Three issues of The Pennsylvania Ledger featuring reporting on the Revolutionary War, Benjamin Franklin, and a runaway slave advertisement.

The Pennsylvania Ledger was printed by James Humphreys, a Philadelphia native who began the paper in January 1775. While at the start of the conflict the young editor claimed he would remain impartial, he had been obliged to swear allegiance to the king when he was earlier a clerk in the court of chancery, and he could not bear to violate his oath. Popular sentiment was aroused against him by his competitor, Benjamin Towne, who published the Pennsylvania Evening Post. By November 1776, Humphreys fled Philadelphia, returning only in late 1777 when the city was occupied by the British. During the British occupation until the spring of 1778, the Ledger was a fully Tory newspaper. 

Issues include: 

1. The Pennsylvania Ledger: Or the Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, & New-Jersey Weekly Advertiser. No. IV. Philadelphia: James Humphreys, 18 February 1775. 4 pages, folio, 10 x 15 ¾ in.

One of the first issues published by Humphreys, with a critical open letter addressed to Lord North beginning: "The important period is at length arrived when Great Britain is to establish a permanent foundation for her future prosperity, or by obstinately persisting in a cruel, unjust policy, ever-lastingly fix the era of her irretrievable ruin. America is speedily to be left in the free enjoyment of her impartial, constitutional rights, or be butchered into the surrender of them at the expense of national honour, ruin of the revenue, & general bankruptcy of the mother kingdom." 

Also of note are the proceedings of the First Continental Congress published on page 2: "The general Congress is now sitting & consists of deputies from every colony on the continent except Quebec and the two Floridas...This Congress is truly respectable..."  

2. The Pennsylvania Ledger: Or the Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, & New-Jersey Weekly Advertiser. No. XL. Philadelphia: James Humphreys, 28 October 1775. 4 pages, folio, 10 x 15 ¾ in.

The issue includes reports on the military action following the Battle of Bunker Hill, details of various naval engagements with the British and Spanish, a Royalist raid on a printer, and a visit to Cambridge by a Continental Congress committee including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Lynch, and Benjamin Harrison. The article details the recommendation for another Continental Army: “As the time for which the present army is raised will expire in 2 or 3 months, these gentleman, with the members of the Hon. Council of this colony are appointed to meet and confer with his Excellency General Washington, on the subject of forming and establishing another continental army, for the defense of the invading rights of the United colonies. The enemy in Boston has been remarkable still for near a fortnight past, having scarcely fired a gun. We are impatiently waiting for some authentic advices from our army in Canada, none having been received since our last.”

3. The Pennsylvania Ledger: Or the Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, & New-Jersey Weekly Advertiser. No. LXVIII. Philadelphia: James Humphreys, 11 May 1776. 4 pages, folio, 10 x 15 ¾ in.

In addition to extensive reporting on the ongoing Revolutionary War, page three includes an advertisement for a reward for a self-emancipated slave issued by John Jones: “Six Dollars Reward. Ran Away, the eighth instant, from the subscriber, living in the district of Southwark, a Negro man named Newry, by trade a cooper, about twenty-two years of age, five feet eight or nine inches high.”
 

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