James Otis Jr

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He was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, to James Otis, Sr. and Mary Allyne, the second of thirteen children and the first to survive infancy. His younger sister Mercy Otis Warren, his brother Joseph Otis, and his youngest brother Samuel Allyne Otis also rose to prominence, as did his nephew Harrison Gray Otis.

Speaking of James Otis, John Adams said, "I have been young and now I am old, and I solemnly say I have never known a man whose love of country was more ardent or sincere, never one who suffered so much, never one whose service for any 10 years of his life were so important and essential to the cause of his country as those of Mr. Otis from 1760 to 1770."

Otis graduated from Harvard in 1743 and rose to the top of the Boston legal profession. In 1760, he received a prestigious appointment as Advocate General of the Admiralty Court. He promptly resigned, however,when Governor Bernard failed to appoint James Otis Jr.'s father to the promised position of Chief Justice of the Superior Court. In a dramatic turnabout following his resignation, Otis instead represented pro bono the colonial merchants who were challenging the legality of the "writs of assistance" before the Superior Court, the predecessor of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. These writs would enable British authorities to enter any colonist's home with no advance notice, no probable cause and no reason given. In his oration against the writs, John Adams stated, "Otis was a water of fire; with a promptitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities."

James Otis considered himself a loyal British subject. Yet in February 1761, he argued brilliantly against the Writs of Assistance in a nearly five-hour oration before a select audience in the Old State House. His argument failed to win his case, although it galvanized the revolutionary movement. More than thirty years later, with considerable exaggeration, John Adams claimed that "the child independence was then and there born,[for] every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance." In fact, his challenge to the authority of Parliament made a strong impression on John Adams, who was present, and thereby eventually contributed to the American Revolution. In a pamphlet published three years later, in 1765, Otis expanded his argument that the general writs violated the British unwritten constitution harkening back to Magna Carta. Much enhanced by John Adams on several occasions, the text of his 1761 speech was first printed in 1773 and in longer forms in 1819 and 1823.

Originally politically based in the rural Popular Party, Otis effectively made alliances with Boston merchants so that he instantly became a patriot star after the writs of assistance. He was elected by an overwhelming margin to the Massachusetts House of Representatives a month later. Otis subsequently wrote several important patriotic pamphlets, served in the Massachusetts legislature and was a leader of the Stamp Act Congress. He also was friends with Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense.

Otis suffered from increasingly erratic behavior as the 1760s progressed. Otis received a gash on the head by British tax collector John Robinson's cudgel at the British Coffee House in 1769. Some mistakenly attribute Otis's mental illness to this event. That it was completely unrelated is shown by Wroth and Zobel (see below). John Adams has several examples in his diary of Otis's mental illness well before 1769. By the end of the decade, Otis's public life largely came to an end. Some believe Otis was a manic-depressive or schizophrenic and that his illness could be successfully treated today. Otis was able to do occasional legal practice during times of clarity.