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Five. The Religion of Politics
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d 101 five The Religion of Politics Conditions in the town of Pownalborough had always been contentious for Pastor Bailey ever since his arrival in 1760, but the crises drawing the town into the Revolution tended to politicize animosities that up to then had been largely religious and personal in nature. On the one hand, as usual, were Bailey’s two antagonists, his erstwhile Harvard classmates high sheriff of Lincoln County Charles Cushing and justice, later judge, Jonathan Bowman. Both were dependent on, and reflected, the sentiments of the powerful “Whig,” or “patriot,” faction within the Kennebeck Proprietors noted for their opposition to the Church of England and to Parliament’s expanding power. On the other hand, in Pownalborough stood the Reverend Mr. Jacob Bailey, a living manifestation of the Church of England’s expansive tendencies and a client of the “Tory,” or loyalist, element among the Kennebeck Proprietors as personified by Dr. Silvester Gardiner. Around their missionary preacher rallied Pownalborough’s German, French, and Irish immigrants who, along with English adherents to the Church of England, valued stability and order in church, state, and society. Thus, the bitter rivalry between Pownalborough’s leading officials and the town’s Anglican preacher, as well as between their respective followings, persisted into the revolutionary era, growing ever more political but never losing its religious and personal overtones.1 Compared to events in leading port towns like Boston or even nearby Falmouth, overt political agitation against Parliament’s efforts to tax and legislate directly for the colonies came late to Pownalborough. Nonetheless , newspapers, personal correspondence, and travelers kept town residents well informed of the unfolding crises over stamp taxes, import duties, riots, resolutions, and embargoes against British trade. Bailey was 102 Chapter Five in constant communication with friends and relatives such as his brotherin -law, Joshua Weeks in Marblehead, his friend and colleague, Willard Wheeler in Concord, and patron Silvester Gardiner in Boston. He meanwhile observed to the Society in England that the long delayed construction of Pownalborough’s Anglican church had been prolonged yet further by the boycott protesting Parliament’s renewed efforts to tax the colonists in the Townshend Acts, “which occasioned a great stagnation of business and prevented the increase of wealth,” thereby hindering contributions to the building project as well as to Bailey’s own income.2 Boston’s new weekly journal, The Boston Chronicle, described as a “godsend to the Tory cause,” especially attracted Bailey’s interest and support. In contrast to Whig papers such as the Boston Gazette, Chronicle editor John Mein gleefully exposed the hypocrisy of Boston’s Whig merchants, who loudly supported the self-sacrificing patriotic principle of nonimportation yet continued to trade secretly with Britain. Shortly after the first appearance of the Boston Chronicle in 1767, Bailey wrote to Weeks praising the new paper, and also to publisher John Mein himself, enthusiastically endorsing his publication “without those pieces of dirty scandal with which some of our public prints have lately abounded.” Not only did he promise to subscribe, he even offered “to furnish any anecdotes from this part of the world that might be appropriate.” But Bailey and other “friends of government” had little time to enjoy the new journal. Within two years, publisher Mein had fled Boston to escape a Whig mob, and the Boston Chronicle ceased publication soon after.3 Escalating political turmoil finally touched Pownalborough directly by word and deed in 1773. In reaction to an act by Parliament providing salaries for royal governors and judges, thereby freeing them from dependence on colonial legislatures, Boston’s Committee of Correspondence canvassed the towns of the province in a circular letter asking for their reactions to Parliament’s persistent attacks upon English liberties in America.4 At this moment, Pownalborough’s west side, including Rev. Jacob Bailey and his adversaries Justice Jonathan Bowman and Sheriff Charles Cushing, were preoccupied by the controversy over forming a church parish for Congregationalists and efforts to disenfranchise the local Anglicans. However, while the west-side residents quarreled among themselves, the eastern side, Wiscasset, presumably expressing sentiments that represented the town as a whole, responded to Boston’s circular letter in March 1773. The Pownalborough response was no mere protest but a startlingly novel statement of Whig theory of empire, all the more startling considering its source—not Boston, but the small, [54.158.138.161] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 12:21 GMT) The Religion of Politics 103 isolated community in eastern Massachusetts. It argued that each...