Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions, Part I: Context

            It occurred to me recently that the manner in which I've been going about things in this blog has perhaps been a bit…one-sided. I've spoken a great deal about what I like to imagine is a decent assortment of statesmen, philosophers, economists, and political thinkers. And I've always tried to grasp them for all that they are; good, bad, inspiring, and flawed. I've tried to be non-partisan, if that’s possible, and yet I seem to have fallen into the rather unfortunate habit of privileging one specific perspective over another of equal value. What I mean to say is, all the people whose work I’ve yet discussed have been men.

            If you feel as though you can see what’s coming, and don’t like it, do please take the opportunity to run for the hills, or whatever.

            See, I have a sister. She’s a very talented writer – very articulate and intelligent – and it just so happens she’s also the submissions editor for an online film magazine called cléo (lower-case and italicized, because it’s that kind of book). It’s a publication with a declared feminist slant, if you hadn't guessed, and reflecting about the kinds of topics it covers and the kind that I cover caused me to stop and think for a moment. The American Revolution, and the period of nation-building that followed, is an utterly fascinating era in the history of the world. Centuries-old traditions were torn down, wholly untested institutions were raised in their place, and men everywhere spoke passionately and articulately about liberty, the nature of human existence, rights, and community. But again we see how easy it is, how seemingly natural, to speak of the American founding as an explicitly masculine enterprise. Inspiring though the preamble of Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration is – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” – it’s also a clearly gendered statement. More than likely the intent was to use “man” as a synonym for “mankind,” though in truth this isn’t much better.

            It isn’t that we should fault Jefferson for not being more gender-inclusive. Trying to hold a figure from the 18^th century to the standards of 21^st is little more than an exercise in futility and frustration. But recognizing the gender bias that comes with studying the Founders raises an important question; where were the women during the Revolution? What did they think/feel/do about the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre, the Declaration of Independence, or the United States Constitution? It was their nation as well as their husbands’, brothers’, fathers’ and sons’; every decision men in power made affected them, in some cases to a greater degree than their male counterparts. Where is their voice? Where is their story? There are, fortunately, a number of studies a person can familiarise themselves with that attempt to tackle questions very much like these. “Women in the Revolution” has become an increasingly fleshed-out area of inquiry since at least the 1980s, and bit by bit the other half of the picture that is the American Founding is being filled out, and given color, light, shadow, and dimension. In that spirit I’d like to contribute something of my own to the conversation.      

    

            That being said, the selection of an appropriate subject presents something of a quandary. One of the reasons that women have been left of the orthodox narrative of the Revolution is because their perspective on just about any topic was felt to hold less intrinsic value than a man’s. As a consequence, women’s thought were rarely recorded, or if recorded were rarely preserved. What we do know of women during the Revolutionary Era comes largely from the perspective of men. This is understandable, but it does rather throw my “history in their words” thesis into disarray. Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and the (giggle) second Second Lady of the United States, would appear to be a rare exception. Her letters to her husband, exchanged over a period of decades amidst some of the most significant events in American history, provide fascinating insight. Not only do they offer a window into the mind of a very intelligent, well-read 18^th-century American woman, but they also chronicle the inner workings of one of the most fruitful, durable, and sincere personal and political partnerships in modern history. A moment’s consideration, however, reveals a slight complication. If Abigail Adams is famous at all, and I think it’s fair to say she is, then it’s really only as a function of her husband’s own celebrity. We can read her letters because John Adams, Founding Father and President of the United States, preserved them; her voice is expressed through and as an accessory to his. This is not meant to downplay her worth as a source of information or insight, but rather to point out that though her perspective is indeed rare and valuable it is one whose very existence (as we know it) is undeniably male-centered.

            Fortunately there is another woman that comes to mind. A contemporary of Adams, Jefferson, and all the rest, her writings during and about the Revolution and the American Founding came at the behest of no man, and went on to influence the course of events on an equal footing with those of her male colleagues. She was a wife and mother, a playwright, an activist, a political commentator, and a historian; all in her own right, and on her own initiative. The abovementioned John Adams himself once wrote of her, “God Almighty has entrusted her with the Powers for the good of the World, which, in the cause of his Providence, he bestows on few of the human race.” I’d like to take the next few weeks to read and discuss a small portion of the work of this woman, she who should most certainly be considered among the American Founders. Her name, which I'm fairly confident you've never heard before, was Mercy Otis Warren.

            Born in 1732 in the Cape Cod community of Barnstable, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mercy was the third of James Otis, Sr. and Mary Allyne’s thirteen children. The elder Otis was one of the most prominent lawyers in the colony, was elected to the General Court in 1745, and was appointed Attorney General by Governor William Shirley in 1748. Mercy was accordingly raised in a familial environment that was both highly literate and politically engaged. Indeed, the manner in which James, Sr. became an opponent of Governor Thomas Hutchinson in the 1760s, and spoke out in the 1770s against perceived abuses of power by British authorities, would seem to indicate a streak of radicalism that doubtless had an impact on his children, Mercy included. Along with her brothers, Joseph and James, Jr., she studied under the family’s private tutor, Reverend Jonathan Russell. Russell apparently noted the young Mercy’s passion for history and furnished her with numerous volumes on the subject. After James, Jr. later departed Barnstable to attend Harvard he corresponded regularly with his sister, and surviving letters attest to his regard for her intelligence and his belief that she should put it to use. Upon her brother’s return to the family home Mercy aided him in his graduate studies, and was thereby exposed for the first time to work by political philosophers like John Locke and David Hume.   

            In 1754, Mercy Otis married Plymouth, Massachusetts lawyer and merchant James Warren. A friend of Mercy’s bother, Warren developed a reputation in the 1760s for being an outspoken critic of British government policies like the Stamp Act, and the Townshend Acts. He later went on to ally with Samuel and John Adams, served in the Massachusetts Militia at Bunker Hill (June 17^th, 1775), and became Paymaster General of the Continental Army in 1776. Soon after their marriage, Mercy became an instrumental part of her husband’s political life. The couple’s home in Plymouth frequently played host to meetings of local political and revolutionary groups, including Samuel Adams’ Sons of Liberty, and thereafter she set her sights on exercising her literary voice in favor of the protection and advancement of the liberties that British authorities seemed daily to be threatening. James Warren proved to be very encouraging of his wife’s efforts, and she in turn became his lifelong correspondent and chief political confidante. The couple went on to have five sons (James, Winslow, Charles, Henry, and George) between 1757 and 1766.

            Over the course of the Revolutionary War years (1775-1783), and the subsequent nation-building era of the 1780s and 1790s, Mercy maintained lively and heartfelt correspondence with a number of highly significant individuals among the Founding Generation. These included, among others, Abigail Adams and Martha Washington, English historian Catherine Macaulay, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. John Adams was also a regular correspondent, and in the 1760s and 1770s became her close friend and literary mentor. Through her letters, Mercy was able to nurture discussions of women’s issues with some of the most influential Americans of the era, help keep various key parties informed of current events, and foster relationships with many of the prime movers of the American Founding. Beginning in the 1770s she began to put her literary prowess to public use with the publication of several highly satirical plays that turned an acerbic eye on the indecisiveness of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and the threat posed by the potential abnegation of the rights guaranteed by the Massachusetts colonial charter. These dramas, all published anonymously, were entitled The Adulterer (1772), The Defeat (1773), The Group (1775), The Blockheads (1776), and The Motley Assembly (1779). Following the end of the Revolutionary War, efforts to improve upon the flaws inherent in the Articles of Confederation produced a draft constitution which Mercy and James Warren both found themselves opposed to. During the subsequent ratification process, whereby said constitution was debated and either approved or denied by special conventions in each of the thirteen states, the pair both published Anti-Federalist essays in their local Massachusetts newspaper under the shared pseudonym “Helvitius Priscus.” Mercy herself, again in an attempt to shine on light on some of the flaws she perceived in the proposed national charter, also wrote a pamphlet with the title Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions, under the penname “A Columbian Patriot.”

            Even from this brief biographical sketch, several important characteristic of Mercy Otis Warren, her life, and her work can be surmised. The first is that she had lived, as of the late 1780s, just about her entire life in a highly politicized and intellectually challenging environment. The daughter, sister, and wife of statesmen, lawyers, and political activists, Mercy Otis Warren (who we’ll just call Warren from here on out) had seemingly always existed in a social world that greatly valued concepts like natural rights, encouraged political dissent against perceived tyranny, and encouraged the use of natural gifts like reason, oratorical skill, and literary ability. In a different environment, surrounded by different people, it would not have been at all surprising for her to adopt the role of patient hostess and loyal friend that so many women of her generation had been taught was their province. This is in no way intended to downplay Warren’s own sense of purpose or initiative. That she was determined to put her talents to use in a field that held little, if any, respect for female contributors, and which would force her to toil for the better part of her years in anonymity, seems indication enough of her steadfast resolve, and her desire to be of service to the political community she felt herself a part of. That being said, the encouragement offered at an early age by her brother, James Otis, Jr., and in her adult years by her husband, James Warren, should not be discounted. Her uncommonness is in some ways a reflection of their uncommonness; no less for being connected, but still very much that.

            Warren’s choice of creative outlet, as mentioned above, is also worth noting. During the era in which Mercy Otis Warren wrote and published, female participation in the Anglo-American literary world was far from the norm. Granting certain notable exceptions, like British feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft or Gothic novelist Eliza Parsons, many women writing in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries did so under pseudonyms in an attempt to conceal their gender, at least partly in order to bypass any assumptions or prejudices as to the content or quality of their work. This did not stop women from putting pen to paper, in any number of genres and at times quite successfully. But the relative paucity of prominent female literary figures doubtless had the effect of conditioning most women who engaged with literature to regard the written word as yet another creative enterprise that was the domain of men. Warren was obviously not dissuaded by the lack of visible role models or exemplars, though she did choose to publish most of her work (until the early 1790s) under a series of assumed names. This would seem to indicate that she was particularly strong-willed – willing to defy the sexual status quo of the Anglo-American community – as well as humble – simultaneously unwilling to publicly engage in behavior that might easily have been regarded with a degree of sensationalism. Her decision to publish anonymously was therefore possibly owing to an aversion to becoming an object of attention while contributing meaningfully to the political events unfolding around her.

            The events of Mercy Otis Warren’s life would also seem to indicate on her part an abiding passion for knowledge and intellectual stimulation. Though Johnathan Russell had been tasked by the Otis family with preparing their eldest sons to attend Harvard, Mercy proved herself as capable a student as her brothers, and so impressed her tutor that he encouraged further study and provided her with the appropriate materials. She exhibited the desire for stimulation and self-improvement again upon the return of James, Jr. from Harvard; though no doubt her offer of assistance was genuine, she doubtless also understood that aiding him in his study presented an opportunity for her to expand her own base of knowledge. This sense of initiative is remarkable considering that learning was not something that was required of her gender. There were no women’s colleges in the colonial Massachusetts of her youth, and an advanced knowledge of history, philosophy, or literature would not have been necessary to fulfil the role of wife and mother that was life’s culmination for the great majority of 18^th-century women. Though Mercy Otis Warren was indeed a faithful wife to her husband James, and a mother to his children, she succeeded in becoming so much more thanks to a sense of curiosity and self-assuredness on par with that of her male colleagues. This confidence and keen interest in the world around her manifested itself again during her married life when she became an active participant in the political gatherings that the Warrens hosted in their Plymouth home. Rather than listen, council her husband, and otherwise keep to herself, she reacted to the events of the day by becoming a playwright. Her views on the political situation in Massachusetts in the 1770s became fodder for public consumption and debate because she took steps to make them so. In the 1780s she did so again on the topic of the proposed constitution, on an equal basis with her husband, the various Anti-Federalists, and the likes of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. At every step along the way she may well have received encouragement from her male family members and friends, but without some innate sense of purpose, without feeling on some level like she needed to be a part of the world of knowledge and debate, Mercy Otis Warren would likely be a name of little consequence. She made it otherwise.