1779 REVOLUTIONARY WAR MASSACHUSETTS STATE LOTTERY RECEIPT FEATURING THE WARNING “DEATH TO COUNTERFEIT THIS" AND ICONIC SNAKE EMBLEM 

Partly engraved document completed in manuscript. Signed by H. Gardner, as Treasurer. [Boston?], Massachusetts, 1 June 1779. 1 page, 9 3/16 x 5 5/8 in. Countersigned by committee members. 

An attractive receipt from the 1779 Massachusetts State Lottery, noting that the bearer of the note was entitled to receive fifteen pounds on 1 January 1783. The lottery formed part of an experimental effort to raise funds during the American Revolutionary War, when both Congress and the individual states sought creative means to finance the enormous costs of the conflict. The United States Board of Treasury had authorized a national lottery as early as 1776, and the present document relates to the lottery established by Massachusetts in 1779 as part of that broader wartime funding system. Such lotteries represented an early and important mechanism by which the fledgling American governments attempted to sustain the war effort in the absence of reliable taxation or established financial institutions.

Following the war, the complicated network of national and state obligations was ultimately consolidated when the federal government assumed the Revolutionary War debts of the individual states on 9 August 1790 as part of the sweeping financial program advanced by Alexander Hamilton. In that process, many state-issued obligations, including instruments such as this lottery receipt, were absorbed into the broader settlement of the national debt.

The document features handsome printer’s devices typical of Revolutionary-era financial instruments. Along the lower margin appears the stern warning “Death to Counterfeit This,” a striking anti-counterfeiting notice intended to deter forgery at a time when paper currency and financial certificates were highly vulnerable to imitation. Also present is an ouroboros- a snake consuming its own tail encircling a tree. In the political symbolism of the Revolutionary era, the serpent evoked colonial unity and endurance, recalling the imagery popularized by Benjamin Franklin in his famous “Join, or Die” cartoon. By the 1770s, variations of the serpent motif had become widely associated with American unity; the New-York Journal notably adopted the ouroboros on its masthead in 1774 accompanied by the motto “United Now Alive and Free…”.

Important evidence of the improvisational economic measures that helped support the American struggle for independence.

[American Revolutionary War, American Revolution, Founding Fathers, Declaration of Independence, Colonial America, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe] [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs]