What’s In A Pseudonym?

by poputonian

The other day I posted about the pseudonyms used by Samuel Adams in publishing anonymous political essays.

It took a long time for Samuel Adams to come to the surface of Boston politics, even though his father was a powerful figure in the caucuses and the General Court. One reason for the delayed “arrival” is that Adams is almost alone in history as a man who sincerely desired anonymity. His major writings were signed not “Adams” but “Determinatus,” “Candidus,” “Vindex,” “Populus,” “Alfred,” “Valerius Poplicola,” “T.Z.,” “Shippen,”, “a Bostonian,” “a Tory,” “E.A.,” “a Layman,” “an Impartialist,” “a chatterer,” — even later, when he could have gained great credit by acknowledging his full opus, he would not take the trouble. The writings had done their work; that was what he wanted. He often ended his letters with the command “Burn this,” and he took his own advice by consigning nearly all his correspondence files to the flames, leaving behind a relatively small amount in the hands of others or in public print.
…
In the eighteen months from December 1770 to June 1772 he turned out 36 political essays for the [Boston] Gazette, an output not matched by any other writer of the time.

But the use of pseudonyms wasn’t restricted to the Boston radicals; right-wing blowhards had them too, and they were coming after Adams:

Hutchinson had split Hancock away from the faction; only Adams remained a danger to the provincial government, and the governor had plans for him. “I have taken much pains to procure writers,” he said, “to answer the pieces in the newspapers which do so much mischief among the country people.” He had two or three writers contributing to Draper’s Massachusetts Gazette, he said, besides the help of a new press and a young printer “who says he will not be frightened and I hope for some good effect.” The Crown writers sallied into print — Chronus, Probus, Benevolus, and Philanthrop — to “blow the coals,” as Hutchinson put it.

Oh brother. Probus? Some things never change. And I’ll take Benevolus and Philanthrop to be more evidence of the upper-crust wingers holding themselves in high esteem, a fact also consistent with modern times.

I’m surprised Hutchinson didn’t write under the pseudonym, TRUSTUS, a label befitting a man who held a plurality of key offices. In the pitch of James Otis’s battle against the illegal Writs of Assistance, Boston born and bred Hutchinson held the following offices all at once: lieutenant governor, chief justice of the Superior Court, president of the council of the General Court, judge of the probate in two different counties, and commander of Castle William, the fort controlling Boston harbor. When Otis so gallantly fought in court against the Writs, it was Hutchinson, the staunch loyalist and Chief Justice of the court who stymied the effort. It was not until more than five years later, in the mid-1760s that Connecticut pushed through the opposition to the Writs and Parliament finally acknowledged their illegality.

As to the use of pseudonyms, my own is an accidental concatenation of two of Adams’s – Populus and A Bostonian; I didn’t mean for it to happen that way (I misread the list,) but I’m satisfied with it nonetheless.