Road to Liberty: Mercy Otis Warren

Known as the "Conscience of the Revolution" and described as perhaps the most formidable female intellectual in eighteenth-century America, Mercy Otis Warren was a poet, historian, and playwright. She believed in the Revolution and played an integral role in capturing, shaping, and moving the cause forward.

Born in 1728 in Barnstable, Massachusetts, Mercy Otis was the third of thirteen children and the family’s oldest daughter. She grew up in a household where her intellectual and academic pursuits were encouraged, which was unusual for women at the time. She married James Warren, a politician, in 1754, and they had five sons. Defying custom and convention, Warren was openly political, engaging with many great figures and thinkers like John Adams, Abigail Adams, and Samuel Adams.

Patriotic and writing anonymously, Warren published her satire, The Adulateur (1772), and two other plays, Defeat (1773) and The Group (1775), each denouncing the British. She supported the Boston Tea Party and boycotts of British goods.

In 1790, using her real name, Warren was the third woman to publish a book of poems, behind Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley. In 1805, Warren also published History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, a three-volume work that comprehensively captured the history leading toward Revolution. This was one of the first nonfiction books published by a woman in America.

She also denounced the institution of slavery because it could "banish a sense of general liberty." And as an Anti-Federalist, she took a strong stand against ratification of the Constitution. At the age of 86, Warren died on October 19, 1814, in Massachusetts, leaving behind a legacy as a bold woman undeterred in telling the truth.