Gunpowder Joe
by Anthony Clarvoe

Hounded out of his native England, Joseph Priestley hoped to secure a sanctuary along the banks of the Susquehanna.

Would this refugee find America, that great experiment, to be the true democracy he had championed from across the sea?

Would he finally be free to pursue his religion, his science, and his political beliefs in this new “land of liberty”?

Controversy continued to swirl around him.

Revolutionary comrades turned into bitter political opponents when it came time to actually govern the country they founded.

The immigrant Priestley was drawn into the vortex of America’s first major crisis.

“Freedom of Speech” had yet to be tested, and Priestley’s admirers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were engaged in a deeply polarized debate over the fate of our fledgling nation.“As GUNPOWDER JOE begins, Mary Priestley urges her world-famous husband to flee as a mob approaches their home in Birmingham, England.

But the scientist, whose political writings have inflamed his foes previously, isn’t perturbed.

‘It will be fine,’ Joseph Priestley tells his worried wife.

‘They have been content to hang me in effigy for years.’ ‘They may be done pretending,’ Mary retorts.

Thus, the world premiere of Anthony Clarvoe’s historical drama — ‘GUNPOWDER JOE: Joseph Priestley, Pennsylvania and the American Experiment’ — gets off to a fast start … In the end, the Priestleys flee, and the rioters torch their residence, which contains the scientist’s laboratory and library … It quickly establishes how well connected Priestley became after settling in Pennsylvania.

He soon had friends — and foes — in high places.

In one scene, he and President John Adams are having tea when Priestley suggests that Adams appoint Thomas Cooper, another English expatriate who has settled in Northumberland, to a federal post.

The president reacts sharply.

‘I would never give such a position to a foreigner,’ Adams declares, adding that such appointments should be given only to ‘loyal Americans’ … Animated, occasionally humorous and always enlightening, Clarvoe’s drama shatters any notion that Priestley, internationally known for discovering oxygen in 1774, spent his last decade living quietly in Northumberland content to pursue new discoveries.

It shows how he helped strengthen our First Amendment right to say things about our government that even the president may not like.”

—John L Moore, The Daily Item