The Hutchinson Letters Affair was an incident that increased tensions between the colonists of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and the British government prior to the American Revolution. In June 1773 letters written several years earlier by Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, governor and lieutenant governor of the province at the time of their publication, were published in a Boston newspaper. The content of the letters was propagandistically claimed by Massachusetts radical politicians to call for the abridgement of colonial rights, and a duel was fought in England over the matter.
The affair served to inflame tensions in Massachusetts, where implementation of the 1773 Tea Act was met with resistance that culminated in the Boston Tea Party in December 1773. The response of the British government to the publication of the letters served to turn Benjamin Franklin, one of the principal figures in the affair, into a committed Patriot.
Read more about Hutchinson Letters Affair: Background, Publication, Content of The Letters, Consequences, Who Gave Franklin The Letters?
Other articles related to "hutchinson letters affair, hutchinson, letters, affairs":
... After Whately's death, correspondence directed to him from Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts, Lieutenant-Governor Oliver and other British colonial agents was leaked to ... "These letters, though not official, related wholly to public affairs, and were intended to affect public measures ...
... have been proposed as the means by which Benjamin Franklin acquired the letters ... despite his political differences with Hutchinson, was apparently able to convince the latter in 1774 that he was not involved in their acquisition ... Knollenberg) have concluded that Thomas Pownall was the probable source of the letters ...
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