1. Barnabas Bidwell was an author, teacher and politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, active in Massachusetts and Upper Canada.
26 Facts About Barnabas Bidwell
1. 2.
Barnabas Bidwell 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.
3.
Barnabas Bidwell was effective in defending the administration's positions and passing important legislation.
4.
Barnabas Bidwell resigned his seat in Congress in July 1807.
5.
Barnabas Bidwell 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.
6.
Bidwell later paid the $63.18, plus fines, which he attributed to an error by a Berkshire County clerk while Bidwell had been away on duties in Boston.
7.
Barnabas Bidwell remained in Upper Canada for the rest of his life.
8.
Barnabas Bidwell was son of American Revolutionary War Patriot Adonijah Barnabas Bidwell, Yale 1740, and Jemima Devotion in Township No 1, and he graduated from Yale College in 1785.
9.
Barnabas Bidwell later attended the college in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in Providence, Rhode Island.
10.
Barnabas Bidwell studied law under judge Theodore Sedgwick of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
11.
Barnabas Bidwell was admitted to the Massachusetts state bar in 1805 and commenced practice in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
12.
Barnabas was married to Mary Gray Bidwell and lived a very happy life with his wife.
13.
Barnabas Bidwell was a Massachusetts state senator from 1801 to 1804 and a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1805 to 1807.
14.
Barnabas Bidwell was elected to the federal House of Representatives in 1805 as a Democratic-Republican.
15.
Barnabas Bidwell served in the Ninth and Tenth Congresses, resigning his seat in 1807.
16.
Barnabas Bidwell broke with the Federalists and became the leading spokesman of the Democratic-Republican administration of President Thomas Jefferson in the US Congress.
17.
Barnabas Bidwell successfully defended the president's policy of imposing economic sanctions in response to British violations of neutral rights at sea.
18.
Barnabas Bidwell 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.
19.
Barnabas Bidwell was Attorney General of Massachusetts from 1807 to 1810, when his political opponents found a minor discrepancy in the Berkshire County books and made exaggerated allegations of corruption.
20.
Since Barnabas Bidwell was promptly able to pay both amounts, it was not because of the judgment that he fled.
21.
Barnabas Bidwell fled, he claimed, out of fear of his political enemies, who were exaggerating his personal responsibility and indebtedness.
22.
Barnabas Bidwell won a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada for Lennox and Addington but was unable to take his seat.
23.
Barnabas Bidwell's political opponents in Upper Canada brought an election petition challenging his election 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.
24.
The investigation was published in The Kingston Chronicle and Barnabas Bidwell proved that all the charges against him in the United States had been settled.
25.
Barnabas Bidwell remained in Upper Canada until his death at Bath.
26.
Bidwell's sister, Theodosia Bidwell Brewer, was the grandmother of US Supreme Court Justice David J Brewer, who sat on the court from 1889 to 1910 with his uncle, Stephen J Field.