Weighing in With Words

During the Revolutionary War, the opposing armies often stopped fighting during the coldest months of the year and waited for better weather before resuming the conflict. In the winter of 1775–76, as the British settled into an occupation of Boston, British general John Burgoyne wrote a play, The Blockade of Boston. It made fun of the way that the Americans spoke and dressed. Burgoyne converted Boston’s Faneuil Hall into a theater and arranged for his play to be staged for the entertainment of the British soldiers. But as the play opened in early January 1776, a group of patriots launched a surprise attack on nearby Charlestown. The show was interrupted as the actors and the audience, made up of mostly British soldiers, scrambled to react.

The play provoked an American response — a satire of the British soldiers. The Blockheads; or, The Affrighted Officers was published and passed around Boston in pamphlet form. It was published anonymously because a woman, Mercy Otis Warren, wrote the piece.

Today, Mercy Otis Warren is considered one of the great literary minds of the Revolutionary War-era. She was born in 1728, in Barnstable, Massachusetts. Her father, James Otis Sr., was a well-to-do merchant, who hired a tutor to educate her brother, James Otis Jr. Although girls were not offered the same educational opportunities as boys were at the time, Mercy was well educated. She learned how to read and write and was permitted to listen in on her brother’s lessons.

In 1754, Mercy married James Warren, and the couple moved to Plymouth. Both James Warren and James Otis Jr. were early leaders in the Colonial resistance to British tyranny. Boston was a hotbed of rebellion in the decade before fighting began in the war. The Warren home served as a meeting place for colonists who supported a split from Great Britain. As the hostess of those get-togethers, Mercy had firsthand access to information and events as they unfolded.

Through the activities of her husband and brother, she met and kept up written correspondences with other patriots, such as Samuel Adams, Henry Knox, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Mercy also developed and maintained friendships with other women. These women included Abigail Adams, English historian Catherine Macaulay, Martha Washington, and Hannah Winthrop, wife of the acting president of Harvard College. The exchange of letters among the women allowed them to share their hopes and fears and offer one another support.

Warren wrote several satirical plays before and during the war, but they were not initially credited to her. None of the works were performed, either, because Boston had banned theaters and plays. But written material was a powerful propaganda tool in the effort to sway public opinion, and Mercy’s plays were printed and distributed as pamphlets. Her first two plays, The Adulateur (1772) and The Defeat (1773), poked fun at Thomas Hutchinson, the British governor of Massachusetts. They were followed by The Group (1775), which satirized the Tories (pro-British) who were ruling Boston, and then The Blockheads; or, The Affrighted Officers (1776). The Motley Assembly (1779) was a satire about the new American society. Their attacks on the British and people who supported them made the plays popular among the patriots.

Years after the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, Mercy continued to weigh in on issues. In the 1780s, she did not support ratification of the Constitution. A believer in self-rule, she thought the Constitution gave the federal government too much power over the states. A small volume of her poems and collected writings was published in 1790. It was the first work to carry her name as the author and included two short tragedies, The Ladies of Castile and The Sack of Rome. Those pieces made the case for women to have a voice and a role in public issues.

Mercy’s History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, three-volume work published in 1805, was the first history of the United States. It caused a split between Mercy and John Adams, who had shared a warm and friendly correspondence for most of the war. Adams did not like the unflattering way that Mercy portrayed his passionate approach to politics. They reconciled before she died in 1814.

Mercy also admitted to being the author of her previously anonymous plays after the war was over. She was one of the first Americans to write plays about her country. She became known as the “Conscience of the American Revolution” for her forceful anti-British views. The fact that she was a woman who expressed her opinion and was listened to by men reveals the strength of her position during the war.