Background
James Sullivan was born on April 22, 1744 in in Berwick, in a part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay that is now the state of Maine, United States. He was the fourth son of John Sullivan and Margery Brown Sullivan.
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James Sullivan was born on April 22, 1744 in in Berwick, in a part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay that is now the state of Maine, United States. He was the fourth son of John Sullivan and Margery Brown Sullivan.
After studying under his father, James became a student in the law office of his brother John at Durham.
In 1779 Sullivan was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard College.
After his marriage Sullivan settled in a two-room house at Biddeford, but Sullivan soon prospered and moved to the new town of Limerick. Here he became king's counsel for York County and one of the most influential men in the District of Maine.
He took a prominent local part in the early movement toward revolution and was a member of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts and of numerous committees, including the Committee of Safety. In 1776 he was appointed a justice of the supreme court of Massachusetts and throughout the war continued to be returned as a member of the legislature.
In 1778 he moved to Groton, Massachussets When the new state was organized in 1780 he was one of the committee to reorganize the laws. Two years later he resigned from the bench and in 1783 moved to Boston and was elected to Congress.
He was occupied largely with politics: holding public office, writing for the press, and active in the inner councils of his party. He advocated the adoption of the federal Constitution in letters signed Cassius, printed in the Massachusetts Gazette, September 18-December 25, 1787. Toward the end of 1788 or in the beginning of 1789 he made a trip through the South, probably in the interest of Hancock, with a view to securing him the vice-presidency.
In 1790 he resigned the position of probate judge, which he had held for a short time, and was made attorney-general of Massachusetts. In 1796 he was appointed agent to maintain the interests of the United States before the commissioners at Halifax who were to determine the disputed boundary line of Maine. By this time Sullivan had become one of the most prominent lawyers in Massachusetts, with a large and very lucrative practice.
In 1797 he ran for governor, but was defeated by the Federalist candidate. Ten years later, however, in June 1807, he was elected to the office.
At this time occurred his controversy with Timothy Pickering in the course of which he refused to communicate Pickering's letter on the Embargo to the state legislature. A war of letters and pamphlets followed, on the eve of the election of 1808, and although Sullivan was reelected governor by a small majority, the election generally was a pronounced Federalist victory.
Although he died in the governorship it is unlikely that if he had lived he would have risen to higher office.
James Sullivan was an early associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, served as the state's attorney general for many years, and as governor of the state until his death. He was also the author of The History of the District of Maine, still valuable, Observations upon the Government of the United States (1791), a treatise on the suability of states, and is credited with having been influential in securing the adoption of the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution. He was a founding member and the first president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, was a charter member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was involved with the Massachusetts Humane Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith among the Indians, and a charitable society that supported Congregationalist ministers.
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Sullivan was never a national leader, but he was throughout his career a man to be reckoned with as perhaps the richest, ablest, and most powerful of the Democrats, or Republicans as they were then called, in what was, for most of his life, Federalist territory. His writings for the press on contemporary issues, published under several pen names, were innumerable and carried great weight.
He was more than a mere politician, however, and was keenly interested in several fields of thought outside of politics. Both as citizen and capitalist he was interested in "public improvements" as then understood and he was the projector and for long president of the Middlesex Canal.
He was one of the first members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He was also engaged in the following organizations: the Massachusetts Humane Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith among the Indians, and a charitable society that supported Congregationalist ministers
He met Mehitable Odiorne at Durham, whom he married February 22, 1768. On January 26, 1786, his wife died, leaving six young children - among them William Sullivan - and on December 31 he married Martha Langdon, sister of John and Woodbury Langdon.
