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JAMES OTIS (1725-1783)
A Harvard-educated lawyer, Otis was born in Barnstable,
Massachusetts. He served as Advocate General of the British
admiralty court in Boston until 1760 when he resigned his position
to argue against the British Writs of Assistance, an open-ended
search warrant that allowed British customs officials to search
private property for illegal goods without the modern equivalent's
constant judicial review.
In 1762, prompted by the closing of the local legislature by royal
governor Francis Bernard to end contentious debate over the use of
treasury funds by Bernard without the legislature’s approval, Otis
produced a 53-page pamphlet, Vindication of the Conduct of the
House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay. It
quickly came to be one of the most widely read pamphlets in the
thirteen colonies and highlighted the classic fundamentals of
American revolutionary theory.
The normally reserved John Adams gushed with admiration:
"Look over the declaration of rights and wrongs issued by Congress
in 1774. Look into
the Declaration of Independence in 1776...look into Mr. Thomas
Paine's "Common Sense", "Crisis", and
"Rights of Man". What can
you find that is not to be found in this ‘Vindication of the House
of Representatives’?”
In 1765 he protested against the Stamp Act, which required taxes
paid on newspapers, deeds, licenses, mortgages and even dice and
playing cards. He famously argued in his popular pamphlet, The
Rights Of The British Colonies, Proved And Asserted, that since
the Stamp Act had been passed in the English Parliament without
going through the colonial legislatures, it stood for taxation
without representation.
With Samuel Adams as his
behind-the-scenes supporter Otis continually made his case in
supporting the rights of the colonists, using pamphlets, local
newspapers and town meetings as his forum.
An increasingly unstable man, a political dispute with a loyalist
to the Crown led to blows at The British Coffee House, a local
tavern. Otis was severely injured and never regained his previous
brilliance and, from 1771, he faded from the spotlight.
Jimmy’s Tangents:
Even before his fateful encounter at The British Coffee House,
Otis would often have moments of madness such as the night he
decided to break every window in the Town House (now The Old State
House)
On another occasion Otis spent three days collecting all of his
personal papers and then proceeded to burn them, an action that
historians of the Revolutionary War regard as a loss of
immeasurable proportions
Otis had once predicted that he would die by a strike of
lightning and in May of 1783, while watching a thunderstorm on a
farm in Andover, his prediction was proven true. (Life Lesson #83:
Do not lean against a metal doorway during a lightning storm.)
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