Background
John Holmes was born on March 28, 1773 in Kingston, Massachussets, United States. He was the son of Melatiah and Elizabeth (Bradford) Holmes, and a descendant of William Holmes who was in Scituate, in Massachusetts, as early as 1641.
(Excerpt from The Statesman, or Principles of Legislation ...)
Excerpt from The Statesman, or Principles of Legislation and Law But this inquiry is, perhaps, for us, more speculative than profitable. The jurisdictional and territorial rights or claims of the native Indians were scarcely distinguishable from each other. Both were in the tribe or community, and individual possessions in lands were scarcely known. As the life of the Indian is ambulatory, his occupation of the land was transient and for temporary purposes, and common to others with him self. The treaties Of cession by the chiefs or head men, with the consent of the tribe, and the charters of the European dis coverers, ceding the territory and jurisdiction to the colony and prescribing the rules of individual right - have so perfected the titles in Maine, that we have very little reason to discuss their origin. By a recurrence to the origin of our political institutions, we are struck with the singular fact that nearly all the charters which form the basis of our liberties emanated from the three first sovereigns of the House of Stuart - a family not much distinguished for their respect for popular rights. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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John Holmes was born on March 28, 1773 in Kingston, Massachussets, United States. He was the son of Melatiah and Elizabeth (Bradford) Holmes, and a descendant of William Holmes who was in Scituate, in Massachusetts, as early as 1641.
Holmes withdrew from his father's iron works at nineteen, John studied at the town school and with Reverend Zephaniah Willis so successfully that he was able to enter Rhode Island College (now Brown University), in 1793. After graduating in 1796, he studied law under Benjamin Whitman of Hanover and was admitted to the bar in 1799.
In 1799 Holmes removed to Maine and settled in that part of Sanford later incorporated (1808) as Alfred. In this new country, he built up a lucrative practice in land titles. Keen of wit, cool in the face of his opponents' wrath, using satire, ridicule, epithet, and anecdote, often in preference to logic, he gained a wide reputation as a lawyer more because of his success than because of his knowledge of the law. When the Dartmouth College case came before the Supreme Court, he with Attorney General Wirt was opposing counsel to Webster and Hopkinson. Of Holmes's speech, Webster wrote, "Upon the whole, he gave us three hours of the merest stuff that was ever uttered in a county court. "
Holmes's natural taste for politics had been whetted by his election by the Federalists of Sanford as representative to the Massachusetts General Court in 1802 and 1803.
In 1812 he was returned as a representative to the General Court where he was the defeated Democratic candidate for the speakership. Active in the lower house as well as in the Senate, to which he was elected in 1813, he upheld the national government and opposed the anti-war measures of Federalist Massachusetts. His political conversion won for him much ridicule, including the title "Duke of Summersetts. "
In January 1816 President Madison appointed him a commissioner under the fourth article of the Treaty of Ghent to make division between the United States and Great Britain of the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay. In the same year Holmes was elected to Congress and was reelected in 1818. A foremost advocate of the separation of Maine from Massachusetts, Holmes took a prominent part in the Brunswick Convention of 1816. Though not the author of the curious method of counting votes called "Holmes' arithmetic, " he signed the report setting it forth and received blame and ridicule for the argument that five-ninths of the aggregate majorities of the town corporations constituted the five-ninths of the legal votes of Maine required by the Massachusetts law authorizing separation.
Besides acting as chairman of the committee which drafted the Maine constitution, he did much to put through Congress the bill creating the new state. His pamphlet, wherein he argued that any restriction upon the admission of Missouri would be unconstitutional, was his defense against the opposition of many citizens of Maine to entangling the admission of Maine with the question of slavery extension. Elected senator from Maine in 1820, he retired in 1827, only to be elected the next year to fill the unexpired term of Albion Keith Parris. In 1833 he again retired to the practice of law.
In 1824 Holmes supported Crawford as a candidate for the presidency. Never a Jacksonian, he transferred his allegiance to Clay and later to the Whig party. In the upper house he defended Foot's resolution, which led to the Webster-Hayne debate, and was active in opposing Van Buren's nomination as minister to Great Britain in 1831. Blair called him the "Thersites of the Senate. "
In 1836 and 1837 he represented the town of Alfred in the state legislature. Appointed in 1841 United States attorney for the Maine district by President Harrison, he held the office until his death in Portland in 1843. He had published in 1840 a volume entitled The Statesman, designed to illustrate the "Principles of Legislation and Law. " Though he had been notoriously intemperate during the earlier years of his career, late in life he took an active part in the temperance movement.
(Excerpt from The Statesman, or Principles of Legislation ...)
At first, Holmes was a vigorous Federalist, but later he became an ardent Democrat, possibly through conviction but possibly also because of the increasing popularity of the Democratic party in Maine.
Holmes was twice married: on Sept. 22, 1800, to Sarah Ann Brooks of Scituate, Massachussets, who died on December 6, 1835; and on July 31, 1837, to Caroline F. (Knox) Swan, the youngest daughter of General Henry Knox, with whom he spent his last years in the mansion at Thomaston, Maine.
