to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, he dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes on their famous “midnight rides” to warn Adams and Hancock. Thomas used his network of post riders (who normally delivered papers), to “alarm the countryside” about the movement of British troops toward Lexington on April 18. On the fateful day of April 20, 1775, Thomas “joined the provincial militia in opposing the King’s troops” at Lexington.
Thomas personally reported and printed a series of depositions by eyewitnesses to the battles of Lexington and Concord entitled, A Narrative of the Excursion and Ravages of the King’s Troops Under the Command of General Gage, On the Nineteenth of April, 1775, Together with the Depositions Taken by Order of Congress, To Support the Truth of It. This short volume – with a long title – would publicize the depravity of the British and solidify resistance by the colonies. The narrative publication was rushed to England ahead of the royal governor’s official report of the battle.
After the War:
In the 1780s Thomas branched out to become a book publisher and arguably the most important early American printer alongside Benjamin Franklin. Thomas printed the first American dictionary, bibles, educational works, songbooks and books for children. Unlike other American printers who merely reprinted or translated European works, Thomas openly embraced and cultivated American authors.
His literary works included The Power of Sympathy published in 1789 by William Hill Brown, the first novel by a native American author. Thomas also published magazines in addition to his newspaper. His New-England Alamanck was enormously profitable, growing from three thousand copies in 1781 to twenty-nine thousand by 1797. Defying convention, Thomas was also a music publisher and proved to be prescient by investing in musical type fonts at a time when the market was as best uncertain.[4]
Thomas published over 100 books for children, including A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible, which is described by the Library of Congress as “the first American version of a novelty Bible that replaced some words with pictures to encourage children’s interest as well as their reading skills.” The bible contained almost five hundred woodcuts by American artists, and was “the most ambitious woodcut volume produced in America up to that time.”[5]
In 1791 Thomas published his most famous book, the first American illustrated edition of the King James Bible. Thomas carefully consulted over thirty editions of the Bible to meticulously insure the accuracy of the text. Of course, Thomas specially commissioned American artists to create fifty copperplate engravings for the work.[6]
Thomas printed the first collection of Massachusetts statutes up to the year of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The Perpetual Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including the U.S. and Massachusetts Constitutions (the world’s oldest functioning constitution) was purposely printed in a smaller size and at a lower price to facilitate wide scale distribution. Other legal publications included an early American edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England and Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws.
Thomas was also an author. His two volume History of Printing in America, with a Biography of Printers, and an Account of Newspapers (1810) was the first book of its kind, surveying printing between 1640 to 1800. The book remains a reliable primary source on early American publishers and publications. The work is included in the Grolier Club’s One Hundred Influential American Books Printed Before 1900.
Thomas retired from the printing business in 1802 to dedicate his time to writing, research and philanthropy. His extensive research borrowed from his vast library of books and newspapers, which were later donated to the American Antiquarian Society, which Thomas founded.
Alexander Hamilton fans are familiar with the hurricane that struck the island of St. Croix in 1772. Thomas’ newspaper republished young Alexander Hamilton’s “first refrain” about how “devastation reigned” and the “testament to his pain,” as immortalized by Linn-Manual Miranda.
In 1995 Ye Old Oyster House, “America’s Oldest Restaurant” and a national historic site in Boston, commissioned nine paintings to tell Isaiah Thomas’ story. The carefully researched paintings could very easily be adapted for use on a USPS commemorative stamp or se-tenant commemorative set.[7] Additional likenesses of Thomas include an oil on panel by Ethan Allen Greenwood (1779-1856).[8]
The Newseum in Washington, D.C. memorializes Isaiah Thomas with an exhibit narrated by war correspondent Sebastian Junger.[9] In Thomas’ day, the First Amendment did not yet exist to protect the press from hostile government censorship or worse. “Colonial publishers had no such protection, and risked jail and worse for attacking the crown,” which is exactly why Thomas was a heroic patriot.[10] Indeed, the British considered Thomas so dangerous that according to Thomas’ memoire, “he had the honor of being included with John Hancock and Samuel Adams in a list of twelve persons who were to be summarily executed when taken.”
Sources for this petition include the Massachusetts Historical Society[11] and the following publications[12]:
Memoir of Isaiah Thomas, Benjamin Franklin Thomas (1874)
Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. VI (1889)
Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, Esther Forbes (1942)
The America Revolution to the War on Terrorism, John Byrne Cooke (2007)
Massachusetts Troublemakers: Rebels, Reformers, and Radicals from the Bay State, Paul Della Valle (2009)
Law Books and Legal Publishing in America, 72 Law Libr. J. 355 (1979)
Isaiah Thomas as Music Publisher, Karl Kroeger, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 86, issue 2 (1977)
Respectfully submitted,
HISTORICAL SOCIETIES,
PHILATELIC ORGANIZATIONS,
PUBLISHERS/JOURNALISM ASSOCIATIONS
Professor Robert Watson, Ph.D
Lynn University
David Wells Roth
www.DavidWellsRoth.com
Adam Levinson, Esq.
www.StatutesandStories.com
[1] To our knowledge the exclusive list includes the following publishers: Joseph Pulitzer (1947), Horace Greeley (1961), Fredrick Douglas (1967), Adolph Ochs (1976), Henry R. Luce (1998), DeWitt and Lila Wallace (1998), and John H. Johnson (2012). Of course, it bears mentioning that the first American stamp issued in 1847 commemorated the first postmaster general – none other than Benjamin Franklin – who was also a publisher.
[2] http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Portraits/isaiahthomasgreenwood.htm
[3] Warren was the President of the Massachusetts Provisional Congress, the author of the Suffolk Resolves, and later became the “hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill.”
[4] Over the span of his career he published twenty-four tunebooks, in thirty-eight editions.
[5] https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/march-13/
[6] https://library.osu.edu/innovation-projects/omeka/exhibits/show/the-king-james-bible/game/item/27
[7] The artist David Wells Roth is a signatory to this petition. Earlier this year Mr. Roth submitted his portfolio to William J. Glicker, Creative Director and Manager, Stamp Development. The entire commission can be viewed in the Union Oyster House or on http://davidwellsroth.com/artwork/union-oyster-house/
[8] http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Exhibitions/Portraits/Worcester%20Portrait%20Project/IThomas.JPG
[10] https://newseumed.org/artifact/americas-first-war-correspondent-risks-life-and-limb/
[11] https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/isaiah-thomas-born.html
[12] We would be happy to provide an emailed copy of this petition with links to each source, which can also be downloaded from https://statutesandstories.com/
Thomas should be given the stamp honor.
I sure hope your petition inspires an Isaiah Thomas stamp!