Barnabas Bidwell (August 23, 1763 – July 27, 1833) was an author, teacher and politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, active in Massachusetts and Upper Canada (now Ontario).

He 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.

Nonetheless, the controversy, exaggerated in the press by his Federalist Party enemies, effectively scuppered his potential appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Upper Canada, he won a seat in the provincial Legislative Assembly but his political opponents managed to expel him on charges of having his American citizenship, being a fugitive and having immoral character.

He successfully defended the president's policy of imposing economic sanctions in response to British violations of neutral rights at sea.

He 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.

Accused of embezzling money while he was Berkshire County treasurer, he and his family fled to Upper Canada (now Ontario) in 1810 and settled in Kingston until an investigation could determine what if any liability he held.

The charge was advanced by his political enemies in the Federalist Party, apparently to halt his rise as a Democratic-Republican and trusted confidant of Jefferson.

There is little reason, moreover, to doubt his assertion that because his public offices required his presence elsewhere in the United States, he employed clerks to handle his duties in Berkshire, one of whom, who had died by the time of financial exposure, had been responsible.