Mercy Warren: Colonial Propagandist
Primary Influential Inflammatory Author of the Colonial Revolution
Apr 21, 2008
Mercy's father and brothers encouraged her education during a time when education for women dared not transgress the responsibilities of the hearth and household. She shared her brothers' tutors until they eventually left for college.
Revolutionary Inspiration
Mercy's family was heartily involved with the revolutionary spirit raging in Massachusetts. The Warren home was a popular meeting place for the revolutionary agitators of her day. Since the men in Mercy's family were actively involved in the revolutionary process, their contacts became her contacts, such as: Sam Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock and Alexander Hamilton.
Mercy's brother James, fervently spoke out against the Stamp and Sugar Acts. He encouraged her to write anti-British sentiments which found publication in pamphlets, letters, poems and plays.
Her first works were written anonymously. However, as public acceptance of her articles spread as well as the public awareness of her identity, her later works were written under her own name.
Because, ...theater was banned in Puritan Boston...her plays were not designed for the stage. They often were allegorical. However, people reading the material knew who the characters in the play represented in the political arenas and what the thematic material pointed to in daily occurrences. Her political writings were widely read and vastly popular.
Mercy's passion for writing appeared to climax when her brother was severely beaten by a loyalist official and the position of Chief Justice of Massachusetts was given to Thomas Hutchinson, a known Tory, instead of to her father. Thomas Hutchinson became a regular target for her writings. She so stirred the public against him that his home was ransacked when he was lieutenant governor.
Colonial Kindred Spirits
Over time Mercy developed relationships with other women who influenced the men in their lives such as Abigail Adams and Catherine Maccauley, a noted, brazen, English writer/historian. Maccauley's themes openly addressed English treatment of the 13 colonies, even hinting that open revolution was threatening the relationship.
However, from time to time her friendship with John and Abigail Adams waned given their conflicting views. For instance, the Adams' favored the establishment of the United States Constitution, while Mercy and her husband did not.
Her plays include: The Group, The Sack of Rome, The Ladies of Castile, and The Squabble of the Sea Nymphs (Boston Tea Party):
The heroes of the Tuskeraro Tribe [the men disguised as Indians],
Who scorn alike, a fetter, or a bribe,
In order ranged, and waiting freedoms nod,
To make an off'ring, to the Watry God.
She also wrote a three volume history of the American Revolution published in 1805. Mercy's prose was probably the most influential literary material of her time.
Source
Cokie Roberts, Founding Mothers, (HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2004), pgs. 37-56.
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