Letters Developing the Character and Views of the Hartford Convention
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Otis' letters in defence of the Hartford Convention, and the people of Massachusetts
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The Practice in Civil Actions and Proceedings at Law in Massachusetts: With References to Decisions in New Hampshire, Maine, &c. with the Rules of the ... and an Appendix of Forms (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Practice in Civil Actions and Proceeding...)
Excerpt from The Practice in Civil Actions and Proceedings at Law in Massachusetts: With References to Decisions in New Hampshire, Maine, &C. With the Rules of the State and United States Courts, and an Appendix of Forms
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the you 1848, by H. G. 0. Count, to the Clork'o ofioo, of the Dun-let Court of the District of Has-nebulous.
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Harrison Gray Otis was an American lawyer and politician, becoming one of the most important leaders of the United States' first political party, the Federalists.
Background
Harrison Otis was born on October 8, 1765, in Boston, the eldest child of Samuel Allyne and Elizabeth (Gray) Otis. His father was brother to James Otis and Mercy Otis Warren, and the youngest child of Col. James Otis of Barnstable, Massachussets. His mother was the daughter of Harrison Gray (1711 - 94), treasurer of the province of Massachusetts Bay, and a refugee Loyalist in the Revolution. His father, a merchant who had speculated heavily during the war, went bankrupt after its close.
Education
Harrison Otis' education at the Boston Latin School was interrupted by the siege of Boston. Entering Harvard College in 1779, he graduated first in the class of 1783 and in later years received the usual appointment to the Harvard corporation and board of overseers that are awarded to successful alumni. Harry read law with Judge John Lowell and was admitted to the Boston bar in 1786. The same year he commanded a volunteer infantry company during Shays's Rebellion, but did not see action; and made a reputation as an orator when taking his master's degree at Harvard.
Career
Otis quickly rose to a leading place at the Boston bar, earned a large income for the period, and acquired within ten years considerable property, largely by investments and speculations in Boston real estate, and Maine and Yazoo lands. A Federalist, like almost all of his class in New England, Otis first served his party in 1794 by dissuading the Boston town meeting from supporting Madison's anti-British resolutions. The same year, and in 1795, he was elected a Boston representative to the General Court of Massachusetts. Another burst of eloquence in Boston town meeting on April 25, 1796, routed the local Jeffersonians who were attacking Jay's Treaty, and helped to make Boston the "headquarters of good principles" from the Federalist point of view. President Washington immediately appointed him United States district attorney for Massachusetts, an office which he resigned the same year in order to enter Congress, as the successor to Fisher Ames.
In Congress (1797 - 1801) Otis established close relations with the South Carolina Federalists, John Rutledge, Jr. , and Robert Goodloe Harper, and supported the measures of President Adams' administration by speech and written word. He was foremost in creating the system of armed neutrality in 1797-98 to meet French aggression, which, like most of the Federalists, he considered a "Jacobin" offensive to undermine the federal government, and destroy the basis of American society. For that reason, he supported the Alien and Sedition Acts. An ardent admirer of Alexander Hamilton, he was preparing to urge a declaration of war against France in 1799, when President Adams accepted the conciliatory advances of the French government. In the factional fight that then broke out in the Federalist party Otis defended and supported the President. He and Mrs. Otis were leading figures in the "Republican Court" at Philadelphia, but found Washington little to their taste, and he refused to stand for reelection to Congress in 1800.
Otis then settled down in Boston and became a leader in politics, in society, and at the bar. Charles Bulfinch was employed to design for him three of the most distinguished dwelling houses that are still standing in Boston. The first (now 141 Cambridge St. ) was built in 1795-96 and sold in 1800, when a much larger one (85 Mount Vernon St. ) was erected on Beacon Hill, the greater part of which Otis and a small syndicate had purchased, when a pasture, in order to develop as a residential district. The third Otis mansion (45 Beacon St. ), built in 1806, became his home for the rest of his life; and he also maintained the country estate of "Oakley" in Watertown. The Otis houses were centers of Boston hospitality.
In politics Otis was an active party manager, and the principal connecting link of the Federalist aristocracy with the Boston democracy; but he was never admitted to the inner councils of the "Essex Junto, " who suspected insincerity in his polished manners, and possible defection in his support of President Adams. His few published orations do not justify the high reputation that he enjoyed as a public speaker. He was fluent, classical in language and diction, but ready in wit and allusion, the favorite orator of Boston town meeting in the generation between Samuel Adams and Daniel Webster.
Otis served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1802-05 and in 1813-14 (speaker, 1803 - 05), and in the state Senate 1805-13 and 1814-17 (president, 1805 - 06, 1808-11). Although not privy to the Federalist secession plot of 1804, he became an active leader of the state-rights movement in his party at the time of Jefferson's Embargo, consistently opposed the War of 1812, and led the Hartford Convention of 1814. Otis proposed a New England convention as early as 1808, but used his influence against a similar movement during the war until the summer of 1814 when, in his opinion, a convention became necessary to control and moderate the exasperated feelings of New England, to concert maneuvers for interstate defence against Great Britain when the federal government was powerless to help, and to procure concessions to New England commercial interests from the other states.
Otis was chairman of the joint committee of the General Court which reported in favor of the Hartford Convention in October 1814, drafted the call to the other New England States, and was chosen by the legislature second of the twelve Massachusetts delegates to Hartford. In the Convention itself (December 15, 1814 - January 5, 1815) Otis served on all important committees, and drafted the final report (The Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates at Hartford, 1815), which well expressed his caution, moderation, and averseness to force an issue with the federal government.
Appointed by the Governor of Massachusetts on January 31, 1815, one of a committee of three to negotiate with the authorities at Washington about using federal revenues for state defense, he proceeded to the capital, but was met on the way by news of the Peace of Ghent, which rendered his mission abortive and himself ridiculous. Otis supported both the administrations of Monroe, and helped to inaugurate the "era of good feelings" by entertaining the President at Boston in 1817.
Otis was elected that year to the United States Senate, after declining a Federalist nomination to the governorship of Massachusetts. But he effectually shut himself out from becoming a national figure by becoming the public champion of the Hartford Convention. After consulting his friends on the desirability of publishing the journal of the Convention in 1818, Otis published Letters Developing the Character and Views of the Hartford Convention (1820), and Otis' Letters in Defense of the Hartford Convention (1824), engaged in an acrid pamphlet controversy on it with J. Q. Adams (Correspondence between John Quincy Adams and Several Citizens of Massachusetts Concerning the Charge of a Design to Dissolve the Union 1829), and frequently adverted to the subject in his public speeches. Every such effort stirred up feelings and charges which he was powerless to allay, and which, however unjustified in fact, he would have better allowed the public to forget. In the United States Senate he did not particularly distinguish himself, although he entered with great ardor into the effort to form a northern bloc against the extension of slavery to Missouri in 1820.
The atmosphere of Washington seemed so unfriendly, and his efforts to obtain payment of the Massachusetts war claims were so constantly thwarted, that he resigned his seat in 1822 in order to run for mayor of Boston. On that occasion he was defeated. The Federalist nomination for governor of Massachusetts was given to him in 1823, upon the refusal of John Brooks to run again. The Republicans put up a strong candidate, Dr. William Eustis, and as Otis unwisely made the Hartford Convention the principal issue of the campaign, he was badly defeated; that defeat marked the passing of the Federalist party in its last stronghold.
Otis never relinquished his hold of local public affairs. He was thrice elected mayor of Boston (1829 - 31), and he acquired some notoriety by refusing to interfere with William Lloyd Garrison. He greatly deprecated and publicly denounced the abolitionist movement, which he foretold would bring about a division of the Union, but refused to countenance any suppression of free speech on slavery. In the 1820's Otis became a considerable owner of manufacturing stock, and a convert to protection, although he had been instrumental in defeating the Baldwin tariff of 1820. Always an enemy to democracy, he firmly believed that the country was going to the dogs. In 1848, in his eighty-third year, Otis published a pungent letter against the "fifteen-gallon" temperance law, and another (1848), in all the verve of his youthful style, in favor of General Taylor. Old age and debility prostrated him, and before the presidential campaign was over, he died at his Boston residence on October 28, 1848.
Achievements
Harrison Otis served as the United States attorney for the District of Massachusetts (1796–1796); president of the Massachusetts Senate (1805 – 1806, 1808–1811); delegate from Massachusetts to the Hartford Convention (1814–1815); 3rd Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts (1829 – 1832).
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Membership
Harrison Otis was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 8th congressional district (1797-1801); United States Senate from Massachusetts (1817-1822); the Brattle Square Church.
Personality
"Harry" Otis, as he was always called by his friends, inherited the winning personality, charming manners, and full-blooded enjoyment of life that have characterized the Otis family for two hundred years, and which marked him off from the somewhat austere and inflexible type of New England political leader. He also developed a brilliant if somewhat facile intellect.
Quotes from others about the person
J. Q. Adams wrote in 1816, "In the course of nearly thirty years that I have known him, and throughout the range of experience that I have had in that time, it has not fallen to my lot to meet a man more skilled in the useful art of entertaining his friends than Otis. His Person while in Youth, his graceful Deportment, his sportive wit, his quick intelligence, his eloquent fluency, always made a strong impression upon my Mind; while his warm domestic Affection, his active Friendship, and his Generosity, always commanded my esteem. "
Connections
On May 31, 1790, Harrison Otis married the daughter of a Boston merchant, Sally Foster (1770 - 1836), who bore him eleven children.
