During his years as judge and attorney general he was responsible for drafting and revising much of the state's legislation as part of the transition from British rule to independence.

While attorney general he worked with the commission that established the border between Maine and New Brunswick, and prosecuted several high-profile murder cases.

[4] Sullivan was educated at home, and any prospects for military service were dashed when his foot was crushed in a childhood accident.

[9] He supplemented his legal work by acting as an agent for Boston-based merchant interests, including John Hancock, one of Boston's wealthiest men.

[11] James Sullivan is regarded as a descendant of the O'Sullivan Beare clan, from the Beara Peninsula of the Cork and Kerry area.

According to John Adams, Sullivan used his financial rewards to invest in local real estate, including farmlands and mills.

[14] When Governor Thomas Gage indefinitely delayed the next meeting of the assembly the following October, its members met anyway, establishing the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.

[15] This body exercised de facto control over Massachusetts during the early years of the American Revolutionary War.

[22] At the time of his appointment to the bench, the position was seen as particularly risky, because it was a clear representation of anti-British authority whose placeholders were thought to be risking their lives should the British succeed in putting down the rebellion.

[25] Between 1780 and 1782 he and the rest of the court were active in harmonizing the state's laws with the document, revising and discarding old statutes, and assisting in the drafting of new ones.

[33] In the debate he proposed that the convention conditionally adopt the Constitution, subject to Congress considering and acting on a suite of amendments.

In 1801 he prosecuted the Dedham murderer Jason Fairbanks, who had retained Federalist Harrison Gray Otis as his defense council.

Sullivan and Otis faced off again in 1807 in the sensational trial of Thomas Selfridge, accused of murdering Charles Austin.

[49][50] Although Sullivan sought in some ways to be a moderate voice in the highly partisan disagreements between Federalists and Republicans, he supported the policy of President Thomas Jefferson in embargoing trade with Great Britain and France, who were then embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars.

The Embargo Act of 1807 had a significant negative impact on shipping interests based in Massachusetts ports, and Federalists sought to use this, and the threats of war emanating from the Jefferson administration, to unseat Sullivan in 1808.

Federalist Senator Timothy Pickering wrote an open letter raising the specter of war and charging Jefferson with failing to publish critical documents in ongoing negotiations.

Sullivan's defense included letters by Senator John Quincy Adams countering the Federalist charges.

[51] Republicans were unhappy with Sullivan's handling of the political attacks, and for his refusal to remove Federalists from patronage positions in the government.

In the spring of 1808, before the May opening of the legislature, Sullivan's health began to decline (epilepsy and an "organic disease of the heart"), so he was unable to seize the initiative.

When he finally made his speech to the assembly, he failed to respond to the political aspects of the dispute, and called for national unity in dealing with outside interests.

[54] Sullivan also came under criticism by political partisans on both sides for issuing large numbers of exemptions to the embargo, ostensibly to avoid civil strife in the event of a grain shortage.

Based on widespread opinion that the Federalists were likely to lose the presidential election, Sullivan, his health failing, forwarded the electoral votes on to Congress.

[56] He died in office on December 10, 1808, aged 64,[57] and was interred in Boston's Granary Burying Ground in a tomb shared by colonial governor Richard Bellingham.

[61] Sullivan was a major moving force and leading director of the company that oversaw the Middlesex Canal (construction of which began in 1793).

The canal connected the Merrimack River at present-day Lowell (then still East Chelmsford) to the port of Boston, ending roughly at Sullivan Square, which is named in his honor.

[10] Sullivan also predicted that Maine would eventually separate from Massachusetts, because "it is so large and populous, and its situation so peculiar, that it cannot remain long" a part of the other state.