Have Mercy! And Other Tales From the American Revolution

She was the first woman, and one of the few of her generation, to write a comprehensive account of the American Revolution.

She was on a first-name basis — and frequent correspondent — with the great names of the era. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Hancock, Patrick Henry — all admired her. But with her publication in 1805 of History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, she enraged Adams by accusing him of being a closet monarchist. It ended their friendship.

And she is called The Muse of the Revolution. That’s one reason Mercy Otis Warren is on the cover of my new book, Trump’s Superpower: A Historical Novel about the Founding Fathers & One Founding Mother. She is the Founding Mother I chose to include among the founders I brought down from heaven to celebrate our 250th birthday.

On her mother’s side, she was a descendant of Mayflower passenger Edward Doty, one of the men who signed the Mayflower Compact in Massachusetts in 1620. The Compact was the first agreement in the colonies, “in the Presence of God and one another,” to form a “civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation,” and to enact from time to time laws, ordinances, constitutions and offices “for the general Good of the Colony.” You could call it the launch of our democratic traditions.

Married to another famous patriot, James Warren, she raised five sons while he served in government and in George Washington’s army. It was her brother James Otis, a firebrand of revolutionary rhetoric, and author of the phrase ‘No Taxation Without Representation,’ who convinced their father that Mercy deserved a seat at the table with his tutor. With the acquiescence of these men, she learned literature, history, and politics. Later her husband James also encouraged her, calling her “our scribbler.” In those early years she wrote under a pen name, as women were rarely educated, and never welcomed in the rough and tumble of politics, considered a male purview.

Her most important work came after the revolution, when George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and other famous colonialists convened a convention in Philadelphia, in the summer of 1788, to write a constitution. She was angered by the result, which enumerated the powers of a vastly enlarged central government, while eschewing any talk of the rights of the states or the people.

In her view, farmers and merchants had laid down their tools and taken up weapons to fight the mightiest empire in the world because they believed the clarion calls of the Declaration of Independence: that all men were created equal, that their inalienable rights were guaranteed not by man but by the Creator, and that governments could not rule without the consent of the governed.

Under the pseudonym “A Columbia Patriot,” she called on the states not to ratify the constitution unless it was amended to include a Bill of Rights. Historians assumed the essay had been written by Eldridge Gerry, another dissident, and her authorship was only proven decades later by her great great grandson, a historian named Charles Warren. In 1927, he found a reference to the pamphlet in her correspondence with British historian Catharine Macaulay, a friend.

It is to Mercy, along with other dissidents that the political establishment tried to discredit by calling them anti-federalists, that we owe our freedoms.

When the Constitutional Convention finished its work, Benjamin Franklin left Philadelphia Hall. Elizabeth Powel, a fixture in elite circles, approached Franklin, the most famous man in Philadelphia, and asked him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin famously replied, "A republic, madam—if you can keep it.” This exchange James McHenry, a Maryland delegate, recorded in his journal.

She always argued that individual rights trumped those of the central government.

“No republic ever yet stood on a stable foundation without satisfying the common people,” she once wrote. More: “The origin of all power is in the people, and they have an incontestable right to check the creatures of their own creation.” Finally: “The rights of the individual should be the primary object of all governments.”

I think of her now because of the travesty committed by Senate Majority Leader John Thune and his handful of co-conspirators, passing a bill in the middle of the night to bypass the will of the people. She would have wanted us, I think, to rise up and protest, to argue that our country has an obligation to protect our sovereignty by closing the borders, to punish criminals and to guarantee that foreign citizens do not vote in our elections. I imagine she would have applauded the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson, who rarely raises his voice, called the Senate bill “a joke.”

And I also think of her now because she is one of the stars of my new book, Trump’s Superpower: A Historical Novel about the Founding Fathers & One Founding Mother. Some readers have asked me who the founding mother was, and it is Mercy Otis Warren. The book is available for pre-order now, in Kindle or hard cover form. The audio book will drop closer to the publication date, May 12.

I’ve hired a talented artist, who with the help of AI is giving me new tools to promote the book. Here is Ingage Digital Media’s Doug Broomfield and his rendition of Mercy Otis Warren, arguing that contrary to what leftwing critics argue, the founders were motivated not by greed (a favorite narrative of the academe) or slavery (the calling card of the modern Left) but by a passion for liberty, for themselves and future generations.