Otis, James

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Otis, James

OTIS, JAMES. (1725–1783). Patriot politician, publicist, and orator. Massachusetts. Otis, born in West Barnstable, Massachusetts on 2 February 1725, graduated in 1743 from Harvard, which he hated. He then studied law under Jeremiah Gridley, a prominent Boston attorney, after which he established his own practice in Boston in 1750. In 1755 Otis married the weathy Ruth Cunningham. Within a few years, Otis was considered one of the leading lawyers in the province. He was an expert in common, civil, and admiralty law, in addition to being a scholar whose Rudiments of Latin Prosody (1760) became a Harvard text. In 1761 he resigned his lucrative office as king's advocate general of the vice admiralty court at Boston rather than argue for the Writs of Assistance, unlimited search warrants that allowed the authorities to search anywhere they pleased. Instead, Otis took the side of the Boston merchants in opposing the writs, which the royal customs collectors were seeking in order to find evidence of the violation of the Sugar Act of 1733.

In his famous speech against the writs, delivered on 24 February 1761, Otis gave one of the earliest statements of the doctrine that a law that violates "Natural Law" is void. He decried the writs as an exercise of arbitrary power and, as such, contrary to the British constitution. No formal record of his argument exists, but young John Adams took notes and, 60 years later, recalled: "Otis was a flame of fire!… He hurried away everything before him. American independence was then and there born" (Adams, vol. 10, p. 247). Otis lost the case to Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson, who argued that the Massachusetts Superior Court had the same power as British courts, which had been granted the authority to issue such writs by Parliament. In 1766 the British vacated Hutchinson's ruling on the grounds that this act of Parliament did not apply to Massachusetts. Otis's arguments against the writs of assistance did not circulate widely, but exerted great intellectual influence among the emerging patriot leadership.

Some scholars have questioned Otis's motivation in opposing British authority, finding personal causes in his resignation from his post as advocate general in 1760. It is known that Otis blamed Governor Francis Bernard and then-Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson for violating an agreement to elevate the senior James Otis to the Superior Court. Much to the shock of the two James Otises, Hutchinson was himself made chief justice (13 November 1760), even though he continued to serve as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. The younger Otis denied that his opposition to arbitrary government was motivated by a desire to avenge frustrated family ambitions.

In May 1761, two months after his famous speech against the writs, Otis became one of Boston's four representatives to the provincial legislature. His father was re-elected as speaker of the House, and the two Otises formed a popular bloc of Boston and rural interests to oppose the crown officials. In 1762 Otis wrote his first pamphlet, "A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives," in which he put forth the proposition that the legislature had complete power of the purse; the executive could spend no funds without their approval. In 1764 he wrote "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved," putting forth the increasingly popular idea that there could be no taxation without representation, and the following year published "A Vindication of the British Colonies," mocking the British principle of virtual representation.

Yet even as Otis put forth a series of radical political positions, he cautioned moderation in resistance. Otis was made head of the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence in 1764, and the next year he made a proposal that resulted in the Stamp Act Congress. He considered the Virginia resolves of Patrick Henry treasonable, and on 26 November 1765 wrote that he preferred "dutiful and loyal Addresses to his Majesty and his Parliament, who alone under God can extricate the Colonies from the painful Scenes of Tumult, Confusion, & Distress." At the Stamp Act Congress he argued for petitions rather than resistance. Even when British troops landed at Boston in 1768, Otis persisted in his insistence that no action beyond petitioning and letter writing was appropriate.

Though he stood still while political affairs accelerated away from him, Otis continued to play a key role in Massachusetts through 1770. Elected to the General Court in the spring of 1766, he formed a triumvirate with Samuel Adams and Joseph Hawley that led the legislative attack against the embattled Governor Francis Bernard and his deputy, Hutchinson. Otis presided over the town meeting that revived the nonimportation movement (28 October 1767), and, with Samuel Adams produced the Massachusetts circular letter, leading the majority that voted not to rescind it. Throughout these activities, which caused British authorities to threaten Adams and Otis with trial for treason, Otis viewed the idea of independence with abhorrence and repeatedly opposed what he saw as mob violence. Although his confederates worried about the violence of Otis's tongue, it was he who time and again stopped them from actions that would have provoked a crisis. He organized and moderated the town meeting of 12-13 September 1768 that quashed Samuel Adams's calls for armed resistance against the British regulars coming to establish the Boston Garrison.

Otis fell from leadership under unusual circumstances. On the evening of 5 September 1769 he charged into the British Coffee House and loudly demanded an apology from some officials who had accused him of provoking disloyalty. In a brawl that followed, John Robinson laid Otis's head open with a sword. The blow, aggravated by heavy drinking, drove Otis over the brink of madness, and although his reason returned from time to time he was finished as a public figure. He sued Robinson, was awarded damages of £2,000, and then refused any restitution beyond his legal and medical costs. In 1771 he seemed so completely restored that he returned to the general court, but in December he was declared legally insane. With a borrowed musket he rushed into the Battle of Bunker Hill, 17 June 1775, and emerged unscathed. Early in 1778 he was able, during one of his periodic lucid intervals, to argue a case in Boston, but he found the physical exertion too much and the darkness descended. Although he sometimes became violent and had to be tied down, during most of his final years he was harmless. The end came dramatically to this man who could have been the protagonist of a classical tragedy. Otis had always predicted that he would be killed by lightning, and on 23 May 1783 he was struck by lightening while standing on a friend's doorstep.