Warren, James

WARREN, JAMES. (1726–1808). Political leader. Massachusetts. The eldest son of James and Penelope (Winslow) Warren, he was not related to Joseph and John Warren, who also achieved some fame during the Revolutionary War era. Born at Plymouth, James was graduated from Harvard College in 1745, succeeded his father as Plymouth county sheriff in 1757, and pursued careers as a merchant and gentleman farmer. In 1754 he married the sister of James Otis; Mercy Otis Warren (1728–1814) is remembered as a poet and one of the most perceptive of the first generation of historians of the Revolution.

James sat in the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court and the Provincial Congress from 1766 until 1778. He was speaker in 1769 and 1770, and helped to establish the local Committee of Correspondence. He was a close friend of John and Samuel Adams, and succeeded Joseph Warren as president of the Provincial Congress. He became speaker of the House of Representatives in the new General Court. Between 27 July 1775 and 19 April 1776 he was paymaster general of the Continental army, and from 1776 to 1781 he was on the Navy Board for the Eastern Department. When, in September 1776, the General Court designated him one of three major generals to lead a force into Rhode Island, he was unwilling to serve under a Continental officer of lesser rank and excused himself on the grounds of a recent illness. The next year he resigned his commission to avoid another such situation, and his political enemy, John Hancock, used this to undermine his reputation to such a degree that Warren failed to be re-elected to the legislature in 1778. In 1779 he won re-election, but was unable to win again until 1787. He held a number of offices after the war, but was unable to amass the political power needed to compete with such antagonists as Hancock. "I am content to move in a small sphere," he had written to John Adams in 1775. "I expect no distinction but that of an honest man who has exerted every nerve." Yet when he later sought and failed to achieve such distinctions as the office of lieutenant governor and member of Congress he was resentful. "His mind has been soured, and he became discontented and querulous," wrote John Quincy Adams. He opposed ratification of the federal Constitution in 1788, believing that it would lead to a dissolution of the state governments, and became an Anti-Federalist.

SEE ALSO Hancock, John.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Shipton, Clifford K. New England Life in the 18th Century: Representative Biographies from "Sibley's Harvard Graduates." Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963.

                              revised by Harold E. Selesky