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The Odyssey of Ebenezer Smith Platt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Sheldon S. Cohen
Sheldon S. Cohen
Affiliation:
Sheldon S. Cohen is Professor of History at Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60626. He would like to thank the American Philosophical Society, the Georgia Historical Society, and the keepers of John Adams Papers at theMassachusetts Historical Society for their permission to quote from manuscript papers relating to Ebenezer Smith Platt.He would also like to thank Dr. Adele Hast for her research on his behalf in England and the staff of the Benjamin Franklin Papers at Yale University for allowing him to examine their holdings. Finally, he wishes to express his grateful appreciation to Mr. Daniel Keefe, his energetic research assistant, for his invaluable efforts in aiding the completion of this project.
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Extract

On 17 February 1777 John Wilkes, the controversial politician, pamphleteer, and propagandist, rose to address the House of Commons. Wilkes, renowned for his opposition to King George III and his followers, was equally regarded by Americans as a long-standing champion of their colonial rights. And it was in both of these contexts that he marshaled his oratorical skills on this occasion. The specific target of his speech was the third reading of a bill, proposed by Lord North's government, which would suspend the habeas corpus act through the remainder of the year for persons accused of high treason for actions within the American colonies, or on the high seas, or for alleged acts of piracy. Wilkes began by declaring emphatically: “I cannot continue silent while so important a Bill is pending before this house.” He then attacked the proposed act as “tyrannical, arbitrary, ambiguous, unconstitutional,” and forecast that it would lead to expansion of the American war that had been raging for almost two years. Wilkes illustrated the oppressive, unwarrantable and alienating effects of the proposed act on Americans by citing the case of a young colonial named Ebenezer Smith Platt, then confined in London's infamous Newgate prison.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , August 1984 , pp. 255 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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