There is a photograph of the house where Otis was killed by lightning (May 28, 1783) in Bailey's _Andover_, p. 86. Cf. _Appleton's Journal_, xi. 784. The principal detailed authority on the career of Otis (born, 1724; died, 1783) is William Tudor's _Life of James Otis_, which Lecky, in his _England in the Eighteenth Century_ (iii. 304), calls "a remarkable book from which I have derived much assistance." Francis Bowen wrote the life in Sparks's _Amer. Biog._, vol. xii. John Adams had an exalted opinion of Otis, and Otis's character receives various touches in Adams's _Works_ (x. 264, 271, 275, 279, 280, 284, 289-295, 299, 300). Bancroft depicts him in 1768 (vol. vi. 120, orig. ed.), but he failed rapidly later by reason of the blows he received in an assault in Sept., 1769, provoked by him. Cf. Greene's _Hist. View_ (p. 322); D. A. Goddard in _Mem. Hist. Boston_ (iii. 140); Barry's _Mass._ (ii. 259).]
One of the ablest as well as one of the most temperate expressions of the stand taken by the colonies was in Stephen Hopkins's _Rights of the Colonies examined; published by Authority_ (Providence, 1765).[169]
Similar arguments were set forth in behalf of Connecticut by its governor.[170]
Already, in 1764, when Oxenbridge Thacher printed his _Sentiments of a British American_, he had formulated the arguments against the navigation acts and British taxation, which ten years later, in the Congress of 1774, Jay embodied in his Address to the British People.[171]
John Adams, in later years, when distance clarified the atmosphere, looked upon the conflict which Jonathan Mayhew waged with Apthorpe, and with the abettors of all schemes for imposing episcopacy on the people by act of Parliament, as the repelling of an attack upon the people's right to decide such questions for themselves, and as but a forerunner of the great subsequent question.[172]
Copied from a mezzotint engraving in the American Antiquarian Society's possession, marked "Richard Jennys, jun., pinxt et fecit."
A portrait by Smibert, and engraved by J. B. Cipriani, is in Hollis's _Memoirs_ (1780), p. 371; and a reëngraving has been made by H. W. Smith. Cf. Bradford's _Life of Mayhew_; Thornton's _Pulpit of the Rev._; _Mem. Hist. of Boston_, ii. 245, with note on his portraits.