Lorenzo Sabine


Lorenzo Sabine was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts now more remembered for his research and publishing concerning the Loyalists of the American Revolution than as a public servant.

Background and Early Life

Born in New Concord, New Hampshire, Sabine moved to Boston, Massachusetts, with his parents in 1811 and to Hampden, Maine, in 1814.
He completed preparatory studies.
At the age of eighteen, he moved to Eastport, Maine, and became employed as a clerk and afterwards engaged in mercantile pursuits.
He was editor of the Eastport Sentinel.
Founder of the Eastport Lyceum.
Incorporator of Eastport Academy and Eastport Athenaeum.
He served as member of the Maine House of Representatives in 1833 and 1834.
Deputy collector of customs at Eastport 1841–1843.
He moved to Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1848, having been appointed a trial justice.
Sabine was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-second Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Benjamin Thompson and served from December 13, 1852, to March 3, 1853.
He was not a candidate for the Thirty-third Congress.
He moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts, having been appointed secretary of the Boston Board of Trade.
He also served as special agent of the United States Treasury Department.

Loyalist Studies

From early childhood, Sabine, in his own words, was "revolution-mad." But, not until 1821, when he moved to Maine and was close enough to pursue his passion, did he realize the great resource available and the profound, for the times, insight that "there was more than one side to the Revolution." Prior to this "every 'Tory' was as bad as bad could be, every 'son of Liberty' as good as possible." During the 1840s, Sabine published the results of his research in the North American Review. The article were not well received by "patriotic" Americans. One of the few to applaud his research and publishing was Harvard-based historian Jared Sparks. When the fruits of his labor appeared in 1847 in revised and expanded form as The American Loyalists, or Biographical Sketches of Adherents to the British Crown in The War of the Revolution; Alphabetically Arranged; with a Preliminary Historical Essay a firestorm of controversy erupted.
He died in Roxbury, Massachusetts, April 14, 1877. He was interred in Hillside Cemetery, Eastport, Maine.

Works by Lorenzo Sabine (in Chronological Order)