Background
Joseph Bradley Varnum was born on January 29, 1751, at Dracut, Massachusets. He was a son of Samuel and Hannah (Mitchell) Varnum and a brother of James Mitchell Varnum.
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Joseph Bradley Varnum was born on January 29, 1751, at Dracut, Massachusets. He was a son of Samuel and Hannah (Mitchell) Varnum and a brother of James Mitchell Varnum.
Later assertions by Federalists of Varnum's illiteracy were malicious, but he was largely self-taught and sometimes betrayed a lack of early educational advantages.
Observance of the British troops in Boston in 1767 interested Varnum in military tactics, and in 1770 one of two militia companies at Dracut elected him captain. He was replaced in 1774 by an older man though still employed as an instructor, and in this capacity, he was present at the Battle of Lexington. From January 1776 to April 1787, he was captain of the Dracut Minutemen, and he served in the campaigns against Burgoyne in 1777, at Rhode Island in 1778, and later in suppressing Shays's Rebellion. He represented Dracut in the Massachusetts lower house, 1780-85, and northern Middlesex County, in the Senate, 1786-95.
A mild anti-Federalist, he was sent to the Massachusetts convention to ratify the national Constitution. He was a somewhat irregular candidate for the Second and Third congresses but was nominated regularly in 1794 for the Fourth Congress against Samuel Dexter, a Federalist. He was elected by a majority of eleven votes, most of his support coming from Dracut and the adjoining towns. The election was protested, because the local board of selectmen, of which Varnum was a member, returned sixty more votes than Dracut was entitled to, but, in accordance with the lax rules of the period, he was exonerated in a Republican Congress of charges of political corruption.
In Congress, he favored national defense through the militia as against a standing army, opposed building the Constitution and other naval vessels, denounced President John Adams' personal extravagance, and was an early opponent of slavery and the slave trade. He was several times called upon to preside during executive sessions. He benefited from the Jefferson-Randolph dispute when the speaker of the House sided with the latter, and the power of the administration was put behind Varnum in his election to the speakership in the Tenth Congress by one vote. His speakership occurred "in an epoch of commanding mediocrity", and he was reelected in the Eleventh Congress. A very important adjustment made in his term of office was that of limitation of debate in the House.
The speaker, unfortunately for his own standing at home, attached his signature to the Embargo Act and brought down upon his head accusations of subserviency to the administration and the South by the New England Federalists. In 1809, he was nominated by the Republicans for lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts but was defeated. In 1810, the Massachusetts legislature, deadlocked for several days, finally chose Varnum senator to succeed Timothy Pickering. He took his seat in March 1811 and before long was accused by his opponents, and probably justly, of conspiring with the southwestern "war hawks" to bring on the War of 1812. After the declaration of war, he and several Democratic representatives were mobbed in Boston. He remained the staunchest New England supporter of "Mr. Madison's war. " In 1813, he was president pro tempore of the Senate and acting vice-president of the United States. He ran for governor of Massachusetts on a "win the war" platform in 1813 but was badly defeated by Caleb Strong.
In 1814, he spoke at length in the Senate against Giles's bill for an army of 80, 000 men. "The justice of Varnum's criticism could not fairly be questioned, " says Henry Adams. At that date, he was the only New England war man in Congress. Still a useful legislator, Varnum served in the Senate until 1817, when he was succeeded by Harrison Gray Otis, 1765-1848. He re-entered the Massachusetts Senate, where he opposed the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. He was a delegate to the state convention to amend the constitution in 1820. Despite his record as a militarist, he became a pioneer member of the Massachusetts Peace Society, the predecessor of the American Peace Society. Late in life, he revolted from the established Congregational Church and joined the Baptists. He was buried without pomp or ceremony in the Varnum Cemetery at Dracut. He was the author of An Address Delivered to the Third Division of Massachusetts Militia, at a Revue, in the Plains of Concord, printed by William Hilliard in 1800.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Varnum and his wife received as a gift from his father 160 acres of land with half a dwelling-house and a barn. Farming remained Varnum's primary and preferred occupation throughout his career, and he was proud, in 1818, of owning 500 acres with "more than ten miles of good stone fence upon it".
Varnum was married, on January 26, 1773, to Molly Butler, the daughter of Jacob Butler, of Pelham, New Hampshire, a woman of strong character and marked domesticity, who bore her husband twelve children.