William and Mary Goddard, Printers and Public Servants

questionable honor of a visit from the mob. James Calhoun, Mayor of Bal-
timore, writing to Governor Johnson,¹ said that Goddard's publication of
the "Queries," a piece "evidently intended to injure the character of the
Commander in Chief, ..... determined the principal part of the Town to
withdraw their names from the list of his subscribers, but the Officers in gen-
eral thought it more incumbent on them to resent so great an insult offered
to their Genl......." by active measures. Accordingly, they visited Goddard,
who as the result of their representations, agreed to meet them and other
citizens the next morning. "Early in the morning," continued Calhoun,

"Goddard was seen parading the streets with a Gun & his friend Coll. Oswald with a
drawn Sword, venting his spleen in the most abusive language....... This naturally tended
further to enrage & by the time appointed for the meeting a large number collected and
seem'd determined to make him give up the Author which he found it most prudent to do
& make the recantation published in his Supplement."²

According to Goddard's account in his memorial³ to Governor Johnson,
he and his friends were roughly used in this business which Calhoun de-
scribed, without detail, in the letter here cited. An officer of militia inter-
fered in his behalf and was in his turn attacked by the mob. Endeavoring
to save her husband from their anger, this gentleman's wife had been "beaten
and abused, with circumstances of barbarity that must have melted the
flinty heart of a savage." In order to save his house from further pillage and
himself from being carted through the streets with a rope around his neck
by this "band of ruffians, composed of Continental recruits, mulattoes, or
negroes, fifers and drummers," he had signed and printed as a supplement
to the Maryland Journal a paper "containing the most ridiculous and ab-
surd concessions." He made clear his contention that he was being perse-
cuted because of his stand for the liberty of the Press, exercised in pursuance
of his conviction that it was his duty to help in the vindication of the char-
acter of General Lee, a gentleman and a patriot to whom he believed a great
injustice had been done by the recent court-martial proceedings.

This was parliamentary language, as became one addressing a Governor.
In his published utterances⁴ during these days, his temper was violent and
his words measured up to his feelings, but he expressed himself even more
vividly to one whom he met on the Annapolis road when he said,⁵

^lRed Book, 3:41.

² See Supplement Maryland Journal, No. 303, v. 6, Maryland Historical Society.

³Red Book, 3:38. See also The Maryland Gazette, &c. Extraordinary, No. 17, bound in v. 6 of Maryland Journal,
Maryland Historical Society copy.

⁴ See v. 6 of the Maryland Journal, Maryland Historical Society; also The Maryland Gazette, &c. Extraordi-
nary, No. 17, in same volume.

⁵ Red Book, 3: 42. In The Maryland Gazette, &c. Extraordinary, No. 17, is printed the correspondence in which
Oswald vainly invited Colonel Smith, referred to in this extract, to meet him on the field of honor.

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