James Otis, Jr.

James Otis, Jr.

Portrait by Joseph Blackburn, 1755
Born February 5, 1725
Barnstable, Province of Massachusetts Bay
Died May 23, 1783 (aged 58)
Andover, Massachusetts
Occupation lawyer, political activist, pamphleteer and legislator
Known for Oration against British writs of assistance February 5, 1761 which catapulted him into the first ranks of Patriot leaders.
Spouse(s) Ruth Cunningham
Children James, Elizabeth Brown
Mary Lincoln
Parent(s) James Otis, Sr.
Mary Allyne
Bronze sculpture of James Otis, Jr stands in front of the Barnstable County Courthouse.

James Otis, Jr. (February 5, 1725 – May 23, 1783) was a lawyer in colonial Massachusetts, a member of the Massachusetts provincial assembly, and an early advocate of the Patriot views against British policy that led to the American Revolution. His catchphrase "Taxation without representation is tyranny" became the basic Patriot position.[1]

Early life

He was born in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. He was the second of thirteen children and the first to survive infancy. His sister Mercy Otis Warren, his brother Joseph Otis, and his youngest brother Samuel Allyne Otis became leaders of the Revolution, as did his nephew Harrison Gray Otis.[2] His father, Colonel James Otis, Sr., was a prominent lawyer and militia officer.

In 1755 James married "the beautiful Ruth Cunningham", a merchant's daughter and heiress to a fortune worth 10,000 pounds.[3] Their politics were quite different, yet they were attached to each other. Otis later "half-complained that she was a 'High Tory,'" yet in the same breath "she was a good Wife ['Ruthy'], and too good for him."[4] The marriage produced three children (James, Elizabeth and Mary). Their son James died at the age of eighteen, and their daughter Elizabeth, a Loyalist like her mother, married Captain Brown of the British Army and lived in England for the rest of her life. Their youngest daughter, Mary, married Benjamin Lincoln, son of the distinguished Continental Army General Benjamin Lincoln.

Writs of assistance

Otis graduated from Harvard in 1743 and rose meteorically to the top of the Boston legal profession. In 1760, he received a prestigious appointment as Advocate General of the Admiralty Court. He promptly resigned, however, when Governor Francis Bernard failed to appoint his father to the promised position of Chief Justice of the province's highest court; the position instead went to longtime Otis opponent Thomas Hutchinson. In a dramatic turnabout following his resignation, Otis instead represented pro bono the colonial merchants who were challenging the legality of the "writs of assistance" before the Superior Court, the predecessor of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. These writs enabled British authorities to enter any colonist's home with no advance notice, no probable cause and no reason given. In his oration against the writs, John Adams recollected years later, "Otis was a flame of fire; with a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities."[5]

James Otis considered himself a loyal British subject. Yet in February 1761, he argued against the Writs of Assistance in a nearly five-hour oration before a select audience in the State House. His argument failed to win his case, although it galvanized the revolutionary movement.

John Adams promoted Otis as a major player in the coming of the Revolution. Adams said, "I have been young and now I am old, and I solemnly say I have never known a man whose love of country was more ardent or sincere, never one who suffered so much, never one whose service for any 10 years of his life were so important and essential to the cause of his country as those of Mr. Otis from 1760 to 1770." Adams claimed that "the child independence was then and there born,[for] every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance." In fact, his challenge to the authority of Parliament made a strong impression on John Adams, who was present, and thereby eventually contributed to the American Revolution. In a pamphlet published three years later, in 1765, Otis expanded his argument that the general writs violated the British constitution harkening back to the Magna Carta. Much enhanced by John Adams on several occasions, the text of his 1761 speech was first printed in 1773 and in longer forms in 1819 and 1823.[6]

The four tracts that he wrote during 1764–65 to protest British tax measures reveal contradictions and even intellectual confusion, says Ferguson. While Otis was the first leader of the period to develop distinctive American theories of constitutionalism and representation, he relied on traditional views of Parliamentary authority. Otis refused to follow the logical direction of his natural law theory, and by drawing back from radicalism appeared to be inconsistent.[7] Some historians have suggested incipient insanity, but Samuelson argues that Otis should be seen as a practical political thinker rather than a theorist. That explains why his positions changed as he adjusted to altered political realities, and exposed the British constitutional dilemmas of colonial parliamentary representation and the imperial relationship between Britain and the American colonies.[8]

Otis did not identify himself as a revolutionary; his peers, too, generally viewed him as more cautious than the incendiary Samuel Adams. Otis at times counseled against the mob violence of the radicals and argued against Adams' proposal for a convention of all the colonies resembling that of the British Glorious Revolution of 1688. Yet on other occasions Otis exceeded Adams in rousing passions and exhorting people to action. According to some accounts, at a town meeting on September 12, 1768, Otis even called his compatriots to arms.

Patriot and pamphleteer

Originally politically based in the rural Popular Party, Otis effectively made alliances with Boston merchants so that he instantly became a patriot star after the controversy over the writs of assistance. He was elected by an overwhelming margin to the provincial assembly a month later. Otis subsequently wrote several important patriotic pamphlets, served in the assembly and was a leader of the Stamp Act Congress. He also was friends with Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense.

Otis suffered from increasingly erratic behavior as the 1760s progressed. Otis received a gash on the head by British tax collector John Robinson's cudgel at the British Coffee House in 1769. Some mistakenly attribute Otis's mental illness to this event, but it has been shown to be unrelated by Wroth and Zobel. John Adams has several examples in his diary of Otis's mental illness well before 1769. By the end of the decade, Otis's public life largely came to an end. Some believe Otis was a manic depressive or schizophrenic and that his illness could be successfully treated today. Otis was able to do occasional legal practice during times of clarity.

Unique in his era, Otis favored extending the basic natural law freedoms of life, liberty and property to African Americans. He asserted that blacks had inalienable rights. The idea of racial equality also permeates Otis's Rights of the British Colonies (1764).[9]

Death

James Otis' grave in Granary Burying Ground.

Otis died suddenly in May 1783 at the age of 58 when, as he stood in the doorway of a friend's house, he was struck by lightning. He is reported to have said to his sister, Mercy Otis Warren, "My dear sister, I hope, when God Almighty in his righteous providence shall take me out of time into eternity that it will be by a flash of lightning".[10]

Published works

References

  1. ↑ The slogan was already in use in Ireland. McCullough, David (2001). John Adams. New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-7432-2313-3.
  2. ↑ http://www.juntosociety.com/founders/jamesotis.html
  3. ↑ Charles H. Turtle, "Christopher Kilby of Boston", New England Hist. and Mass. Register, XXVI (1872), 4,4,n
  4. ↑ John Adams Diary, I, 349 (January 16, 1770).
  5. ↑ Adams, John. Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or, Political Essays. Boston: Hews and Goss, 1819, p. 246.
  6. ↑ http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1204.html
  7. ↑ Ferguson, 1979
  8. ↑ Samuelson, 1999
  9. ↑ Breen, 1998
  10. ↑ Drake, S.G. (1848). The New England Historical & Genealogical Register, Volume 2. p. 290. Retrieved 22 September 2014.

Further reading

External links

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