John Lowell, Jr.

John Lowell Jr. (October 6, 1769 in Newburyport, Essex County, Massachusetts – March 12, 1840 in Boston) was an American lawyer and influential member of the Federalist Party in the early days of the United States of America. Career John Lowell Jr. was the son of John Lowell (1743–1802). He graduated from Phillips Andover and then from Harvard University in 1786. After studying law, he was admitted to the bar in 1789 (like his father, before he was twenty years old). In 1797, he gave the Fourth of July Address at Faneuil Hall in Boston, in which he criticized revolutionary France. From 1798-1801, he served as a Federalist member of the Massachusetts legislature. In 1801, along with Harrison Gray Otis, he defended Jason Fairbanks against charges of murdering Elizabeth Fales in Dedham, Massachusetts. Despite a vigorous defense, Fairbanks was convicted and executed by hanging. This, followed by the death of his father in 1802, caused him to suffer a breakdown. He retired from active law practice in 1803, and traveled with his family to Europe for the next three years, touring England, France, and Italy. After his return to the United States in 1806, he took up residence at his father's old estate in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and devoted himself to literature, writing on politics, agriculture, theology, and other topics, under various signatures, such as: "Citizen of Massachusetts", "Massachusetts Lawyer", "Layman", and "Yankee Farmer". He vigorously opposed French influence and the policies of the Democratic-Republican Party, writing many spirited pamphlets (some signed "The Boston Rebel", some "The Roxbury Farmer"), including: The Antigallican (1797), Remarks on the Hon. J. Q. Adams's Review of Mr Ames's Works (1809), New England Patriot, being a Candid Comparison of the Principles and Conduct of the Washington and Jefferson Administrations (1810), Appeals to the People on the Causes and Consequences of War with Great Britain (1811) and Mr Madison's War (1812). The pamphlets contained an extreme statement of the anti-war wing of the Federalist party and defended British impressment as a right of long standing. Lowell is believed to be the first to use the term "Mr. Madison's War" as a derogatory nickname for the War of 1812.