Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/647

Rh all questions relating to the expenditure of public money the rights of a colonial legislature were as sacred as the rights of the house of commons. In June, 1765, Mr. Otis moved that a congress of dele- gates from all the colonies be called together to consider what should be done about the stamp-act. In that famous congress which met in October in New York he was a delegate and one of the com- mittee for preparing an address to parliament. In 1767, when elected speaker of the Massachusetts assembly, he was negatived by Gov. Bernard. On the news of Charles Townshend's revenue acts, the assembly prepared a circular letter to be sent to all the colonies, inviting concerted resistance. The king was greatly offended at this, and instructions were sent to Bernard to dismiss the assembly unless it should rescind its circular letter. In the debate upon this royal order Otis made a fiery speech, in which he used the expression : " We are asked to rescind, are we? Let Great Britain rescind her measures, or the colonies are lost to her forever."

In the summer of 1769 he got into a controversy with some revenue officers, and attacked them in the Boston " Gazette." A few evenings after- ward, while sitting in the British cotfee-liouse, he was assaulted by one Robinson, a commissioner of customs, supported by several army or navy officers. Mr. Otis was savagely beaten, and received a sword-cut in the head, from the effects of which he never recovered. He had already shown some symptoms of mental disease, but from this time he rapidly grew worse until his reason forsook him. He brought suit against Robinson, who was assessed in £2,000 damages for the assault ; but when the penitent officer made a written apology and begged pardon for his irreparable offence, Mr. Otis refused to take a penny. With this lamentable affair his public career may be said to have ended, for, al- though in 1771 he was again chosen to the legisla- ture, and was sometimes afterward seen in court or in town-meeting, he was unable to take part in public business. In June, 1775, he was living, harmlessly insane, at the house of his sister, Mercy Warren, at Watertown. When he heard the, rumor of battle on the 17th, he stole quietly away, bor- rowed a musket at some farm-house by the road- side, and joined the minute-men. who were march- ing to the aid of the troops on Bunker Hill. He took an active part in that battle, and after it was over made his way home again toward midnight. The last years of his life were spent in Andover. Early in 1778, in a lucid interval, he went to Bos- ton and argued a case in the common pleas, but found himself unequal to such exertion, and after a short interval returned to Andover. Six weeks after his return, as he was standing in his front doorway in a thunder-shower, leaning on his cane and talking to his family, he was struck by light- ning and instantly killed. It was afterward re- marked that he had been heard to express a wish that he might die in such a way. He was a man of powerful intelligence, with great command of language and a most impressive delivery, but his judgment was often unsound, and his mental work- ings were so fitful and spasmodic that it was not always easy to tell what course he was likely to pursue. For such prolonged, systematic, and cool- headed work as that of Samuel Adams he was by nature unfit, but the impulse that he gave to the current of events cannot be regarded as other than powerful. His fame will rest chiefly upon the single tremendous speech of 1761. followed by the admirable pamphlet of 1764. His biography has been ably written by William Tudor (Boston, 1823). — His brother, Samuel Alleyne, statesman, b. in Barnstable, Mass., 24 Nov.. 1740; d. in Washing- ton, D. C, 22 April, 1814. was graduated at Har- vard in 1759. He studied law, but turned his at- tention to mercantile business. He was chosen a representative in 1776, and in 1784 was speaker of the house. He was a member of the board of war, and in 1780 was a member of the convention that framed the constitution of Massachusetts. In 1787 he was one of the commissioners sent to negotiate with Daniel Shays and his insurgents, and in the following year he was a delegate to the Continental congress in its last session. After the adoption of the Federal constitution he was secretary of the U. S. senate. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Harrison Gray, receiver-general of Massachu- setts. — Their son, Harrison Gray, statesman, b. in Boston, 8 Oct., 1765 ; d. there, 28 Oct., 1848, was graduated at Harvard in 1783. He was admit- ted to the bar in 1786, and two years afterward de- livered the Fourth-of-July oration in Boston. In 1787 he was captain in the militia, and served as aide-de-camp to Gen. Brooks in the campaign against the Shays insurgents. He soon rose to dis- tinction at the bar. His courtly mannei's and winning address made him a favorite in society, and his style of oratory was much admired. In 1796 he was chosen to the state legislature, and in 1797-1801 was a member of congress, and promi- nent among the Federalist leaders. Returning to Massachusetts, he was district attorney in 1801, speaker of the house in 1803-'5, and president of the state senate in 1805-'ll. In 1814 he was appointed justice of common pleas, and held that office for four years. In the Hartford convention, 1814, he took a prominent part, and thus laid himself open to imputations of disloyalty, which to some extent diminished his popularity. He was nevertheless chosen U. S. senator in 1817. and retained that place until 1822, when he resigned his seat to become a candidate for the office of mayor of Boston. Up to that time Boston had retained its old town government by town-meetings and selectmen, and to be chosen first mayor of Boston was felt by many of its citizens to be an honor for which one might willingly exchange a very high office. The war record of Mr. Otis is thought to have redounded to his disadvantage. Before election-day his name was withdrawn from the canvass, and John Phillips was elected with a near approach to unanimity. In 1829 Mr. Otis was elected mayor, and in his inaugural address took occasion to repel the charge of disloyalty to the Union, which had been repeatedly brought against the members of the Hartford convention. " At no time in the course of my life," said he, " have I been present at any meeting of individuals, public or private, of the many or the few, or privy to any correspondence of whatever description, in which any proposition having for its object the dissolution of the Union, or its dismemberment in any shape, or a separate confederacy, or a forcible resistance to the government or laws, was ever made or debated, and I have no reason to believe that any such scheme was ever meditated by distinguished individuals of the old Federal party." Such a declaration may serve to show that the dangerous tendencies latent in such movements as that of the Hartford convention were not always comprehended even by the leading actors, and it may be instructively compared with statements often made on the eve of the Declaration of Independence, to the effect that the American colonies had no intention of breaking off their connection with the British empire. Among the other noteworthy speeches of Mr. Otis may be mentioned