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Joseph Bucklin Society
Site Summary. A national history center both for the Gaspee Affair of 1772 and also for Bucklin History 1600-1899. We emphasize the pre-Revolutionary history of Massachusetts and Rhode Island and the events and people involved in the Americans' 1772 attack on the Royal Navy ship Gaspee. We maintain a 4,000 person biography and genealogy database and history for the Bucklin family. Gaspee Hist Ed. 2011 - K Copyright, |
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Our research to date indicates that the attack on the
Gaspee was really an attempt to serve an arrest warrant on Dudingston
and get him into a Rhode Island court for judgment of the legality of
his actions. There is an extensive article on this subject on our
specialized Gaspee history site. Go there to read legal points
that lawyers appreciate, and historians have generally overlooked.
Gaspee attack as an attempt to arrest the English ship captain |
Lawyers can understand the conditions of pre-revolutionary law that gave the Whigs (those claiming the English had no right to tax Americans) control of the civil jury. Lawyers also can understand the conditions of pre-revolutionary law that rendered the English authorities unable to control civil juries.
In contrast, non-lawyer historians who have missed the significance of the conditions of law existing in Colonial Massachusetts and Colonial Rhode Island. Tools legal under English law made it impossible to effectively enforce English customs and tax law. it left the English with no effective way to counter the active American resistance. As long as the New England was not declared in a state of war or rebellion, the English military was subject, ultimately, to the decisions of New England juries!
Read at our
specialized Gaspee site about
Rhode Island's pre-Revolution use of law as a weapon.