Barnabas Bidwell
Barnabas Bidwell (August 23, 1763 – July 27, 1833) was an author, teacher and politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, active in Massachusetts and Upper Canada. Educated at Yale, he practised law in western Massachusetts and served as treasurer of Berkshire County. He served in the state legislature as representative and senator, as well as in the United States Congress as spokesman for the administration of Thomas Jefferson. He was effective in defending the administration's positions and passing important legislation, and was the Massachusetts Attorney General from 1807 to 1810, when exaggerated press accounts of irregularities in the Berkshire County books halted his political career and prompted his flight to Upper Canada. Bidwell later paid the $63.18, plus fines, which he attributed to a Berkshire County clerk while he was away on duties in Boston. Nonetheless, the controversy, exaggerated in the press by his Federalist Party enemies, effectively scuppered his potential appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barnabas Bidwell | |
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Portrait by John Brewster, Jr. | |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 12th district | |
In office March 4, 1805 – March 3, 1807 | |
Preceded by | Simon Larned |
Succeeded by | Ezekiel Bacon |
Attorney General of Massachusetts | |
In office June 15, 1807 – August 30, 1810 | |
Governor | James Sullivan Levi Lincoln Sr. Christopher Gore Elbridge Gerry |
Preceded by | James Sullivan |
Succeeded by | Perez Morton |
Member of the Massachusetts State Senate | |
In office 1801–1804 | |
Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives | |
In office 1805–1807 | |
Treasurer of Berkshire County, Massachusetts[1] | |
In office September, 1791 – August, 1810 | |
Personal details | |
Born | August 23, 1763 Township No. 1 (now Monterey, Massachusetts), Province of Massachusetts Bay, British America |
Died | July 27, 1833 69) Bath, Upper Canada | (aged
Resting place | Cataraqui Cemetery, Kingston, Ontario, Canada |
Nationality | American, Canadian |
Political party | Democratic-Republican |
Children | Marshall Spring Bidwell |
Alma mater | Yale College class of 1785, Brown University |
Profession | Attorney |
In Canada, he won a seat in the provincial assembly but his political opponents managed to expel him on charges of having his American citizenship, being a fugitive and having immoral character.
Early life
Bidwell was son of American Revolutionary War Patriot Adonijah Bidwell, Yale 1740, and Jemima Devotion in Township No. 1 (now Monterey, Massachusetts), and he graduated from Yale College in 1785. Through his mother, he was descended from John Haynes, 5th Governor of Massachusetts and 1st Governor of Connecticut, and George Wyllys, 4th Governor of Connecticut. He later attended the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (now known as Brown University) in Providence, Rhode Island. He studied law under judge Theodore Sedgwick of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Sedgwick, a prominent member of the House of Representatives and later a senator, was an important spokesman for the Federalist Party. He was admitted to the Massachusetts state bar in 1805 and commenced practice in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
US political career
Bidwell broke with the Federalists and became the leading spokesman of the Democratic-Republican administration of President Thomas Jefferson in the US Congress.
Bidwell was a Massachusetts state senator from 1801 to 1804 and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1805 to 1807. Bidwell was elected as a Democratic-Republican and served in the Ninth and Tenth Congresses (March 4, 1805 – July 13, 1807).
In the House of Representatives, Bidwell displaced John Randolph of Roanoke, as administration leader and become the leading spokesman of Jefferson. He successfully defended the president's policy of imposing economic sanctions in response to British violations of neutral rights at sea. He also directed the campaign to purchase Florida and was the leading advocate for passage of the bill that abolished the slave trade in the US, which took effect in 1808. He was Attorney General of Massachusetts (June 15, 1807 – August 30, 1810), when his political opponents found in a minor discrepancy in the Berkshire County books and so exaggerated allegations of corruption.
Accused of embezzling money while he was Berkshire County treasurer, he and his family fled to Canada in 1810 and settled in Kingston, Upper Canada (now Ontario) until an investigation could determine what if any liability he held. The charge was forwarded by his political enemies in the Federalist Party, apparently to halt his rise of this Democratic-Republican and trusted confidant of Jefferson. At the time, he has been under consideration by President James Madison for a position on the US Supreme Court. The final judgment of the Berkshire court against him, which he paid in 1817, amounted to only $330.64 damages and a paltry $63.18 costs. Since Bidwell was promptly able to pay both amounts, it was not because of the judgment that he fled. There is little reason, moreover, to doubt his assertion that because his public offices required his presence elsewhere in the United States, he employed clerks to handle his duties in Berkshire, one of whom, who has died by the time of financial exposure, had been responsible. He fled, he claimed, out of fear of his political enemies, who were exaggerating his personal responsibility and indebtedness.
Exile
Bidwell won a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada for Lennox and Addington but failed to take his seat because his election was petitioned against on the grounds that he was a fugitive from justice, he had an immoral character, and he had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States.[2] John Beverley Robinson and Henry John Boulton paid for an investigation into Bidwell's career in the United States to discredit Bidwell's character. The investigation was published in The Kingston Chronicle and Bidwell proved that all the charges against him in the United States had been settled.[3] After an unusually long debate, Bidwell was expelled from the House by a vote of 17-16.[4]
Bidwell remained in Canada until his death.
Bidwell died in Bath, Upper Canada, and his remains are interred in Kingston's Cataraqui Cemetery.
Legacy
His son, Marshall Spring Bidwell, successfully sat in the same seat from 1824 to 1836. Marshall Spring Bidwell later left for the United States. Bidwell's sister, Theodosia Bidwell Brewer, was the grandmother of U.S. Supreme Court Justice David J. Brewer, who sat on the court from 1889 to 1910 with his uncle, Stephen J. Field.
Footnotes
- Dexter, Franklin Bowditch (1907), Biographical sketches of the graduates of Yale college with annals of the College History Volume IV, New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, p. 388
- McMullen, John Mercier (1891), The history of Canada: from its first discovery to the present time, Volume 1, Brockville, Ont.: McMullen & Co., p. 450
- Raible, Chris (1992). Muddy York Mud: Scandal & Scurrility in Upper Canada. Toronto: Curiosity House. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-9696418-0-3.CS1 maint: date and year (link)
- McMullen, John Mercier (1891), The history of Canada: from its first discovery to the present time, Volume 1, Brockville, Ont.: McMullen & Co., p. 451
External links
- United States Congress. "Barnabas Bidwell (id: B000446)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- Marshall Spring Bidwell family fonds, Archives of Ontario
U.S. House of Representatives | ||
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Preceded by Simon Larned |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 12th congressional district March 4, 1805 – July 13, 1807 |
Succeeded by Ezekiel Bacon |
Legal offices | ||
Preceded by James Sullivan |
Massachusetts Attorney General June 15, 1807 – August 30, 1810 |
Succeeded by Perez Morton |