Mercy Otis Warren: Poet, Patriot, Pamphleteer, Propagandist, and Playwright

September 25 was the birthday of pioneering American literary figure Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814).

Daughter of Massachusetts lawyer James Otis, Mercy received the benefit of the same education as her older brothers James and Joseph, a rarity at the time. In 1754 she married James Warren (1726-1808), descendent of Mayflower PilgrimRichard Warren, following a six year courtship. The pair settled in Plymouth, and their home became one of the primary meeting spots for the Sons of Liberty. The Warrens were associated with Samuel and John Adams and other Revolutionists, and helped plan actions such as the Boston Tea Party. James sat in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, was Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Paymaster General of the Continental Army, among other posts. John Singleton Copley painted the portrait above ca. 1763.

Mercy wrote several poems and satirical stage plays that poked political fun at the Tories and the Loyalist cause. Her plays included The Adulateur (1772), The Defeat (1773), The Group (1775), The Blockheads (1775), and The Motley Assembly (1779). In 1789 she published the pamphlet Observations on the New Constitution, an anti-Federalist tract that opposed ratification of the Constitution, on the grounds that it lacked a bill of rights. Like all of her works until this point, it was published anonymously. The Observations was not attributed to Warren until over a century later. Prior to that, many thought Elbridge Gerry had written it. In 1790, Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous was published under her own name, the first time she had taken this step, a rare one at the time.

In later years, the Warrens became Jeffersonian Democrats, causing a painful split with their old friend and ally John Adams, a Federalist. In 1805 she published her three volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.

Feeling patriotic? Good! That suggests you’re in accord with the central tenet espoused by the Otises, the Warrenses, the Adamses and all good and loyal American Republicans, which is NO KINGS.