The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Lowell, John (jurist)

LOWELL, John, American jurist: b. Newburyport, Mass., 17 June 1743; d. Roxbury, Mass., 6 May 1802. He was graduated from Harvard in 1760, studied law, entered practice at Newburyport in 1762, represented that town in the general court in 1777 and Boston in 1779, and was a delegate to the convention of 1780 which framed the constitution of Massachusetts. He obtained the insertion in this document of the clause of the preamble which declares that “all men are born free and equal,” with the belief that slavery would thus be abolished in Massachusetts. The Supreme Court of the State upheld his contention in 1783, and thereby slavery in the State was abolished at his initiative. In 1782-83 he was a delegate in the Continental Congress, and in 1782 was appointed by the Congress one of three judges of a Court of Appeals to hear appeals from courts of admiralty. In 1784 he was a member of the New York-Massachusetts Boundary Commission. He was made by Washington in 1789 judge of the United States District Court of Massachusetts, and by Adams in 1801 chief justice of the First Circuit of the United States Circuit Court. He was a founder of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1780), and one of its councillors. He published an oration on James Bowdoin the elder in Vol. II of the ‘Memoirs’ of the American Academy; and a poem in ‘Pietas et Gratulatio’ (1761).