James Warren (politician)

James Warren was born on September 28, 1726, in Plymouth, Massachusetts.[1] His father, James Warren, was a businessman and legal official who served as the high sheriff of Plymouth County; he was also a captain in the colonial militia.[2] Warren's mother was Penelope Winslow, who married his father in 1724.[1][3] Warren was born into a prominent Massachusetts family which descended from Mayflower passenger Richard Warren.[2]

The young Warren grew up on the family farmstead near the Eel River. From 1742 to 1745, he attend Harvard College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree.[1] While studying at Harvard, Warren, who excelled at his studies, developed "strong feelings about how the colonies should be governed".[2] He also befriended future Massachusetts Attorney General and military officer James Otis Sr. while studying at Harvard.[4]

After graduating from Harvard, Warren returned to Plymouth, where he settled down to a career as a businessman and gentleman farmer.[4] On November 14, 1757, Warren married Mercy Otis, the daughter of James Otis Sr; the marriage was the culmination of a six-year long engagement between the two.[1] After marrying at the Otises' house, the two settled down on a Plymouth townhouse Warren had purchased in 1755.[5]

A portrait of Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley c. 1763

In 1757, after his father died, Warren succeeded to his position as Plymouth County high sheriff.[4] The same year, the newly married couple moved back to the Warren family estates and Mercy gave birth to their first child, who was named James after his father.[5] All of this took place amidst a backdrop of increasing tensions between Great Britain and its North American colonies, with colonists protesting acts passed by the Crown.[6]

In 1765, a small group of American Patriots, including Warren, gathered at the Warren family home to discuss what the colonial response should be to the recent Stamp Act of 1765, which had been passed by the Parliament of Great Britain and targeted the American colonies.[7] The group agreed that representatives from each of the Thirteen Colonies should gather in New York City and send a petition to King George III requesting that he repeal the act.[7]

While the colonists awaited the King's response, Warren was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1766, continuing to sit in the house until 1778.[7] During this period, he associated with prominent Patriots such as James Otis Jr., John Adams, and Samuel Adams.[1] In 1772, Warren, along with Mercy, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren and others formed a Massachusetts committee of correspondence in response to the Gaspee Affair.[8]

Warren continued being active in Patriot efforts to resist British imperial policies targeting the American colonies, assuming prominent roles in anti-British actions by Patriots such as the Boston Tea Party, writing that "the People should strike some bold stroke and try the Issue." In a letter Warren wrote to John Adams in 1775, he stated, "I am content to move in a small sphere. I expect no distinction but that of an honest man who has exerted every nerve."[1]

Warren served as a delegate to the first Massachusetts Provincial Congress in October 1774.[1] In 1775, open conflict broke out between British and Patriot forces following the battles of Lexington and Concord.[9] After Joseph Warren was killed in action fighting the British at the battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, Waren succeeded him as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, continuing to hold that position until the congress was dissolved in 1780.[1]

During the early stages of the American Revolutionary War, Warren served as Paymaster-General of the Army from July 27, 1775 to April 19, 1776, after being appointed by the newly-formed Continental Congress.[1] For his services, Warren was paid a salary of 100 dollars a month.[10] He also served with Continental Army elements as a military officer when they were stationed at Cambridge and Boston in 1775 and 1776, during a campaign which saw American troops successfully force the British to evacuate from Massachusetts.[1][11]

From 1776 to 1781, Warren served on the Continental Navy Board for the eastern department, overseeing the activities of the fledgling Continental Navy against the British Royal Navy. Warren was also appointed to the rank of major-general in the Massachusetts Militia and was ordered to lead a Continental Army force into British-controlled regions in Rhode Island. However, unwilling to accept the command of an officer of a lesser rank, Warren officially resigned from the militia on August 1777, bringing an end to his nascent military career.[1]

In 1783, the British Crown signed the Treaty of Paris, officially confirming the United States' independence.[12] Four years later in 1787, Warren was elected "by the popular majority" to the seat of speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. During his one-year tenure, Warren's popularity waned due to his stance on currency issues and criticism of the methods used by federal authorities to suppress Shays' Rebellion.[1] On 22 October, 1786, Warren wrote in a letter to John Adams that "We are now in a State of Anarchy and Confusion bordering on a Civil War."[13]

In the aftermath of the rebellion's suppression, rumors spread that the Warren family had supported the rebels, forcing them to issue claims both denying that rumor along with claims that their son Winslow had joined forces with rebel leader Daniel Shays.[14] Relations between the federal government and the Warrens became strained during this period; when Winslow's application to serve as the American consul in Lisbon was rejected, Warren co-authored a letter to James Bowdoin blaming him for not supporting Winslow in his attempt to join the Foreign Service.[15]

In 1788, Warren emerged as an opponent of the Constitution's ratification due to the lack of any bill of rights contained within the document, authoring several pamphlets (which were published in Boston) publicizing the issue; he also wrote for the Independent Chronicle and the Massachusetts Centinel newspapers during this period. Warren was chosen to serve on the governor's council from 1792 to 1794, but was defeated as a candidate for lieutenant-governor and retired from politics in 1794, retiring to his Plymouth estate where he died on November 27, 1808.[1]

Both before, during, and after the Revolutionary War, Warren and Mercy were prominent supporters of American republicanism, with historian Murney Gerlach noting that he remained a "firm exponent of republicanism both during and after the period of government under the articles of confederation", visualizing his ideal political structure as being founded on "equal liberty and the happiness of mankind".[1] The couple continued to support radical political beliefs until their death, even as such views became increasingly unpopular among the American public.[16]

Warren was among one of the founding members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest learned societies in the United States.[17] However, Warren would eventually come under heavy attack from his associates at the academy for his views on Shays' Rebellion; in contrast to most members, Warren held sympathetic views towards the rebel's grievances against the federal government, in line with his political beliefs of being "suspicious of incipient despotism". Mercy wrote that Warren bore "unprovoked abuse with the Dignity of concious rectitude".[18]

In the 1790's, Warren sided with the Jeffersonian democrats, which led to his friendship with John Adams to fall apart. American statesman John Quincy Adams noted that Warren "was formerly a very popular man, but of late years he has thought himself neglected by the people. His mind has been soured, and he became discontented and querulous." In 1804, Warren was selected to be a presidential elector for Massachusetts for that year's presidential election, voting for Thomas Jefferson against his opponent, South Carolina politician Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.[1][19]

Warren maintained a strong relationship with his wife, encouraging her career as a playwright and treating Mercy as an intellectual equal and confidante.[20] After Mercy gave birth to James in 1757, the couple gave birth to four more children over the next nine years- Winslow, Charles, Henry and George.[5] When Warren died, he was buried at Burial Hill, a cemetery in Plymouth; Mercy took the opportunity to successfully repair her damaged relationship with Adams.[21] After Mercy died on October 19, 1814, at the age of 86, she was buried at Burial Hill as well.[20]