Atlantic Friendship: Catharine Macaulay and the Enlightenment of Mercy Otis Warren
In the late 18th century and early 19th century, there were two important female historians in the Atlantic world. One was Catharine Macaulay in England; another was Mercy Otis Warren in colonial Massachusetts. Catharine Macaulay was a well-known female historian in the 18th century Britain, not only because she supported oppositional arguments in the British political circles, but also because she criticized David Hume and Edmund Burke’s conservative historical writings, then wrote her own historical works—The History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line (8 volumes, 1763-1783) in response, which won her good fame as a Whig historian in England and North America.[1] As one of Macaulay’s good friends, Mercy Otis Warren recorded the Massachusetts politics and revolutionary political affairs happened in colonial America and became an excellent female historian, too. Warren not only wrote political satires to irony the Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson and the despotism of the Mother Country in revolutionary Massachusetts, but also published her own historical work — History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (3 Volumes, 1805) to praise the American Revolution. Moreover, realizing the decline of the public virtue of the new republic, she wrote a pamphlet named “Observations on the New Constitution and on the Federal and State Conventions” (1788) with a pseudonym name “A Columbian Patriot,” in which she opposed to the ratification of the Federal Constitution and advocated Americans to cultivate public virtues and be cautious of the corruption of the new republic.
In Warren’s deep mind, she admired Macaulay very much. Since the first time she contacted with Macaulay and set up their friendship through letter in 1773, they continued their revolutionary friendship until the death of Catharine Macaulay in 1791. Even when Macaulay died in 1791, Warren helped her to publish her Oberservations on the Reflections of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France in a Letter to the Right Honourable Earl of Stanhope (1791) in Boston, and her “republic voice” was still appreciated in the North America: “Macaulay’s republican voice continued to be heard across the Atlantic through Warren’s republication of her response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France: a pamphlets which, as Warren wrote in her introduction to the Boston edition, “will doubtless gratify every American who has not lost sight of those principles that actuated, and the perseverance that effected, the independence of America.”[2]
When historians assess the significance of Mercy Warren’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, they believe Warren had learned a lot from Macaulay’s History of the England. It is not a surprise that Lester Cohen presumes “Warren had the most systematic understanding of ideology and ethics [of the Revolutionary historians], the best-developed interpretation of how corruption operated in history, and the clearest insight into the historian’s role as a social and political critic.”[3] Moreover, when Warren was dying, she left her will to her granddaughter, Marcia Warren, and left her own presentation copy of Macaulay’s Letters of Education, “hoping its message of female equality and independence would be an inspiration.”[4] As we can see, Warren highly appreciated Macaulay’s great deed as a female historian.
Till now, historians have done a lot research on them. Lawrence J. Friedman and Arthur H. Shaffer think that Warren’s work represented American nationalism and discussed the politics of historical nationalism.[5] Discussing the politics of language in Warren’s works, Lester H. Cohen discusses “the beautiful ‘fabric’ of republicanism” and how it worked in her History. [6] Taking Mercy Warren and Catharine Macaulay as female historians, Marianne B. Geiger examines how Warren and Macaulay contributed themselves to the “transatlantic republican tradition.”[7] Assuming gender and public sphere are good lenses for scholars to do their research, Kate Davies argues Mercy Warren and Catharine Macaulay transmitted the “republic voice” in the Atlantic world and constructed the Atlantic public sphere.[8] Focusing on the correspondence between Mercy Warren and Abigail Adams, Edith B. Gelles examines the bonds of friendship between them. [9] As these and other scholars have done their research on them, rarely have historians explore the enlightenment of Mercy Warren from an Atlantic perspective and examine how Macaulay influenced Warren by setting up herself as an example personally and politically.
In this paper, rather than discuss how Warren was enlightened comprehensively in all her life, I am going to examine the enlightenment of Mercy Warren from an Atlantic perspective and attempt to explain how Macaulay influenced Warren and shaped her character and political thinking. In part one, I will discuss Catharine Macaulay’s political views; In part two, I will examine the Atlantic friendship between Macaulay and the revolutionaries in colonial America; Then I will focus on the correspondence letters between Macaulay and Warren and discuss how Macaulay enlightened Warren; finally, I will argue why Macaulay enlightened Warren so much, while Warren was not a radical as her and was so pessimistic toward the future of the new republic.
I
Macaulay was born in a Whig banking family, from which she inherited “a radicalism rooted in the misfortunes of their grandfather Jacob” when she was young.[10] In 1731, Macaulay was born in Kent, and her parents were Elizabeth Wanley Sawbridge and John Sawbridge, both of whom came from prominent London Whig banking families. When she was young, her family was greatly irrigated by the arbitrary power and monarchy in the Great Britain. In the “South Sea Bubble” affair, Jacob Sawbridge, her grandfather, a member of the House of Commons and once was a director of the South Sea Company, was deprived of his parliamentary seat and lost a lot of fortune for compensating defrauded South Sea stockholders. Jacob was treated so unfair that he was irrigated by the political corruption and was very dissatisfied with the British politics. It was hard to say how much it had influenced young Macaulay, but it was undeniable that “Catharine’s embittered memories of her grandfather’s mistreatment were later reinforced by her study of the history of Greece, Rome, and Stuart England.”[11]
In such a rich family, her father’s library created good opportunities for her to educate herself. In her childhood, Macaulay gradually formed a good habit of reading. She liked reading so much that she read a large number of books in her father’s library, especially those books on the Greek and Roman history. Macaulay's father only cared the education of his sons rather than her young daughters and refused to hire an instructor for Macaulay. However, with the help of her young brother, John Sawbridge, Macaulay managed to educate herself thoroughly. John supported his sister not only intellectually, but also in practice. John became a radical Whig, a member of the “Bill of Rights Club,” a partisan of the policies of John Wilkes and Charles Fox, and in succession alderman, sheriff, Lord Mayor of London, and a Member of Parliament. Encouraged by her younger brother and attracted by the Greek and Roman historical books, Macaulay was educated, which prepared her for joining the circles of radical dissenters and became a famous female historian in her later life.
Dr. George Macaulay, Macaulay’s first husband, helped her wife to integrate herself into the London oppositional circles. In 1760, Macaulay was married to Dr. George Macaulay, a Scottish physician who lived in London. With the help of her husband, she was introduced to the London Whig and Scottish circles. In the London political circles, Tobias Smollett, William Hunter, Thomas Hollis, James Burgh, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, Theophilus Lindsay, Andrew Kippis, John Jebb and other radical dissenters were their representatives, who helped Macaulay to join their political discussion, take part in their political activities actively and share their political views. Thomas Hollis, a good friend of Macaulay’s, even encouraged her to research and write about their shared political views, namely, the political ideas and ideologies of the republican or Old Whig. Influenced by her London friends politically, Macaulay started to form her own view on the British politics.
When the John Wilkes affair happened, Macaulay and her brother became conspicuous political figures in Britain. In 1768, when the House of Common refused to validate John Wilkes’s election as representative of Middlesex Country, which sparked the first viable parliamentary reform movement in eighteenth-century England, both John and Macaulay criticized the House of Common and supported John Wilkes. Defending Wilkes in front of the public, John immediately became one of the most conspicuous figures in London politics and had supporters of the Bill of Rights. Like his brother, Macaulay also took part in the Wilkes affair, although she was sick and mourning her husband’s recent death. Since the John Wilkes affair, Macaulay and his brother became important political figures in Britain.
With the help of her brother and the radicals, Macaulay formed her radical reviews on British politics. In 1767, Macaulay wrote a tract entitled Loose Remarks on Certain Positions to be Found in Mr. Hobbes’s Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society, with a Short Sketch of a Democratical Form of Government, In a Ltter to Signor Paoli. In this pamphlet, Macaulay attacked Hobbes’s advocacy of absolute monarchy, declaring succinctly that “political equality and the laws of good government, as so far from incompatible, that one can never exist to perfection without the other.”[12] Nevertheless, in order to assert her political standpoint clearly, she debated with David Hume and Edmund Burke. When David Hume’s The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 were firstly published in 1754, Macaulay assumed Hume’s The History of the England represented the interest of the Tory party and was partial. Disagreeing with Hume’s conservative historical writing, Macaulay sporadically published her The History of England from the Accession of James I to that of the Brunswick Line since the first volume was published in 1763; When the French Revolution was broken out, Edmund Burke wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790 and advocated French people to support their king and the French monarchy. In response to Burke, in 1790, Macaulay published Observations on the Reflections of the Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke, on the Revolution in France immediately and criticized Burke’s conservative political views.
From 1763 to 1783, Macaulay published her 8 volumes History of the England gradually, in which she explained her understanding of the history of the England. In her masterpieces, she asserted “the general principles of the rights of mankind,” and contained provocative comments with pointed relevance to British politics at the time. Pointing out corruption had “poisoned every part of the constitution” and “sapped” its foundations, Macaulay warned that “the aim of princes is to make conquests on their subjects, not to enlarge the empire of a free people.” In addition, she argued that “government is the ordinance of man; that being the mere creature of human invention, it may be changed or altered according to the dictates of experience and the better judgment of men.” She also pointed out that “any part of individual of the people” had the right to oppose a tyrant “without respect to constitutional forms.” Most English radicals subscribed to the concept of popular sovereignty, but they were reluctant to uphold in practice the right of a people to change their government through revolution. Instead they advocated reform within constitutional channels. Macaulay’s History of the England suggests that she was far less squeamish about revolution than other radicals.[13]
Macaulay was sympathetic to the revolutionaries in North America. However, she was reluctant to see the independence of the thirteen colonies from the British Empire. When the relationships between the Mother Country and the colonies was in tension, unlike radicals who naively thought the conflict between them could be reconciled, she predicted that the war would result in the breakup of the imperial union. In 1775, she made her first and only public statement on the colonial crisis, An Address to the People of England, Ireland, and Scotland, on the Present Important Crisis of Affairs. The pamphlet quickly went through four editions in England and was reprinted in America, where it became “fashionable” reading.[14] In the Address, Macaulay praised parliamentary candidates who had supported parliamentary reform and the taxation rights of Americans in 1774. She charged that despotic government policies threatened the liberties of all British citizens and stressed the injustice of the repressive Quebec Act and recent punitive measures against Boston. If the conciliatory trade policies were successful, she claimed, needed revenues could be obtained from the colonies and Americans would “contribute all in their power towards the welfare of the empire.” Otherwise, civil war between the Mother Country and the colonies were unavoidable and would result in American independence and the loss of American revenues. Worse still, she assumed France and Spain would compete with the England, which would threaten the country’s prosperity and perhaps its survival as a sovereign power. Macaulay criticized the Great Britain government and its trade policies on the North America and was very worry about the independence of the colonies, because she presumed that the independence would damage the relationships between them and would cause the loss of revenues of the Great Britain.[15]
In Macaulay’s late life, she finished her Letters on Education and advocated the education for women. Focused on kindness and non-violence, moral precepts, and the education of women, Macaulay wanted women to be educated so that they could exert their talents to win in the man-dominated world, just as she did. She talked about how women's seeming deficiencies were due not to their lower nature but to their lack of a proper education. She supported the same educational system for boys and girls, men and women. She discussed the fact that a woman's virtue was only a measure of one thing: how chaste they were. She admitted that in society it was acceptable that a woman be a thief, liar, cheat, coward, deadbeat, or any other type of criminal as long as she was still a virgin. Losing her virginity, outside of wedlock, a woman was marked as a debased woman, a situation from which she could never recover.[16] To Macaulay women could find more power in chastity that they chose for themselves than they could in throwing that chastity away. Macaulay’s letters, addressed to ‘Hortensia’ include a brief history of education in Europe as well as thoughts on such topics as ‘Necessary Qualities in a Tutor’, ‘Literary Education of young persons’ and ‘No characteristic Difference in Sex’. She sought to discourage coquetry and foster a taste for serious learning and rational reflection. Written in 1790, Macaulay did not criticize female manners so much, although she argued that women were limited mentally and physically by their environment. She urged physical exercise and academic studies for women, equal to those of men, dismissing the concept of innate inferiority and claiming in a principle which Wollstonecraft would urge tirelessly. As one of her readers, Mary Wollstonecraft was inspired and spoke warmly of Macaulay’s achievements in the Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).[17]
II
Macaulay was so radical a female historian and political activist that colonial Americans wanted to make friends with her. In 1769, heard the saloon hold by Macaulay, Benjamin Rush initiated a regular correspondence with her after attending her salon. Convinced that her goals were “the noblest that ever animated a human breast,” Rush praised her accomplishments publicly and privately and claimed that Macaulay and her friends are the true friends of colonial Americans. In a letter to his brother Jacob, Rush confided: “All Mr. Wilkes’ friends are friends to America; some of them talk of seeking shelter from arbitrary power in the peaceful deserts of America. Mrs. Macaulay, the celebrated female historian… is employed in publishing 5th volume of her History of the England, in which she proposes to treat largely of the settlement of the colonies. You may dependent upon it, she will do ample justice to the rights of America. I wish her History was more known in our country; I think it would be of great importance to us in the present critical situation of our affairs.”[18]
John Dickinson was also glad to communicate with her. John Dickinson not only sent her a piece of silk manufactured in Philadelphia—a symbol of the colonists’ determination to turn manufacturers on their own behalf if England adhered to its taxation policies, but also arranged to import Macaulay’s History into the colonies, in violation of the embargo on British goods. Unlike Thomas Paine’s concise and vigorous Common Sense, which immediately became a bestseller book since its publication in North America, the initial sales of Macaulay’s eight volumes The History of England were disappointing.[19]
Like Benjamin Rush and John Dickinson, John Adams started to contact with Macaulay. When John Adams received word through a friend that Macaulay was interested in corresponding with him, he eagerly dispatched a letter complimenting her as “one of the brightest ornaments not only of her sex but of her Age and Country.”[20] He noted the rumor that Macaulay had planned to pen a “History of the present Reign, or some other History in which the Affairs of America are to have a Share,” and volunteered to assist her. Although Macaulay was genuinely interested in writing a history of America, she ultimately gave up on the idea. American patriots, enthralled with the idea of the “celebrated female historian” immortalizing their cause and country, continued to court her even after the end of the Revolutionary War.[21] Adams’ correspondence with Macaulay demonstrated that Americans, far removed from London, looked to allies like Macaulay for information about public sentiment in England and the ministry’s likely conduct. Her brother’s political connections and her extensive circle of friends increased Macaulay’s potential value as an informant.
Macaulay liked to share her political ideas with her American correspondents. In a 1773 letter she told Adams of the imminent resignation of Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts. In late 1774 she apologized for being unable to send Adams information on “what is meditating against you in England.” She noted that “no item were dropt of the intentions of the Ministry till they were ripe for execution nor did any Person out of the secret and very few [who] were in it conceive an idea that Government would venture such lengths” as were taken in the Intolerable Acts. She decried the apathy of her countrymen to the colonists’ plight: “The people of this country are so dead to every generous principle in policy that they regard the Quarrel of the Government with the Americans only as it may affect their own interests. They will snarl a little if they meet with interruption in their commerce but I believe no evil short of the entire destruction of their prosperity will produce an effective opposition.”[22] Then she concluded pessimistically that “the bands of the Ministry in both houses are so numerous that opposition serves no other purpose than to publish the sentiments of individuals not in the smallest respect to obstruct the designs of government.” Macaulay’s comments confirmed Adams’ worst fears and undoubtedly influenced the determination of patriots to take up arms.[23] In the North America, Macaulay was so welcome that the other political leaders also wanted to share their political views with her. Her American correspondents were broadened and came to include patriots Benjamin Franklin, Richard Henry Lee and his brother Arthur, Josiah Quincy, Jr., the theologian Ezra Stiles, Samuel Adams, the writer and historian Mercy Otis Warren, George Washington, John and Abigail Adams and other politicians.
Macaulay, the first female historian in 18th century Britain, called by Mary Wollstonecraft a “woman of the greatest ability, undoubtedly, that this country has ever produced,” was a great female figure in British history.[24] At the end of the 18th century, Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft “were considered by their contemporaries to be among Edmund Burke’s ‘boldest adversaries.’”[25] Through participating political activities and writing political pamphlets and historical works, she became a great female model for ladies to learn from her. As a radical, Macaulay took part in British political activities and harshly criticized the political corruption of British politics; as an historian, she used primary sources for her research, reading pamphlets and manuscripts written and drew conclusions based on them. Moreover, in order to write history unbiased, she quoted sources at length and cited published essays that reflected both sides of an argument; as a female, she analyzed the deficiencies of the women in a male dominated world and encouraged women to educate themselves. As a female, as well as a radical and an historian, Macaulay set up a good example and encouraged other females in her contemporaries to define their character and enlighten themselves. In North America, her great deed and radical views were highly appreciated by Mercy Otis Warren.
III
In colonial Massachusetts, the Otis family was a famous political family. Born in this family, Mercy Otis Warren was easy to know the political activities happened in colonial Massachusetts and accepted her political education directly from her family. In 1728, Warren was born in the political family of the Otises. Warren’s father, James Otis, Sr. was a judge of the Barnstable County court of common pleas, who had a large number of legal affairs to deal with everyday. Warren’s brother was James Otis, Jr., who first declared that "taxation without representation is tyranny" and argued that the colonial Americans were also the British subjects who had the same rights as the Englishmen in the Great Britain.[26] James Otis, Jr. was so radical a politician that he took part in a lot of political activities in Massachusetts, which directly helped his younger sister to know the Massachusetts political affairs. It was in this family Warren touched the Massachusetts politics and accepted political education from her father and brother. As a girl, Warren’s father did not give her any formal schooling, although he encouraged his sons to accept college education. Luckily, with the help of her brother, James Otis, Jr., Warren got opportunities to learn literacy and knew political activities in colonial Massachusetts. When she was young, she formed a good habit of reading books and was very interested in poems and dramas.
James Warren, Warren’s husband, also played a very important role for Warren to know the political affairs in colonial Massachusetts. She attended the Harvard Commencement and met James Warren in 1743, then she was married to James Warren in 1754 and served as her husband's private secretary at the headquarters of the Massachusetts Committee of Safety and the Provincial Congress to relate news about the Revolution that few men enjoyed. As the Great Britain and the colonies was in tension, the Warren and Otis families positively involved into the colonial politics. James Otis, Jr. actively participated into the resistance activities to the British rule, the Warrens frequently hosted protest meetings, invited famous politicians, like John Adams and his cousin Samuel Adams, to join their discussion. As a woman, Warren could play only a very limited public role. However, she attended those activities and witnessed what happened there, which made good preparation for Warren to write her history of the American Revolution.
Received political education from both the Otis family and the Warren family, Warren began to create political satires to express her dissatisfacation to the Massachusetts governor and the tyranny of the Great Britain in Massachusetts. In 1773, “The Adulateur” appeared anonymously in the Massachusetts Spy, a Boston newspaper. It was written to be read, not performed, since plays were banned in Massachusetts. The play portrayed royal governor Thomas Hutchinson, as the character Rapatio, bent on destroying liberty in a fictional country of "free-born sons." Meanwhile, “The Defeat” was published in the same year, which irony the Rapatio again. Later, featuring the colony's evil Tories and praising the Patriots, “The Group” was published in 1775, “The Blockheads” was published in 1776 and “The Motley Assembly” was published in 1779.[27] Moreover, she published her Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous in 1790, in which her dramas “The Sack of Rome” and “The Ladies of Castile” were included. In these dramas, she told her countrymen the precariousness of freedom and hoped “to throw a mite into the scale of virtue” in order to help insure that enlightened civilizations protect their institutions against “an impenetrable cloud” of corruption.[28]
But in Warren’s life, Macaulay was one of the most important friends who helped her to enlighten herself. In picking up where James Otis, Jr. left, Warren took her brother’s position and started to write letters to Macaulay. Since June 9th, 1773, the first time when Warren wrote her first letter and started her correspondence with Macaulay, they maintained their Atlantic friendship for almost 20 years. In their correspondence letters, they talked about the colonial Massachusetts politics quite frequently. Like Macaulay who harshly criticized the corruption of British politics, Warren also opposed to the tyranny and the corruption of the Great Britain in North America. She pointed out, “that state (the Great Britain) like an unnatural parent has plung’d her dagger into the Bosom of her affectionate offspring.[29] Besides, according to her, the colonies were groaning under the tyranny of the British Empire in North America: “the rapacious arm of tyranny has now seized and is devouring the fair inheritance, and what adds to the just indignation of every lover of his country is that while his land is groaning under the yoke of foreign servitude many of her treacherous sons, dead to more laudable feelings of soul, are stretching out their miscreant hands to fix the chain on a people, to whom they are indebted by innumerable obligations.”[30] As we can see clearly, like Macaulay, Warren hated the political corruption of the Mother Country in colonial Massachusetts and disliked the tyrannical Massachusetts government.
Warren appreciated Macaulay’s political views on the political corruption of the Great Britain. However, she thought Macaulay didn’t notice “the living Agents of a Corrupt court” in North America. She wrote, “Though I never imagined that while you were Researching the Records of time & by your Elegant pen Exhibiting to the World the most striking traits of former Tyrants, you was inattentive to the living Agents of a Corrupt Court: who have been long forming a system of Despotism that should Reach beyond the Atlantic & involve this Extensive Continent in the same Thralldom that Awaits the Miserable Asiatic.[31] The Great Britain should protect its offspring, while in fact, the parent state was “illegal encroachments on her loyal subjects,” invaded their legal rights and “plung’d her dagger into the Bosom of her affectionate offspring.”[32] Obviously, Macaulay’s political views helped Warren to recognize the political situation in the eve of the American Revolution.
In terms of governmental authority, Macaulay claimed that people should oppose to the arbitrary power in order to protect their liberty. Like Macaulay, Warren argued that now that the Mother Country misused its power, the colonial Americans should not obey its authority. Instead, they should resist the authority of the British Government who misused its power and authority:
Mankind have ever been so prone to yield implicit obedience to that authority to which they have long been accustomed that there are few examples of resistance, unless the ill timed exercise or wanton abuse of power has rendered it necessary to resist that arbitrary spirit which too often gains ground till the social state becomes more miserable than the rude ages of uncultivated nature. When this is the case the feelings of the man and the patriot are awakened and both the peasant and the statesman are urged to struggle even in blood to secure themselves and to posterity the claims they derive from heaven.[33]
In Macaulay’s all life, she was a model who was in pursuit of liberty. In a letter to Macaulay, Warren confided to her, “I do not wonder that a mind formed like yours, glowing with the love of freedom and independence, should risk the danger of crossing the seas with the hope of seeing the system of virtue an liberty, the Idol of political and philosophical writers of former ages realized in modern times. But methinks I hear you cry, alas! For human nature! as face answers to face so does the character of Nation to Nation: at least so far as a similarity of circumstances puts it in the power of the governed to enjoy quietly the luxuries of life or the Governors to prevent the indulgence by the abuse of power.”[34] Agreed with Macaulay on the significance of the liberty, Warren continued her correspondence with Macaulay for a long time.
Warren not only appreciated Macaulay’s radical reviews, but also supported her in practice. When the French Revolution was broken out, Edmund Burke supported the monarchy in France and opposed to radical change. Disagreed with Burke’s conservative political views in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Macaulay published her Observation on the Reflection of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke in 1790 immediately in response.[35] When it was published in Boston in 1791, Warren wrote a brief unsigned introduction for supporting Macaulay. Macaulay affirmed popular sovereignty, announcing instead that the French Revolution was a case unique “in that perfect unanimity in the people” and the display of “a sudden spread of an enlightened spirit.”[36] Warren appreciated Macaulay’s views very much and claimed: “Whatever convulsions [may] yet be occasioned by the revolution in France, it will doubtless be favourable to general liberty, and Mr. Burke may undesignedly be an instrument of its promotion, by agitating questions which have for a time lain dormant in England, and have been almost forgotten, or artfully disguised, in America.”[37]
In order to defense her political and historical views of the British politics and history, Macaulay fight against with Thomas Hobbs, David Hume and Edmund Burke without hesitation. For Warren, Macaulay set up a good example for the 18th century women and emulated her to debate with her political rivals ─ the Federalists. In the late 1780s, Federalists were rising in the American politics and advocated Americans to strengthen the power of the federal government. As an anti-Federalist who was dissatisfied with the Federal party, Warren wrote the “Observations on the new Constitution and on the Federal and State Conventions” with a pseudonym “A Columbian Patriot,” and strongly opposed to the ratification of the Constitution in 1787. When the Federalists of the Massachusetts state agreed to ratify the Constitution, Warren claimed, it “dangerously adapted to the purposes of an immediate aristocratic tyranny,” and soon would “terminate in the most uncontroubled despotism.”[38] She argued, the new republic was degrading: “the character of nations generally changes at the moment of revolution…patriotism is discountenanced and publick virtue becomes the ridicule of the sycophant…the gulph of despotism set open, and the grades to slavery, though rapid, are scarce perceptible…science is neglected, and real merit flies to the shades for security from reproach…the mind becomes enervated, and the national character sinks to a kind of apathy…”[39] In her correspondence letter to Macaulay, she pointed out, the Federalist Party wanted to consolidate a strong government, in order to support it by force, it was “at the risqué of distorting the fairest features in the political face of America.”[40]
Through her letters, dramas, poetry, historical works and political pamphlets, Warren expressed her personal opinions on revolutionary affairs. She hated tyrannical government and cherished for freedom and virtue. However, unlike Macaulay who thought the Great Britain should change its trade policies toward its colonies in North America and put them under control, Warren argued for the independence of the thirteen colonies. By taking Macaulay as a model, she not only shared Macaulay’s political views, but also wrote historical works and political pamphlets and asked colonial Americans to pursue freedom. To some degree, Macaulay helped her to enlighten herself in the late 18th century Atlantic world.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Macaulay played a very significant role for enlightening Warren. However, when we compare them together, we can notice the big difference between them. Macaulay was a real radical, while Warren was not. In Warren’s life, she supported her husband as a private secretary, holding political saloons at home, but she was never a real political activist and directly participated into the political activities in colonial Massachusetts. Although Warren emulated Macaulay to argue with the anti-Federalists, she did not want to debate with them publically. Warren published her political pamphlet on the state and Federal constitution with a pseudonym ─ “a Colombian Patriot,” rather than stand in front of them and express her ideas publically, which was totally different from Macaulay’s political behaviors.
In Warren’s late life, she suffered a lot, which greatly influenced her perception of the new republic. Before her History of the American Revolution were appeared in public, three of her five sons were died. Charles died of consumption at the age of twenty-four in 1786; Winslow died in battle in Ohio in 1791 at thirty one; and the youngest, George, died in Maine at the age of twenty four; her oldest son, James Jr. lost a leg. Meanwhile, Macaulay was died. As for her husband, he was so sympathetic to the Shay’s Rebellion in 1786 that James was placed outside of the growing Federalist mainstream in colonial Massachusetts politics due to his moderate Anti-Federalism, while John Adams and Massachusetts Federalists totally disagreed with him. Encountered such political setbacks, James died in 1808 melancholy. Losing her sons, friend and husband and suffered so much, Warren’s nerve was so sensitive that she was suspicious of the future of the new republic.
Meanwhile, the broken up of the friendship between the Warren family and the Adams family was a great hit on Warren mentally. When Warren started to write her History of the American Revolution in the 1770s, John and Abigail Adams highly encouraged her to finish it. In 1787, when John was still in London, he even wrote to her and hoped she could continue to write, “for there are few Persons possessed of more Facts, or who can record them in a more agreeable manner.”[41] While in 1805, when Warren’s three volumes History of the American Revolution were published, John Adams was very disappointed to his encouragement. In Warren’s History of the American Revolution, she pointed out that John Adams “having relinquished the republican system, and forgotten the principles of the American Revolution,” which greatly irrigated John Adams.[42] At last, their friendship was broken up for 12 years until two years before her death in 1814, Abigail Adams visited her again and finally made peace with each another. It was these unhappy events happened in Warren’s late life that they intensified her feelings of melancholy.
Although Warren and Macaulay both supported republican form of government, they disagreed with each other on the end of the government. For warren, the end was the creation of a politically independent republic of virtuous citizens whose secular glories would be commensurate with their basic faith in the workings of providence and in the maintenance of their essential virtue. She explained that “the courage which is accompanied by humanity, is a virtue; but bravery, that pushes through all dangers to destroy, is barbarous, is savage, is brutal.”[43] Therefore, the Revolution could be justified, only if it could produce the right balance of social obligation and individual freedom within humanity, or human nature.[44] Given the attributes Warren assigns to human nature and virtue, Warren only supported republican government. While for Macaulay, the end of the republican government is to protect the liberty of its citizen and against tyranny.
Finally, although Warren shared Macaulay’s historical views, she did not agree with her totally. In the preface to the first volume of her The History of England, Macaulay remarked: “the individual censures which may ensue from striking into a path of literature rarely trodden by my sex will not permit a selfish consideration to keep me mute in the cause of liberty.”[45] Macaulay thought history of the England was the continuous conflict between liberty and arbitrary power, although Warren shared this view, she viewed history in terms of three fundamental conflicts:
A political conflict between liberty and arbitrary power; an ethical conflict between virtue and avarice; and a philosophical conflict between reason and passion …Beyond being mutually consistent, liberty, virtue, and reason were, for Warren as for many of her generation, necessary to sustain a republic. Liberty without virtue and reason to guide it led to licentiousness; virtue without reason and liberty to energize it led to passivity and quietism; and reason without liberty and virtue to focus it led to abstraction and cynicism. The need for all three animating principles demonstrated why republics had proven to be so fragile.[46]
Unlike Macaulay who interpreted the history from the perspective of the binary opposition between liberty and tyranny, Warren assumed the struggle for liberty, virtue and reason and against the power, luxury and passion dominated the topics of history. Comparing with Macaulay who paid more attention to the evil of the monarchical government and its arbitrary power and emphasized the importance of pursuing liberty, Warren noticed how week the new republic and advocated Americans to have public virtues in order to construct a new republic. As a woman and a faithful Christian who suffered a lot in her late life, late Warren’s correspondence filled with Christian forbearance, patience, benevolence, and sobriety mixed with the language of public virtue, which made her rather different from Macaulay.
[1] Joseph Hamburger argues that Macaulay was not the conventional Whig historian, “Macaulay went beyond the conventions of Whig history, and in doing so he gave his History its distinctive character,” see Joseph Hamburger, Macaulay and the Whig Tradition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), 77.
[2] Mercy Otis Warren, ‘Introduction,’ to Catharine Macaulay, Oberservations on the Reflections of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke on the Revolution in France in a Letter to the Right Honourable Earl of Stanhope, 2nd ed. (Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews, 1791), 1. Cited from Kate Davies, Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren: The Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 304.
[3] Lestern Cohen, “Explaining the Revolution: Ideology and Ethics in Mercy Otis Warren’s Historical Theory,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 37, 2 (April 1980), 203.
[4] Marianne B. Geiger, Mercy Otis Warren and Catharine Macaulay: Historians in the Transatlantic Republican Tradition (New York University, Ph. D dissertation: 1986), 4.
[5] Lawrence J. Friedman and Arthur H. Shaffer, “Mercy Otis Warren and the Politics of Historical Nationalism,” The New England Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jun., 1975), 194-215
[6] Lester H. Cohen, “Mercy Otis Warren: The Politics of Language and the Aesthetics of Self,” American Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 5 (Winter, 1983), 481.
[7] Marianne B. Geiger, ibid.
[8] Kate Davies, Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren: The Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender (Oxford: 2005).
[9] Edith B. Gelles, “Bonds of Friendship: The Correspondence of Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 108 (1996), 35-71.
[10] Carla H. Hay, “Catharine Macaulay and the American Revolution,” Historian, Winter 94, vol. 56 Issue 2, 301
[11] Carla H. Hay, ibid, 301
[12] Cited from Jerome R. Reich, British Friends of the American Revolution (Armonk, N.Y. : M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 44.
[13] Catharine Macaulay, Loose Remarks on Certain Propositions to be Found in Mr. Hobbes’ Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society, with a Short Sketch of a Democratical Form of Government in a Letter to Signor Paoli, 2rd ed. (London, 1769), 35 and The History of England from the Accession of James to the Elevation of the House of Hanover, 2rd ed. (London, 1766), 1: xvi, 2: 83, 227, 106n; James Burgh, Political Disquisitions: or, an Inquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses (London, 1774-1775), 3: 429-30.
[14] Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991[1972]), 253-254; Colin Bonwick, English Radicals and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 78, 97; Josiah Quincy, “Journal of Josiah Quincy, Jun., During His Voyage and Residence in England from September 28th, 1774 to March 3rd, 1775,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 50 (1916-1917): 451-452; Paul Smith, comp., English Defenders of American Freedom, 1774-1778 (Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, 1972), 108; John Adams to Dr. J. Morse, 5 January 1816, in C. F. Adams ed., The Works of John Adams (Boston: 1850-1856), vol. 10: 202.
[15] Catharine Macaulay, “An Address to the People of England, Ireland, and Scotland on Present Important Crisis of Affairs,” 3rd ed. (New York, 1775), reprinted in Smith, English Defenders of American Freedom, ibid, 113-122.
[16] Catharine Macaulay, Letters on education (London: 1790)
[17] Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvana Tomaselli ed., A Vindication of the Rights of Men and A Vindication of the Rights of Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
[18] George W. Corner, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), 60-61; L. H. Butterfield, ed., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 2: 182; Macaulay, Loose Remarks, ibid, 29-32; Benjamin Rush to [Jacob Rush], 26, January [1769], in L. H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 1: 74.
[19] H. Trevor Colbourn, “John Dickinson, Historical Revolutionary,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 83 (July 1959): 284; John Dickinson to Arthur lee, 31 March 1770, in Richard Henry Lee, Life of Arthur Lee (Boston, 1829), 2: 30; L. H. Butterfield, “The American Interests of the Firm of E. and C. Dilly, with their Letters to Benjamin Rush, 1770-1795,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 45 (1951): 307-8.
[20] Charles Francis Adams ed., The Works of John Adams: Second President of the United States with a Life of the Author (Boston: 1854), 332.
[21] John Adams to Macaulay, 8 August 1770, in Butterfield, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ibid, 1: 360-361.
[22] Macaulay to John Adams, August 1773, 11 September 1774, Adams Papers, microfilm, reel 344.
[23] Macaulay to Mercy Warren, 11 September 1774, Mercy Warren Papers, Massachusetts History Society, microfilm, reel 1: Letterbook; Maier, ibid, 242, 247-250, 260-264.
[24] Mary Wollstonecraft, Sylvana Tomaselli ed., ibid, 188.
[25] Wendy Gunther-Canada, “The Politics of Sense and Sensibility: Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay Graham on Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France,” in Hilda L. Smith ed., Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 126.
[26] James Otis, “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” in Bruce Frohnen ed., The American Republic: Primary Sources (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 180-201.
[27] See Mercy Otis Warren, The Plays and Poems of Mercy Otis Warren (New York: Delmar, 1980)
[28] Benjamin Franklin V, “Introduction,” in Mercy Otis Warren, The Plays and Poems of Mercy Otis Warren, ibid, xxiv.
[29] Jeffrey H. Richards, Sharon M. Harris ed., Mercy Otis Warren: Selected Letters (Athens: 2009), 37-8.
[30] “To Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay, Plimouth N. E. June 9th, 1773,” in Jeffrey H. Richards, Sharon M. Harris ed., ibid. 38.
[31] “To Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay, Plimouth N. E. December 29, 1774,” Jeffrey H. Richards, ibid, 37.
[32] “To Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay,” Plymouth June 9th, Jeffrey H. Richards, ibid, 16, 37-38.
[33] Jeffrey H. Richards, ibid, 84.
[34] “To Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham,” Milton [September?] 1786, Jeffrey H. Richards, ibid, 208-9.
[35] Edmund Burke, James Dodsley, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: 1790)
[36] Macaulay, 1791, 10. Jeffrey H. Richards, Mercy Otis Warren (New York: Twayne, 1995), 124.
[37] Macaulay 1791, 2. Jeffrey H. Richards, ibid, 124.
[38] In editing the pamphlets on the constitutions of the United States, Leicester Ford erroneously attributed it to Elbridge Gerry. See A Columbian Patriot [Mercy Otis Warren], “Observations on the new Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions,” in Paul Leicester Ford ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, published during its Discussion by the People, 1787-1788 [1787] (Brooklyn, N. Y., 1888), 11.
[39] Paul Leicester Ford ed., ibid, 10.
[40] “To Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay,” Milton December 18th 1787, Jeffrey H. Richards, ibid, 216.
[41] Mercy Otis Warren, Warren-Adams letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren: 1778-1814, Volume 2 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917), 301, Dec. 25, 1787.
[42] See Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, Vol. 3 (Boston, 1805), 392; In his letter to Mercy Warren on July 20, 1807, John Adams claimed that he embraced the principles of the American Revolution, rather than forgotten them, he explained them clearly, see Charles F. Adams, ed., Correspondence between John Adams and Mercy Warren (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 338-350.
[43] Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution (New York: AMS Press, 1970[1805]), vol. 2, 369.
[44] Mercy Otis Warren, ibid, vol. 1, 141.
[45] Macaulay, History of the England, ibid, vol. 1, x.
[46] Lester H. Cohen, “Forward,” Mercy Otis Warren, Lester H. Cohen ed., History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1994), 7.
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