The Answer to a Colonel's Letter. By a Wooden Legged Soldier in Gloucestershire. Wherein Some American Matters Are Slightly Touched Upon
- Hildebrand Oaktree (author)
- Jack P. Greene (collection editor)
Published in 1766 under the pseudonym “Hildebrand Oaktree,” this essay by a Wooden Legged Soldier in Gloucestershire is a short British pamphlet written in the epistolary style popular among political commentators of the era. The anonymous author adopts the persona of a disabled military veteran to lend plain-spoken authority to his views, responding to an unnamed colonel’s earlier letter and touching along the way on the contentious question of British policy toward the American colonies.
The pamphlet is part of the broader print debate that erupted in Britain between 1764 and 1776 over taxation, representation, and imperial governance — a controversy ignited by the Stamp Act and its subsequent repeal.
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The text of these 18th century pamphlets has been converted by machine from scanned PDFs of the original microfilm copies. While the text has been machine-proofed, transcription errors may still remain. For example, the 18th-century long S, ſ , may be rendered as “f,” some words may be incorrectly transcribed, and there may be repeated words or phrases.