Continental Congress Broadside

Printed broadside (13 x 8 1/4 in.; 331 x 208 mm) on a half-sheet of laid paper preserving deckle on three edges (watermarked jc), single column, 18 lines + headline, York-Town: [John Dunlap?,] 12 January 1778, the edition directed in type to "Reverend Sir," this copy addressed in holograph to the Reverend Thomas Barton at Lancaster, signed by Henry Laurens as President of Congress, address panel and reception docket on verso; light browning, two small mounting remnants on verso.

Not in Evans and evidently unrecorded.

Printed broadside (13 x 8 1/4 in.; 331 x 208 mm) on a half-sheet of laid paper preserving deckle on three edges (watermarked jc), single column, 18 lines + headline, York-Town: [John Dunlap?,] 12 January 1778, the edition directed in type to "Reverend Sir," this copy addressed in holograph to the Reverend Thomas Barton at Lancaster, signed by Henry Laurens as President of Congress, address panel and reception docket on verso; light browning, two small mounting remnants on verso.
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State and Church: an unrecorded and evidently unique Congressional broadside appealing for donations of "Woollens and Linens, made or unmade, for the sick Soldiers in the Hospitals."

The text of this poignant appeal issued by the displaced Continental Congress is known from the Letterbook, Papers of the Continental Congress (National Archives), but no example of the printed edition of fifty copies has previously been identified (Letters of Delegates to Congress, ed. Smith, 8:569). Unable by its own devices to clothe and supply the American troops suffering 90 miles to the west at Valley Forge, Congress here asks the church congregations of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland to collect woolens and linens for the Board of War.

"In so solemn an Appeal as we have now made to the righteous Judge of the whole Earth, it is not enough that our Cause is good, we ought, in order to obtain his Favour in the Prosecution of this Appeal, to exercise those Virtues which are pleasing to him. The Relief, therefore, of the Sick and Indigent, more especially of such as have been rendered so by hazarding their Lives in the Service of their Country, is our indispensible Duty. From our Ports being blocked up, Congress have not been able to provide a sufficient Quantity of Linens and Woollens for the Sick, languishing in the Hospitals in the Middle District; and to remedy this, have thought proper to order 'a Recommendation to be sent to the Clergy of all Denominations in the said District, to solicit Donations of Woollens and Linens, made or unmade, for the sick Soldiers in the Hospitals, and to send the same to the Board of War, or any Hospital, as may be most convenient.' The Congress have a firm Confidence that the Ministers of Christ (who has declared, that he will consider kind Offices done to the sick as done to himself) will exert themselves on the present Occasion."

This copy is signed by Henry Laurens, "I am with great respect Reverend Sir Your most hum. servant Henry Laurens, President of Congress." Presumably all copies of the edition were so subscribed and then sent by Laurens to William Shippen, Jr., at Manheim, Pennsylvania. Shippen, the son of a Pennsylvania delegate to Congress, was the Director of Hospitals for the Continental Army. In a letter covering the stack of broadsides, Laurens requested Shippen "to subjoin & superscribe the Names of such Reverend Gentlemen, as you know & can learn of, who are most likely to succeed in Charitable Collections for the Hospital & cause the Letters to be forwarded with all possible dispatch" (The Papers of Henry Laurens, ed. Chessnut & Taylor, 12:287).

Rev. Barton's copy is further endorsed by John Woodhull, a Presbyterian minister from Lancaster who served as a chaplain in the Continental Army: "I am to request you in the name of Mr. Shippen D: Genl. to Send your Collections to Dr. Jackson in Lancaster."

It is ironic that this moving ephemeron of the American Revolution survived in the papers of Thomas Barton, Anglican rector of Lancaster's St. James Church. Barton supported the continuance of British authority in America and honored the collects and prayers for George III and the royal family in his services—which he was soon forced to conduct in private. By the end of 1778, Barton had quit Pennsylvania for loyalist New York, where he died in May 1780. 

The printing of this broadside has been ascribed to John Dunlap on the basis of its Caslon font and its design; but it could possibly have been produced by David Hall and William Sellers.