1. The letters were furnished (from a source never divulged) by Benjamin Franklin, London agent of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in a letter to Speaker Thomas Cushing, London, 2 Dec. 1772 (Franklin, Writings, ed. Smyth description begins The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert Henry Smyth, New York and London, 1905–1907; 10 vols. description ends , 6:265–268; a variant version, copied in JA’s hand, is in the Adams Papers, Microfilms, April 1773, and is printed in JA’s Works description begins The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850–1856; 10 vols. description ends , 1:647–648). JA also made a copy of the Hutchinson letter that gave greatest offense to whig feelings. It was originally written, as we now know all the purloined letters were, to Thomas Whately, dated at Boston, 20 Jan. 1769, and contained the following passage as copied and attested by JA:

The letters were handed about too freely and over too long a time to be kept a secret, and on 15 June they were by order of the House turned over to the printers (Mass., House Jour. description begins Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts [1715– ], Boston, reprinted by the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1919– . (For the years for which reprints are not yet available, the original printings are cited, by year and session.) description ends , 1773–1774, p. 56). They appeared in a pamphlet published by Edes and Gill under the title Copy of Letters Sent to Great-Britain, by His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, the Hon. Andrew Oliver, and Several Other Persons, Born and Educated Among Us, 1773, which was several times reprinted in America and England, and they ran all summer serially in Thomas’ Massachusetts Spy. They led to a petition by the Massachusetts House for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver from their posts, to a duel in London, to the famous denunciation of Franklin by Alexander Wedderburn in the Privy Council, and to Franklin’s loss of his office as postmaster general in America.

Franklin’s account of the affair, published posthumously, is in his Writings, ed. Smyth description begins The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert Henry Smyth, New York and London, 1905–1907; 10 vols. description ends , 6:258–289; Hutchinson’s in his Massachusetts Bay, ed. Mayo description begins Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo, Cambridge, 1936; 3 vols. description ends , 3:282–298, supplemented by “Additions to Thomas Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay,” Amer. Antiq. Soc, Procs., 59 (1949):60–65. Mr. Malcolm Freiberg in an article entitled “Missing: One Hutchinson Autograph Letter” points out and discusses the significance of the variations between the texts of the critical paragraphs in Hutchinson’s letter quoted above as on the one hand printed by his adversaries and as on the other hand preserved in his letterbook in the Massachusetts Archives (Manuscripts, 8:179–184 [Spring 1956]). But it should be noted that Hutchinson himself did not raise questions about the validity of the printed text and indeed quoted the most controversial passage of all from that text (Massachusetts Bay, ed. Mayo description begins Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo, Cambridge, 1936; 3 vols. description ends , 3:293–294).