Introduction

“No taxation without representation”.

This slogan, an anonymous creation of the popular mind during the pre-revolutionary period, is still used in the U.S. American school system to explain to future citizens the origin of their nation. Still, no nation can thrive without the existence of a national feeling and a national consciousness in the hearts and minds of its people. At the time this telegraphic catchphrase appeared, the feeling of a nation was, at least in the northern hemisphere of the American continent, already deeply rooted. The national consciousness was also highly developed.

The formation of both the American national feeling and national consciousness can be regarded as a success of strategic communication. The slogan expresses the popular indignation against an unjust situation: the subjection of the North-American colonies to the British Crown. The relationship between central administration and colonies was portrayed as sheer exploitation; and the condition of the inhabitants of the colonies, as an assault against the most elemental human and civil rights.

Paradoxically, this exploitation was not so obvious for those individuals who were suffering it in the year 1763, when the independence movement arose and the peculiar public relations crusade started. The feeling of being subject to oppression and injustice had to be implanted and systematically tended in the heart of those distant subjects of the British Empire. The effort was extraordinarily successful, for in 1783, when the independence of the United States of America was finally accomplished, the national feeling, the consciousness of belonging to a sovereign nation, had replaced the former loyalty to Great Britain.

However, the legal and fiscal situation of the American colonists was not very different from the situation of most of the British subjects on the island (Harlow, 1923). They were in no fashion victims of oppression. Nor did they feel as if they were oppressed. The most relevant and influential citizens of the American colonies, the economic, intellectual and social elites, were committed Tories, i.e. the group of citizens who kept loyal to the British Crown. The rest of the population, which mostly consisted of farmers, were experiencing the hardship of subsistence and had hardly time to develop a national consciousness, let alone to cherish any revolutionary dream (Draper, 1996).

The Whig party, the partisans of an independent America, constituted in 1763 a very small group of outsiders, indeed. Yet, this marginal group assembled the brightest and most energetic individuals of the age. They realized – and this is the best proof of their talent – that no political enterprise will ever be successful without public support, that the only way to carry through their independence project was to instill the national spirit in the heart of the indifferent people, those who were too busy with routine tasks. In ideological battles, it is common that the two partisan fronts just gather a small group of people. The majority usually remains indifferent. The Whig party understood that this vast group of indifferent people was the essential component of public opinion and it was urgent to mobilize them. Social support is the foundation of any claim to power, and this political axiom, as Machiavelli’s genius already revealed, is not inherent to just democratic regimes, but also to absolute or despotic governments (Machiavelli, p.56). The fact that an important part of the messages created to consolidate the American national spirit was based on the democratic ideas that inspired the European Enlightenment is more anecdotal than it may seem a priori. It is rather the reflection of an intellectual fashion, a fashion in the world of ideas. The national feeling, which is basically the feeling of belonging to a community defined by a unit of territory and cultural values, might have many other agglutinant ideological factors. The idea of race, for instance, was exploited with notorious success by the German National-Socialism with this aim. These days, we are witnessing how religion also reinforces the feeling of belonging to a specific community and legitimates political and social structures that are far away from any democratic aspiration.

Whenever the collective will, la volunté générale Rousseau depicted in his book Du contrat social (1946), is the booty to win, the political discourse will fall back upon emotions. For the appeal to the pathos, as Aristotle (1325b) suggested, remain the most effective way “to put the audience in the right frame of mind”. The correct pathos will guarantee an effective connection with the audience. And it is just this emotional common ground that any form of persuasive communication is based on.

In the case of the American Revolution, there were three fundamental challenges for the partisans of the independence. First of all, they had to propagate the enlightened ideas, in vogue in Europe at the time, that stressed the individual right to self-fulfillment. Secondly, the British colonial power was presented as the main obstacle to achieve this individual right. Finally, the individual self-fulfillment was inseparably associated to the national identity.

Enlightened ideas were thriving all over the European continent. Above all, the intellectual elites were spellbound by the new paradigm that worshiped human reason as the only possible source of true knowledge and the only consistent guide of individual, social or political action. It is no wonder, for those ideals gave them, the intellectual elites, the managers of human reason, the key role in the public administration and political decision making. The emerging press in Europe revealed its potential to spread ideas and to articulate public opinion. Some enlightened minds immediately realized that this potential could be easily translated into terms of political power. The American agitators in favor of the revolutionary cause hit the wave of the ideas that were propagated in Europe by a new generation of fresh and refreshing intellectual leaders. They also very soon became conscious of the key role the press would play in their endeavors.

James Otis, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Josiah Quince, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander McDougall and Christopher Gadsden are essential names of that group of young radicals inspired by the European Enlightenment and armed with high doses of enthusiasm and ambition. They are now considered the architects of the American national spirit. Samuel Adams deserves special attention. From his ideological trench at Boston Gazette, the most influential newspaper in New England, Samuel Adams tirelessly tried to mold public feelings. He provided his fellow colonists with ideas and arguments to support the independence and with the necessary words to voice them. It is one of those proverbial ironies of destiny that Samuel Adams, the most frantic among the radicals and the most gifted dealing with public opinion, was working for a period of time as tax-collector for the British Crown. The lack of work ethics performing the duties inherent to this position made Adams very popular among his fellow citizens (Cutlip, 1976).

The independence cause also profited from historical circumstances that favored the awakening of a nationalist feeling. The peace treaty of 1763 ended the Seven Years War between France and Great Britain confirming the victory of the last power. The first consequence of the French defeat was the immediate departure of all French civil and military elements. This fact lessened the dependence of the colonist on British support (Jensen, 1967). At the same time, the long war effort generated huge debts to the British Crown, which was compelled to increase the tax burden on all its subjects, including the inhabitants of the North-American colonies (Cutlip, 1976). The tension caused by the increasing taxes was exploited by the revolutionary agitators to replace, in barely 12 years, the sentimental identification of the colonists with the British Empire with a feeling of hatred toward the British oppression. The success of the revolutionary cause demanded this change. The image of the mother country had to give way to the image of the tyrannical power.

Communication Channels

Strategic communication is basically a management function. The professional communicator designs, produces and sends messages with the aim of influencing the thoughts or actions of his target audience. I have already mentioned that persuasive messages have always been determined by the characteristics of the audience, as well as by the existing communication practices and channels. In the ancient world, the sophists focused on oral eloquence to achieve compliance. The appearance of the printing press represented the birth of a radically new rhetoric. The development of this invention kept generating new channels for the dissemination of ideas and the manufacturing of feeling. In the 17th and the 18th centuries, the press established itself as the most effective channel of mass persuasion. The dimensions of the audience that a single message was able to reach through this medium had no precedence. The importance of the press became immediately clear for the revolutionary faction. They realized that the broader the public you can reach, the more ambitious your goals might be. In this case, the strategic goal was to create a national feeling in a territory of unheard dimensions in the history of the Western civilization.

Still, the press was not the only communication channel used by the leaders of the revolutionary faction.

Sermons

The rich American Public Speaking tradition was forged during the pre-revolutionary period. Public addresses and sermons constituted an effective vehicle to contact the common people (Davidson, 1941). Legend ascribes those sermons an extraordinary passion. The speakers frequently used the pulpit to inject hatred into the heart of their fellow citizens against the British government and, above all, against the British commerce. I intentionally used the word legend because it is difficult today to analyze the contents of those speeches. Most of them were impromptu speeches, improvised during public meetings and demonstrations called by the Whig leaders. Sometimes the speeches were carefully designed to emphasize and exploit the unfavorable aspects of the situation in the North-American colonies. The small amount of those inflammatory speeches that is now available systematically focuses on the cruelty and corruption of the British administration. Of course, the sour spot, the most outrageous sign of this cruelty and corruption, is always the unjust obligation of having to pay taxes without the political and civil rights that naturally belong to the tax payer.

Special Events

The Whig leaders intuitively sensed the significance and power of what we call in modern politics grassroots actions. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann established in the 1980s her theory of the Spiral of Silence, which definitively determined the fashion political campaigns are now designed. The Spiral of Silence is founded on the fact that ideas and opinions that are not spoken out aloud, will tend to fade away, and finally to disappear (Noelle-Neumann, 2001). Noelle-Neumann tries to link her theory to the social-psychological tradition represented by thinkers like Gustave LeBon, Gabriel Tarde or José Ortega y Gasset. The assumption of these authors is that the average individual is continuously studying his/her social environment in order to detect the prevailing opinions and ideas. Because of the natural impulse toward integration, which is basically a natural urge of human warmth, the individual, when exposed to public judgment, will express the ideas he perceives are accepted by the majority and will adopt the behaviors that will not cause any kind of social sanction. Because of this basic human instinct, average citizens will inevitably avoid positions over which the threat of isolation hangs. On the other hand, they will naturally join those ideas that are accepted by the majority (Noelle-Neumann, 2001).

The function of the frequent demonstrations organized by the Whigs was to give visibility to the revolutionary idea. They contributed to shape the social perception. The independence leaders realized that their fellow citizens had to perceive their cause as socially accepted and well liked. They had to make the revolution fashionable. Such demonstrations were especially frequent after 1765 and were associated to the revulsion generated by the Stamp Act, the notorious stamp tax legislation that was used by the Whigs as a symbol of the arbitrariness of the British central administration (Davidson, 1941; Draper, 1996). The violence of these demonstration was more symbolic than real. For instance, in New London, Connecticut, the effigy of Jared Ingersoll, a stamp distributor, was dragged along during one of the demonstrations and finally “executed” while the crowd yelled “traitor” or “enemy of this country” at it. The most famous of all these special events was the so-called “Boston Tea Party”. Yet, this early example of pseudo-event will demand full attention later.

Songs

Another form of keeping ideas alive are songs. They constitute an excellent instrument to protect the popular morale in threatening situations, such as wars or revolutionary uproars. Popular songs also helped improve and strengthen the public perceptions of revolutionary ideas. However, the independence cause never produced a song comparable to “La Marseillaise”, the symbol of the French Revolution. The radical songs might have represented the popular feeling at the time, but they were not able to defy the passage of time. They tried hard, though. Even leaders like Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin wrote lyrics for songs to agglutinate popular feelings. Furthermore, the Whig newspapers were eager for this kind of artistic expression and more than willing to give them the necessary publicity. Using a popular melody, Paine wrote “The Liberty Tree” in an attempt to directly blame the British King for all the injustice the American colonists were suffering. Benjamin Franklin titled the song he wrote the lyrics for The King’s own Regulars, and Their Triumph over the Irregulars (Davidson, 1941). By the way, Franklin’s title reflects the quality of the whole song. If the songs of the American Revolution never reached the fame of similar and illustrious models, it was rather because of lack of talent than because of lack of interest.

Pamphlets

The radicals demonstrated much more talent writing pamphlets, flyers and diatribes against the British oppression. It does not seem, nevertheless, that this oppression limited too much the freedom of most colonial printers to publish this kind of propaganda pieces. In every North American colony there was at least one printing press. The devotees of the American independence used this communication generator with special intensity. According to Baylin, the pamphlet represented “the distinctive literature of the Revolution” (Baylin, 1967, p.8). Pamphlets served as laboratories to experiment with ideas and the linguistic formulas to express them. For this reason, Whig pamphlets never had an intense circulation among the common people. They were rather the communication channel of the opinion leaders, who were in charge of transmitting the revolutionary ideas to the rest of the less active population. Thousands of pamphlets were written during the pre-revolutionary period. The frantic activity of the radicals helped them unify ideas and strategies, eliminate dissonances and identify the most sensitive spots in the body of the public opinion. Leaders like Stephen Hopkins, Daniel Dulany, Richard Bland, John Dickinson, James Otis, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, William Henry Drayton and, above all, Thomas Paine spent an important part of their revolutionary energy writing pamphlets and diatribes. Even Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin, much more concentrated on their journalistic enterprise, signed some pamphlets. At the dawn of the independence movement, the pamphlets mostly attacked the tax burden for the inhabitants of the North-American colonies, but the more the revolutionary feeling was penetrating into the core of public opinion, the bolder the written attacks became. The British government and army, even the British Crown appeared more and more frequently as the target of the radical criticism in the pamphlets.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense offers us the best example of the character and function of pamphlets during war time. Common sense was published on January 9th, 1776. Paine did not surprise the readers with new ideas or with a deep elaboration of the old ones. The pamphlet, as already stated, was useful to test arguments and expression forms that helped the revolutionary cause connect with the people. Common Sense intensifies the emotional touch of the revolutionary discourse. Its function was to fuel the hatred that the outburst of the military conflict had already exacerbated.

Hath your House been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor?

Common Sense had an unusual circulation. It actually reached an important part of the population. According to Jensen (1967), it was the only pamphlet that could be put on the same level with newspaper articles in terms of public repercussion. To judge by its tone and contents, the main claims of the revolutionary cause, at this phase, must already have taken root deep in the heart of the colonists. Thus, Paine could carry the sentimentality of his discourse to extremes. The emotional appeals we find in the pamphlet are not elaborated or sophisticated. The author bases the emotional connection with his audience on the most elemental aspects of life, such as housing, bread, family or sense of honor, which happen to be the more effective when dealing with public opinion. The language is simple, too. Paine’s rhetoric is clear, direct, free of ambiguities, and burdened with minimal nuances. The constant appeal to the reader’s sense of honor ethically justifies the climatic moment of the pamphlet, the final dramatic appeal to the humblest partisans of the revolution: “Reconciliation is now a fallacious dream”. The author is conscious that a final sacrifice is expected, and that it might be a bloody sacrifice.

Newspapers

Despite the fact that an important part of the population was still illiterate, it was the press that carried the burden of creating and maintaining opinion between 1763 and 1785. The flow of ideas during the whole revolutionary period followed the two step model described by Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz much later, in the 1950s. Newspapers’ contents affected, on a first step, intermediate opinion leaders, those citizens who were able to read, and who would spread later the revolutionary messages in their smaller circles of influence (Lazarsfeld & Katz, 1955). Intellectual leaders used newspapers to seed the ideas that community opinion leaders would later disseminate among the rest of the population.

One of the most amazing facts of the American Revolution is the almost unanimous adhesion of the new medium to the Whig movement. The press surged in Europe in the shadow of the enlightened thinking. In the North-American colonies, as already mentioned, the intellectuals in favor of independence monopolized the new ideas in vogue in Europe. In their diatribes, they made the most of the common places of the Enlightenment on the subject of human and civil rights. Being bereft of the right to participate in the political administration of the empire was interpreted and voiced as a form of slavery. This word was frequently used to depict the situation of the colonists in many pamphlets and newspapers. Of course, the very word was powerful enough to feed the resentment toward the British Crown.

At the time of the military confrontation, the British King was presented as the embodiment of a repressive system and held accountable for the civil rights theft suffered by the inhabitants of the colonies. The enlightened ideas assigned the popular will unusual relevance, for it was regarded as the only legitimate source of political power. The awareness of the role of public opinion necessarily aroused the question of which are the most effective means to influence it. Practically from its very birth, the press was considered the ideal instrument for the propagation of ideas of the day. In marked contrast to the traditional literature, the press has an ephemeral character, which is the reason why it revealed itself as the ideal channel to feed the mutable public opinion with likewise ephemeral ideas. The Whig party, much more in line with the fashionable European philosophical trends, soon became aware of the mysterious balance that characterizes the relationship between press and public opinion.

In addition to this more developed awareness of the potential of the press, the radical intellectuals and propagandists also counted on the interests of the printing house owners. They had good reasons to support the revolutionary faction because their trade was deeply affected by the heavy stamp duty (Davidson, 1941).

The fact is that, perhaps due to the especially turbulent political climate, the number of newspapers blew up as of 1765. At that time, there were 21 newspapers in the North-American colonies. Ten years later, in 1775, the number had doubled itself. Fifteen of these newspapers appeared in New England (Davidson, 1941). In Massachusetts, the very heart of the revolutionary movement, the most radical newspaper was Boston Gazette, which was published by Benjamin Edes. The paper was better known because of the propaganda activity of Samuel Adams, though (Cutlip, 1976). Another important newspaper committed to the idea of independence was The Massachusetts Spy, published in Boston by Isaiah Thomas. Even newspapers commonly regarded as “neutral”, like Boston Evening Post, also published articles by Samuel Adams and other intellectuals linked to the Whig faction (Davidson, 1941).

In Connecticut, the four newspapers that supported the cause of the radicals were The Connecticut Courant, New London Gazette, The Connecticut Journal and Connecticut Gazette. New York only had one radical paper in 1775, The Journal, published by John Holt. New York Gazette and Weekly Post-Boy had stopped circulation in 1773. In Pennsylvania, the two newspapers most devoted to the revolution were Pennsylvania Journal and Pennsylvania Gazette. Others like Pennsylvania Chronicle, Pennsylvania Packet, Evening Post, Mercury and The Ledger also got along with the Whig ideas. Radical newspapers in Maryland were Baltimore Gazette, Maryland Journal, and Maryland Gazette, as was Virginia Gazette in the state of Virginia. In North Carolina, the two Whig newspapers were North Carolina Gazette, published by James Davis, and Cape Fear Mercury, published by Adam Boyd. In the south colonies, the most influential newspaper, South Carolina Gazette, was an exact replica of Boston Gazette, for the father of the editor, Peter Timothy, learned the profession working for Benjamin Franklin (Davidson, 1941).

If pamphlets and broadsides worked as linguistic and ideological laboratories, the newspapers were much more effective for the revolutionary cause, shaping the way the colonists perceived the world. Empirical social sciences in the 20th century discovered the power of mass media to shape our perception of the reality. McCombs and Shaw (1972) articulated the famous “Agenda Setting Effect” of the mass media. According to this theory, the actual effect of mass media, rather than to impose or instill opinions upon the audience, is to select from the complex reality those issues on which we are going to form an opinion. They determine our priorities, the topics we are going to talk, to care and to worry about. Mass media is now practically the only information source we have about the inapprehensible outer world. At the time of the American Revolution, the press started to accomplish the same function. Newspapers represented the window through which the colonists learned what was going on in New England, the neighbor colonies and the whole British Empire.

And of course, the filtering process carried out by the press during the whole revolutionary process always happened to benefit or legitimize Whig positions. Not the published opinion determined the course of the public opinion, but the careful selection as news of those events that were clear and unambiguous enough to “speak for themselves” – and for the independence cause, as well (Smith, 1976). In view of the amount of radicals engaged in the journalistic activity, the press can hardly be regarded as an information channel. It was rather an influence organ, an instrument for mass persuasion.

There were no ethical considerations involved either. The press made use of the melodramatic HYPE to facilitate an unambiguous comprehension of the events. The best example of what Hans-Matthias Kepplinger (1982) denominates “instrumental use of information” is with no doubt the informative – and sentimental – processing of the so-called “Boston Massacre”.

Instrumental Use of News: The Boston Massacre

On March 5th, 1770, a mob of Bostonian colonists, most likely experienced agitators, attacked a British guard. Very soon, a commando was sent to help the soldiers in trouble. The officer in command was Capt. Thomas Preston. During the following tumult, the crowd provoked, hassled, and threatened the small defense force. Someone – although not Capt. Preston, as was later confirmed – ordered to open fire. A brief discharge followed that left three dead and two wounded men who would die a few hours later. Nine soldiers were arrested straight away, among them Capt. Preston (Draper, 1996).

Immediately after the incident, the instrumental use of the tragedy began. The main purpose was to reinforce the colonist’s feeling of alienation and to split up any emotional connection with the British Crown. For many years, the radicals had been trying to create a public consciousness of suffering a fundamental discrimination that turned them, in the practice, into slaves. An important part of this strategy was to present the British army as a force of occupation, and the members of these forces as heartless rogues, as a menace for the rest of the citizens. The creation of this image was not an easy job, though, for the North-American colonists had developed a deep emotional bond to the British army after having fought for years on the same side against the French enemy (Shy, 1965). In 1763, this bond was still warm and strong. However, 12 years later, in 1775, the war broke out. In most of the colonies, coexistence had been peaceful. British soldiers were accepted as regular members of the community and as a substantial part of its business. This was the case in most of the colonies, from Connecticut to Georgia. Even in New York, where the social circumstances may have given rise to conflicts, living together never seemed to be a problem (Smith, 1976).

The situation was different, much tenser, in Massachusetts in general and in Boston in particular. As likely reason for this hectic reaction, the fact is frequently adduced that the tax burden was in urban communities stronger than in rural areas (Shy, 1965). Hence, it is no wonder that the tragic incident occurred in Boston, and that the press coverage was in the whole region of Massachusetts more intensive than in other colonies.

As soon as the news about the incident started to circulate, the Whig faction realized that it was a perfect opportunity to attack the presence of British troops in American territory. The very denomination of “massacre” related to an episode in which five men died anticipates the tendency toward the HYPE that has always been characteristic in the field of strategic communication. North-American radicals grasped the power of language to construct reality. Words determine the way we perceive the world around us. And the word that they used to present the regrettable incident in Boston was effective to arouse fear and moral indignation simultaneously. The word “massacre” also suggests a dramatic power disproportion, as well as the misuse of this imbalance with a repressive purpose. The death of one single individual already represents a tragedy, no doubt, yet the way a human tragedy is depicted might bestow the death an instrumental character and help legitimize political claims. If the Boston episode had been labeled as, for instance, “accident”, its instrumental use would have been less effective.

But what was the real effect of the Boston Massacre?

Samuel Adams, with regard to the Boston Massacre, states: “On That night the formation of American Independence was laid” (Smith, 1976, p. 25). To a parallel radical conclusion comes Daniel Webster when he assesses the effect of the incident from the British point of view: “From that moment we may date the severance of the British Empire” (Smith, 1976, p. 25). The tragic episode made history as the turning point in the development of the American independence process. The death of the five Bostonians was used by the Whigs to morally justify their revolutionary ambitions. The tragedy was also an argument more in the hands of the propagandists to denounce the British sway, which was based, the massacre was presented as the best example, just on violence. The Boston Massacre now constitutes a heroic episode of American history. In 1970, the bicentennial of the tragic event was celebrated with the publication of a book titled: “Blood in the Streets: The Boston Massacre”. The very title suggests the power of blood to move passions and wake up feelings of identity.

Still, the reaction that followed the events in Boston does not seem to be as unanimous as it is presented in contemporary textbooks. Robert W. Smith (1976), for instance, came to the conclusion that the massacre only had a strong impact in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In the rest of the colonies, New York included, the instrumental use of the events, and thus, the public awareness and indignation, was smaller.

Bostonian radicals published the first pamphlet about the issue a few days after the incident with the title “A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre of Boston” (Draper, 1996, p. 358). This first pamphlet and others that followed certainly stressed the human tragedy to emotionally connect the people with the revolutionary cause. Still, in most pamphlets published with regard to the Boston Massacre, the discourse was highly elaborated. The colonial contribution to the British splendor was systematically demonstrated on the basis of careful statistical analysis. The general tone of the pamphlets is not as inflammatory as the title of the first one may suggest. In 1770, a pamphlet published by the Town of Boston proved on account of statistical calculation how the British administration profited from the demographic explosion in the North –American colonies. Following analysis based on the sustained increase of the population appears in that pamphlet in order to demonstrate the progressive benefits from the North-American colonies that awaited the British administration:

• 1776: ₤ 1,737,065 for 2 million colonists
• 1786: ₤ 3,474,130 for 4 million colonists
• 1806: ₤ 6,948,260 for 8 million colonists
• 1826: ₤ 13,896,520 for 16 million colonists
• 1846: ₤ 27, 793,040 for 32 million colonists
• 1866: ₤ 55,585,080 for 64 million colonists (Draper, 1996, p.359).

It is not infrequent to find deep elaboration of ideas and arguments, what Petty and Cacioppo (1986) denominate central route of persuasion, in revolutionary pamphlets. As already stated, the pamphlet was the medium used by the revolutionary leaders to communicate among them, to test ideas, gather arguments, consolidate positions, and experiment with linguistic formulas.

To directly connect with the people, sermons and public addresses were more effective. Today, just twelve of the sermons generated by the Boston Massacre are available. The motive of all of them was to commemorate anniversaries of the tragedy. These public annual orations acted, according to Ramsey (1773), as “fuel to the fire of liberty” that “kept it burning with an incessant flame”. The most relevant of these sermons were signed by James Lovell in 1771, Joseph Warren in 1772, Benjamin Church in 1773, Hancock in 1774 and again Joseph Warren in 1775, the year the war broke out. In all of them, the appeal to the emotions of the audience is more relevant than any legal or constitutional consideration. Above all in the sermon delivered by Joseph Warren in 1775, the emotional load reached extremes of paroxysm. Samuel Savage, one of the moderate witnesses of the event, felt annoyed by the contents of a speech that only the “mob applauded while the people of understanding groaned” (Davidson, 1941, p. 197). However, the rhetorical elements of the speech did not essentially differ from the discourse the radicals had been using since 1763.

The oration starts stating that the right to property naturally emanates from the inalienable individual freedom. The conflict arises when the British oppressor, personified in this case not by the King George III, who is treated benevolently in the sermon, but by one especially greedy minister, makes use of military force to suppress a spontaneous manifestation that was supposed to defend the basic individual claim for liberty. The blood shed as a result of the oppression was exalted as the dawn of a crusade for freedom that would inevitably demand the blood of more heroes:

Having redeemed your country, and secured the blessing to future generations, who, fired by your example, shall emulate your virtues, and learn from you the heavenly art of making millions happy: with Herat-felt joy – with transports all your own, YOU CRY, THE GLORIOUS WORK IS DONE. Then drop the mantle to some young ELISHA, and take your seats with kindred spirits in your native skies. (Davidson, 1941, p. 198)

Eleven of the twelve left sermons published in the five years following the massacre were delivered in Massachusetts. This fact also seems to support the hypothesis that the immediate relevance of the incident was smaller in the rest of the colonies, as well as to confirm the leadership of Massachusetts in the revolutionary endeavor.

The informative coverage of the Boston Massacre offers a further example of the Whig control over the most important part of the colonial press. Editors committed to the radical cause produced in the days following the events a series of articles that were published simultaneously in different newspapers. That the source of the articles was exactly the same becomes evident when the news about the massacre in Boston Gazette, The Evening Post and The Post Boy are compared. The same coincidence in the media coverage can be noticed in the special editions that commemorated the anniversary of the massacre in 1772, 1773 and 1774. Behind the uniformity of content and style, Smith (1976) detects the presence of a central Whig intelligentsia that provided the Press with an elaborated, uniform and partial version of the facts, always to aid revolutionary positions.

With regard to quantity, the press was the most efficient means to disseminate news about the massacre. This is especially evident in the colonies that were more distant from Massachusetts. Since distance might contribute to debilitate the emotional connection of the population with the facts, the Whig faction used newspapers to regularly refresh the memory of the Boston tragedy. The whole informative processing about the massacre through all the colonies confirms Scott Cutlip’s hypothesis. According to this author, the instrumental use of news was much more effective for persuasive purposes than the written opinion by journalist and editors (Cutlip, 1976).

The correlation between press coverage and popular interest is also significant (Smith, 1976). In the weeks following the incident, the press paid special attention to the massacre in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In this last colony, the pieces of writing generated by the Boston newspapers were the source of many articles published in pro-Whig media. As a result, Connecticut also produced during these first weeks more pamphlets about the massacre than any other colony – apart from Massachusetts, of course. In Pennsylvania, another colony where the informative processing was very intensive, the interest of the public was also strong (Smith, 1976).

In New York, Virginia and South Carolina, however, the public outrage was minimal. This fact correlates with much weaker press coverage. Furthermore, the informative processing of the events was less partial in New York, which is the reason why the massacre hardly influenced public opinion. In Virginia and South Carolina, in spite of the Whig control over most of newspapers, the informative emphasis was weaker, as was its effect on the agenda of priorities and anxieties of the audience. The public in these distant colonies did not feel threatened by the British military forces. The daily pacific coexistence prevented a rapid escalation of fear or hostility. It seems that the effect of the Boston Massacre was in the South stronger a posteriori (Smith, 1976).

In Massachusetts, the event was portrayed as the fulfillment of the prophecy that the radicals have been designing and spreading for years: the colonies were occupied country; the military forces, the instrument of brutal repression, the only aim of which was to keep watch over the imperial status quo.

The actual development of the affair shows some historical paradoxes. First of all, the members of the notorious commando who killed the five Bostonians were judged and condemned, which might be interpreted as a sign of the intention of the British authorities to keep in good terms with the citizens of the colonies. Capt. Preston was found not guilty at his trial in November 1770. His advocates in the procedure, the fact is also paradoxical, were John Adams and Josiah Quincy, active advocates at the same time of the revolutionary cause (Draper, 1996).

The Power of Symbols: The Boston Tea party

On December 16th, 1773, a group of Bostonian radicals assaulted three ships anchored at the Boston Harbor. They were disguised as Mohawk Indians. Ceremoniously, without apparent rush, the mysterious Mohawks threw to the sea around 340 chests of tea. After the spectacular – and theatrical – show, they marched through the streets of Boston escorted by an enthusiastic crowd (Labaree, 1964).

The origin of this action was the growing popular uproar caused by a new tax on tea. The public discontent was progressively swelling as a result of the campaign organized by the Whig partisans. The East Indian Company, main British tea importer, was portrayed as an ally of the Crown in its attempt to economically asphyxiate the North-American colonies and to perpetuate their dependence on the central administration of the empire (Draper, 1996). The spectacular assault at the Boston harbor, which is known by historians as the Boston Tea Party, was not the first one of the sort. There are reports of a similar action that took place in Philadelphia in the year 1771. Still, the Boston event, more methodic and with carefully designed scenography, had a higher symbolic value. For nothing happened spontaneously that night.

Taxes in general, and the tea tax in particular, constituted the most sensitive spot of the public opinion in New England during the pre-revolutionary period. Scapegoat of the popular wrath was, of course, the East Indian Company. One month before the famous Tea Party, captains of ships belonging to the company had been systematically warned of the possible consequences for anyone involved in the dirty tea business. The warning signals came from a group of anonymous Bostonians who called themselves “Committee for Tarring and Feathering” (Labaree, 1964, p. 101).

The final details for the raid were discussed at Benjamin Edes’s house, who was one of the owners of Boston Gazette. Samuel Adams, also part of the editorial staff of this newspaper, was in charge of ensuring large and enthusiastic popular support for the action. Around 60 colonists, the Mohawks whose names still remain a mystery, participated in the adventure. Above 2,000 people attended the event and went along with their heroes in their triumphant parade through the streets of Boston (Draper, 1996).

The brains of the whole action were in one or other way related to Boston Gazette. Editors, journalists and intellectuals were engineering and carrying out an event that they would themselves convert into news. This is the reason why Scott Cutlip (1976) considers the Boston Tea Party an early manifestation of pseudo-event.

The New England press, which had already exploited with success the emotional load of the Boston Massacre, carefully designed all the elements that could help promote Whig goals. First of all, the irritation created by the taxes was the force that drew feelings together and made germinate the seed of hatred against everything that had to do with Great Britain. Once hatred was deeply rooted into the very core of public opinion, the radical propagandists directed it against the British symbol par excellence: the tea. To drink tea became in the pre-revolutionary North-America a sign of compliance with the British administration, and as a consequence, of treason against the American nation (Draper, 1996). Thus, coffee replaced Tea as the national beverage. The radicals directed their attacks not against British institutions, military forces or even commercial interests, for the material lost for the East Indian Company was insignificant. The Boston Tea Party was rather an attack against a symbol. The symbolic action proved to be more effective than any violent demonstration. Boston’s example was very soon imitated in the rest of colonies, so that at the end of 1774, similar symbolic actions had been staged in practically each and every one of the colonies (Draper, 1996).

Conclusions

The analysis of the communication activity during the American Revolution and the pre-revolutionary period shows a series of elements that clearly prefigure many aspects of the contemporary practice of professional and strategic communication.

1 – First of all, it helps us understand the relationship between power and public opinion. The battle for the independence was initially a battle to gain the favor of public opinion. The radicals realized that political power always flows from public opinion, and that the only way to legitimate their political ambitions was to guarantee its support.

2 – The Whig partisans also recognized the role of mass media to establish the public agenda. They realized that media have different characteristics and that such specific characteristics determine their effects. Consequently, different channels were instrumentally used to address concrete audiences and to deliver different messages. Pamphlets were the channel used by the intellectual leaders to communicate to each other and to test language and ideas. The newspapers, which were able to reach broader audiences, were effective to communicate with opinion leaders, those individuals who, for their part, had the charisma to spread the revolutionary ideas among their smaller influence spheres. Finally, sermons and public addresses proved to be the most convenient means to connect with the people on the street.

3 – Persuasive messages mostly relied on emotions. With strong emotional appeals, the propagandists successfully reinforced the feeling of being subject to a terrible injustice. They were able to transform the perception the people had of the British military forces, which finally – and in great part because of the informative processing of the Boston Massacre – became in the public mind the embodiment of a British tyrannical repression.

4 – The Boston Tea Party served as example of staged events that the propagandists – frequently designers and reporters of the event at the same time – would convert into news.

5 – The Boston Tea Party was also the perfect example of how symbols that normally carry strong emotional connections and do not require a deep elaboration of ideas can be use to agglutinate feeling and move the public will.

6 – Finally, strategic communication during the American Revolution helps us understand the ethical development in the field of communication described by Grunig and Hunt (1984). In this first stage, the professional communicators did not seem to have any ethical concern. They selected the aspects of the reality they were going to convert into news always with instrumental intentions. They were also willing to distort or exaggerate the information when it fitted their revolutionary agenda.

The slogan “no taxation without representation” was not created by a communication professional. Still, it is the result of the restless activity of a relatively small group of ideologues in favor of the American independence. The catchphrase arose anonymously expressing a popular feeling, but this popular feeling was systematically engineered by a group of men who used a very old wisdom about the value of emotions and symbols to articulate Zeitgeist.

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