by Nathan Allen
James Otis
The spelling, grammar, and handwriting are dreadful, even by eighteenth century standards. This can be partly explained by the fact that the writer is a fifteen-year-old boy who, though he could read Cicero, had been exposed to a minimum amount of common education and little formal English; he was simply unfamiliar with non-phonetic languages. The “Honoured Sir” and “Obediend Son” remain constant in form (though not in spelling) throughout Jemmy’s life – so constant that the father assumes a stereotyped image of the “Honoured Sir.” While the concept of “Honoured Sir” would hardly change over the next few decades, the definition of “your obediend son” would transform under the pressure of a dawning era; Jemmy’s conception of “obediend” – to what? to whom? – would be profoundly challenged. He obviously missed Joseph and Mercy, but mentioned his mother only parenthetically. The expected “Uncle Allen” was Samuel Allyne, Mary Otis’s younger brother after whom Samuel Allyne Otis was to be named at the time of his birth later that fall. The financial complexities were to be a recurring theme in all of Jemmy’s Harvard letters.
There were more than visiting uncles and “amusement” in the fall of 1740; famed travelling preachers George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent injected the Great Awakening into Cambridge when they rhapsodized before the Harvard students. The reaction these beguiling preachers elicited from the Harvard faculty was mixed, at least until Whitefield took it upon himself to harshly criticize the college. The college rebuked Whitefield several times; in 1745, the colony’s first divinity professor, Harvard Hollis Chair Edward Wigglesworth, publically stated Harvard’s position on Great Awakening preachers such as Whitefield:
If we consider the Nature of Enthusiasm, which is to make a Man imagine, that almost any Tho’t which bears strongly upon his Mind (whether it came into it by Dreams, Suggestion, or whatever other Way) is from the Spirit of God; when at the same Time he hath no Proof that it is; it will plainly appear to be a very dangerous Thing.
Wigglesworth proceeded to state that “Reason” and “good Conscience” should guide one’s mind, and that if a thought not based on proof “rushes strongly into [one’s] Mind,” the result will be a “Shipwrack in a most surprising Manner.” The Harvard overseers and faculty had become fully converted empiricists, and they claimed that Whitefield had missed the boat. Importantly, Whitefield also disagreed with two emerging trends in New England: the rise of Arminianism and the sense that slavery conflicted with New England ideals. Whitefield promoted slavery, particularly in Georgia, and split with John Wesley’s Methodist Church over the issue of Arminianism, which signaled Whitefield as more of the strict Calvinist. Debates over the influence and interpretation of Arminianism may seem removed from the political inferno of the 1760s, but the young Otis witnessed these debates and they would fuel some of his core decisions in the political realm two decades later.
And yet if tutor Henry Flynt is to be believed, the Great Awakening preachers put the students “in great concern as to their Souls and Eternal State.” A group of students that included Russell and Otis “prayed together sung Psalms and discoursed together 2 or 3 at a time and read good books.” One of the concerned, Samuel Fayerweather, later to be a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Rhode Island, even witnessed “the divil in shape of a bear coming to his bedside.” Otis may have been absorbed in Whitefield’s revivalist fervor – after all, he was only 15 years old – but as with so many sudden conversions, the effects were fleeting. Two years later Jemmy humbly reported to his father that he owed an old bill to the butler who fled Cambridge “in the height of his zeal,” but had now returned to collect, “Having Preached himself out of money if not out of credit” – certainly not the comment of a convert.
While Enlightenment philosophy and science were generating new lines of inquiry and debate at Harvard, by the spring of 1741, the political tension caused by the Land Bank throughout the province was extreme; discontent and civil unrest were in the air. On May 2, the governor received an affidavit attesting that there was a “confederacy” in the countryside of about 5,000 men who were planning to converge on Boston to make their position in favor of the Land Bank abundantly clear. The governor appointed councilor John Quincy to investigate, and he confirmed that an insurrection was planned. Cryptic notices were being posted on meeting houses alerting the townsmen of the date of the insurrection: May 19. The towns of Hingham, Weymouth, Stoughton, Abington, Plymouth and Bridgewater seemed particularly engaged. The target was the elite Boston merchants who refused to conduct business in Land Bank bills. Though Parliament had been lobbied aggressively by the governor and the Boston oligarchs and though Parliament had enacted a law banning the Land Bank, the Governor felt the situation was almost out of control. On May 11, the governor wrote to Thomas Hutchinson, “I assure you the concerned openly declare they defye any Act of Parliament to be able to do it. They are grown so brassy and hardy as to be now coming in a body to raise a rebellion, and the day set for this coming to this town is at the election (27th instant), and the treasurer, I am told is in the bottom of the design, and I doubt it not. I have this day sent the Sheriffe and his Officers to apprehend some of the heads of the conspirators.”
And per the governor’s instructions, on May 14 the council issued warrants for the arrest of all persons who “have been concerned in a design and combination with a number of evil-minded persons to come into the town of Boston in a tumultuous manner tending to the disturbance and disquiet of the government and affright and terror of his Majesty’s good subjects.” The open discussion of insurrection and the governor’s swift action for its suppression prevented any widespread protests. The generation that would lead the revolution was currently in college and would learn lessons about insurrection and protest from their parents.
House elections had just taken place, and Land Bank representatives won a majority of the seats. As the warrants for the arrest of the conspirators were being issued, the House elected Sam Watts as Speaker; Watts was a director of the Land Bank and had been fired as a justice. The governor refused to approve of the rebellious Watts, so the House then elected William Fairfield as House Speaker. Fairfield was an active supporter of the Land Bank. The governor detested the selection but realized there was nothing he could do, so Fairfield got the position. Then the House and Council voted on new Councilors, and 13 – nearly half – were active Land Bank supporters or investors. The reality quickly set in for the governor; the Land Bank was immensely popular. The governor dissolved the House and called for a new election.
The new election was on July 8. The House met and defiantly elected John Choate – original organizer of the Land Bank and fired justice – House Speaker. He was rejected by the governor. John Hobson was then elected and approved as speaker; Hobson was a friend of the bank but not an investor. On July 31, the newly elected Council, per its responsibilities, began to appoint civil officers, and promptly began to appoint Land Bank directors to various civil positions, including Sam Watts, who had been rejected by the governor as House Speaker just two months prior.
While all this was transpiring the colonists were fully aware that the Governor’s lobbying efforts had borne fruit in an Act of the Parliament outlawing the Land Bank. Parliament asserted that the Land Bank was illegal under the 1720 Bubble Act, which regulated and required government approval of all stock companies. It mattered not to Parliament that the Board of Trade and the attorney general had both recently concluded that colonial Land Banks were perfectly legal and required no government pre-approval. The Act of 1741 falsely described the Land Bank as a stock company, and then declared its operation illegal. At first, the Land Bank participants brazenly ignored the Act. To the farmers and rural merchants, the Land Bank was an effort by law-abiding citizens to alleviate a great public problem through means that had been explicitly declared legal by the government, and the Act of 1741 was enforcing a 1720 Act on a company to which it didn’t apply that operated in the colonie
s, to which the 1720 Act didn’t apply. The 1741 Act falsely described the Land Bank as a joint-stock company, falsely applied an Act to the colonies, and applied that Act retroactively. The Act instantly made the Land Bank currency entirely valueless and made those who had issued the currency criminals, subject to imprisonment and forfeiture of estate. Anyone holding the valueless currency could bring an action, and the courts were compelled to apply the law. And as Parliament was the final arbiter of law, no one could appeal and defy the Act. Reality sunk in during the summer of 1741; if Parliament declared that the Land Bank’s currency was valueless and those who funded it were criminals, even if based on falsehoods, even if retroactively, then it was true.
But it was soon apparent that the nullification of all Land Bank currency was causing fiscal chaos. In September, fierce Land Bank enemy Governor Belcher was replaced by William Shirley, who was sympathetic to the financial disaster that the Act created and the general sense of unfairness it engendered. Regardless, Governor Shirley had to acknowledge the absolute supremacy of Parliament and demand that the bank cease operations. Shirley’s sympathetic position encouraged the Land Bank investors to meet on September 22 to devise a plan for settling all outstanding accounts. But the meeting was contentious and only a slim majority voted to cease operations. A large and vocal minority desired to pursue a novel route: defy Parliament, challenge absolute authority, and continue operating. The Land Bank was popular and it was generally conceded that bank proponents had been unfairly treated, but wholesale defiance of the government was not a generally acceptable position in 1741. And Governor Shirley’s evident sympathy made defiance seem a bit more unreasonable than it may have otherwise seemed.
Of course, the Land Bank was powerless to effectively wind-down operations since its currency and contracts were all voided. But as many of its directors and investors were representatives, the bank could request the General Court to assist, particularly because the bank had been created as a solution to a public problem. On April 3, 1742, the General Court passed a resolve to form a joint committee that would pay off bank debts, destroy the bills it had created, and distribute all proceeds. Of course, the General Court was virtually recognizing the same bank contracts that Parliament had declared void, but there seemed no other way to address the issue without creating fiscal and legal havoc. At the time, there were no English laws that addressed such a predicament, and the Governor was forced to officially withhold his consent from the General Court’s proposal that would effectively recognize Land Bank contracts. It seemed that Parliament had crushed a lawful enterprise and subsequently created a situation where it was unlawful to cease operations in an organized manner but failure to do so would lead many to fiscal ruin and many others to jail. Such a brazen use of Parliamentary supremacy was rare, so a collective response would take years to form. Later, Thomas Hutchinson wrote that, “The authority of parliament to control all public and private persons and proceedings in the colonies, was, in that day, questioned by nobody.” Hutchinson overstated the case, as the Land Bank proponents, on the verge of ruin and imprisonment, contemplated defiance. And yet the Land Bank debacle taught a generation of Massachusetts colonists the exact meaning of Parliamentary supremacy. The Land Bank scheme also taught a generation the power of a small but determined group. The Land Bank officially had about 1,000 supporters – a fairly small number. And yet in the face of government retribution, threats, investigations and jail, the Land Bank’s popularity grew, and its support in the popularly elected House was strong and remained so throughout the debacle. It seemed clear to everyone that the bank’s support among the general population far exceeded the number of people who directly benefitted from the bank. Much of the bank’s support was derived not from its customers but from those who resented the seemingly arbitrary power of the oligarchy that ruled Boston, and the Act of 1741 made clear that the ruling oligarchy extended from the merchant elite in Boston all the way back to Parliament and Whitehall in London.
The Land Bank was a formative event for the Massachusetts colonists, and Jemmy’s years at college coincided almost precisely with the rise and collapse of the Land Bank and the messy cleaning up that occurred for years after. And yet despite its widespread popularity outside of Boston, Barnstable town held the unique position of not having a single investor and Barnstable county only had ten investors. The lack of investors was not because Barnstable was aligned with the Boston elite but rather quite the opposite: Barnstable was incredibly conservative and generally opposed to “schemes.” In Barnstable, the basis of wealth was land, and if land had to be converted, the only acceptable currency was gold, silver, or commodities. So neither Jemmy Otis nor his father was directly involved in the Lank Bank on either side.
Harvard Commencement in 1743 was scheduled for July 6 and preparations occupied most of the spring. Commencement Day festivities at Harvard were traditionally not only for the graduates and their families but also for all eastern Massachusetts residents. Formal class work ended in March for the seniors, and they spent their time attending a few lectures and otherwise preparing for final examinations and commencement orations. The “obediend son” penned several letters to his “Honoured Sir” that spring regarding commencement plans and pleading for more money. The “Honoured Sir” apprised Jemmy that his mother, sister Mercy, and brother Joseph planned to attend Commencement and that graduation clothes would be sent from home, which smothered Jemmy’s plans to buy a new outfit in Cambridge. The “Honoured Sir” also instructed his son to plan very little entertaining, which was also a severe disappointment, for the extravagance of one’s commencement dinner had become an important status symbol. The reaction from the “obediend son” was plaintive: “I suppose you would be willing I should make some small Entertainment which will be in some measure necessary if I have no more company than some of our own family.” At the same time he was sending the “Honoured Sir” receipts for a half gross of bottles and “barrell of Cyder.” In estimating his final expenses, Jemmy listed five pounds for commencement dinner, three pounds for the butler, two pounds for the president, “and as much more as you think fit.” Jemmy’s final letter to his father prior to commencement is typical:
Boston, June the 17th, 1743.
Honoured Sir, — I wrote to you the 11th Currant, but omitted Some Things which I Shall now enumerate viz. 15 Shillings for Printing Theses, for three Quarters shoing 24 shillings, for a Sett of Buckles 15 shillings, and if I make any manner of Entertainment there will be a great many things to buy, tho I shall not put you to much Charge for that, not intending to keep much of a commencement and what I do will be with Russell. Pray Sir send me money Enough for I believe I Shall not write again before commencement. Your most Obedient Son,
James Otis
The continuous recitation of pounds, shillings, and pence is not as significant in itself as in the insight it provides into the dawning of post-feudal relationships. The ascension of the Otis family from middling weavers to merchant moguls had been based in large degree on meticulous accounting and a reluctance to part with a shilling without cause. That James Otis, Sr. adhered to these principles is clear from his frequent requests for an accounting of every shilling spent. Painstaking accounting was fairly standard among the merchant class in the colonies, and Jemmy’s college expenses, while high, were not atypical. These nascent provincial capitalists were becoming expert accountants.
Presumably the Otis family returned to Barnstable at the close of festivities, James, Sr. to continue the climb up the economic and political ladder and Jemmy to immerse himself in a broader field of reading than had been possible during his undergraduate years. Jemmy’s four years at Harvard brought a degree of maturation, yet at the same time the handwriting and syntax of his final letters still exhibited a marked lack of assurance. The picture that emerges is of an 18-year-old of intellectual brilliance and sensitivity, who, on returning to Barnstable, would be very likely to shut himself away with his books – both to satisfy his
passion for participation in the captivating world of the Enlightenment that was developing before him and also to escape from what he must have considered the monotonous features of his father’s world. He was clearly not suited to be a country trader.
After commencement the class of 1743 scattered; most would return to Cambridge three years later to deliver their disputations and receive their master’s degrees. The second degree had been initially intended as a mark of distinction for those graduates entering the ministry, following English university practice, but by 1743 it was the customary concluding act for a Harvard education, regardless of intended occupation. There was neither a curriculum nor a residency requirement, and only four of Otis’s classmates spent substantial time at Cambridge during the intervening period. Seven taught school, five were drawn into the great push against French Canada that culminated in the capture of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia in 1745, four embarked on business careers, three began studying law, three went to sea, and two began preaching. Drop-outs, expulsions, and death accounted for seven. Lothrop Russell, Otis’s roommate, neighbor, and close friend, died in 1745 at the age of 21. The future ministers who attended Harvard concurrently with Jemmy are notable, particularly Samuel Cooper and Jonathan Mayhew. What Peter Oliver called the “black regiment” were very radical preachers who could use the platform and protection of the pulpit to make arguments that few others would make; Bostonians had feared an Anglican imposition of their rights longer than they had feared a Whitehall imposition, so preachers bred on suspicion were quick to translate their vigilance from the religious sphere to the political. Mayhew’s 1650 sermon Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance, given on the 100-year anniversary of the execution of Charles I, justified the execution of a king who greatly imposed on the people’s liberties. Mayhew was not a great philosopher; his sermons were not tight logical arguments. Further, he was protected by the pulpit in part because such sermons were inherently passive; Mayhew was not a lawyer arguing cases or a politician drafting statutes that would affect the population; he was not a street organizer or mob leader or tax evader. Puritan ministers in England had been espousing somewhat inflammatory ideology for over two centuries, and the congregation and government had come to expect it and assumed that more often than not such rhetoric would come to naught. But Mayhew was more fiery than most, and he’d attended college with those who would become the leaders of the popular government.
