James Sullivan (April 22, 1744 – December 10, 1808) was an American lawyer and politician in Massachusetts. He was an early associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, served as the state's attorney general for many years, and as governor of the state from 1807 until his death.
Sullivan was born and raised in Berwick, Maine (then part of Massachusetts), and studied law with his brother John. After establishing a successful law practice, he became actively involved in the Massachusetts state government during the American Revolutionary War, and was appointed to the state's highest court in March 1776. He was involved in drafting the state constitution and the state's ratifying convention for the United States Constitution. After resigning from the bench in 1782 he returned to private practice, and was appointed Attorney General in 1790. During his years as judge and attorney general he was responsible for drafting and revising much of the state's legislation as part of the transition from British rule to independence. While attorney general he worked with the commission that established the border between Maine and New Brunswick, and prosecuted several high-profile murder cases.
Sullivan was a political partisan, supporting the Democratic-Republican Party and subscribing to Jeffersonian republican ideals. He supported John Hancock and Samuel Adams in their political careers, and was a frequent contributor, often under one of many pseudonyms, to political dialogue in the state's newspapers. He ran unsuccessfully for governor several times before finally winning the office in 1807. He died in office during his second term.
In addition to his political pursuits Sullivan engaged in charitable and business endeavors. He was a leading proponent of the Middlesex Canal and the first bridge between Boston and Cambridge, and was instrumental in the development of Boston's first public water supply. He was the founding president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and held membership in a variety of other charitable organizations. He wrote one of the first histories of his native Maine, and a legal text on land titles. Legal historian Charles Warren calls him one of the most important legal figures of the time in Massachusetts.
James Sullivan was born on April 22, 1744, the fourth son of John Sullivan and Margery Brown Sullivan, in Berwick, a part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay that is now in the state of Maine. Sullivan's parents were originally from Ireland: his father's family, descendants of the ancient Gaelic O'Sullivan Beare clan, hailed from the Beara Peninsula region of counties Cork and Kerry in the province of Munster, and his mother was orphaned as an infant in County Cork. The couple first met onboard the same transatlantic ship voyage to America, when his mother was a young child. When she came of age, his father wooed and wed her. Settled in Berwick, John Sullivan was a schoolteacher and farmer. James was educated at home, and any prospects for military service were dashed when his foot was crushed in a childhood accident. He also became afflicted with epilepsy while relatively young and suffered from generally mild seizures throughout his life. While convalescing from his foot injury, he read a great deal, learning Latin and the classics. His older brother John, a law student, was instructed to supply him with legal books and training. James later apprenticed at his brother's law practice in Durham, New Hampshire and eventually was admitted to the bar in Massachusetts. He established his own practice first in Georgetown, then shortly afterward in Biddeford, where he was the town's first resident lawyer. In 1768, he married Hetty Odiorne, the daughter of a successful Portsmouth, New Hampshire merchant.
Sullivan's law practice flourished, and by the time he was 30, he was one of York County's leading citizens. He supplemented his legal work by acting as an agent for the interests of Boston-based merchants, including John Hancock, one of Boston's wealthiest men. For his services as a lawyer successfully defending the land claims of early colonists' heirs, in 1773, Sullivan was offered part of a tract within one of the claims he defended, which encompassed roughly twenty miles square situated between the Great Ossipee, Saco, Little Ossipee, and Newichawannock (now Salmon Falls) rivers. Sullivan received approximately six thousand acres of land within the Ossipee tract, and his property was organized as Limerick Plantation, apparently named for the Irish birthplace of his father. In 1775, Sullivan helped to settle the area, personally assisting in the clearing of land. On March 6, 1787, the settlement was formally incorporated as the town of Limerick. According to John Adams, Sullivan shrewdly used his finances to invest in local real estate, including farmlands and industrial properties such as mills.
Sullivan was an early and outspoken opponent of British colonial policies leading to the revolution. He was elected to the provincial assembly in 1774. When it first met in June, Sullivan was a leader in calling for a Continental Congress. When Governor Thomas Gage indefinitely delayed the next meeting of the assembly the following October, its members met anyway, establishing the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. This body exercised de facto control over Massachusetts during the early years of the American Revolutionary War. In addition to sitting in the provincial congress, Sullivan was a leading organizer of colonial defenses in York County, sitting on its committee of correspondence and other bodies. He was sent in 1775 as part of a commission to inspect the troops and facilities at Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, which was nominally under the control of Benedict Arnold, who had been issued a Massachusetts colonel's commission and succeeded in capturing it with the assistance of Ethan Allen. The arduous journey made Sullivan ill for several months afterward.
In late 1775 Sullivan was a member of the committee that drafted legislation establishing the Massachusetts State Navy. Under its terms, three positions were established for admiralty judges; Sullivan was appointed to be the admiralty judge for the eastern district (i.e. Maine) in addition to his other duties. During his period of service in the provincial congress he drafted a large amount of legislation and was tireless in his activities on many committees. He resigned this post when in March 1776 he was offered a seat on the Superior Court of Judicature (as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was then known).
Judicial service and postwar activities
At the time of his appointment to the bench, the position was seen as particularly risky, because it was a clear representation of anti-British authority whose placeholders were thought to be risking their lives should the British succeed in putting down the rebellion. The most noteworthy case Sullivan sat on was a preliminary hearing in Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison, one of the Quock Walker cases where the court in 1783 decided that slavery was incompatible with the state constitution. Sullivan publicly expressed opposition to slavery, and predicted in his writings that the issue would become contentious in the future.
Sullivan participated in the 1779 convention that drafted the new state constitution. Between 1780 and 1782 he and the rest of the court were active in harmonizing the state's laws with the document, revising and discarding old statutes, and assisting in the drafting of new ones.
In 1779 Sullivan was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard College. He served on the court until 1782, when he resigned because his salary was insufficient to meet his expenses, and he could no longer afford to cover the difference. He opened a law office in Boston, and moved into a house in Menotomy (now Arlington, then still part of Cambridge). Although he was elected to represent Massachusetts at the Congress of the Confederation from 1782 to 1783 he did not attend, again for financial reasons. He was politically active in the state, however, supporting John Hancock and then Samuel Adams for governor. He was a prolific writer, contributing frequently to the political discourse that took place in Massachusetts' many newspapers under a variety of pseudonyms.