Editing Chang and Eng Bunker (section)

===Independent travel===

[[File:Chang and Eng, Siamese twins, 1836. Oil painting by Edouard- Wellcome V0017109.jpg|thumb|right|Oil painting by [[Édouard Pingret]], 1836]]

Abel Coffin, upon returning to Massachusetts in July 1832, discovered that Chang and Eng were missing. Coffin accused Hale of "exciting ''his subjects'' to rebellion" (Hale had done no such thing), and after a chase he finally tracked down the brothers in [[Bath, New York]]. Hale later said Coffin told him he had met the twins "whoring, gaming, and drinking" and "gave Chang Eng 'the damndest thrashing they ever had in their lives'". On the twins' desertion, Coffin simply wrote to his wife as follows: "We have had much talk; they seem to feel themselves quite free from me."{{sfn|Orser|2014|p=68}}

The twins themselves did not immediately announce that they were in business on their own, nor did they much alter their public persona.{{sfn|Orser|2014|pp=68–69}} Nonetheless, they were now exclusively referred to by their stage name—the "Siamese twins"—and they did change some parts of their performance, such as by wearing more American clothes, speaking English with the audience, and presenting themselves no longer as "boys" but men. They also answered audience questions sitting in a formal, parlor setting and hunted game in their free time.{{sfn|Orser|2014|pp=61, 70–71, 73}} What had once essentially been their [[indentured servitude]] had changed to freedom; they were in command of their act and hired their own staff.{{sfn|Wu|2012|p=4}}

Chang and Eng did not perform on their sightseeing trip across Western Europe in 1835–36 visiting Paris, [[Antwerp]], [[The Hague]], [[Amsterdam]], and other cities. In 1836, Hale published a pamphlet about them titled ''A Few Particulars concerning Chang-Eng, the United Siamese Brothers, Published under Their Own Direction''. Positioning the twins as upper-class, saying that in Siam, Chinese were elites; it reported, among other particulars, that a representative of [[President Jackson]] had visited the twins' mother.{{sfn|Orser|2014|p=73–74}}