When John Adams returned to Massachusetts after the session of the First Continental Congress, he was surprised to find that there was growing opposition to the radicals and the work of the Congress. It was led by a man who identified himself as “Massachusettensis.” On December 12, 1774 Massachusettensis published the first of a series of articles in which he decided to take the American “patriots,” as he says they styled themselves, head on. His pamphlets were very readable and persuasive. There were seventeen letters in all, each published about a week or ten days apart. When Adams heard about the articles and the influence they were having on the population in Massachusetts, he wrote a reply under the name of “Novanglus.” In the last few articles written by Massachusettensis, the author replied to Adams and in the last article evaluated the work of the First Continental Congress. In these two men the two sides had a final argument in which issues were discussed and analyzed prior to fighting actually breaking out. After that it was too late for any more discussions of this sort.
History books often acknowledge the articles of Massachusettensis but only to allow a fuller discussion of the articles written by Adams under the name of Novanglus, thus allowing a further defense of the patriot’s point of view. If, as Adams feared, Massachusettensis was persuasive enough to have a serious impact on the people of Massachusetts, to the extent that the position of the radicals was feeling threatened, then what Massachusettensis had to say needs to be understood. In the preface to the 1776 publication of the Massachusettensis letters in London, the editor explained that the word “Tory” had a very different meaning in America from the understanding of the word in England. In America a Tory was “a friend to the supremacy of the British Constitution over all the Empire. A Whig is an asserter of colonial independence, or, what is just the same, one who supports the idea of legislation, distinct and divided from British legislation, in all the several provinces.” These are the meanings that Massachusettensis used throughout his letters.