James Otis, the pre-revolutionist Part 1

James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist.

by John Clark Ridpath.

Near the northeast corner of the old Common of Boston a section of ground was put apart long before the beginning of the eighteenth century to be a burying ground for some of the heroic dead of the city of the Puritans. For some quaint reason or caprice this acre of G.o.d was called "The Granary" and is so called to this day. Perhaps the name was given because the dead were here, garnered as grain from the reaping until the bins be opened at the last day's thres.h.i.+ng when the chaff shall be driven from the wheat.

Here the thoughtless throng looking through the iron railing may see the old weather-beaten and time-eaten slabs with their curious lettering which designate the spots where many of the men of the pre-revolutionary epoch were laid to their last repose.

The word cemetery is from Greek and means the little place where I lie down.

In the Granary Burying Ground are the tombs of many whom history has gathered and recorded as her own. But history looks in vain among the blue-black slabs of semi-slate for the name of one who was greatest perhaps of them all; but whose last days were so strangely clouded and whose sepulchre was so obscure as to leave the world in doubt for more than a half century as to where the body of the great sleeper had been laid. Curiosity, whetted by patriotism, then discovered the spot. But the name of another was on the covering slab, and no small token was to be found indicative of the last resting place of the lightning-smitten body of James Otis, the prophetic giant of the pre-revolutionary days. He who had lived like one of the Homeric heroes, who had died like a t.i.tan under a thunderbolt, and had been buried as obscurely as Richard the Lion Hearted, or Frederick Barbarossa, must lie neglected in an unknown tomb within a few rods of the spot where his eloquence aforetime had aroused his countrymen to national consciousness, and made a foreign tyranny forever impossible in that old Boston, the very name of which became henceforth the menace of kings and the synonym of liberty.

Tradition rather than history has preserved thus much. In the early part of the present century a row of great elms, known as the Paddock elms, stood in what is now the sidewalk on the west side of Tremont Street skirting the Granary Burying Ground.

These trees were cut away and the first section of the burial s.p.a.ce was invaded with the spade. Tomb No. 40, over which the iron railing now pa.s.ses, was divided down as far as where the occupants are lying. Within the sepulchre were several bodies.

One was the body of Nathaniel Cunningham, Sr. Another was Ruth Cunningham, his wife. The younger members of the family were also there in death.

When the lid of one coffin in this invaded tomb was lifted, it was found that a ma.s.s of the living roots of the old strong elm near by had twined about the skull of the sleeper, had entered through the apertures, and had eaten up the brain. It was the brain of James Otis which had given itself to the life of the elm and had been transformed into branch and leaf and blossom, thus breathing itself forth again into the free air and the Universal Flow.

The body of the patriot had been deposited in this tomb of his father-in-law, the Nathaniel Cunningham just referred to, and had there reposed until the searching fibres of another order of life had found it out, and lifted and dispensed its sublimer part into the viewless air. Over the grave in which the body was laid is still one of the rude slabs which the fathers provided, and on this is cut the name of "George Longley, 1809," he being the successor of the Cunninghams in the owners.h.i.+p of Tomb No. 40.

Here, then, was witnessed the last transformation of the material, visible man called James Otis, the courageous herald who ran swinging a torch in the early dawn of the American Revolution.

The pre-revolutionists are the t.i.tans of human history; the revolutionists proper are only heroes; and the post-revolutionists are too frequently dwarfs and weaklings.

This signifies that civilization advances by revolutionary stages, and that history sends out her tallest and best sons to explore the line of march, and to select the spot for the next camping-ground. It is not they who actually command the oncoming columns and who seem so huge against the historical background--it is not these, but rather the hoa.r.s.e forerunners and s.h.a.ggy prophets of progress who are the real kings of men-- the true princes of the human empire.

These principles of the civilized life were strongly ill.u.s.trated in our War of Independence. The forerunners of that war were a race of giants. Their like has hardly been seen in any other epoch of that sublime scrimmage called history. Five or six names may be selected from the list of the early American prophets whose deeds and outcry, if reduced to hexameters, would be not the Iliad, not the Jerusalem Delivered, but the Epic of Human Liberty.

The greatest of these, our protagonists of freedom, was Benjamin Franklin. After him it were difficult to name the second. It is always difficult to find the second man; for there are several who come after. In the case of our forerunners the second may have been Thomas Jefferson; it may have been Samuel Adams; it may have been his cousin; it may have been Thomas Paine; it may have been Patrick Henry; it may have been James Otis, the subject of this monograph.

It is remarkable to note how elusive are the lives of many great men. Some of the greatest have hardly been known at all. Others are known only by glimpses and outlines. Some are known chiefly by myth and tradition. Nor does the effort to discover the details of such lives yield any considerable results. There are great names which have come to us from antiquity, or out of the Middle Ages, that are known only as names, or only by a few striking incidents. In some cases our actual knowledge of men who are believed to have taken a conspicuous part in the drama of their times is so meagre and uncertain that critical disputes have arisen respecting the very existence of such personages.

Homer for example--was he myth or man? The Christ? Where was he and how did he pa.s.s his life from his twelfth year to the beginning of his ministry? What were the dates of his birth and death? Shakespeare? Why should not the details of his life, or some considerable portion of the facts, compare in plenitude and authenticity with the events in Dr. Johnson's career?

It seems to be the law of biography that those characters who are known to the world by a few brilliant strokes of genius have as a rule only a meagre personal history, while they whose characters have been built up painfully and slowly out of the commonplace, like the coral islands of the Atlantic, have a great variety and mult.i.tude of materials ready for the hands of the biographer.

James Otis belonged to the first of these cla.s.ses. There is a measure of elusiveness about his life. Our lack of knowledge respecting him, however, is due in part to the fact that near the close of his life, while he was oscillating in a half-rational condition between Andover and Boston, with an occasional visit to Plymouth, he fell into a fit of pessimism and despair during which he spent two days in obliterating the materials for his biography, by destroying all his letters and ma.n.u.scripts. He did as much as he could to make impossible any adequate account of his career or any suitable revelation of his character as developed in his correspondence. Over and above this, however, the materials of his life are of small extent, and fragmentary.

It is to his formal publications and the common tradition of what he did, that we must turn for our biographical and historical estimate of the man. In this respect he is in a.n.a.logy with Patrick Henry who appears only fitfully in history, but with meteoric brilliancy; or with Abraham Lincoln the narrative of whose life for the first forty-five years can be adequately written in ten pages.

The American Otises of the seventeenth century were of English descent. The emigration of the family from the mother country occurred at an early day when the settlements in New England were still infrequent and weak. The Otis family was among the first to settle at the town of Hingham. Nor was it long until the name appeared in the public records, indicating official rank and leaders.h.i.+p. From Hingham, John Otis, who was born in 1657, ancestor of the subject of this sketch, removed to Barnstable, near the center of the peninsula of Ma.s.sachusetts, and became one of the first men of that settlement. He was sent to the Legislature and thence to the Council of the Colony in which he had a seat for twenty-one years. During this period he was promoted to the place of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and while holding this important place he was also judge of the Probate Court. The family rose and flourished in reputation.

In 1702, James Otis, son of Judge John Otis, was born. He followed in his father's footsteps becoming a lawyer and colonial publicist, afterwards a colonel of the militia, a judge of the Common Pleas, a judge of the Probate Court, and a member of the Council of Ma.s.sachusetts. Just after reaching his majority Colonel Otis took in marriage Mary Alleyne, and of this union were born thirteen children. The eldest was a son, and to him was given his father's name. It was to this child that destiny had a.s.signed the heroic work of confronting the aggressions of Great Britain on the American colonists, and of inspiring the latter to forcible resistance.

James Otis, Junior, was born at a place called Great Marshes, now known as West Barnstable, on the 5th of February, 1725. He inherited from his father and grandfather not only a large measure of talents but also a pa.s.sion for public life which impelled him strongly to the study and solution of those questions which related to the welfare of the American colonies, and to the means by which their political independence might be ultimately secured.

The character and intellect of Colonel Otis of Barnstable were transmitted to other members of his family also. The daughter Mercy, oldest sister of James Otis, was married to James Warren who made his home at Plymouth. This lady had her brother's pa.s.sion for politics--an enthusiasm which could hardly be restrained. She wrote and conversed in a fiery manner on the revolutionary topics of the day. Almost coincidently with the Battle of Bunker Hill she composed and published (without her name, however,) a biting satire on the colonial policy of Great Britain, calling her brochure "The Group." Fifteen years afterwards she published a volume of poems, mostly patriotic pieces, and finally in 1805 a brief "History of the American Revolution," which was considered a reputable work after its kind.

Samuel Alleyne Otis, youngest brother of James, outlived nearly all the other members of the family, and was recognized as a prominent political leader. He, also, had the strong patriotic and revolutionary bent of the family, was popular and influential, and was honored with a long term of service as Secretary of the Senate of the United States. In this capacity he partic.i.p.ated, April 30, 1789, in the inauguration of Was.h.i.+ngton, holding the Bible on which the Father of his Country took the oath of office. The other brothers and sisters were of less conspicuous ability, and were not so well known to their own and other times.

In New England in the first half of the eighteenth century the sentiment of education was universal. Among the leading people, the sentiment was intense. Colonel Otis, of Barnstable, was alert with respect to the discipline and development of his children. He gave to them all, to the sons especially, the best advantages which the commonwealth afforded. James Otis was a.s.signed to the care of Reverend Jonathan Russell, the minister at Barnstable, who prepared the youth for college. By the middle of his fifteenth year he was thought to be ready for matriculation. He was accordingly entered as a freshman at Harvard, in June, 1739.

Of the incidents of his preceding boyhood, we know but little. A tradition exists that he was more precocious than diligent; that his will was strong; that his activities were marked with a reckless audacity, which, however, did not distinguish him much from the other promising New England boys of his age. Something of these characteristics are noticeable in his college career.

At Harvard he showed an abundance of youthful spirits; a strong social disposition, and a well-marked discrimination between his friends and his enemies. At times he applied himself a.s.siduously, and at other times mused and read rather than studied. On the whole he did not greatly distinguish himself as a student. His pa.s.sion for literature was marked, and he became conspicuous for his forensic abilities. Towards the end of his course, his character as a student was intensified, and he was not often seen away from his books. Out of term time, he would return to his father's home taking his books with him. At such times he was rarely seen by his former companions of Barnstable, because of his habit of secluding himself for study.

It is narrated that at this period of his life, young Otis gave strong evidence of the excitable temperament with which he was endowed. In the intervals of his study his nervous system, under the stimulus of games or controversial dispute, would become so tense with excitement as to provoke remark. Nor may we in the retrospect fail to discover in this quality of mind and temper the premonitions of that malady which finally prevailed over the lucid understanding, and rational activities of James Otis.

The youth did not much effect social accomplishments. He had a pa.s.sion for music and learned to play the violin. With this instrument he was wont to entertain himself in the intervals of study. Sometimes he would play for company. It was one of his habits to break off suddenly and rather capriciously in the midst of what he was doing. Thus did he with his music. It is narrated that on a certain occasion while playing by invitation for some friends, he suddenly put aside the instrument, saying in a sort of declamatory manner as was his wont--

"So fiddled Orpheus and so danced the brutes."

He then ran into the garden, and could not be induced to play the violin again.

Young Otis pa.s.sed through the regular cla.s.ses at Harvard and was graduated in 1743. On that occasion he took part in a disputation which was one of the exercises of his cla.s.s.

Otherwise his record at the college is not accented with any special work which he did. At the time of his graduation he was in his nineteenth year. It had been his father's purpose and his own that his profession should be the law. It does not appear, however, that his college studies were especially directed to this end. At any rate, he did not devote himself at once to the law, but a.s.siduously for two years (1743-45) to a general course of study chosen and directed by himself with a view to the further discipline of his mind and the widening of his information. It was an educational theory with Otis that such an interval of personal and spontaneous application should intervene between a young man's graduation and the beginning of his professional career. Having pursued this course with himself he insisted that his younger brother, Samuel Alleyne Otis, should take the same course. In one of his letters to his father--a communication fortunately rescued from the holocaust of his correspondence--he discusses the question and urges the propriety of the young man's devoting a year or two to general study before taking up his law books. An extract from the letter will prove of interest. The writer says: "It is with sincerest pleasure I find my brother Samuel has well employed his time during his residence at home. I am sure you don't think the time long he is spending in his present course of studies; since it is past all doubt they are not only ornamental and useful, but indispensably necessary preparatories for the figure I hope one day, for his and your sake, as well as my own, to see him make in the profession he is determined to pursue. I am sure the year and a half I spent in the same way, after leaving the academy, was as well spent as any part of my life; and I shall always lament I did not take a year or two further for more general inquiries in the arts and sciences, before I sat down to the laborious study of the laws of my country.

"My brother's judgment can't at present be supposed to be ripe enough for so severe an exercise as the proper reading and well digesting the common law. Very sure I am, if he would stay a year or two from the time of his degree, before he begins with the law, he will be able to make better progress in one week, than he could now, without a miracle, in six. Early and short clerks.h.i.+ps, and a premature rus.h.i.+ng into practice, without a competent knowledge in the theory of law, have blasted the hopes, and ruined the expectations, formed by the parents of most of the students in the profession, who have fallen within my observation for these ten or fifteen years past."

The writer of this well-timed communication then adds in proof of his position, the names of several distinguished jurists who postponed the beginning of their legal studies, or at least their legal practice, to a time of life quite beyond the conventional student period. Mr. Otis then declares his conviction that a young man may well procrastinate his legal studies until he shall have attained the age of thirty or even of forty years. He declares his belief that such postponement will as a rule lead to better result than can be attained by a youth who begins at twenty, however brilliant his genius may be.

This view of the case was with James Otis both theory and practice. He began his legal studies in 1745. In that year he became a law student under the tuition of Jeremiah Gridley who at that time was already regarded as one of the most able and accomplished lawyers in Ma.s.sachusetts. Preceptor and student were at the first in accord in their political and social principles. At the time of the young man's law course, Gridley was a member of the General Court of Ma.s.sachusetts. He belonged to the party called Whig; for the political jargon of Great Britain had infected the Americans also, and they divided according to the names and principles of the British partisans of the period.

Judge Gridley, while he remained on the bench, took sides with the colonists in their oncoming contention with the mother country. Afterwards, however, by accepting the appointment of Attorney General he became one of the king's officers, and it was in this relation that he was subsequently brought face to face with his distinguished pupil in the trial of the most remarkable case which preceded the Revolutions.

Mr. Otis devoted two years of time to his legal studies before beginning the practice of his profession. The study of law at that time was much more difficult than at the present day. The student was obliged to begin de novo with the old statutes and decisions, and to make up the science for himself by a difficult induction, which not many young men were able to do successfully.

Law text-books were virtually unknown. Otis did not even have access to "Blackstone's Commentaries." No authoritative works on evidence or pleading existed in the English language.

The student must get down his Acts of Parliament, his decisions of the King's Bench, his c.o.ke, his black-letter dissertations on the common law, and out of these construct the best he could a legal system for himself. To this work Mr. Otis devoted himself from 1745 to 1747, after which he left the office of Judge Gridley and went to Plymouth, where he applied for admission to the bar, and was accepted by the court. He began to practice in 1748--the year of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, when the political and historical status of Europe was again fixed for a brief period.

The young attorney almost immediately took rank at the Plymouth bar. The old records of the court at that place still show the frequent appearance of Otis for one or the other of the parties.

In this manner were pa.s.sed the years 1748 and 1749. It does not appear that at this time he concerned himself very much with the affairs of the town or the larger affairs of the commonwealth.

The tax records show his name with an entry to the effect that in 1748 he estimated his personal estate at twenty pounds besides his "faculty," by which was meant, his professional value.

A few incidents of this period in Otis's life have come down by tradition. He soon made a favorable impression on the court and bar. He gained the good opinion of his fellows for both ability and integrity of character. This reputation he carried with him to Boston, whither he removed early in the year 1750. He had already acquired sufficient character to bring his services into requisition at places somewhat distant from Plymouth.

His reception in Boston was accordingly favorable. Beyond the limits of the colony he became known as an advocate. He was sent for in important cases, and showed such signal ability as to attract the admiring attention of both court and people. Already at the conclusion of his twenty-fifth year he was a young man of note, rising to eminence.

There was good ground for this reputation in both his principles of conduct and his legal abilities. From the first he avoided the littleness and quibble which are the bane of the bar. He had a high notion of what a lawyer should be and of the method and spirit in which he should conduct his cases. He had as much dignity as audacity, a sense of justice as keen as the purpose was zealous in pursuing it.

It came to be understood in the courts of Boston when Otis appeared as an advocate that he had a case and believed in it.

He avoided accepting retainers in cases, of the justice of which he was in doubt. Pursuing this method, he was sometimes involved in law-suits in which he was constrained to turn upon his own client.

The story goes of one such instance in which he brought suit for the collection of a bill. Believing in his client and in the justice of the claim, he pressed the matter in court and was about to obtain a judgment when he accidentally discovered, among his client's papers, a receipt which the plaintiff had signed for the very claim under consideration. Through some mistake the receipt had again got back into the man's possession, and he had taken advantage of the fact to inst.i.tute a suit for the collection of the claim a second time.

Seeing through the matter at once, Otis took the plaintiff aside, confronted him with the receipt and denounced him to his face as a rascal. The man gave down and begged for quarter, but Otis was inexorable; he went back to the bar and stated to the court that reasons existed why the case of his client should be dismissed.

The court, presided over by Judge Hutchinson, afterward Lieutenant-Governor and Chief Justice of Ma.s.sachusetts, expressed its surprise at the turn of affairs, complimented Otis for his honorable course as an advocate, commended his conduct to the bar, and dismissed the case.

With the spread of his reputation Mr. Otis was summoned on legal business to distant parts. On one occasion he was called to Halifax to defend some prisoners under arrest for piracy; believing them to be innocent he convinced the court in an eloquent plea and secured the acquittal of the prisoners.

On another occasion he was summoned to Plymouth to defend some citizens of that town who had become involved in a riot on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. It was the custom in the New England towns to observe this day with a mock procession, in which effigies representing the Pope, the Old Bad One, and James the Pretender, were carried through the streets to be consigned at the end to a bonfire. In this instance violence was done by some of the partic.i.p.ants; windows were smashed, gates were broken down, etc. Mr. Otis conducted the defense, showing that the arrested persons taking part in a noisy anniversary, and committing acts that were innocent in spirit, if not innocent per se, ought not to be adjudged guilty of serious misdemeanor. This plea prevailed and the young men were acquitted.