Background
James Warren was born at Plymouth, the eldest son of James and Penelope (Winslow) Warren, and a descendant of Richard Warren of the Mayflower.
James Warren was born at Plymouth, the eldest son of James and Penelope (Winslow) Warren, and a descendant of Richard Warren of the Mayflower.
He graduated from Harvard College in 1745.
He settled as merchant and gentleman farmer in his native town, where after his father's death in 1757 he also assumed the office of sheriff for the county. From 1766 until 1778 he held continuously a seat in the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court and Provincial Congress, where he became strongly identified with the left wing of the patriot party, a close friend and trusted adviser of the two Adamses. His activity before 1775 was not so conspicuous as that of James Otis, John Hancock, Joseph Warren, and Samuel Adams, though in his own community he figured prominently as an organizer of the radicals and served on most of the local revolutionary committees. The assertion that he was first to propose the establishment of committees of correspondence is without adequate foundation of evidence. He wrote in 1775 to John Adams: "I am content to move in a small sphere. I expect no distinction but that of an honest man who has exerted every nerve". After the death of Joseph Warren at Bunker Hill, James Warren filled the important position of president of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts until the dissolution of that body, when he became speaker of the House of Representatives in the new General Court. He was appointed paymaster general for the Continental Army by the Continental Congress and served while the army was at Cambridge and Boston. From 1776 to 1781 he served on the Navy Board for the Eastern Department. In September 1776 the General Court designated him, as one of the three major-generals of the provincial militia, to lead a force into Rhode Island. But, unwilling to be subordinated to a Continental officer of lesser rank, he pled the excuse of recent illness to have himself relieved, and the following year, to avoid the repetition of such embarrassment, he resigned his commission. His conduct in this instance was utilized by his chief political enemy, John Hancock, to undermine his prestige, with the result that he failed of reëlection to the legislature in 1778. Partisan charges against him of irregularity in his Navy Board dealings were later thoroughly disproved. In 1779 he regained his seat, but in the following year lost it again; and from that time until after Shays's Rebellion he was passed over by the electorate. In 1776 he had declined appointment as justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, and in 1780 he refused the position of lieutenant-governor. An ardent exponent of the principles of democracy and simplicity, Warren could not but deplore the wave of reckless extravagance that followed the war. During the rebellion of 1786, while there is no reason to suppose that he ever sanctioned violence, it was plain that his sympathies were largely on the side of the insurgents. Therefore, when in the reaction of 1787 he again entered the House of Representatives, he was at once selected by the popular majority to occupy the speaker's chair. Very soon his unorthodox stand on the question of currency, as well as his wholesale criticism of the way in which the government had handled the insurrection, alienated many of his former friends, who, since the attainment of independence, had become increasingly conservative. Indeed, some suspected that he had been in actual alliance with the rebels. Even John Adams seems to have felt that his attitude towards the uprising was somewhat equivocal. Mrs. Warren, however, wrote to Adams that the General had "borne the unprovoked abuse with the Dignity of conscious rectitude and that Philippic calmness which is never the companion of Insurgency, Anarchy or Fraud". More significant was Warren's able and very emphatic agitation against the ratification of the federal Constitution because of its lack of a bill of rights. On this as on almost every other issue he represented the will of the humbler classes. But once more the trimming tactics of Hancock prevailed, and Warren, defeated as candidate for lieutenant-governor, was obliged to retire from the field of active politics to the less strenuous pursuit of scientific farming. In his later years he was a staunch Jeffersonian Democrat. Twice he tried to reenter the arena by running for a seat in Congress, but without success. Yet in three successive years - 1792, 1793, 1794 - the legislature selected him for membership in the governor's council, and in 1804, at the age of seventy-eight, he received the honor of being chosen one of the presidential electors for Massachusetts. He died during the night of November 27-28, 1808.
Quotes from others about the person
John Quincy Adams commented in his diary during this period: "He was formerly a very popular man, but of late years he has thought himself neglected by the people. His mind has been soured, and he became discontented and querulous".
On November 14, 1754, he married Mercy Otis and had by her, in the course of time, five sons.