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James Otis Lights a Fire

© Brian Tubbs

According to John Adams, American independence was not born on the bloody field of Lexington Green or in the hot assembly room at Independence Hall. It was born in Boston's Old Town Hall in February of 1761. For it was in the winter of that year that the twenty-five year old John Adams witnessed one of the first defiant and energetic stands against British power in North America - an impassioned speech given by a thirty-six year old Massachusetts attorney by the name of James Otis.

Born February 5, 1725 in what is now West Barnstable, Massachusetts, James Otis, Jr. was tutored under the care of the Reverend Jonathan Russell, the minister at Barnstable. At age fifteen, Otis entered Harvard College. He graduated in 1743, and studied law two years later under Judge Jeremiah Gridley, a distinguished member of the General Court of Massachusetts. Judge Gridley, while on the bench, sided often with the colonists in their growing discontent with British policies. Accordingly, Gridley helped shape Otis's philosophy and the two shared an ideological bond. But this would change years later when Gridley became Attorney General of Massachusetts. By that point, Gridley and his former pupil would be on opposite sides of the divide between the Mother Country and the colonies.

In Otis's day, the study of law was daunting and exhaustive. A student was required to thoroughly acquaint himself with old parliamentary statutes and royal decrees - the foundational elements of British common law - and then develop a comprehensive and well-substantiated legal philosophy from the ground up. Protracted dissertations on British constitutional law were read to assist him in this ideological journey. Otis spent two years immersed in his studies, and applied for the bar in 1748.

Accepted by the court, the young attorney began practicing almost immediately. Most of the records of his cases have been lost or destroyed, but historians have pieced enough evidence together to conclude that Otis gained in professional stature and reputation during his years of practice. Possessed of extraordinary talent and zeal, he became a well-known (and well-paid) trial advocate and legal orator throughout Massachusetts, and his name was soon recognized in other colonies as well.

In 1755, plump, round-faced James Otis married Ruth Cunningham, the shy but beautiful daughter of a Boston merchant. The marriage enhanced Otis's social standing and improved his financial situation. But his new bride did not share his political and social idealism. She was, writes author A.J. Langguth, "entirely committed to the conservative principles of her merchant father." During their marriage, James and Ruth Otis had a son and two daughters.