100 Objects #7: The Otis Pamphlet

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0:34Visit everpuredata.com to learn more. Say you've always wanted to have a backyard oasis. Here's the thing. If you get smart with your money, you can do things like that. With Empower, you can start making the most of your money so you can go out and live a little. Isn't that why we work so hard? To have a little fun with our money. like treating yourself to something special or spontaneously doing something extra for a loved one. So use Empower to get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 20 million customers today at Empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored. It's 1984 and journalist Jack Hitt is walking up Broadway in Manhattan toward Columbia University.

1:16Jack is 27 at the time, recently out of grad school and obsessed with American history. I'm a constitution nerd. And my girlfriend and I've decided to write a book about marginalized figures in American history. Romance right there. So on this particularly romantic day, Jack was on his way to do some research on the Revolutionary War in the stacks of Butler Library. Butler Library is one of these libraries when you walk in the front door, it looks like it has about like four or five stories, but it's actually like 12 stories underground too. Right. So I'm down like in the ninth floor and you know that setting, right?

1:55It's just books, wall-to-wall books. And there's nobody down there. It's this wonderful feeling of come off the elevator or walk down the stairs. You're in this like just dark envelope of books. And each aisle is only illuminated by this little 15-minute timer that you turn when you walk down it. And so I'm heading down towards the American Revolution section. On his mind is one particular figure from the American Revolution, someone Jack thought history had almost entirely overlooked. We'd come across this guy named James Otis, who had written this sort of inflammatory pamphlet really early on, the early 1760s, you know, a good 10 or 15 years before the Declaration of Independence.

2:37Some people say, you know, this is the document that sort of got the ball rolling. Jack was fired up about this pamphlet. And if you're thinking this is kind of like a brochure that you get at a doctor's office, you know, with a diagram of the food pyramid, think again. Pamphlets were how big ideas were spread at the time. They could be printed quickly and disseminated widely. And it was also the place where you might have a hot take, right? So think of the famous pamphlets that we all learn later in American history, Thomas Paine's Common Sense or Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania by John Dickinson.

3:10And they're the ones that, you know, that lasted and were famous. And that's why my girlfriend at the time and I wanted to write this book, is Otis's pamphlet deserves to be that famous. But what made the story kind of great for us is that things go sideways for Otis. Actually, horribly. Tragic. That's like Shakespeare. A man, you know, soaring into greatness, crashing into unbelievable humiliation and then madness. And, you know, of course, I romanced the idea that, you know, these dangerous ideas that he was entertaining so early on, you know, had taken him over the edge. So without the internet to rely on, Jack is looking for a book that might tell him more about this tragic proto-founding father and his inflammatory pamphlet.

3:56And I'm poking through the books, looking for which ones I should check out. And I look behind one of the books and I see that there's something back there. a thin volume hand-sewn binding i'm like what pull out some books pull this thing out and this is the pamphlet that james otis wrote wow and this is an original copy it's a 1764 edition of the pamphlet that made him famous my first thought of course is i should steal this

4:35And I'm thinking that in the most virtuous way. Of course. They don't know what they have. They don't appreciate it. It's rotting into dust back there behind these books. I know what it is. It's the Magna Carta of America. I know what I'm holding in my hand. Wouldn't it just sit back there and turn into dust over the next hundred years if I don't save it? It's the only moral option is to take it. Right. And then the light timer cut off and I was plunged into darkness. Matching the darkness of your soul. Exactly. So, of course, I crab walked out of there, took the elevator to the ground floor and up to the sixth floor into the bright light of the rare books division and handed it to the curator.

5:22And I told her, this jewel of the American Revolution has been rotting away in the stacks. And I hope that they will take it and preserve it. and that's where it is today. Wow. But James Otis is still sort of in that hidden place in American history.

5:45To tell the story of James Otis and his seminal pamphlet is to tell the story of a bolt from the blue, a spark that would electrify the American Revolution. Before the Declaration of Independence was even a twinkle in the founding father's eyes, there was James Otis. And you could argue that the story of this pamphlet is the story of the founding document of the United States of America.

6:12From 99 % Invisible and BBC Studios, this is a history of the United States in 100 Objects. I'm Roman Mars. And today, Jack Hitt is back with the Otis pamphlet, America's forgotten Magna Carta and the life of the tragic hero who wrote it.

6:36The story of this pamphlet begins around 15 years before the Revolutionary War, in 1761, in the tiny hamlet of Boston, Massachusetts. You know, at the time, Boston is this tiny little port town, population 16 ,000. Wow. Yeah. So it's like a large university. You practically know everybody on campus, right? And certainly the people in power all knew each other. The city is so small, you could walk from one side of it to the other in under an hour, during which time you might hear boats from Boston Harbor creaking and knocking into the docks. You might encounter pigs loose in the street. And if you weren't like in a church, you were probably in a tavern.

7:21And just remember, you know, we're talking about a time when no one is thinking of rebellion. No one's thinking of independence. These are British citizens in Boston, 1761, a full 15 years before the Declaration of Independence. And at the time, you know, they're mostly merchants trying to make a living and make something of their new life in America. But the living the merchants were making wasn't always strictly legal. There's a good bit of smuggling and everybody kind of knows it, you know. And a lot of it was about getting cheap French molasses out of the Caribbean and into the rum kegs. One of the big trades in the New England colonies was making rum, but the cheapest molasses was from the French Caribbean.

8:07So to get around heavy tariffs, merchants smuggled it in and London was tired of it. They wanted those tax dollars or I suppose those tax shillings. And so to catch these smugglers, London has issued these new kinds of search warrants called writs of assistance. And they're blanket warrants. I mean, you don't need any evidence. You can come aboard a ship day or night. You can go into a house or a warehouse anytime during the day with the barest of suspicions. And the reason they're called writs of assistance is the other aspect of them is that they, any agent who holds this piece of paper can kind of dragoon anyone.

8:47into accompanying them on one of these searches. That's the assistance part. You command it. I mean, if they stop you, if one of these customs agents stops you and says, you have to help me, you have to help them. And so you have this like little mob practically coming into people's places and searching and looking for smuggled goods and everything. And the kicker was that the customs agents also had a financial incentive. They got a cut of whatever they found. So you've got agents prowling around town more and more like thugs and everyone is scared and on edge. And ostensibly the owner or the holder of this writ of assistance is an agent of the British government in some way.

9:27Oh yeah. These writs are executed, you know, by authority from London by the court in Massachusetts. Got it. So you really have this sort of like wonderful tempest in a teapot where you have, you know, Taxes are not being collected. Money is not going into the king's coffers. So you have that. And then you have the merchants, and they're also furious about, you know, the abuse of these blanket warrants. So, you know, everybody's like ready for a courtroom battle. And so the merchants bring a lawsuit and charge that, you know, these writs of assistance are illegal. Okay. So now it's February 1761.

10:10We're in the town hall. That's now called the old state house in Boston. And there were five British judges sitting in wigs and red robes at the front. And so you can imagine the public is permitted to come. And so the place is packed. First, the British government's lawyer gets up and makes the expected case in favor of the Ritz. Parliament authorized these search warrants and Parliament's word is law. Standard, you know, defense of the Ritz. Then it's the merchant's turn to try to convince the judges that the Ritz are illegal. and the first lawyer for the merchants gets up. A guy with a fabulous Dickensian name, Oxenbridge Thatcher.

10:52Oxenbridge makes an equally predictable case on the opposite side. But he makes this very tidy argument about the Reds, you know, citing precedent and so on. Oxenbridge sits down. So far, the packed audience doesn't seem moved. But the merchants have a second lawyer too. A hotshot, hot-headed man who just joined their team. And this is James Otis. Now, I just got to try to describe James Otis to you. And he was sort of known as a really hot shot kind of badass lawyer. He defended pirates in Nova Scotia. There were some young guys that went rioting on Guy Fawkes Day. He took their case, you know.

11:32And his friends had a nickname for him. He was called Furio. Oh, wow. You have to earn that one. And just to complicate things for Furio a little more, he had a personal history with the chief justice, a man named Thomas Hutchinson. Who at the time had just been appointed by the governor. And the man he had passed over for this job that the governor had passed over and given to Hutchinson was James Otis's father. Oh, I see. Yeah. So it's no secret. These two don't like each other. But they also fundamentally disagree. Otis quit his job to take this case. Until days before the trial, he was working for the government side, meaning he should have been arguing in favor of the Ritz.

12:17But he quit the job and dramatically offered to represent the merchants for free. Wow. Now, you can say, you know, he did this for principal, or he did this because he still steamed about his old man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. It's pretty exciting stuff. So Otis takes to the floor and he speaks for five hours. Now, let me just say something about five hours. I think people forget that way before television and radio, before telegraph, before even magazines, oratory was a whole other kind of, you know, public entertainment, really. I always love to remind people that, you know, we laud the Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln debates.

13:02There were seven Lincoln-Douglas debates. Each were three hours long. But people had all the time in the world, and this was great. So when I say he carried on for five hours, I mean, that was just like, this is a good show. That's what that means. They're binging a Netflix show. Right. This is Sopranos, season one. And you're just hitting, next episode, next episode. Exactly. And we know that he's Furio, right? He's a thunderous kind of fellow. So, you know, he warns the audience. He says, I'm going to make this rather dangerous argument. and even suggests one that may end up destroying me. And as we know them, these are the words he said right at the beginning of his talk.

13:37He says, let the consequences be what they will. I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man are to sacrifice his state, ease, health and applause, and even life itself to the sacred call of his country. Otis is preparing his audience. Whatever he's about to say about these writs of assistance, these search warrants, might be so crazy that it could threaten everything. And in fact, you know, he comes right in and lands it. He says, this writ, he says, appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of law that ever was found in an English law book.

14:24Swinging. What he's saying is that it's inherently wrong for thugs to break into your home without due process. He says, now one of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. And then he brings out this sort of cherished old metaphor. He says, a man's house is his castle. And whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. this writ if it should be declared legal would totally annihilate this privilege and then he goes right there he says no acts of parliament can establish such a writ no matter how parliament might word this writ it would be void well gulp what is so radical about this is the fact that he's questioning the very validity of parliament that there might be some laws that are deeper, more fundamental than the laws of parliament.

15:23Because what he's basically saying here is that the king's law doesn't stand up against natural law. That's right. He's saying parliament's law. So understand at this time, you know, no one has really brought into an American courtroom this idea of natural rights, these notions that haven't even been written down yet. These five appointed judges, they totally believe that parliament was supreme, no exceptions. So So remember, in the previous century, you know, a king had lost his head and another his throne in this like centuries long struggle that culminated in this idea that the law of parliament is supreme.

16:01And that's the word they always used. The law of parliament is supreme. So here he is saying like this right to privacy and these British rights in general predate parliament or any government. It's certainly older than any of parliament's mealy laws. And so how is this panel of judges who represent Parliament's mealy laws, how are they reacting to this? Well, the judges must have been floored. But, you know, the merchants in the room, they were moved. They thought, hey, you know, we were just trying to wiggle out of some smuggling fees. But now we're practically the knights of the roundtable in the court of King Arthur.

16:41The truth is, we don't know exactly what James Otis said in that room. There isn't a transcript of his speech. There was no minutes taker for the court. In fact, we only have one set of notes from it. There was really only one young guy who frantically scribbled down everything that he could get down on paper before it was all over. 25-year-old, freshly minted lawyer, John Adams. Wow. Yes. In the room. That John Adams. For people who don't know, I mean, I don't know. So that John Adams, founding father, second president, and kind of the scholar of the group. You know what I mean? Well, he's not only the scholar and the intellectual, but Adams, he kept his diaries.

17:23He's kind of the minutes taker of the entire revolution. I mean, we have his commentary on just about everything. And in fact, here, he famously writes a little later, Otis was a flame of fire. Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance. To be clear, Adams isn't a merchant. He has no money at stake here. He's just a young lawyer who is swept up in the brilliance and prescience of James Otis before him. Later, he swoons a little bit and he says, and this is this very famous line about this little moment, then and there, the child independence was born.

18:05Even the chief judge Hutchinson would later marvel at the magnitude of this moment. Later, Hutchinson writes his own little memoir and remembers that, you know, basically all the troubles in the colonies stem back to this time. And remembers that Otis, before this speech, Otis swore to him that he would, quote, set the province in flames.

18:33His five-hour oration may have radicalized the crowd of merchants and onlookers, but it failed to win the case. He lost the case, but he kind of won in the battle of ideas, at least in the crowd. Absolutely. And won in terms of his reputation. Otis becomes a politician. He's elected to the Massachusetts House. And meanwhile, over the next few years, he's taking this electrifying speech and refining his ideas, turning the argument into something he'll write down on paper in one of the most popular forms of political commentary of the day, the pamphlet. You know, this is three years after the speech when this pamphlet comes out.

19:11So he's taken this idea of like these natural rights, these British liberties, these inherent rights that predate government, and he's kind of pulling it all together. And in 1764, he publishes a little pamphlet with a big title, The Rights of the British Colonies, Asserted and Proved. Otis writes this pamphlet, and it does kind of go viral. In America, it goes through like three editions. It's published in London, so they're discussing it in Parliament. Wow. So, yeah, this is a serious piece of paper, right? And it's made all the more serious by some of the crazy ideas that are being thrown out from this pamphlet.

19:49But he says, and I think he believes in his heart, that he's trying to describe British government. He's describing what he thinks once existed in England. But in fact, he's kind of outlining what America is about to become. Otis goes much further in this pamphlet than he went in his courtroom speech. And he starts to outline a version of a country that was so foreign at the time, it would put his life in jeopardy. Which is strange because to us today, these crazy ideas sound so familiar. They're almost boring. For example, in the pamphlet, he lays out a structure for government. Instead of the supremacy of parliament, he describes three branches working in tandem.

20:31And he even uses the phrase checks and balances to describe how they work harmoniously. But of course, understand me, parliament does not see it that way. he also takes issue with how the colonists are taxed even though they don't have a vote in elections he says the very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented appears to me depriving them of one of their most essential rights as free men you know this is going to this idea is what sort of boils down to the bumper sticker taxation without representation is tyranny Yeah. Right. One of the central sort of mottos of the revolution that's in this pamphlet.

21:14And he evokes this idea in this dramatic moment that our rights aren't given to us by government, but by God. He says, Parliament cannot make two and two five. And he says, you know, the only person that can make natural law like two and two is four is God. Yeah. You know, and every founding person would kind of take this idea and make it their own. You know, Adams later talks about rights granted by our maker. And of course, Jefferson famously says, you know, inalienable rights endowed by our creator. But he's also imagining a version of America that is far more of a utopia than most of the founding fathers would conceive of.

21:54And he has this one passage. Check this out. He says at one point, the colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black. Whoa. Yeah, James Otis. in this pamphlet goes there. Because this is the absolute logic of all of these ideas. Absolutely. Absolutely. And he says, slavery threatens to reduce Europe and America to the ignorance and barbarity of the Dark Ages. Wow. I love that he sees it all. Right. It's all there. And he just carries it forward. Because he's hot-headed. You know, he's Furio. Yeah. He's going to take his argument to the end. Otis wasn't trying to start a revolution with this pamphlet.

22:38Remember, it's lovingly, awkwardly called The Rights of British Colonies, asserted and proved. He wants to reform Britain, not start a new country. But the logic he sets out, it's like a grenade. Once he asserted that natural law supersedes parliamentary law, that there are rights so fundamental that no government can take them away, the tab had been pulled and the grenade thrown.

23:31We'll see you next time. so you can shop with confidence. I have so many pieces of Article furniture in my house, but still my all-time favorite is the Geome sideboard. It looks really, really cool, and it houses all of my CDs. So if you have precious objects, get a Geome sideboard to put things into. You'll be glad you did. Article is offering our listeners$50 off your first purchase of$100 or more. To claim, visit article.com slash 99, and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com slash 99 for$50 off your first purchase of$100 or more. Insurance isn't one size fits all.

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26:08Well, you know, at first, of course, Otis is this great hero. And this is a very powerful and strong pamphlet. And here in the States, they think it's all great. Now, it does get published in London. And, you know, like I said, this argument that Parliament is not supreme is just, you know, that is not going to sit. I did find this. The eminent jurist of the day was a man named Lord Mansfield, and he did offer this opinion. Quote, it is said the man is mad. The book is full of wildness. Meanwhile, in the colonies, counter pamphlets are written. Customs officers start bad mouthing him. So Otis responds in follow up pamphlets, hot takes flying back and forth.