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JAMES BOWDOIN.... American National Biography Online Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Bowdoin, James (7 Aug. 1726-6 Nov. 1790), scientist and statesman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of James Bowdoin, a wealthy Boston merchant of French Huguenot origins and a member of the Massachusetts Council, the upper house of the General Assembly, and his second wife, Hannah Portage. Young James Bowdoin was educated at Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard College in 1745. At his father's death in 1747 he inherited a fortune valued at over 80,000 sterling. Independently wealthy, he lived luxuriously on his income from bonds, loans, rentals, and real estate holdings in Maine. In 1748 he married Elizabeth Erving, daughter of John Erving, a Boston merchant. The couple had two children. Following in the tradition of the English country gentleman, Bowdoin pursued a life of public service, scientific study, and estate development. A representative of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Bowdoin took a master's degree at Harvard in 1748 and, inspired by his college mentor, John Winthrop (1714-1779), the next year began purchasing electrical apparatus. In 1750 Bowdoin visited Philadelphia, where he began an enduring friendship with Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). The next year Franklin sent him the manuscript of his Observations on Electricity, and the pair began a correspondence that continued for the next forty years. Bowdoin, however, turned from the study of electricity to astronomy. He was especially interested in optics and in 1761 published a brief article, "An Improvement Proposed for Telescopes," in the London Magazine. He encouraged Winthrop's successful observation of the transit of Venus in 1761 and backed a similar abortive venture, planned for the Lake Superior region in 1769. Gradually Bowdoin assembled a remarkably comprehensive working library, which contained over 1,200 volumes by 1775. Although heavily weighted toward scientific and mathematical works, the collection included extensive holdings in philosophy, religion, politics, history, biography, and belles lettres. In 1759 he published a volume of original verses, A Paraphrase on Part of the Oeconomy of Human Life, which he fancied exceeded the scope of Robert Dodsley's original work, The Oeconomy of Human Life (1751). His book attracted little attention in Boston, but he was undaunted enough to contribute four poems, two in Latin and two in English, to the "Harvard Verses" presented to the young George III in 1762 in an attempt to gain royal patronage for the college. Bowdoin was also drawn to Massachusetts politics. He served on several town committees before his election to the House of Representatives in 1753. Four years later he was advanced to the Council, where he continued without interruption until 1769. Like his father, Bowdoin at first endorsed the prerogative or court party, which supported the royal governor. A friend of Governor William Shirley, he was even closer to his successor, Thomas Pownall, who shared his scientific interests. But his attachment to royal government soured after the arrival of the next governor, Francis Bernard, whom Bowdoin soon came to detest personally. Bowdoin's first opposition to British restrictive policies came when, with the rest of the Council, he condemned the Sugar Act of 1764, claiming that although the act was ostensibly intended to regulate trade, it was unconstitutional because it raised a revenue in the colonies. Bowdoin halted his personal imports of British goods in support of the nonimportation agreements of the 1760s to protest the Stamp and Townshend acts. His final break with Bernard came soon after his daughter Elizabeth married John Temple in 1767. Temple, though a customs agent, was an implacable foe of the governor. Peter Oliver, a Massachusetts Tory, later commented in his Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion that Temple had acquired "a rich Father-in-Law to support him in resentment." In 1768 Bowdoin engineered a Council appeal to the king opposing the Townshend Acts, as usual, on economic grounds. By this time he effectively controlled that body through a faction that included his father-in-law, John Erving, and his brother-in-law, James Pitts. Bowdoin's opposition to Bernard became so heated that the governor vetoed his Council membership after the May 1769 election. Banished from the Council, Bowdoin ever more openly embraced the patriot cause. In 1770, fearing a hostile British reaction to the Boston Massacre, the town meeting chose Bowdoin and several others to prepare a report. His introduction and ninety-six depositions taken from eyewitnesses were quickly published in England as Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston (1770), a propaganda piece that proved highly effective in minimizing the affair in British eyes. Bowdoin was returned to the House in the May 1770 election and immediately elevated to the Council. The new governor, the native-born Thomas Hutchinson, permitted his election to stand, but Bowdoin consistently opposed Hutchinson in the Council through the Boston Tea Party crisis and Parliament's imposition of the Intolerable Acts. These changes in government brought in Thomas Gage (1721-1787) as military governor and instituted a new Mandamus Council composed of Loyalist sympathizers. Thus in 1774 Bowdoin was again excluded from the Council. Though Bowdoin declined election to the First Continental Congress on the grounds of ill health, his services to the revolutionary cause were substantial. Fleeing Boston a month after the battles of Lexington and Concord, he recuperated from consumption at the summer estate of Tory absentee Peter Oliver at Middleborough while General John Burgoyne occupied his own Beacon Hill mansion. By May 1776 he was well enough to stand for election to Massachusetts's new revolutionary Council, where he served as president. This position made him head of the Massachusetts government. Here he enthusiastically worked for independence from Great Britain. Recurring tuberculosis forced his resignation from the Council in 1777, but he was well enough to preside over the Massachusetts constitutional convention of 1780 and to chair the subcommittee which, guided by John Adams (1735-1826), wrote the new constitution. During the war years Bowdoin's fortunes declined as his Maine holdings deteriorated and his Elizabeth Isles, off the Massachusetts coast, were repeatedly attacked by British raiders. Seeking new investment opportunities, he concentrated on shipping ventures. Unfortunately, all of Bowdoin's ships were taken by the British, and Emanuel Pliarne, a partner, drowned while crossing the Potomac River. Later efforts at privateering proved equally disastrous. Meanwhile, renewing his interest in science, Bowdoin was an important founder of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) in 1779, served as first president, and contributed four papers to the first volume of the society's Memoirs, published in 1785. During the postwar years, Bowdoin broadened his financial and philanthropic interests and reentered politics. In 1784 he became founding president of the Massachusetts Bank, and in 1786 was elected president of the fledgling Massachusetts Humane Society, which attempted to find means of resuscitating drowning victims. As a conservative, Bowdoin had opposed the spending policies of his old political enemy John Hancock (1737-1793) since 1780, but before 1785 he had never received more than 15 percent of the vote for the governorship. That year, however, the state was facing bankruptcy, and in February Hancock abruptly resigned, leaving his lieutenant governor, Thomas Cushing, to complete his term. This was Bowdoin's best chance for victory; he narrowly defeated Cushing on a platform of fiscal responsibility and morality, rising to power on the "Tea Assembly" issue of corruption in office. He performed satisfactorily enough to win reelection in 1786 as well but was criticized by many for his overzealous handling of Shays's Rebellion (see Daniel Shays). In the face of state bankruptcy, Bowdoin, ignoring legitimate agrarian grievances, had raised a privately financed army that had crushed the farmer rebels of western Massachusetts. Accordingly, he went down to defeat by a revitalized John Hancock in 1787. After this setback Bowdoin retired permanently from state politics, his last years brightened by his election to the Royal Society in 1788 as a "foreign" member on the basis of his contributions to the AAAS and the publication of its Memoirs. That same year he purchased nine shares in the Ohio Company of Associates, then engaged in the settlement of Marietta. In 1789 he made a final investment, this time in the China trade. As governor, Bowdoin had promoted the creation of a stronger central government, stressing the confederation's need to regulate foreign commerce. Thus he heartily endorsed the new Constitution and entertained George Washington at his home on the president's visit to Boston in October 1789. After an illness of several months, James Bowdoin died in Boston of a "putrid fever and dysentery." His funeral was long remembered as one of Boston's largest and grandest. James Bowdoin was an exceedingly complex individual. Always a conservative, reserved and aristocratic, he disdained mere popularity but was a determined and fervent Massachusetts patriot. Though relatively unknown beyond New England, this statesman and philosopher, if not in the first rank of revolutionary intellectuals, may still be favorably compared with Thomas Jefferson and especially with his old friend Benjamin Franklin. Bibliography Both Bowdoin's letter book and cash book have been preserved at the Massachusetts Historical Society, which has published many of his letters in Bowdoin and Temple Papers, 6th ser., vol. 9, and 7th ser., vol. 6. Additional manuscripts may be found among the Kennebeck Purchase Papers and Waldo, Knox, and Flucker papers, Maine Historical Society. Alden T. Bradford, ed., Speeches of the Governors of Massachusetts from 1765-1777; and the Answers of the House of Representatives to the Same (1818), illustrates Bowdoin's legislative contributions. Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, vol. 4 (1890), contains his gubernatorial messages. Robert C. Winthrop, a collateral descendant, published early accounts of Bowdoin's life in Washington, Bowdoin and Franklin (1876) and The Life and Services of James Bowdoin (1876). The best short biography is Clifford Shipton, Sibley's Harvard Graduates 9 (1960): 514-50. Gordon E. Kershaw, James Bowdoin II: Patriot and Man of the Enlightenment (1991), is a full-length biographical study. Bowdoin's role as governor during Shays's Rebellion is explored in Marion Starkey, A Little Rebellion (1955); David P. Szatmary, Shays' Rebellion: The Making of an Agrarian Insurrection (1980); and in several essays in Robert Gross, ed., In Debt to Shays (1993). His Maine real estate empire is examined in Kershaw, The Kennebeck Proprietors (1975). Gordon E. Kershaw Citation: Gordon E. Kershaw. "Bowdoin, James"; http://www.anb.org/articles/01/01-00089.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Access Date: Copyright (c) 2000 American Council of Learned Societies. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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