Mercy Otis Warren (September 24,[1] 1728 – October 19, 1814) was a political writer and propagandist of the American Revolution. In the eighteenth century, topics such as politics and war were thought to be the province of men. Few women had the education or training to write about such matters. Warren was the exception. During the years before the American Revolution, Warren published poems and plays that attacked royal authority in Massachusetts and urged colonists to resist British infringements on colonial rights and liberties. During the debate over the U.S. Constitution in 1788, she issued a pamphlet, written under the pseudonym, "A Columbian Patriot," that opposed ratification of the document and advocated the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. In 1790, she published a collection of poems and plays under her own name, a highly unusual occurrence at the time. In 1805, she published one of the earliest histories of the American war for independence, a three- volume "History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution". This was also the first history of the Revolution authored by a woman. Although an exceptional woman herself, Warren was not a feminist in the modern sense. She believed in women's intellectual equality with men, but did not promote the cause of women's political rights.
Although Warren had no formal education, she studied with the Reverend Jonathan Russell who tutored her brother James Otis in preparation for Harvard College. James Otis would later become an attorney and one of the foremost early opponents of Thomas Hutchinson, a royal official in Massachusetts. Through her brother, she met her husband James Warren, and became acquainted with John Adams. Under their influence,Mercy became acquainted with the leading arguments against Hutchinson and the larger problems with British policy in the colonies. Mercy's husband James encouraged her to write, fondly referring to her as the "scribbler"[1] and she became his chief correspondent and sounding board.[2] Through their correspondence they increased the awareness of women's issues, were supportive, and influenced the course of events to further America's cause.[2]
She became a correspondent and adviser to many political leaders, including Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and especially John Adams, who became her literary mentor in the years leading to the Revolution. In a letter to James Warren, Adams wrote, "Tell your wife that God Almighty has entrusted her with the Powers for the good of the World, which, in the cause of his Providence, he bestows on few of the human race. That instead of being a fault to use them, it would be criminal to neglect them."[3]
Prior to the American Revolution, in 1772, during a political meeting at the Warren's home, they formed the Committees of Correspondence along with Samuel Adams. Warren wrote "no single step contributed so much to cement the union of the colonies". Since Warren knew most of the leaders of the Revolution personally, she was continually at or near the center of events from 1765 to 1789. She combined her vantage point with a talent for writing to become both a poet and a historian of the Revolutionary era. All Mercy Otis Warren’s work was published anonymously until 1790.[2] She wrote several plays, including the satiric The Adulateur (1772). Directed against Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, the play foretold the War of Revolution.
In 1773, she wrote The Defeat, also featuring the character based on Hutchinson, and in 1775 Warren published The Group, a satire conjecturing what would happen if the British king abrogated the Massachusetts charter of rights. The anonymously published The Blockheads (1776) and The Motley Assembly (1779) are also attributed to her. In 1788 she published Observations on the New Constitution, whose ratification she opposed as an Anti-Federalist.
Contents |
In 1790 she published Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, the first work bearing her name. The book contains eighteen political poems and two plays. The two dramas, The Sack of Rome and The Ladies of Castille, deal with liberty, social and moral values that were necessary to the success of the new republic.[2]
In 1805, she had completed her literary career with a three-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. President Thomas Jefferson ordered subscriptions for himself and his cabinet and noted his "anticipation of her truthful account of the last thirty years that will furnish a more instructive lesson to mankind than any equal period known in history". [4] The book's sharp comments on John Adams led to a heated correspondence and a breach in their friendship that lasted until 1812.
Mercy Otis Warren died in October, 1814, at the age of 86. She is buried at Old Burial Hill, Plymouth, Massachusetts. The SS Mercy Warren, a World War II Liberty ship launched in 1943, was named in her honor. In 2002, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.
<ref> tag defined in <references> has no name attribute; see the help page.