Governor's Council and Opposition To British Rule
Bowdoin was elected to the provincial assembly in 1753 and served there until named to the governor's council in 1756. Although at first supportive of the royal governor, his politics became more radical as British colonial policy became increasingly unpopular, and Bowdoin believed those policies would have a negative effect on the New England economy. Personal factors may also have played a role in Bowdoin's shift in views: John Temple, the local customs commissioner and Bowdoin's son in law, was embroiled in nasty disputes with Governor Francis Bernard in the 1760s. By 1769 Bowdoin was one of the principal spokesmen of the opposition to the governor on the council. In that year Bernard rejected Bowdoin's renewed election to the council. Bowdoin, however, was instrumental in causing Bernard's downfall from office. Private letters critical of the provincial government that Bernard had written were published in 1769 to great outrage. Bowdoin rebutted the charges and claims made in Bernard's letters, and published a highly polemic pamphlet arguing for Bernard's removal that was sent to the colonial secretary, Lord Hillsborough.
Bowdoin won reelection to the assembly in 1770, and was promptly reelected to the council the same year, soon after Bernard left the province. Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson acquiesced to Bowdoin's return to the council, reasoning that he was less dangerous there than as an outspoken critic in the lower house. However, the seat Bowdoin vacated in the assembly was taken by Samuel Adams, another leading political opponent of the royal governors, and Hutchinson was faced with the prospect of opposition on both fronts.
After the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, Bowdoin was chosen by the Boston town meeting to serve on a committee that investigated the affair. The committee took depositions and produced a report describing the event that was published as A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre. The work was highly critical not only of the governor, but also the behavior of the British Army troops that were stationed in Boston, and is characterized by historian Francis Walett as one of the major propaganda pieces influencing public opinion in the colonies. Bowdoin's opposition to British policies continued during the Hutchinson administration, and when letters by Hutchinson were published to outrage similar to the Bernard letters affair, Bowdoin again penned works highly critical of the governor and calling for his removal. Hutchinson's successor, General Thomas Gage, vetoed Bowdoin's reelection to the council in 1774, citing "express orders from His Majesty" that he be excluded from that body.
Read more about this topic: James Bowdoin
Famous quotes containing the words governor, council, opposition, british and/or rule:
“Three years ago, also, when the Sims tragedy was acted, I said to myself, There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of Massachusetts,—what has he been about the last fortnight? Has he had as much as he could do to keep on the fence during this moral earthquake?... He could at least have resigned himself into fame.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“Anthropology is the science which tells us that people are the same the whole world over—except when they are different.”
—Nancy Banks-Smith, British columnist. Quoted in Guardian (London, July 21, 1988)
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)