Public Statement on the Hutchinson Letters

December 25, 1773; excerpted from Benjamin Franklin's Writings

"Finding that two Gentlemen have been unfortunately engaged in a Duel, about a transaction and its circumstances of which both of them are totally ignorant and innocent, I think it incumbent on me to declare …that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question."

Benjamin Franklin

While Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) waited for King George III's (1738–1820) Privy Council to discuss the Massachusetts petition to remove Governor Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780) and Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver (1706–1774) from office (discussed in previous entry), a duel took place in England. Remember that the Hutchinson letters had been written to Thomas Whately, now dead. How Franklin came to have the letters, no one knows; someone probably stole them and gave them...