Joseph Hawley, Colonial Radical

By E. Francis Brown '25. Columbia University Press, New York, 1931.

Joseph Hawley's life can be described most accurately as a tragedy. Hawley was a member of a distinguished family, was well educated and gave every indication of developing into one of the most important men of his time—only to end his life in an obscurity caused by mental difficulties which produced a profound melancholia. He might well have become one of the country's "fathers," and now be ranked with such men as Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Washington, but just as his powers and opportunities approached their maximum his mental difficulties necessitated his retirement to the semiobscurity in which he eventually died.

Joseph Hawley was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1723; the best known member of his family was Jonathan Edwards, a cousin. When he graduated from Yale, Hawley expected to study for the ministry, but after participating in the Louisbourg expedition of 1745 he turned to law, eventually beginning to practice in Northampton. His knowledge of the law, combined with his dignity, his oratorical powers and his unusual scrupulousness gave him a place of importance in the affairs of western Massachusetts. Inevitably he participated in the French and Indian War, took part in town affairs (notably concerning law, religion and education) and finally was drawn into provincial affairs. Hawley identified himself with the radical group in the Massachusetts legislature, becoming an important member of the group which included James Otis, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, James Warren and Elbridge Gerry. Quite naturally he was chairman of the Northampton Committee of Correspondence in 1774 and was outstanding in the early events of the Revolution. In 1776 he was considered seriously to replace John Adams in Congress, since Adams was in poor health. Unfortunately it was just at this time, when Hawley was most needed, when his power was the greatest and when the future held so much of importance, that his mind gave way (in the late fall of 1776) and he was plunged into melancholia. He recovered to some extent by 1779, but events had moved rapidly and he was unable to resume his leadership. He died in 1788.

Mr. Brown has told Hawley's story well, with due emphasis on its inherent tragedy. In this short book, for the text is under 200 pages, he has presented a sympathetic and well-balanced biography, which includes an unusually adequate background of the interests and social customs of the time. To say that the biography is a Ph.D. thesis is misleading to anyone who tends to assume, as does the present reviewer, that such a thesis is generally very dryly factual and studded with a superfluity of scholarly information. True, Mr. Brown has not written in the vein of the so-called "new" biography, since he has made no particular effort to discover and emphasize the, less creditable portions of Hawley's life; true also that he has made no secret of the sources of his information. Consequently the results of his labor can be recommended only to such readers, whether professional historians or intelligent laymen, who have a genuine interest either in Massachusetts history or in the preliminaries of the American revolution. For all such persons the present biography is well worth reading. Hawley is treated with fidelity, sincerity, sympathy and honesty, as well as with a wealth of surrounding material that makes him live again in his proper background.