Mercy Warren

Biography of Mercy Otis Warren. Mercy (1728 - 1814) was a political writer and propagandist of the American Revolution.Her brother, James Otis, was a leader of the rebels at the time of the Stamp Act.  Her husband James Warren was head of the Massachusetts legislature and paymaster to the Continental Army. She initiated the Committees of Correspondence and stayed in close touch with leaders of the Revolution, in particular with her close friends Abigail and John Adams. During the debate over the United States Constitution in 1788, she issued a pamphlet, Observations on the new Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions written under the pseudonym "A Columbian Patriot," that opposed ratification of the document and advocated the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. She wrote plays and poems and also a three-volume history of the American Reovlution -- "History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution."