184 



THE FEENCH BLOOD IN AMERICA 



Public 

 Servant 



Defender of 

 Liberty 



President 

 Convention of 

 1779 



American 

 Academy 



chiisetts General Court when he was twenty-six years old. 

 His ability soon asserted itself and three years later he 

 was made a member of the council. Here he distinguished 

 himself by his firm opposition to the royal governor and 

 to the encroachments of the crown upon the popular 

 liberty of the colony. His popularity with the people 

 became thus solidly intrenched, while the royal officers 

 both hated and feared him. In 1769 he was again chosen 

 as one of the councillors and was promptly negatived by 

 Governor Bernard. This aroused the resentment of the 

 Bostonians, and they showed their feeling by immediately 

 electing him to the assembly with an overwhelming 

 majority. Sickness alone prevented him from attending 

 the Continental Congress to which he was delegated in 

 1774, but by the end of the next year he was so far re- 

 covered as to be able to act as president of the council. 

 The constitutional convention which assembled in 1779 

 chose him for its presiding officer, and he took prominent 

 part in shaping the action of that body. Shortly after 

 his election as governor of the state in 1785, he was con- 

 fronted by a difficult problem in the shape of Shay's Re- 

 bellion. His firmness and decisive action quelled the 

 rapidly growing insurrection without resort to blood- 

 shed, though, in taking his prompt measures he was com- 

 pelled to pay the expenses of the militia largely out of his 

 own pocket. In the words of President Timothy Dwight, 

 "This measure preserved the State, perhaps the Union, 

 and deserved for the author of it a statue." His last 

 public service was as a member of the convention that 

 adopted the federal constitution in 1788. 



Although most of Governor Bowdoin's rapidly declining 

 energies were devoted to politics, he yet found time to aid 

 and further many charitable and scientific enterprises. 

 He was one of the founders, and the first president, of the 

 American Academy of Arts and Letters ; and willed to 

 the society his valuable library. He aided in establish- 

 ing the Massachusetts Humane Society. For mauy j'cars 



