Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 6 (of 8): The United States of North America, Part I
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 6 (of 8): The United States of North America, Part I
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
After a statue of James Otis, by Crawford, in the chapel at Mount
Auburn. The usual portrait of Otis is by Blackburn, painted in 1755,
and now owned by Mrs. H. B. Rogers. The earliest engraving of it which
I have noticed is by A. B. Durand in Tudor, and again in the _Worcester
Magazine_ (1826), vol. i. It has been engraved by W. O. Jackman, J.
R. Smith, O. Pelton, and best of all by C. Schlecht, in Gay's _Pop.
Hist. U. S._, iii. 332. Cf. Loring's _Hundred Boston Orators_, and
the woodcut in the _Mem. Hist. Boston_, iii. 6. The earliest engraved
likeness is probably a rude cut on the title of Bickerstaff's _Almanac_
(1770), which is reproduced in Lossing's _Field-Book of the Rev._, i.
486.
There is a photograph of the house where Otis was killed by lightning
(May 28, 1783) in Bailey's _Andover_, p. 86. Cf. _Appleton's Journal_,
xi. 784. The principal detailed authority on the career of Otis (born,
1724; died, 1783) is William Tudor's _Life of James Otis_, which
Lecky, in his _England in the Eighteenth Century_ (iii. 304), calls "a
remarkable book from which I have derived much assistance." Francis
Bowen wrote the life in Sparks's _Amer. Biog._, vol. xii. John Adams
had an exalted opinion of Otis, and Otis's character receives various
touches in Adams's _Works_ (x. 264, 271, 275, 279, 280, 284, 289-295,
299, 300). Bancroft depicts him in 1768 (vol. vi. 120, orig. ed.),
but he failed rapidly later by reason of the blows he received in an
assault in Sept., 1769, provoked by him. Cf. Greene's _Hist. View_ (p.
322); D. A. Goddard in _Mem. Hist. Boston_ (iii. 140); Barry's _Mass._
(ii. 259).]
One of the ablest as well as one of the most temperate expressions of
the stand taken by the colonies was in Stephen Hopkins's _Rights of the
Colonies examined; published by Authority_ (Providence, 1765).[169]
Similar arguments were set forth in behalf of Connecticut by its
governor.[170]
Already, in 1764, when Oxenbridge Thacher printed his _Sentiments
of a British American_, he had formulated the arguments against the
navigation acts and British taxation, which ten years later, in
the Congress of 1774, Jay embodied in his Address to the British
People.[171]
John Adams, in later years, when distance clarified the atmosphere,
looked upon the conflict which Jonathan Mayhew waged with Apthorpe, and
with the abettors of all schemes for imposing episcopacy on the people
by act of Parliament, as the repelling of an attack upon the people's
right to decide such questions for themselves, and as but a forerunner
of the great subsequent question.[172]
[Illustration: JONATHAN MAYHEW.
Copied from a mezzotint engraving in the American Antiquarian Society's
possession, marked "Richard Jennys, jun., pinxt et fecit."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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