Boston Gazette is sued for libel

Gov. Francis Bernard and Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson bring unsuccessful charges against the paper for its criticism of the two officials. As “Populus,” Samuel Adams later writes in the Gazette, “There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.” “Hutchinson’s great mistake,” John M. Galvin later writes, “was to give battle against James Otis and Samuel Adams in the newspapers . . . [which] brought a new focus on the rights of the colonists and greatly heightened the efforts of Otis and Adams to sustain a running argument against the supporters of strong British control and in favor of those who wanted to take steps in the direction of Independence.”