Daniel Leonard

Born into a prominent, wealthy iron-manufacturing family in Norton, Massachusetts, Daniel Leonard graduated from Harvard College in 1760. Daniel Leonard was a brilliant lawyer, and close personal friend of John Adams in colonial Massachusetts. While initially sympathetic to colonial grievances, Leonard broke with the Whigs over the radical mob violence of the Sons of Liberty.

Between December 1774 and April 1775, Leonard and John Adams engaged in an intellectual duel. Writing anonymously as Massachusettensis in the Boston Post-Boy, Leonard published 17 sophisticated letters defending British imperial authority, arguing that parliamentary supremacy was absolute and that rebellion would bring military ruin. Writing as Novanglus in The Boston Gazette, Adams countered weekly, arguing that the colonies were distinct realms tied to the King, not subject to Parliament.