William Manning (author)

William Manning (1747–1814) was a New England farmer, foot soldier and author. After fighting in the American Revolutionary War, he began to believe that his service and labor meant little to those in charge. He soon became a member of the Jeffersonian Republican Party (otherwise known as the Democratic-Republican Party) in response to the day’s ruling Federalist Party. As the years passed and his distrust in government grew, he wrote multiple papers on what he deemed was the corruptness of the “Few” and what the “Many” endured because of it. In 1798, Manning wrote his most famous work, The Key of Libberty (later corrected to The Key of Liberty), in which he wrote that the goal of the Few was to distress and force the Many into financially depending on them, creating a continued cycle of dependence. He continued that the Many’s only hope was to vote for leaders that would fight for those with lesser power and urge for smaller government. His work, however, would not be published for more than a century, mostly due to its controversial content.

William Manning was born in Billerica, MA, in 1747. His paternal ancestors came to Massachusetts from England during the Puritan migration. The farm he was born on was the same farm that his great-grandfather worked on and lived. On that farm, built in 1696 and referred to as the Old Manse, Manning and his wife, Sarah, raised 10 of their 13 children.

Manning lived a life of “Yankee yeomanry”—a group of small, free holding farmers—like his ancestors and lived in a village named Hampden that was well off. The farm, itself, was formerly used as a garrison house during the Indian wars and, afterwards, served as a tavern. Many of the original books from the tavern are still in existence.

Little is known of Manning’s military career, other than the fact that it inspired him to write his later works. On April 19, 1775, while serving in Captain Solomon Pollard’s company at age 27, he responded too late to the alarm of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in the American Revolutionary War. He was appointed second lieutenant shortly afterwards and served two terms as a selectman in Billerica many years later.

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