—John Adams to James Warren, March 18, 17801

Life

Mercy Otis Warren was born September 14, 1728, in Barnstable, Massachusetts, the third of 13 children of James Otis and Mary Allyne Otis. At the age of 26, she married James Warren. They had five children. Mercy Warren died on October 19, 1814, at the age of 86.

Education

Warren was tutored by her uncle, the Reverend Jonathan Russell, who had an extensive library. She studied ancient and modern history, Greek and Roman literature, English plays and poetry, and philosophy. She had a particular propensity for the ancients, and Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World was a favorite.

Religion

Puritan

Political Affiliation

Anti-Federalist, Jeffersonian Republican

Highlights and Accomplishments

Mercy Otis Warren was a remarkable woman among remarkable men. Along with many of the Founding Fathers, she was acquainted with Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Dryden, Virgil, Homer, Machiavelli, Sidney, Gibbon, Hume, and Locke. Her uncle, Reverend Jonathan Russell, tutored her and her brothers and provided all the masters necessary for a rigorous classical education; in “some of the ancients” she found “most exclent company.”2 Reverend Russell’s copy of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World was particularly worn by Warren’s assiduous and loving care.

Leading up to the American Revolution, an adult Warren anonymously published satirical plays and poems, featured on the front pages of newspapers, to drum up support for the colonial cause. Her Observations on the New Constitution, which appeared under the pseudonym “A Columbian Patriot,” would help to ensure the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous was the first work Warren published under her own name and the third notable body of poetry produced by an American woman.3 Perhaps most impressive is her comprehensive, three-volume History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, one of the earliest histories of the Revolution.

In short, Mercy Otis Warren was an accomplished woman, conceivably having improved “her mind by extensive reading” that was substantive enough to have earned the praise of Pride & Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy.4

The Life of Mercy Otis Warren

In addition to books, Warren resided with many of the remarkable men and women of the American Founding. Her father was a selectman in Barnstable before becoming a delegate to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and serving on several notable committees. Growing up among her 12 siblings, her closest friend was her brother, James Otis, whom she called Jemmy. James was an early and prominent Revolutionary lawyer who argued against British writs of assistance, which were general warrants that allowed British officers to search colonists’ homes, storehouses, and ships without evidence that the law had been violated. John Adams noted that when James Otis railed against the writs in court, “Then and there the Child Independence was born.”5 Among Warren’s female correspondents were Abigail Adams; Hannah Winthrop, the wife of distinguished Harvard professor and scientist John Winthrop; Martha Washington; and the first female English historian, Catharine Macaulay.

At the age of 26, Mercy married James Warren, a Harvard peer of her brother, and they raised five sons together. While she devoted much of her life to managing their household, her husband served as speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Continental Army’s Postmaster-General. Their marriage was an affectionate one, and James encouraged her writing. Mercy often referred to James as the first friend of her heart and sometimes, out of loneliness, urged him to decline political positions that took him far away from her.

Among the Warrens’ friends were fellow Founders John and Abigail Adams. Mercy and James were roughly a generation ahead of the Adams’s, with Mercy being 16 years older than Abigail, but the couples were united by republican principles. En route to visit her husband during the war, Mercy would sometimes stop at the Adams’s farm in Braintree to converse with Abigail, and Abigail sent her daughter and namesake, Nabby, to stay for an extended period with Mercy, who tutored the girl. John often praised and supported Mercy Otis Warren’s writing and, on occasion, aided in its publication. For example, he sent her third satirical play, The Group, to be published in Philadelphia before it was circulated in New York as a pamphlet and appeared in the Boston Gazette and the Massachusetts Spy.

Sadly, Warren’s relationship with John Adams would become strained, as she, a staunch republican, believed he became sympathetic toward monarchy in his later years (she was not alone in that belief). Adams’s refusal while serving as President to help secure a position for her wayward and favorite son, Winslow, contributed to the tension between them, and their relationship would experience a break when Warren published her History. In it, she wrote that John Adams’s “prejudices and his passions were sometimes too strong for his sagacity and judgement,” and he responded by sending her 10 blistering and lengthy letters, not always waiting for a response from her between postings.6 Mutual friend and Constitutional Convention delegate Elbridge Gerry (who was long thought to be the author of Warren’s Observations on the New Constitution) would aid in repairing Warren’s relationship with Adams.

For all their accomplishments and notoriety, the Warren and Otis families were not immune to setbacks and tragedies. James Otis suffered ill health and became erratic, particularly following a physical assault in 1769, before dying from a lightning strike in 1783. Mercy had a delicate constitution; her vision began to fail after she was inoculated for smallpox in 1776; and by 1778, she was increasingly bedridden. James Warren’s reputation was harmed by unfair claims that he had been involved in Shays’ Rebellion, the armed uprising in Massachusetts that precipitated replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution. Their sons Charles, Winslow, and George died in 1785, 1791, and 1800, respectively, and their eldest, James, suffered a mental breakdown and while serving in the American Navy lost his leg after it was shattered by a British cannonball. In 1781, James and Mercy purchased Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s former country house, only to relinquish it for financial reasons in 1788 and retire back to Plymouth. James passed away in 1808 at the age of 82, and Mercy died in 1814 at the age of 86.

Warren’s Plays and Poetry

Mercy Otis Warren began her patriotic career by anonymously publishing a series of satirical plays and poems. The plays were short, characterized by long speeches, and not aimed at entertaining an audience for an evening (the performance of plays was banned under Boston law). Rather, Mercy’s plays fall into the realm of pamphlet literature, intended to rally the American colonists. Like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Warren’s work was replete with such lines as “That man dies well who sheds his blood for freedom.”7

Pamphlet literature and political poems were popular among the colonists, who were remarkably literate and particularly interested in the classics and classical republicanism. Students aiming for college were expected to read Cicero and Virgil in Latin and the New Testament in Greek. Warren herself was drawn to the ancients, often choosing Roman names for her characters and emphasizing the importance of virtue in maintaining a regime in her tragedy The Sack of Rome. She would write in her History that the American Revolutionaries’ “self-denying virtues had rivaled the admired heroes of antiquity.”8

Lacking lengthy plots and robust character development, Warren’s plays and poems were primarily responses and thinly veiled references to contemporaneous Revolutionary events. In her first anonymous play, The Adulateur, she introduced her antagonists as Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson (Rapatio) and Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver (Limpet); standing against them are James Otis (Brutus), James Warren (Rusticus), and John Adams (Hortensius) among others.9 Hutchinson, a native-born colonial Loyalist, was charged with enforcing the Stamp Act, a British measure that taxed items like newspapers and playing cards. In 1765, anti–Stamp Act protestors ransacked Hutchinson’s mansion, and in The Adulateur, Rapatio is seeking revenge. He aims to “trample down the choicest of [the patriots’] rights” and would “smile at length to see my country bleed.” In comparison, the American patriots are determined and willing to “perish like [ ] freem[e]n.”10 The climax of the play is the Boston Massacre, during which British soldiers fired on a crowd of Bostonians.

Warren’s second play, The Defeat, followed publication of the Hutchinson–Oliver letters. Benjamin Franklin, while in England, had obtained private correspondence between the Massachusetts governor and lieutenant governor, and the exchanges (against Franklin’s wishes) were printed in the newspapers. In those letters, Hutchinson suggested that “an abridgement of English liberties in colonial administration” might be appropriate.11 The people of Boston were appalled and inflamed by such temerity, and Hutchinson soon reemerged in the Boston Gazette as Warren’s character Rapatio. Unfortunately for Hutchinson, Warren’s plays were so popular that Rapatio became a “recognizable label” for the Loyalist governor.12 Warren’s rancor toward Hutchinson seems to have been both political and personal. Hutchinson was disliked by many, but he had also successfully opposed the appointment of Warren’s father to a political position.13

The final play in Warren’s series, The Group, focused on the Loyalist councilors who had been appointed by the Crown pursuant to the Intolerable Acts of 1774, which were punishing restrictions put in place by England following the Boston Tea Party. The people of Boston viewed the acts as infringements on the principle of self-government and a violation of the Massachusetts charter. The “group” of councilors who accepted royal appointments, instead of being elected by the lower colonial house, were depicted as traitorous, greedy, and power-hungry.

Warren furthered the patriot cause not only through plays, but also in poems. John Adams encouraged her to write “The Squabble of the Sea Nymphs” (or “The Sacrifice of the Tuscararoes”), a poem about the Boston Tea Party, and arranged for it to be published in the Boston Gazette. In 1790, Warren included the piece in Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, the first of her works to appear under her own name. By his permission, she dedicated the volume to George Washington, with whom she claimed “the honour of private friendship,” and who praised the “Merits of the respectable and amiable writer.”14 Warren rewarded him with a copy of her poems, which she also sent to John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Paul Revere. After reading them, Hamilton contended that “[i]n the career of dramatic composition at least, female genius in the United States has outstripped the Male.”15

Warren’s Observations

Warren’s impact was not confined to the events leading up to the American Revolution. As an Anti-Federalist, she joined in the deliberations surrounding the Constitution and publicly identified what she saw as its shortcomings and faults. Her Observations on the New Constitution, published under the pseudonym “A Columbian Patriot,” was a 19-page pamphlet intended to influence the ratification debates, particularly in the important state of New York. New York state committees received more than 1,600 copies, and it was printed in several newspapers.16

A Columbian Patriot viewed the Constitution as an anti-republican encroachment on liberty that consolidated too much power in the federal government to the detriment of individual citizens and the states. Overall, the Constitution proposed a system of government that was a “many-headed monster; of such motley mixture, that its enemies cannot trace a feature of Democratic or Republican extract.”17 Warren went on to list numerous objections in her Observations. Among them were the absence of a Bill of Rights, the presence of a standing army, a lack of annual elections, the blending of the judiciary and executive, too few representatives by population, and the process by which the Constitution was written and set to be ratified. While many of these concerns were voiced by other Anti-Federalists, respected Anti-Federalist scholar Herbert Storing concluded that Warren’s objections were “more philosophical than most of her fellows.”18

Years after the Constitution’s ratification and implementation, Warren (perhaps partly to promote national unity) would admit that the Constitution had proved sound, writing in her History that with amendments, the Constitution was “at the present period as wise, as efficient, as respectable, as free, and we hope as permanent, as any constitution existing on earth.”19

In categorizing Founders as Federalists and Anti-Federalists, it is tempting to exaggerate certain political disputes and lose sight of the fact that there was widespread agreement on fundamental moral principles. For example, Warren, like the Federalists, was a staunch republican and proponent of natural law and natural rights. In her Observations she wrote that:

[M]an is born free, and possessed of certain unalienable rights—that government is instituted for the protection, safety, and happiness of the people, and not for the profit, honour, or private interest of any man, family, or class of men. That the origin of all power is in the people, and that they have an incontestable right to check the creatures of their own creation, vested with certain powers to guard the life, liberty, and property of the community.20

While Warren had voiced concerns about whether or not the Constitution properly protects inalienable rights, there is no doubt that she understood the meaning and importance of first principles. The language she uses is notably similar to the language employed in the Declaration of Independence, a document she praised highly. Consistent with natural law, the principles of the Declaration had been put forth “under the awe of the Divine Providence,” which gives human beings a sense of their proper place and the obligations they owe the Creator and each other:

From the principles, manners, habits, and education of Americans, they expected from their rules, economy in expenditure (both public and private,) simplicity of manners, pure morals, and undeviating probity. These they considered as the emanations of virtue, grounded on a sense of duty, and a veneration for the Supreme Governor of the universe, to whom the dictates of nature teach all mankind to pay homage….21

By contrast, the “hardiness of atheism sets at defiance both human and divine laws, until the man is lost to himself and to the world.”22 Mercy believed that human nature is unchangeable and that human beings are capable of reason and possess inalienable rights, such as freedom of conscience. Mercy’s view of human nature, like that of Publius (the pseudonym for James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay), was optimistic but not naïve: Both reason and impulse are part of the human condition. In her History, she wrote that:

The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of man, that pants for distinction. This principle operates in every bosom, and when kept under the control of reason, and the influence of humanity, it produces the most benevolent effects. But when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, or the moral sense weakened by the sudden acquisition of wealth or power, humanity is obscured.…23

While Warren believed the human soul could be “beautiful” and her advocacy for republican government denotes a fundamental confidence in the human capacity for self-government, character education remains necessary. The dangers of avarice and the centrality of morals, manners, and virtue are persistent themes in Warren’s writing that she would examine more fully in her History.

Warren’s History

Warren’s close relationships with many key players in the American Revolution enabled her to write one of the first historical accounts of the War of Independence, her History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. As she indicates in her introduction, Warren was “[c]onnected by nature, friendship, and every social tie, with many of the first patriots, and most influential characters on the continent.”24 Her home in Plymouth, Massachusetts, became a “breeding place” for the Revolution; it was situated in the thick of Revolutionary events, her husband was chosen for the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence, and the Sons of Liberty passed in and out to plan their resistance to British interference. She was also in “epistolary intercourse with several gentlemen employed abroad in the most distinguished stations, and with others since elevated to the highest grades of rank and distinction” and thus “had the best means of information, through a long period that the colonies were in suspense.”25

Warren completed a draft of her three-volume History by 1787, but it remained unpublished until 1805, in part because a female historian was an anomaly during the Founding period. Much of her narrative focuses on the Revolution itself and is dedicated to military accounts. It begins with the Stamp Act and continues through the adoption of the Constitution and the election of 1800, which signaled the ascendency of the Jeffersonian Republicans. In party politics, Warren sided with the Jeffersonian Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were champions of yeoman farmers and concerned with the dominance of urban speculators, against the Federalist party of Alexander Hamilton.

Although her historical opus did not enjoy as much popularity as some of her other works did, Warren’s accurate and detailed History is the only Anti-Federalist account of the Revolution. However, her personal assessments are quite evident in places, perhaps earning her the charge of being biased. Her Anti-Federalist and Jeffersonian Republican views are reflected in her treatment of George Washington, whom she initially praised profusely, both in her public writings and in private correspondence, but later saw as being too influenced by the financial schemes of Alexander Hamilton.26 It is hardly surprising that President Thomas Jefferson extolled her History highly and sent copies to his Cabinet members.

Throughout her History, Mercy reflects on the work in which she is engaged and her purpose in writing an account of the American Revolution. Consistent with other Founders and as a student of the ancients, Mercy believed that “Empire decays when virtue’s not the base.”27 In a republic, the will of the majority will ultimately prevail, and if that will is corrupt and misguided, the law will be as well. By writing her History, Mercy was contributing to the preservation of virtue and memory in America, and thus of America itself. In her first chapter, she writes that:

Many who first stepped forth in vindication of the rights of human nature are forgotten, and the causes which involved the thirteen colonies in confusion and blood are scarcely known, amidst the rage of accumulation and the taste for expensive pleasures that have since prevailed.… Thus the hurry of spirits, that ever attends the eager pursuit of fortune and a passion for splendid enjoyment, leads to forgetfulness; and thus the inhabitants of America cease to look back with due gratitude and respect on the fortitude and virtue of their ancestors.… But the historian and the philosopher will ever venerate the memory of those pious and independent gentlemen….28

Gratitude is a virtue that must be maintained in a republic, and Mercy bookends her History with discussions of gratitude. The preceding quote, as noted, appears at the beginning in her first chapter, and at the end, Mercy notes (paraphrasing a quote from Xenophon) that “ancient Persians considered ingratitude as the source of all enmities among men. They considered it ‘an indication of the vilest spirit, nor believe it possible for an ungrateful man to love the gods or even his parents, friends, or country.’”29 By writing a history of the American Revolution, Warren was protecting the American national character and inviting subsequent generations to share in maintaining that character. She was well aware that empires rise and fall and knew that the experiment in self-government, because it depends on the virtue of the American people, is never fully and permanently attained. Her History, then, was a “manual of republican ethics” designed to inspire future generations who will need to continue the “uncompleted struggle.”

The History is not a stale and dry account of the facts of the Revolution. Warren contended that “a just knowledge of character” is necessary for the historian, and no explanation of the American Revolution would be complete without adequate attention to the American national character.30 It was ultimately that character, that body of virtues, morals, and principles, that gave rise to the Revolution. The American colonists were not being treated significantly worse than other subjects under British rule, but because of their belief in republican principles, they resented the very status of “subject.”

What defines the American character and unites Americans are those republican principles that are laid out most clearly in the Declaration of Independence. As Warren wrote:

[T]he independence of the United States must be secured by an undeviating adherence to the principles that produced the Revolution. These principles were grounded on the natural equality of man, their right of adopting their own modes of government, the dignity of the people, and that sovereignty which cannot be ceded either to representatives or to kings.31

According to historians Lawrence J. Friedman and Arthur H. Shaffer, when Warren referred to the United States, she “meant more than geography or a territorial state; ‘America’ meant more than nationality. Both terms symbolized a way of life, an ideology. The United States was not only a new nation but a new society.”32 Warren’s pre-Revolutionary writings were part of the effort to create that society, and she meant her History to be part of the effort to preserve it.

Warren’s Manners

Throughout her life, Warren was particularly interested in morals, manners, and virtue. For example, when her favorite child, Winslow, praised Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son, a guidebook on the education of young men that became popular in high society, she responded with a letter denouncing Chesterfield’s theories. To her, Chesterfield was Machiavelli in epistolary form, insidiously contending that the appearance of virtue was more desirable than virtue itself. Warren’s searing critique of Chesterfield did not reach Winslow alone. When she shared her letter with Abigail Adams, Abigail believed Warren had taken Chesterfield to task so meticulously that she forwarded the letter to the Boston Chronicle, where it was published.

As historian Rosemarie Zagarri writes, “Like many other eighteenth-century authors, Mercy used the term ‘manners’ not simply to refer to etiquette or social deportment, but to denote social norms or mores.… Changes in manners thus reflected changes in virtue.”33 Following the Revolution, Warren grew concerned that the morals of the American people had degenerated, that too many were animated by commercial interests, greed, and personal profit and were not as strongly attached to the republican principles that had been the cause of the Revolution. The acquisition of wealth was not “very favorable to the virtue or manners of the possessors. It had a tendency to contract the mind, and led it to shrink into selfish views and indulgences, totally inconsistent with genuine republicanism.”34 To Warren, a republic depends on self-government, and self-government on the individual level is about inculcating virtue so that reason prevails over impulse.

By Warren’s accounting, the American system needed republican manners supported by institutions, virtues, and a particular way of life—manners completely different from those that characterized the aristocratic British feudal system in which a few aristocrats owned land and the many worked that land. Americans were used to economic mobility, equality, and having the opportunity to rise or fall based on their own actions and merits. An aristocratic character is animated by superiority and distinction; the “republican spirit” is more modest, requiring “patience, probity, industry, and self-denial” and a “simplicity of life and manners.”35

Warren disapproved of anything in America that seemed to hint of aristocracy. For example, she criticized the Society of the Cincinnati, which she viewed as creating an American nobility because membership was hereditary and limited to former officers of the Continental Army. Even the ranks of an army—and especially a standing army—were met with her skepticism. Commanders could improve their condition above the general populace and become accustomed to obedience from others, and “the aggrandizement of particular families by distinguished orders, and assumed nobility, appeared to originate in the army.”36

When Boston saw a rise in fashionable new clubs that featured music, dining, dancing, and gambling, Warren spoke out against them. She was wary of association with European powers, fearing that “fascination with the splendor of courts and the baubles of ambitious spirits, scepters, diadems, and crowns” could “undermine the beautiful fabric of republicanism.”37 The spirit of avarice had already spread throughout Europe, and she did not want it to take hold in America.

As Herbert Storing has noted, Warren’s views were characteristic of many of the Anti-Federalists:

Homogeneity implied, for the Anti-Federalists, not only likeness but likeness of a certain kind: a society in which there are no extremes of wealth, influence, education, or anything else—the homogeneity of a moderate, simple, sturdy, and virtuous people. Republican government depends on civic virtue, on a devotion to fellow citizens and to country so deeply instilled as to be almost as automatic and powerful as the natural devotion to self-interest.38

Warren’s Providence

To maintain proper manners and republican principles, Warren advocated civic education and a firm attachment to religion. In her History, she criticized the South for the lack of attention paid to the education of the young and praised the North where “[b]oth knowledge and property were more equally divided” and ”consequently a spirit of more equal liberty was diffused.”39 While formal education was certainly a part of Warren’s vision, she had in mind both “public and private” education: the cultural, civic, and moral education of being raised and residing in a society that is constantly signaling through its institutions, laws, and practices what it honors and abhors.

Warren saw religion as indispensable both for moral education and for the continuation of a republic because “every domestic enjoyment depends on the unimpaired possession of civil and religious liberty,” and religion was perhaps “the only certain restraint of the passions, those dangerous inlets to licentiousness and anarchy.”40 The example of Europe, where religion had broken down to the detriment of moral ties and constraint, demonstrated this reality.41

Warren did not view religion simply as useful; she saw Providence as both favoring and imposing obligations on the American people. Among America’s advantages were its distance from Europe, increasing population, immense territory, mild climate, and abundant natural resources. Moreover, the nation was founded in an era of education when arts and manners had been elevated and the rights of human beings were recognized and understood.42 These considerable favors came with requisite obligations. The principles of the Declaration had been put forth “under the awe of the Divine Providence,”43 which had “clearly pointed out the duties of the present generation, particularly the paths which Americans ought to tread. The United States form a young republic, a confederacy which ought ever to be cemented by a union of interests and affection, under the influence of those principles which obtained their independence.”44

Americans had recognized the laws of nature and nature’s God and had an obligation to protect those principles by preserving their homeland as a republic because the success of the experiment in self-government would have implications not only for America’s citizenry, but also for mankind as a whole. America was the first nation founded on the human capacity for self-government and the first republic established over an extended territory. In the arc of human history, the “American Revolution may be a means in the hands of Providence of diffusion [of] universal knowledge over a quarter of the globe, that for ages had been enveloped in darkness, ignorance, and barbarism.”45 Warren believed and trusted, both in her personal life and in her politics, that a grander plan was at work.

Conclusion

Mercy Otis Warren was better known in the Founding era than she is in our own. As an Otis, she came to love the ancient principles of republican government, and as a Warren, she defended those principles in poetry, plays, and history. She revered the Declaration of Independence in her History and influenced the Constitution with her Observations. While surrounded by the Founding Fathers in life, in American memory she now belongs to a remarkable set of women who helped to write the American story. Warren joins the company of Abigail Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Tubman, herself serving as the “Conscience of the American Revolution.”

Brenda Hafera

Selected Primary Writings

Observations on the New Constitution (1788)46

Mankind may amuse themselves with theoretic systems of liberty, and trace its social and moral effects on sciences, virtue, industry and every improvement of which the human mind is capable; but we can only discern its true value by the practical and wretched effects of slavery; and thus dreadfully will they be realized, when the inhabitants of the Eastern States are dragging out a miserable existence only on the gleanings of their fields; and the Southern, blessed with a softer and more fertile climate, are languishing in hopeless poverty; and when asked, what is become of the flower of their crop, and the rich produce of their farms—they may answer in the hapless stile of the Man of La Mancha,—“The steward of my Lord has seized and sent it to Madrid.” Or, in the more literal language of truth, the exigencies of government require that the collectors of the revenue should transmit it to the Federal City.

Animated with the firmest zeal for the interest of this country, the peace and union of the American States, and the freedom and happiness of a people who have made the most costly sacrifices in the cause of liberty—who have braved the power of Britain, weathered the convulsions of war, and waded thro’ the blood of friends and foes to establish their independence and to support the freedom of the human mind, I cannot silently witness this degradation without calling on them, before they are compelled to blush at their own servitude, and to turn back their languid eyes on their lost liberties—to consider, that the character of nations generally changes at the moment of revolution.…

History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution (1805)47

Chapter I

History, the deposite of crimes, and the record of every thing disgraceful or honorary to mankind, requires a just knowledge of character, to investigate the sources of action; a clear comprehension, to review the combination of causes; and precision of language, to detail the events that have produced the most remarkable revolutions.

To analyze the secret springs that have effected the progressive changes in society; to trace the origin of the various modes of government, the consequent improvements in science, in morality, or the national tincture that marks the manners of the people under despotic or more liberal forms, is a bold and adventurous work.

The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of man, that pants for distinction. This principle operates in every bosom, and when kept under the control of reason, and the influence of humanity, it produces the most benevolent effects. But when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, or the moral sense weakened by the sudden acquisition of wealth or power, humanity is obscured, and if a favorable coincidence of circumstances permits, this love of distinction often exhibits the most mortifying instances of profligacy, tyranny, and the wanton exercise of arbitrary sway. Thus when we look over the theatre of human action, scrutinize the windings of the heart, and survey the transactions of man from the earliest to the present period, it must be acknowledged that ambition and avarice are the leading springs which generally actuate the restless mind. From these primary sources of corruption have arisen all the rapine and confusion, the depredation and ruin, that have spread distress over the face of the earth from the days of Nimrod to Cesar, and from Cesar to an arbitrary prince of the house of Brunswick.

Chapter XXX

At the same time that these wayward appearances began early to threaten their internal felicity, the inhabitants of America were in general sensible, that the freedom of the people, the virtue of society, and the stability of their commonwealth, could only be preserved by the strictest union; and that the independence of the United States must be secured by an undeviating adherence to the principles that produced the revolution.

These principles were grounded on the natural equality of man, their right of adopting their own modes of government, the dignity of the people, and that sovereignty which cannot be ceded either to representatives or to kings. But, as a certain writer has expressed it,

Powers may be delegated for particular purposes; but the omnipotence of society, if any where, is in itself. Princes, senates, or parliaments, are not proprietors or masters; they are subject to the people, who form and support that society, by an eternal law of nature, which has ever subjected a part to the whole.

These were opinions congenial to the feelings, and were disseminated by the pens, of political writers; of Otis, Dickinson, Quincy, and many others, who with pathos and energy had defended the liberties of America, previous to the commencement of hostilities.

On these principles, a due respect must ever be paid to the general will; to the right in the people to dispose of their own monies by a representative voice; and to liberty of conscience without religious tests: on these principles, frequent elections, and rotations of office, were generally thought necessary, without precluding the indispensable subordination and obedience due to rulers of their own choice. From the principles, manners, habits, and education of the Americans, they expected from their rulers, economy in expenditure, (both public and private,) simplicity of manners, pure morals, and undeviating probity. These they considered as the emanations of virtue, grounded on a sense of duty, and a veneration for the Supreme Governor of the universe, to whom the dictates of nature teach all mankind to pay homage, and whom they had been taught to worship according to revelation, and the divine precepts of the gospel. Their ancestors had rejected and fled from the impositions and restrictions of men, vested either with princely or priestly authority: they equally claimed the exercise of private judgment, and the rights of conscience, unfettered by religious establishments in favor of particular denominations.

They expected a simplification of law; clearly defined distinctions between executive, legislative, and judiciary powers: the right of trial by jury, and a sacred regard to personal liberty and the protection of private property, were opinions embraced by all who had any just ideas of government, law, equity, or morals.…

The declaration of independence, which has done so much honor to the then existing congress, to the inhabitants of the United States, and to the genius and heart of the gentleman who drew it, in the belief, and under the awe, of the Divine Providence, ought to be frequently read by the rising youth of the American states, as a palladium of which they should never lose sight, so long as they wish to continue a free and independent people.

This celebrated paper, which will be admired in the annals of every historian, begins with an assertion, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, which nature and nature’s God entitle them to claim; and, after appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions, it concludes in the name of the good people of the colonies, by their representatives assembled in congress, they publish and declare, that they are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States: in the name of the people, the fountain of all just authority, relying on the protection of Divine Providence, they mutually pledged themselves to maintain these rights, with their lives, fortunes, and honor.

These principles the Sons of Columbia had supported by argument, defended by the sword, and have now secured by negotiation, as far as the pledges of national faith and honor will bind society to a strict adherence to equity. This however is seldom longer than it appears to be the interest of nations, or designing individuals of influence and power. Virtue in the sublimest sense, operates only on the minds of a chosen few: in their breasts it will ever find its own reward.

Chapter XXXI

It was thought by some, who had been recently informed of the secret transactions of the convention at Philadelphia, that the greatest happiness of the greatest number was not the principal object of their contemplations, when they ordered their doors to be locked, their members inhibited from all communications abroad, and when proposals were made that their journals should be burnt, lest their consultations and debates should be viewed by the scrutinizing eye of a free people. These extraordinary movements appeared to them the result of the passions of a few. It is certain, that truth, whether moral, philosophical, or political, shrinks not from the eye of investigation.

The ideas of royalty, or any thing that wore the appearance of regal forms and institutions, were generally disgusting to Americans, and particularly so to many characters who early came forward, and continued to the end of the conflict, stedfast in opposition to the crown of Britain. They thought that after America had encountered the power, and obtained a release from foreign bondage, and had recently overcome domestic difficulties and discontents, and even quieted the spirit of insurrection in their own states; that the republican system for which they had fought, should not be hazarded by vesting any man or body of men with powers that might militate with the principles, which had been cherished with fond enthusiasm, by a large majority of the inhabitants throughout the union.

Republicanism, the idol of some men, and independence, the glory of all, were thought by many to be in danger of dwindling into theory; the first had been defaced for a time, by a degree of anarchy, and fears were now awakened that the last might be annihilated by views of private ambition.

The people were generally dissatisfied with the high pretensions of the officers of the army, whose equality of condition previous to the war, was, with few exceptions, on the same grade with themselves. The assumption of an appropriate rank was disgusting, in a set of men, who had most of them been taken from mechanic employments, or the sober occupations of agriculture. Thus jealousies were diffused, with regard to the officers of the old army, the Cincinnati, and several other classes of men, whom they suspected as cherishing hopes and expectations of erecting a government too splendid for the taste and professions of Americans. They saw a number of young gentlemen coming forward, ardent and sanguine in the support of the principles of monarchy and aristocracy. They saw a number of professional characters too ready to relinquish former opinions, and adopt new ones more congenial to the policy of courts, than to the maxims of a free people. They saw some apostate whigs in public employments, and symptoms of declension in others, which threatened the annihilation of the darling opinion, that the whole sovereignty in the republican system is in the people: “that the people have a right to amend and alter, or annul their constitution and frame a new one, whenever they shall think it will better promote their own welfare and happiness to do it.”

This brought forward objections to the proposed constitution of government, then under consideration. These objections were not the result of ignorance; they were made by men of the first abilities in every state; men who were sensible of the necessity of strong and energetic institutions, and a strict subordination and obedience to law. These judicious men were solicitous that every thing should be clearly defined; they were jealous of each ambiguity in law or government, or the smallest circumstance that might have a tendency to curtail the republican system, or render ineffectual the sacrifices they had made, for the security of civil and religious liberty to themselves; they also wished for the transmission of the enjoyment of the equal rights of man to their latest posterity. They were of opinion, that every article that admitted of double confusion, should be amended, before it became the supreme law of the land. They were now apprehensive of being precipitated, without due consideration, into the adoption of a system that might bind them and their posterity in the chains of despotism, while they held up the ideas of a free and equal participation of the privileges of pure and genuine republicanism.…

Indeed the United States of America embrace too large a portion of the globe, to expect their isolated situation will forever secure them from the encroachments of foreign nations, and the attempts of potent Europeans to interrupt their peace. But if the education of youth, both public and private, is attended to, their industrious and economical habits maintained, their moral character and that assemblage of virtues supported, which is necessary for the happiness of individuals and of nations, there is not much danger that they will for a long time be subjugated by the arms of foreigners, or that their republican system will be subverted by the arts of domestic enemies. Yet, probably some distant day will exhibit the extensive continent of America, a portrait analogous to the other quarters of the globe, which have been laid waste by ambition, until misery has spread her sable veil over the inhabitants. But this will not be done, until ignorance, servility and vice, have led them to renounce their ideas of freedom, and reduced them to that grade of baseness which renders them unfit for the enjoyment of that rational liberty which is the natural inheritance of man. The expense of blood and treasure, lavished for the purchase of freedom, should teach Americans to estimate its real worth, nor ever suffer it to be depreciated by the vices of the human mind, which are seldom single. The sons of America ought ever to bear in grateful remembrance the worthy band of patriots, who first supported an opposition to the tyrannic measures of Great Britain. Though some of them have long since been consigned to the tomb, a tribute of gratitude is ever due to their memory, while the advantages of freedom and independence are felt by their latest posterity.…

It will be the wisdom, and probably the future effort of the American government, forever to maintain with unshaken magnanimity, the present neutral position of the United States. The hand of nature has displayed its magnificence in this quarter of the globe, in the astonishing rivers, lakes, and mountains, replete with the richest minerals and the most useful materials for manufactures. At the same time, the indigenous produce of its fertile lands yields medicine, food, and clothing, and every thing needful for man in his present condition. America may with propriety be styled a land of promise; a happy climate, though remarkably variegated; fruitful and populous, independent and free, both necessity and pleasure invite the hand of the industrious to cherish and cultivate the prolific soil, which is ready to yield all that nature requires to satisfy the reasonable wishes of man, as well as to contribute to the wealth, pleasure, and luxury of the inhabitants. It is a portion of the globe that appears as a fair and fertile vineyard, which requires only the industrious care of the laborers to render it for a long time productive of the finest clusters in the full harvest of prosperity and freedom, instead of yielding thorns, thistles, and sour grapes, which must be the certain fruits of animosity, disunion, venality, or vice.

Though in her infantile state, the young republic of America exhibits the happiest prospects. Her extensive population, commerce, and wealth, the progress of agriculture, arts, sciences, and manufactures, have increased with a rapidity beyond example. Colleges and academies have been reared, multiplied, and endowed with the best advantages for public instruction, on the broad scale of liberality and truth. The effects of industry and enterprise appear in the numerous canals, turnpikes, elegant buildings, and well constructed bridges, over lengths and depths of water that open, and render the communication easy and agreeable, throughout a country almost without bounds. In short, arts and agriculture are pursued with avidity, civilization spreads, and science in full research is investigating all the sources of human knowledge.

Indeed the whole country wears a face of improvement, from the extreme point of the northern and western woods, through all the southern states, and to the vast Atlantic ocean, the eastern boundary of the United States. The wisdom and justice of the American governments, and the virtue of the inhabitants, may, if they are not deficient in the improvement of their own advantages, render the United States of America an enviable example to all the world, of peace, liberty, righteousness, and truth. The western wilds, which for ages have been little known, may arrive to that stage of improvement and perfection, beyond which the limits of human genius cannot reach, and this last civilized quarter of the globe may exhibit those striking traits of grandeur and magnificence, which the Divine Economist may have reserved to crown the closing scene, when the angel of his presence will stand upon the sea and upon the earth, lift up his hand to heaven, and swear by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that there shall be time no longer.

Recommended Readings

• Joan Hoff Wilson and Sharon L. Bollinger, “Mercy Otis Warren: Playwright, Poet, and Historian of the American Revolution,” in Female Scholars: A Tradition of Learned Women Before 1800, ed. J.R. Brink (St. Albans, VT: Eden Press Women’s Publications, 1980).
• Jean Fritz, Cast for a Revolution: Some America Friends and Enemies, 1728–1814 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972).
• Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008).
• Rosemarie Zagarri, A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015).

Notes