By Erin Williams
Mass Humanities board member
In a previous chapter of my life I was immersed in writing, directing and performing theater, on the streets and in the halls, exploring new ways of seeing the world around us. In 1975 I learned about Mercy Otis Warren, playwright, poet, activist and mother. I saw there was a place for theater for social change that challenged power dynamics and sought social justice. Mercy Otis Warren believed that “political power ultimately resided in the hands of ordinary citizens, and that an engaged, populace was the only true safeguard against tyranny”.¹
As the third woman to be published in the United States—after Anne Bradstreet and Phyllis Wheatley—Mercy stood as an extraordinary voice in early American letters. She was the first woman playwright published in the United States. Her plays were sharp political satires of the struggles between the Patriots and the British Crown, often setting these moral battles amid the ancient grandeur of Rome to reveal the timeless follies of power and corruption.² In her poems, dramas, and historical writings, Warren argued that republics live or die by the moral character and vigilance of their citizens. She warned that complacency and luxury were the greatest enemies of liberty and called on Americans to resist self‑interest in favor of civic virtue and duty. For Warren, the American Revolution was a moral awakening as much as a political triumph—proof that an informed and determined people could throw off oppression and build something new. This audio letter, Oh Mercy!, is one I imagined Mercy writing to her dear friend Abigail Adams. Although born a generation apart they had a strong bond, both committed to doing democracy.
Footnotes and further reading
- Mercy Otis Warren, The History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution(Boston: Manning and Loring, 1805), full digital copy available from the oll.libertyfund.org.
- Background on Warren’s role among early American women writers: see entries on Anne Bradstreet and Phyllis Wheatley at the womenshistory.org and related essays in American Women’s Literary History.
- Discussion of Warren’s History and its reception appear in modern annotated editions listed below.
Bibliography
- The Plays and Poems of Mercy Otis Warren. Delmar, NY: Scholars Facsimiles & Reprints, 1989.
- Rosemarie Zagarri. A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1995.
- 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.
- Jeffrey H. Richards and Sharon M. Harris, eds. Mercy Otis Warren: Selected Letters. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009.
- Mercy Otis Warren. The History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. Boston: Manning and Loring, 1805. archive.org | oll.libertyfund.org
