AMES, FISHER (1758-1808), American statesman, orator and political writer, was born at Dedham, Mass., on April 9, 1758. He graduated at Harvard college in 1774, and began the practice of the law at Dedham in 1781, but eventually abandoned that profession for the pursuit of politics. He was a prominent mem ber of the Massachusetts convention which (Feb. 1788) ratified for that state the Federal Constitution, and in the same year in the lower house of the state legislature, he distinguished himself by his eloquence and readiness in debate. During the eight years of Washington's administration (1789-97) he was a prominent Federalist member of the national House of Representatives. On April 28, 1796, when the Republicans, hostile to the Jay Treaty, were on the point of holding up the appropriation necessary for its execution, Ames made what has been considered the greatest speech of his life and secured the passage of the appropriation. When Washington retired from the presidency, Congress voted him an address and chose Ames to deliver it. Ames was one of the group of New England ultra-Federalists known as the "Essex junto," who opposed the French policy of President John Adams in 1798, and were conspicuous for their British sympathies. He died on July 4, 1808.
His writings and speeches, which display great fertility of imagina tion, were collected and published, with a memoir of the author, in 1809, by the Rev. Dr. J. T. Kirkland. A more complete edition was published by the statesman's son, Seth Ames, in 1854.