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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. BY JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL. D. AUTHOR OF A "Cyclopaedia of

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	27 septembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819928492
Langue	English

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JAMES OTIS THE PRE-REVOLUTIONIST
BY JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL. D. AUTHOR OF A"Cyclopaedia of
Universal History, “ ”Great Races of Mankind, “”Life and Times of
William E. Gladstone, " etc. , etc.
THE CHARACTER OF JAMES OTIS BY CHARLES K. EDMUNDS,Ph. D.
WITH AN ESSAY ON THE PATRIOT BY G. MERCER ADAM LateEditor
“Self-Culture” Magazine, Etc. , Etc.
TOGETHER WITH ANECDOTES, CHARACTERISTICS, ANDCHRONOLOGY
Near the northeast corner of the old Common ofBoston a section of ground was put apart long before the beginningof the eighteenth century to be a burying ground for some of theheroic dead of the city of the Puritans. For some quaint reason orcaprice this acre of God was called “The Granary” and is so calledto this day. Perhaps the name was given because the dead were here,garnered as grain from the reaping until the bins be opened at thelast day's threshing when the chaff shall be driven from thewheat.
Here the thoughtless throng looking through the ironrailing may see the old weather-beaten and time-eaten slabs withtheir curious lettering which designate the spots where many of themen of the pre-revolutionary epoch were laid to their last repose.The word cemetery is from Greek and means the little place where Ilie down.
In the Granary Burying Ground are the tombs of manywhom history has gathered and recorded as her own. But historylooks in vain among the blue-black slabs of semi-slate for the nameof one who was greatest perhaps of them all; but whose last dayswere so strangely clouded and whose sepulchre was so obscure as toleave the world in doubt for more than a half century as to wherethe body of the great sleeper had been laid. Curiosity, whetted bypatriotism, then discovered the spot. But the name of another wason the covering slab, and no small token was to be found indicativeof the last resting place of the lightning-smitten body of JamesOtis, the prophetic giant of the pre-revolutionary days. He who hadlived like one of the Homeric heroes, who had died like a Titanunder a thunderbolt, and had been buried as obscurely as Richardthe Lion Hearted, or Frederick Barbarossa, must lie neglected in anunknown tomb within a few rods of the spot where his eloquenceaforetime had aroused his countrymen to national consciousness, andmade a foreign tyranny forever impossible in that old Boston, thevery name of which became henceforth the menace of kings and thesynonym of liberty.
Tradition rather than history has preserved thusmuch. In the early part of the present century a row of great elms,known as the Paddock elms, stood in what is now the sidewalk on thewest side of Tremont Street skirting the Granary Burying Ground.These trees were cut away and the first section of the burial spacewas invaded with the spade. Tomb No. 40, over which the ironrailing now passes, was divided down as far as where the occupantsare lying. Within the sepulchre were several bodies. One was thebody of Nathaniel Cunningham, Sr. Another was Ruth Cunningham, hiswife. The younger members of the family were also there indeath.
When the lid of one coffin in this invaded tomb waslifted, it was found that a mass of the living roots of the oldstrong elm near by had twined about the skull of the sleeper, hadentered through the apertures, and had eaten up the brain. It wasthe brain of James Otis which had given itself to the life of theelm and had been transformed into branch and leaf and blossom, thusbreathing itself forth again into the free air and the UniversalFlow.
The body of the patriot had been deposited in thistomb of his father-in-law, the Nathaniel Cunningham just referredto, and had there reposed until the searching fibres of anotherorder of life had found it out, and lifted and dispensed itssublimer part into the viewless air. Over the grave in which thebody was laid is still one of the rude slabs which the fathersprovided, and on this is cut the name of “George Longley, 1809, ”he being the successor of the Cunninghams in the ownership of TombNo. 40.
Here, then, was witnessed the last transformation ofthe material, visible man called James Otis, the courageous heraldwho ran swinging a torch in the early dawn of the AmericanRevolution.
The pre-revolutionists are the Titans of humanhistory; the revolutionists proper are only heroes; and thepost-revolutionists are too frequently dwarfs and weaklings. Thissignifies that civilization advances by revolutionary stages, andthat history sends out her tallest and best sons to explore theline of march, and to select the spot for the next camping-ground.It is not they who actually command the oncoming columns and whoseem so huge against the historical background— it is not these,but rather the hoarse forerunners and shaggy prophets of progresswho are the real kings of men— the true princes of the humanempire.
These principles of the civilized life were stronglyillustrated in our War of Independence. The forerunners of that warwere a race of giants. Their like has hardly been seen in any otherepoch of that sublime scrimmage called history. Five or six namesmay be selected from the list of the early American prophets whosedeeds and outcry, if reduced to hexameters, would be not the Iliad,not the Jerusalem Delivered, but the Epic of Human Liberty.
The greatest of these, our protagonists of freedom,was Benjamin Franklin. After him it were difficult to name thesecond. It is always difficult to find the second man; for thereare several who come after. In the case of our forerunners thesecond may have been Thomas Jefferson; it may have been SamuelAdams; it may have been his cousin; it may have been Thomas Paine;it may have been Patrick Henry; it may have been James Otis, thesubject of this monograph.
It is remarkable to note how elusive are the livesof many great men. Some of the greatest have hardly been known atall. Others are known only by glimpses and outlines. Some are knownchiefly by myth and tradition. Nor does the effort to discover thedetails of such lives yield any considerable results. There aregreat names which have come to us from antiquity, or out of theMiddle Ages, that are known only as names, or only by a fewstriking incidents. In some cases our actual knowledge of men whoare believed to have taken a conspicuous part in the drama of theirtimes is so meagre and uncertain that critical disputes have arisenrespecting the very existence of such personages.
Homer for example— was he myth or man? The Christ?Where was he and how did he pass his life from his twelfth year tothe beginning of his ministry? What were the dates of his birth anddeath? Shakespeare? Why should not the details of his life, or someconsiderable portion of the facts, compare in plenitude andauthenticity with the events in Dr. Johnson's career?
It seems to be the law of biography that thosecharacters who are known to the world by a few brilliant strokes ofgenius have as a rule only a meagre personal history, while theywhose characters have been built up painfully and slowly out of thecommonplace, like the coral islands of the Atlantic, have a greatvariety and multitude of materials ready for the hands of thebiographer.
James Otis belonged to the first of these classes.There is a measure of elusiveness about his life. Our lack ofknowledge respecting him, however, is due in part to the fact thatnear the close of his life, while he was oscillating in ahalf-rational condition between Andover and Boston, with anoccasional visit to Plymouth, he fell into a fit of pessimism anddespair during which he spent two days in obliterating thematerials for his biography, by destroying all his letters andmanuscripts. He did as much as he could to make impossible anyadequate account of his career or any suitable revelation of hischaracter as developed in his correspondence. Over and above this,however, the materials of his life are of small extent, andfragmentary. It is to his formal publications and the commontradition of what he did, that we must turn for our biographicaland historical estimate of the man. In this respect he is inanalogy with Patrick Henry who appears only fitfully in history,but with meteoric brilliancy; or with Abraham Lincoln the narrativeof whose life for the first forty-five years can be adequatelywritten in ten pages.
The American Otises of the seventeenth century wereof English descent. The emigration of the family from the mothercountry occurred at an early day when the settlements in NewEngland were still infrequent and weak. The Otis family was amongthe first to settle at the town of Hingham. Nor was it long untilthe name appeared in the public records, indicating official rankand leadership. From Hingham, John Otis, who was born in 1657,ancestor of the subject of this sketch, removed to Barnstable, nearthe center of the peninsula of Massachusetts, and became one of thefirst men of that settlement. He was sent to the Legislature andthence to the Council of the Colony in which he had a seat fortwenty-one years. During this period he was promoted to the placeof Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and while holding thisimportant place he was also judge of the Probate Court. The familyrose and flourished in reputation.
In 1702, James Otis, son of Judge John Otis, wasborn. He followed in his father's footsteps becoming a lawyer andcolonial publicist, afterwards a colonel of the militia, a judge ofthe Common Pleas, a judge of the Probate Court, and a member of theCouncil of Massachusetts. Just after reaching his majority ColonelOtis took in marriage Mary Alleyne, and of this union were bornthirteen children. The eldest was a son, and to him was given hisfather's name. It was to this child that destiny had assigned theheroic work of confronting the aggressions of Great Britain on theAmerican colonists, and of inspiring the latter to forcibleresistance.
James Otis, Junior, was born at a place called GreatMarshes, now known as West Barnstable, on the 5th of February,1725. He inherite