The writs of assistance and public memory: John Adams and the legacy of James Otis

New England Quarterly

Volumn 79, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 533-555

  Farrell, James M ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 61249583901     PISSN: 00284866     EISSN: 19372213     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (56)

1. Daniel Webster, "Adams and Jefferson," Works of Daniel Webster, vol. 1 (Boston: Little & Brown, 1851), p. 121.
2. George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, vol. 4 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1856), p. 414.
3. John Fiske, "Thomas Hutchinson, Last Royal Governor of Massachusetts," in Essays Historical and Literary, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1902), p. 26.
4. John Clark Ridpath, James Otis, the Pre-Revolutionist (Milwaukee: H. G. Campbell, 1903). pp. 57-58, 47.
5. John T. Morse Jr., John Adams (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1924), p. 23.
6. Lawrence Henry Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1775 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954), p. 39.
7. A. J. Langguth, Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster 1988), p. 22.
8. See also Kathryn Griffin Swegart, "The Man Who Sparked the Revolution," Yankee Magazine, June 1993, p. 58.
9. I am not attempting a close textual analysis of the speech (which, in the end, is neither especially complicated nor stylistically remarkable). My approach, then, differs significantly from the body of rhetorical scholarship on the Otis speech. See Lorenzo Sears, The History of Oratory (Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co., 1896), pp. 309-10;
10. George V. Bohman, "The Colonial Period," in A History and Criticism of American Public Address, ed. William Norwood Brigance, vol. 1 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1960), pp. 3-54, esp. 39-43;
11. Jerald Banninga, "James Otis on the Writs of Assistance: A Textual Investigation," Speech Monographs 27 (1960): 351-52;
12. Robert Oliver, History of Public Speaking in America (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1965), pp. 45-51;
13. James A. Benson, "James Otis and the 'Writs of Assistance' Speech - Fact and Fiction," Southern Speech Journal 34 (1969): 256-63;
14. Barnet Baskerville, The People's Voice: The Orator in American Society (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1979), pp. 7-31;
15. Michael Riccards, "James Otis, Colonial Leader and Lawyer," in American Orators before 1900: Critical Studies and Sources, ed. Bernard K. Duffy and Halford R. Ryan (New York: Greenwood, 1987), pp. 299-306.
16. and M[aurice] H. Smith, The Writs of Assistance Case (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
17. On the specific Parliamentary legislation governing writs of assistance, see Joseph R. Freese, "Early Parliamentary Legislation on Writs of Assistance," Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 38 (1959): 318-59.
18. Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield, vol. 3 (New York: Atheneum, 1964), pp. 275-76.
19. Warren, History of the Revolution, pp. 28-29.
20. See also Legal Papers of John Adams, 2:106-7.
21. See also Oliver, History of Public Speaking in America, p. 50.
22. Adams's abstract, however, lay virtually unnoticed for twelve years after the writs trial, at which point Jonathan Williams Austin, a clerk in Adams's law office, took it from among his legal papers and submitted it to a local newspaper. On 29 April 1773, the Massachusetts Spy published the only text of the speech to appear in print during Otis's lifetime. Twenty years after he had died, the speech reappeared, this time in George Richards Minot, Continuation of the History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, from the Year 1748, vol. 2 (Boston: J. White & Co., 1803), pp. 91-99. The Otis speech as published by Minot, which matched almost exactly the version from the Massachusetts Spy thirty years earlier, remained the authoritative text for twenty years.
23. On Adams's aaxiety about historical remembrance, see Joseph Ellis, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), pp. 57-83,
24. Adams to McKean, 30 July 1815, Works of John Adams, 10:171.
25. See also Adams to Jefferson, 30 July 1815, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, p. 451.
26. Adams to Morse, 29 November 1815, Works of John Adams, 10:182.
27. Adams to Tudor, 16 November 1816, Works of John Adams, 10:230-32.
28. Adams to Tudor, 29 March 1817, Works of John Adams, 10:247-48. Many of the anthologies that carry Otis's address quote all, or a portion, of Adams's remarks in their introductory materials.
29. William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: James Webster, 1817), pp. 66, 32, 55, 120-23, 41.
30. On the "liberty or death" speech, see Judy Hample, "The Textual and Cultural Authenticity of Patrick Henry's 'Liberty or Death' Speech," Quarterly Journal of Speech 63 (1977): 298-310,
31. and Stephen T. Olsen, "Patrick Henry's 'Liberty or Death' Speech: A Study in Disputed Authorship," in American Rhetoric, Context and Criticism, ed. Thomas W. Benson (Carbondale: Southem Illinois University Press, 1989), pp. 19-66.
32. Adams to Tudor, 5 April 1818, Works of John Adams, 10:311.
33. Adams to Wirt, 5 January 1818, Works of John Adams, 10:271-72.
34. Kennedy, Memoirs of William Wirt, 2:34.
35. Adams to Niles, 13 February 1818, Works of John Adams, 10:282-89.
36. "Mr. Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry," North American Review, March 1818, pp. 293-324.
37. Boston Daily Advertiser, 27 March 1818.
38. Nibs' Weekly Register, 25 April 1818, pp. 137-40.
39. Caesar A. Rodney to John Adams, 6 September 1818, Niles' Weekly Register, 10 October 1818, p. 100.
40. "Beginnings of the American Revolution," North American Review, September 1819, p. 401.
41. Tudor, Life of Otis, p. 494.
42. Banninga, "James Otis o the Writs of Assistance," p. 351.
43. Chauncey M. Depew, ed., The Library of Oratory, vol. 2 (Akron, Ohio, 1902);
44. Alexander Johnston and James Albert Woodburn, eds., American Orations, vol. 1 (New York, 1896);
45. Thomas B. Reed, ed., Modern Eloquence, vol. 14 (Philadelphia, 1903).
46. Alexander K. McClure, ed., Famous American Statesmen and Orators, vol. 1 (New York: F. F. Lovell, 1902);
47. William Jennings Bryan, ed., The World's Famous Orations, vol. 8 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1906);
48. Julian Hawthorne, ed., Orations of American Orators, vol. 1 (New York: Co-Operative Publication Society, 1900).
49. The Tudor version has also survived. See Houston Peterson, ed., A Treasury of the World's Great Speeches (New York: Grolier, 1965),
50. and James Andrews and David Zarefsky, eds., American Voices: Significant Speeches in American History, 1640-1345 (New York: Longman, 1989).
51. Most of the internet versions available today are also originally from Tudor, though that source is seldom cited. See the discussion of Tudor's influence in Baskerville, People's Voice, pp. 27-29.
52. "Tudor's Life of James Otis," North American Review, April 1823, pp. 337-53.
53. That speech, like the argument on writs of assistance, entered into the public consciousness as a representation of the patriot's eloquence. See, e.g., Osgood's Fifth Reader (Pittsburgh: A. H. English, 1858), pp. 64-66,
54. and Epes Sargent, The Standard Speaker (Philadelphia: Charles Desilver, 1861), p. 284.
55. Child's fictional speech was printed in several schoolbooks and attributed to Otis. See John Frost, The American Speaker (Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co., 1845), p. 97,
56. and Lewis C. Munn, The American Orator (Boston: Compiler, 1853), pp. 206-7. By 1891,