Maligned Loyalist

...For in his beloved New England, insurgency was evolving into revolution, and those who opposed the cause found themselves harassed, uprooted, driven from their homes...

...More important, the governor had an enormous capacity for abuse, retaining his composure and self-control despite endless vilification...

...In 1754, following 20 years of marriage, he lost his beloved wife, Margaret Sanford...

...When he died in 1780, he was still clinging to the hope that the fortunes of war would result in a reconciliation of imperial and American interests...

...The populace's growing fears in this period form a vital theme in Bailyn's tightly constructed work...

...He became the province's lieutenant governor in 1758...

...her death left an open wound that gnawed constantly at him...

...If he dared return home, Hutchinson ran the risk of being hanged...

...He watched helplessly as seven of his 12 children died in infancy...

...Hutchinson himself became persona non grata in Massachusetts-the Revolutionary Legislature confiscated his property and labeled his behavior treasonable...

...Reviewed by James Kirby Martin Assistant Professor of History, Rutgers Thomas Hutchinson, it may be asserted, did as much as anyone to precipitate the political crisis that grew into the American Revolution...

...Not by choice, Hutchinson spent his remaining years in England, assisting other loyalists and dreaming of the day events would allow him to gaze once again upon his homeland...

...In June 1774, Hutchinson sailed for London to discuss the situation with Britain's policymakers, having no idea the final tragic act of his life was about to unfold...

...An angry mob tore his Boston mansion apart in August 1765, at the height of the Stamp Act controversy, although Hutchinson in fact had nothing to do with authoring the law...

...The representative of British imperial policy in Massachusetts and the foremost loyalist of his age, he was perceived by his prerevolution-ary contemporaries as the devil incarnate, a chief agent in an insidious ministerial conspiracy to corrupt and destroy American liberties...

...These private misfortunes no doubt spurred Hutchinson to push himself ever deeper into public affairs...

...Later, he had to protect the tea consignments that were the focal point of the Boston Tea Party of 1773...

...shortly thereafter he assumed the chief justiceship...

...His fate, so thoughtfully depicted by Bailyn, demonstrates the kind of paranoid illusions that have frequently moved men to extreme actions at critical junctures in American history...

...But discord and personal tragedy plagued him throughout his life...

...Extremely energetic, he took on countless assignments, and after several years in the lower and upper houses of the General Court, had enough of a reputation to be offered appointive Crown offices...

...Indeed, a number of prominent Revolutionary leaders-sam and John Adams among them-became apoplectic at the mere mention of his name...

...Throughout his career, Hutchinson dealt with his opponents as openly and as fairly as one could in the heat of the 18th-century political arena, eschewing the under-banded and secretive weapons available to him, declining to humiliate or destroy his enemies...

...During the 1760s, however, this penchant for collecting royal positions began provoking suspicions among many citizens that were to turn into outright hatred...

...Aspiring to be the disinterested statesman, Hutchinson labored feverishly to effect a better British appreciation of American interests in the context of the empire...

...Appointed governor in 1771, Hutchinson had to maintain order during the trying days of the Boston Massacre...

...Born in 1711 into an old and distinguished New England family, educated at Harvard and skilled as a merchant, Hutchinson enjoyed every prospect for a comfortable, leisurely and honorable existence...

...But the crowning irony, in these dawning Bicentennial years, is that we can look to the loyalist Hutchinson, condemned as a traitor in his own generation, for an example of an honorable political leader...

...The provincial governor, reputedly perverting all that he touched in his power-hungry drive for offices and honors, actually refused to foment the tyranny his adversaries claimed was his one true goal...

...Yet Hutchinson takes on new meaning in this intelligent biography by the eminent Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn...

...That he sacrificed almost everything he held dear because of his personal rectitude makes for poignant reading, especially at a time when the country is searching for models of public virtue...

...But Bostonians, listening to petty local politicians who disliked their well-placed, more successful opponent, preferred to believe Hutchinson had secretly abetted the ministry in drafting the 1765 Stamp Act, and was in favor of directly taxing all Americans through Parliamentary legislation...

...One misunderstanding fed upon another, raising popular paranoia and eventually consuming the man in a chaos of political confrontations...

...Bailyn characterizes Hutchinson as an individual of unexciting temperament, methodical and hardworking, diligent rather than imaginative or witty...