Gordon, William
Gordon, William
GORDON, WILLIAM. (1728–1807). Historian, clergyman. England and Massachusetts. Born in Hitchin, England, in 1728, Gordon began his ministry in an Independent church in Ipswich in 1752. Twelve years later he left, after a quarrel with a leading member of the church over the latter's use of workmen on Sunday. He then became minister in Southwark. In 1770, having become sympathetic to the colonial cause and having corresponded with several prominent Americans, he emigrated to Massachusetts. He became pastor of the Third Congregational Church in Roxbury (6 July 1772), and in 1775 was made chaplain of the Provincial Congress. He held the position for less than a year, being dismissed in 1776 in a political dispute. That same year he appointed himself the task of writing a history of the Revolution. Over the next seven years he collected documents, interviewed participants, and traveled widely.
In 1786 Gordon, feeling that the Americans would not accept what he saw as an unbiased history of the Revolution, returned to England. But Gordon found it difficult to get a publisher in England, and he had to remove passages his publisher thought too critical of the government before it could be printed. Gordon's four-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America was published in London in 1788. A three-volume American edition was published in New York City the next year. After being considered a prime authority for more than a century, the work was criticized for plagiarizing from the Annual Register. The book is nevertheless valuable, because Gordon used letters borrowed from participants (and seldom returned) and corresponded with generals to secure missing details. In 1789 Gordon secured a congregation at St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire. Returning to Ipswich in 1802 he lived the last five years of his life in great poverty, having realized only £300 from the sale of his History. He died in Ipswich on 19 October 1807.
SEE ALSO Burke, Edmund.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cohen, L. The Revolutionary Histories. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980.
revised by Michael Bellesiles