Reason in Madness
The Political Thought of James Otis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3256327 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James Ferguson (0000-0002-3736-0603, corresponding author), James R Ferguson |
| Year | 1979 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 194 |
| Publication date | 1979-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1922264 |
| OpenAlex | W2333086638 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
H T ow can such inconsistencies and prevarications be reconciled to honesty, patriotism and common sense?' Thus did A Friend to Liberty angrily denounce political tracts of James Otis in a letter to Boston Evening-Post in I766. The letter expressed a view that was widely shared, for many Bostonians agreed that Otis had betrayed cause of American liberty by repudiating his earlier arguments against tax measures of British Parliament. Indeed, at one point, the rage against him in town of Boston seemed to be without bounds, John Adams later recalled. He was called a reprobate, an apostate, and a traitor, in every street in Boston.2 Otis, however, saw things quite differently. Stung by charges of selfcontradiction, he insisted that his tracts were positively consistent.3 The claim did little to convince unsympathetic contemporaries, but it has found support from modern historians. Samuel Eliot Morison, for example, declared that 'wavering' or 'retreat' often referred to in secondary accounts is found neither in his writings nor his recorded speeches.4 More recently, Bernard Bailyn has suggested that Otis did not repudiate his initial position and that there was thus a considerable element of truth to his assertion of consistency.' It is not surprising that such conflicting interpretations have been given to four tracts that Otis wrote in response to British tax measures. The pamphlets are confusing, and understandably so: Otis was going mad during years when he wrote them. As early as I765 his mental instability was
Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.22 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1999 - 2022 (24) |
| Highly cited | No |