Season 1 Extra, Episode B | A Woman’s Voice in America’s Revolution: The Legacy of Mercy Otis Warren

Mercy Otis Warren was no ordinary figure in America’s founding story. How many women of her time had the opportunity to receive a classical education, let alone become influential political thinkers and writers? As one of the few, Warren used her intellect and talent to champion liberty during the American Revolution. But why is her name so often left out of the history books?

In this episode of This Constitution, Matthew Brogdon sits down with Kirstin Birkhaug, assistant professor of political science at Hope College, to uncover the life and work of this revolutionary thinker. What made her writings so impactful that even John Adams admitted to feeling intimidated by her intellect? How did her radical views on liberty shape her critiques of the U.S. Constitution, and what can they teach us in today’s political climate?

During the conversation, Matthew and Kristin delve into  Warren’s enduring legacy—her critiques of unchecked power, her defense of individual rights, and her advocacy for civic virtue. It also addresses her political affiliations and relationships with prominent figures like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, clarifying her alignment with Jefferson’s ideals and the complexities of her evolving relationship with Adams, which transitioned from initial camaraderie to tension.

In This Episode

• (00:00:37) Introduction to Mercy Otis Warren
• (00:01:32) Early life and education
• (00:03:33) Marriage and political influence
• (00:05:49) Mercy's literary career begins
• (00:06:47) Correspondence with prominent figures
• (00:07:15) James Warren's political role
• (00:07:58) Mercy's plays and political commentary
• (00:09:24) Conflict with Thomas Hutchinson
• (00:10:56) Use of pen names
• (00:12:52) The History of the American Revolution
• (00:15:15) The role of memory in Warren's history
• (00:16:23) Warren's concerns about Washington
• (00:17:33) Warren's Critique of the Constitution
• (00:19:51) Warren's observations on the new Constitution
• (00:21:16) Massachusetts ratification convention
• (00:23:15) Warren's advocacy for press freedom
• (00:24:37) Warren's civic engagement perspective
• (00:26:58) Warren's Lockean influences
• (00:29:56) Introduction to Freedom
• (00:30:15) Mercy Otis Warren's political context
• (00:31:07) Warren's alignment with Jefferson
• (00:32:07) Warren and Adams' fractured relationship
• (00:33:23) Reconciliation of Adams and Warren

Notable Quotes

• [00:03:33] "I feel a sense of inferiority whenever I speak to you; I feel that your attainments dwarf those of most men." — Kirstin Birkhaug
• [00:04:44] "Mercy kind of takes up the mantle of continuing his kind of progressive thoughts and ideas into the revolution and beyond." — Kirstin Birkhaug
• [00:12:06] "Warren is caught between this intellect that pulls her towards writing political propaganda plays and the inherent tension she feels about her role as a wife and mother." — Kirstin Birkhaug
• [00:15:15] "She wants to capture this memory of the American Revolution, the keen despair people felt at the loss of liberty, and the steam this movement picked up." — Kirstin Birkhaug
• [00:17:33] "Mercy Otis Warren hopes to reinvigorate the memory of the American Revolution and its principles, which she says are well encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence." — Kirstin Birkhaug
• [00:25:52] "Mercy Otis Warren thinks that the Constitution is a departure from the spirit of the Revolution, not a continuation of it." — Matthew Brogdon

Our Guest

Dr. Kirstin Birkhaug is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Hope College. She teaches a variety of political science courses, including Introduction to American Politics and upper-level political theory. Her research focuses on early A

Transcript

Matthew Brogdon:
[00:00:37 - 00:00:42]
Welcome to This Constitution. I'm Matthew Brogdon. I'm joined today by a very special guest here to talk with us about Mercy Otis Warren, one of our forgotten founders and one of the most important women. Kirstin Birkhaug is an assistant professor of political science at Hope College, and she's an eminent scholar of the American founding and American political thought. Kirstin, welcome to This Constitution.

Kirstin Birkhaug:
[00:01:07 - 00:01:22]
Thank you, Matthew. Great to be with you today.

Matthew Brogdon:
[00:01:22 - 00:01:32]
So we're going to talk about Mercy Otis Warren. Most Americans probably don't know who she is, even though she's crucially important. She really belongs to two founding families that played a significant role in the American founding. So introduce us to Mercy Otis Warren.

 Birkhaug:
[00:01:45 - 00:02:12]
Sure thing. Mercy Otis Warren was born in 1728 to a preeminent family in New England, specifically the Otis family in Massachusetts.
She had older brothers and younger sisters and grew up in a highly educated household. An unusual aspect of her upbringing was that she received an education typically reserved for young men.

[00:02:31 - 00:03:06]
Her father arranged for her brothers to study under a local reverend in preparation for Harvard. When one of her brothers decided against attending, her father allowed Mercy to continue the lessons in his place. This meant she read the same texts that young men studied for university, fostering a sharp intellect and a deep interest in writing.

[00:03:06 - 00:03:41]
As she grew older, some accounts suggest that her intelligence made her a less desirable match in the marriage market. She eventually married James Warren in 1754 at the age of 26. Warren was a prominent figure in the revolution, and together they had five sons.

[00:03:41 - 00:04:30]
Mercy remained deeply engaged in politics, maintaining a close relationship with her brother, James Otis. Otis was a leading member of the Sons of Liberty and influenced figures like John Adams. He advocated for Native American rights, abolition, and even early ideas about women's equality.

[00:04:30 - 00:05:13]
However, Otis suffered a brain injury in an altercation with a British officer in the 1760s, which ended his political influence. Mercy took up his mantle, continuing to champion his progressive ideas through her writings.

[00:05:13 - 00:05:56]
She first published in 1770 after the Boston Tea Party, when John Adams urged her to release a poem she had written. This marked the beginning of her storied publishing career.

Matthew Brogdon:
[00:05:56 - 00:06:00]
Now, Mercy Otis Warren had quite a correspondence throughout her life.  Who else was she connected with? If we're thinking of her in connection with other people we know from the founding, what are the connections that attach her to these other parts of the founding family?

[00:06:47 - 00:07:00]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
Certainly. Her entire family—her brothers, father, father-in-law, and husband—were all prominent Massachusetts politicians. She's directly in their inner circle, with significant influence.

[00:07:00 - 00:07:01]
Matthew Brogdon:
You mentioned James Warren. He was a Civil War general. He also played a major role in state government. At one point, he was the speaker of the Massachusetts House. Did he play a role in the Continental Congress during the Revolution?

[00:07:15 - 00:07:25]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
Yes, he was involved. He was an active member, part of the engine firing all these ideas during the revolution.

[00:07:25 - 00:07:53]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
Certainly, she had his ear, and they were in communication. Their relationship, while not quite on the same level as John and Abigail Adams, shared similarities. They had a friendship based on equality, which was unusual for the time, but it was significant among some of the early American power couples.

[00:07:53 - 00:07:54]
Matthew Brogdon:
Did she write for theater as well? Did she have a play?

[00:07:58 - 00:08:00]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
She wrote five plays. Many of her plays, written during the revolution and the founding era, are political propaganda. She wrote in defense of individual liberty, emphasizing the rights of citizens and the new national project of America.

[00:08:00 - 00:08:25]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
As an anti-federalist, she was uniquely invested in these ideas. She modeled some of her characters after Thomas Hutchinson, a prominent adversary of her family—her father, brothers, and husband. Hutchinson often appeared as a villain trying to strip away liberty and justice.

[00:08:25 - 00:09:00]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
Her plays were both excellent and humorous, and they did a great job conveying her ideas about civic virtue.

[00:09:04 - 00:09:27]
Matthew Brogdon:
Thomas Hutchinson—he was the royal governor in Massachusetts, right?

[00:09:27 - 00:09:53]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
Yes, exactly. Hutchinson served as the royal governor during the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and right up until the British occupation of Boston in 1775.

[00:09:53 - 00:10:23]
Matthew Brogdon:
So, she was writing satires about him during this period of unrest, from the Boston Massacre in 1770 through the Tea Party in 1773, and continuing through the British occupation. It was during this time that we get the first shots of the revolution, like at Lexington and Concord.

[00:10:23 - 00:10:49]
Matthew Brogdon:
She’s almost like the "Saturday Night Live" of the revolution—very outspoken and willing to engage in controversy. But she had to publish much of this under a pen name, right? Did she publish anything under her own name during this period?

[00:10:49 - 00:10:56]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
Very little. One of her favorite pen names during this era was "The Citizen of Columbia." She was already positioning herself as a vested member of the new nation, writing from the perspective of someone who fully aligned with American ideals.

[00:10:56 - 00:11:27]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
Pen names were common at the time. Some, like Publius, remained secretive for a long time, but Warren's pen name was closer to an open secret. Most people knew who she was.

[00:11:27 - 00:12:00]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
In fact, much of the information we have about her suggests that she chose to write under a pen name due to an internal conflict. As a wife, mother, and political voice, she was caught between societal expectations and her own intellectual urges. She wasn’t a proto-feminist, but this tension influenced her use of pen names.

[00:12:06 - 00:12:26]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
She wrote political propaganda plays, poems, and many other works. Her biographer, Nancy Stewart, even referred to her as the "muse of the revolution" for her prolific output.

[00:12:52 - 00:13:00]
Matthew Brogdon:
The most famous thing Mercy Otis Warren wrote is her history of the American Revolution, titled The Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. What’s with the ominous "termination" in the title?

[00:13:14 - 00:13:35]
Matthew Brogdon:
She writes this history late in life, around 1805, and she’s seen many things come and go. It’s not the first authoritative account of the Revolution, but it’s much more readable than the earlier one by Dr. David Ramsey, which is more clinical and dry. Warren’s account, though not as factually accurate as Ramsey's, captures the sentiment of the era better.

[00:13:35 - 00:14:04]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
This history was written as a grand narrative, and modern historians critique Warren's approach. Compared to more modern works, her writing isn’t as focused on fact-checking and accuracy, but her account remains a vital literary work from that time.

[00:14:04 - 00:14:42]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
I personally recommend Lester Cohen’s edition of her work. The introduction is fantastic, and Liberty Fund makes it available online for free in PDF form. It's worth checking out.

[00:14:47 - 00:14:48]
Kirstin Birkhaug:
In fact, I accessed it today! It’s a wonderful resource, and a great example of how history can be told with a strong literary voice.

[00:20:05 - 00:20:25]
Kirstin Birkhaug: Of course, you have the Federalist Papers, written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. There’s a cohesiveness around these papers. They hang together well and appear to form a narrative that's cohesive. They’re written under one author, even though we can sort of see who wrote what when we look back in retrospect.

[00:20:25 - 00:20:46]
Kirstin Birkhaug: Comparatively, the Anti-Federalists are more decentralized, and they have less in common with one another than the Federalists do. We get writers like Cato, Brutus, and Sentinel, who surely share a kind of distress about what the new Constitution might bring, but they're not necessarily aligned in quite the same way.

[00:20:46 - 00:21:16]
Kirstin Birkhaug: Warren is one more voice in this chorus. For her, the key issues with the Constitution were similar to those of other Anti-Federalists: a failure to emphasize individual rights. A Bill of Rights, in particular, was one of her prescriptions. In fact, her observations on the new Constitution are frequently regarded as one of the linchpins in securing that Bill of Rights—a truly amazing legacy for her in that regard.

[00:21:16 - 00:21:28]
Matthew Brogdon: A historical curiosity—did she publish her essay? What kind of relationship did it have with the Massachusetts ratification convention? Was she writing that ahead of the convention or after it? Do you happen to know?

[00:21:28 - 00:21:38]
Kirstin Birkhaug: I don’t know off the top of my head. My guess is that she would have been keenly attuned to when the Massachusetts Ratification Convention was happening, and it’s likely she wrote it beforehand.

[00:21:38 - 00:21:39]
Kirstin Birkhaug: But I don’t have those dates in my head.

[00:21:39 - 00:21:59]
Matthew Brogdon: Interestingly, Massachusetts, I think, is the first state to send its certification of ratification to Congress, along with a list of proposed amendments. I believe that was sometime in the winter of 1788—maybe January or February?

[00:21:59 - 00:22:02]
Kirstin Birkhaug: If I remember correctly, she wrote in October.

[00:22:02 - 00:22:18]
Matthew Brogdon: Okay, so that would be right in line. So, she’s ahead of the curve That’s around when Pennsylvania is doing it. Massachusetts—this is an interesting connection—although not the first state to ratify, is certainly not at the back of the pack. Several states had already ratified by the winter of 1788, and Massachusetts sent this list along with their ratification documents, proposing a fairly lengthy list of amendments. Every state that ratified after that, right up through the 11th state—New York, in July—sends similar lists.

[00:22:18 - 00:22:45]
Matthew Brogdon: The lists start to look similar, with common elements. But Massachusetts really starts a trend there. The proposed amendments create enough pressure that James Madison and his allies in the first Congress write a proposed Bill of Rights. One of these wonderful documents behind us—the one on the far right—proposes twelve amendments. Most of those weren’t exactly what Warren and her friends were asking for, but they do get a Bill of Rights.

[00:22:45 - 00:23:12]
Matthew Brogdon: So, apparently, quite effective.

[00:23:12 - 00:23:31]
Kirstin Birkhaug: Yes, absolutely. One of the things she’s insistent on is stronger protections for freedom of the press, which of course gets rolled into the Bill of Rights as well. It's clearly evident in her observations, and it gets added to the Bill of Rights.

[00:23:31 - 00:23:46]
Kirstin Birkhaug: So, there’s a really clear connection there for her, but she’s also concerned about other things. She thinks the executive and the judiciary are far too close together and that there’s too much room for corruption between them. She’s really concerned about the standing army—or the potential for a federal standing army—which was a concern for many of the Anti-Federalists as well.

[00:23:53 - 00:24:00]

Kirstin Birkhaug: But she viewed that as kind of antithetical to democracy, to liberty, that it would be a kind of perpetual threat. But in general, Warren is a little bit different than the anti-federalists. And all of the other founders, because she writes from the perspective of someone whose primary engagement in politics is civic.

[00:24:00 - 00:24:15]

Kirstin Birkhaug: It's not legal, she doesn't have the full range of legal rights that men do,  coverture laws in, to the extent that they would have applied to her. What have applied to her, which coverture laws at this point were legal fictions that subsumed the identities of married women into their husbands upon marriage, making it difficult for them to own property individually, things of that nature.

[00:24:15 - 00:24:37]

Kirstin Birkhaug: So when she's writing, she's writing as someone who is engaging with politics civilly as someone who is. Educating five sons as someone who is a tested builder of communities as someone who is a stoker of civil discourse. So to that extent, she's concerned about the extent to which the Constitution is going to protect her.

[00:24:37 - 00:24:59]

Kirstin Birkhaug:  inculcates civic virtue, and in particular, a kind of preserved memory of the principles of the American Revolution, and she just doesn't see it. In fact,  the very first line of her observations on the new constitution critiques what she calls theoretical regimes. Regimes that have placed too much of a premium on theorizing about liberty without inculcating the necessary practices that will protect it.

[00:25:00 - 00:25:23]

Kirstin Birkhaug: So that's really her central sort of issue with the constitution is it doesn't do enough to sort of understand what the practical mechanisms will be to protect liberty in the long run. So, yeah.

[00:25:23 - 00:25:49]

Matthew Brogdon: So that raises a really interesting question. Um, you’ve already mentioned in terms of complaints against the Constitution, and this is true of the proposed amendments that states send that we were talking about.

[00:25:49 - 00:26:00]

Matthew Brogdon: Not just about rights as we think about them, things like free press, freedom of speech, and free conscience, but are institutional complaints. They're not happy with the way that things are arranged. It’s the status of the army, the, the structure and extent of the judiciary, the powers of the presidency, the taxing powers, quite often a So you mentioned that,  when she talks about liberty, that, that the In fact, to capture this very clearly or succinctly, Mercy Otis Warren thinks that the Constitution is a departure from the spirit of the Revolution.

[00:26:00 - 00:26:29]

Matthew Brogdon: It’s a departure from the Declaration of Independence, not a continuation of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution. Hence the title of her book, The Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. She doesn’t just mean the end of the war, she means the Constitution The revolutionary tradition and moved into something else.

[00:26:29 - 00:26:50]

Matthew Brogdon: So help me understand a little more what, when she says liberty, that the Constitution has given up on liberty or departed from the tradition of liberty, what does she mean?

[00:26:50 - 00:27:13]

Kirstin Birkhaug: So I think it’s important to highlight here that Warren is a Lockean, the central thinker who occupies her. Primary place in political theory is John Locke, who is someone she reads with James Otis, her brother.

[00:27:13 - 00:27:31]

Kirstin Birkhaug: Well,  James is at Harvard, they share this book, they exchange ideas about it.  there’s a great dual biography of Mercy Warren and James Otis called Har I believe Hearts and Minds is by Jeffrey Hacker that sort of details these exchanges that they have where they were developing these political ideas.

[00:27:31 - 00:27:55]

Kirstin Birkhaug: Locke is also the primary thinker for James Otis. So if we think about Locke and Locke,  you know, emphasis on,  The right to rebellion on the need to recognize tyrannical regimes when they occur and repel them, reject them and the need ultimately to be left alone by one’s government to the extent that it is reasonable.

[00:27:55 - 00:28:00]

Kirstin Birkhaug: Those are the things that she’s not seeing carried through in the Constitution in the same sorts of ways that she’s seeing in the Declaration of Independence. And that makes a lot of sense. Thomas Jefferson’s writing the Declaration of Independence and he is copy pasting from Locke. So it would make sense to the extent that Warren approves of the Declaration of Independence, she approves of Jefferson’s Lockean predispositions.

[00:28:00 - 00:28:20]

Kirstin Birkhaug: Comparatively, if you look at the names that get mentioned at the Constitutional Convention, Locke gets mentioned, surely, but he is not the most mentioned name, which is actually something that is a kind of Recurring and emerging debate,  in,  scholars of American political thought is the extent to which Locke actually is the father of the American political project as he so often purported to be.

[00:28:20 - 00:28:44]

Kirstin Birkhaug: The most frequently mentioned thinker at the Constitutional Convention is Montesquieu.  we’re also getting Followed

[00:28:44 - 00:28:50]

Matthew Brogdon: by Livy. Right.

[00:28:50 - 00:29:00]

Kirstin Birkhaug: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So we’re getting influences in the Constitution that are potentially different theoretical influences than those that primarily undergird the Declaration of Independence.

[00:29:00 - 00:29:06]

Kirstin Birkhaug: And I think that’s where Warren is seeing a bit of attention. For what it’s worth, she’s not convinced that the Ratification of the Constitution is the end of American liberty. It is maybe the termination, in some respects, of the continued spirit of the American Revolution without work. What’s necessary in light of a constitution that Warren ultimately doesn’t do all that it could do to preserve liberty, to preserve the principles of the revolution, is that this is now going to fall to individual Americans.

[00:29:06 - 00:29:42]

Kirstin Birkhaug: So, the Declaration of Independence then, it, it, It’s not just a thesis for the government. It’s not just an idea that undergirds institutions. It’s an individual mandate for Americans. That this is something we need to read and internalize and care about. That we need to be the standard bearers for the memory of what it means not to be free.

[00:29:42 - 00:30:00]

Kirstin Birkhaug: So as to never find ourselves in a situation where we stop being jealous of our own freedoms and collapse our own institutions of liberty, or worse, for Warren, we become oppressive

[00:30:00 - 00:30:15]

Matthew Brogdon: So, and I think I said Livy, maybe Plutarch, some Roman is the second most in the convention, but final question on, on Warren.

[00:30:25 - 00:30:40]

Matthew Brogdon: She wrote Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution in 1805. Of course, by that time, we’re distant from the ratification of the Constitution. You point out we’re almost 20 years out from the writing of the Constitution. We’re, of course, well into our first party system at that point.

[00:30:40 - 00:31:00]

Matthew Brogdon: We’ve, we’ve,  Washington retired from the presidency in 1797. We had four years of John Adams. By the time we get to Warren’s book, we’ve had four years of Thomas Jefferson. We’re gonna get four more years of him. So, where does she fit in those politics? Is she a [00:31:00] Jeffersonian? I assume she’s a Jeffersonian, not a Federalist.

[00:31:03 - 00:31:08]

Matthew Brogdon: How does she fit in that whole controversy once we get political parties?

[00:31:08 - 00:31:20]

Kirstin Birkhaug: So there’s some really interesting history here to the extent that we can align Warren with any one individual founder. It is Jefferson. He’s the bellwether for many of her ideas. They don’t agree on everything, but they agree on many things.

[00:31:22 - 00:31:49] Kirstin Birkhaug: But then that leaves the question of Adams. Because we've already talked a bit about Adams and the fact that they have this close relationship. He's effectively the harbinger of her entire literary career. They fall out, and they fall out right around the Constitutional Convention.  they fall out around John Adams' book that he writes called Discourses on Davila, where he's just sort of parsing through ideas on government, kind of with the American Constitutional Project in mind.

[00:31:49 - 00:32:33] Kirstin Birkhaug: And, you know, he seems to Warren to be entirely too sympathetic to aristocracy and to monarchy, particularly in their hereditary forms. So, if you read the exchanges, there are a couple of great collections of the Warren-Adams epistolary exchanges. She exchanges letters with both John and Abigail,  but there's about ten heated letters between Mercy Otis Warren and John Adams, where John Adams is hurt by her scathing review of his book. She is incensed by what she views as him favoring or lending favor to aristocracy and monarchy. And they just can't come to a resolution, it ends their friendship. So that's a breaking point there.

[00:32:33 - 00:33:00] Kirstin Birkhaug:  so to the extent that John Adams is a political figure with whom she aligns, at that point they're pretty much,  no longer synced up and in the history of the rise, progress, termination of the American Revolution. She does talk about Adams. She's not entirely unsympathetic to him. She paints him as someone who generally wanted to do good and do right by his country, but failed. She characterizes him mostly as a failure and that's also hurtful to him.

[00:33:00 - 00:33:13] Kirstin Birkhaug: So that kind of further fractures their relationship. So in the Jefferson-Adams controversy. She's ultimately going to side with Jefferson, but by that point, the kind of relationship between her and Adams had long since dissolved.

[00:33:13 - 00:33:23] Matthew Brogdon: And there's another connection there, too, because by the end of their lives, Adams and Mercy Otis Warren do restore their correspondence, right, that he reconciled at some point.

[00:33:23 - 00:33:31] Kirstin Birkhaug: Yes. Very briefly, although never to the extent that they had been in the past, where they were great civic friends.  and they were people who sharpened each other intellectually. And they never quite get all the way back there.  but they don't die with the relationship unresolved. Much in a way that sort of mirrors the Adams-Jefferson relationships, which is another one of the great civic friendships of our American history.

[00:33:51 - 00:34:00] Matthew Brogdon: Well, thank you for reintroducing us to one of our forgotten founders and,  allowing us to get to know Mercy Otis Warren and some of your own work.

[00:34:00 - 00:34:03] Kirstin Birkhaug: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

[00:34:03 - 00:34:14] Outro: We're just beginning to explore the rich legacy of America's Constitution. If today's discussion deepened your understanding, share this episode with a friend or student and subscribe to continue learning with us. For more insights and exclusive content, visit uvu.edu/CCS. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to exploring more with you on This Constitution, brought to you by the UVU Center for Constitutional Studies, home to Utah's Civic Thought and Leadership Initiative.