I first read about Mercy Otis Warren in a biography of John Adams. The sister of James Otis, one of the first American patriots unfortunately silenced due to illness caused by a severe beating over politics, Mercy married James Warren and had six sons. She was involved with the politics of her time and spent much time with John and Abigail Adams. She also was a political writer and during the American Revolution penned many pamphlets crusading for the cause of freedom. Her relationship with Adams was temporarily disrupted during the dispute over the Constitution and her epic history of the American Revolution further served to facilitate this break.

This story is particularly interesting because Mercy and her husband James were relatively minor characters during the war and the reader gets a well presented viewpoint of what it was like to gamble so much on the new government. Neither Mercy nor James were personally rewarded for their efforts and yet their strength of character and perserverance helped shaped our country. Mercy was able to function as a beloved mother and wife and yet maintain a role in the intellectual life of the new country. I would strongly recommend this biography. Yet I would also hope that someone current author would undertake the project of a new biography on this interesting woman and her times.

For those interested in the American Revolution, this work is a must. Mercy Otis Warren, a witnesss to the Revolution from start to finish, offers here an eloquent, inspired, profound, and even reliable contemporary account of the epochal events that occured in the crucial period of American history beginning with the Stamp act and terminating with the adoption of the Constitution. However, unlike modern scholarly accounts of the Revolution, Warren makes no effort to remain unbiased. Throughout the work, she firmly and passionately upholds the cause and values of liberty and republicanism. Despite this, she still makes a concerted effort to portray accurately and impartially the events that took place. And while she is at all times staunchly supportive of the cause of the revolutionists, she is quick to condemn cruelty, inhumanity, dishonesty, immorality, and barbarity wherever she finds it.

With these principles firmly in mind, she relates the key figures and events beginning with the reaction to the Stamp Act in the mid-1760s. From this point, she provides an able and suprisingly veracious account of the principal political, military, and diplomatic occurences, as well as the ideological status of both the American and British people. In addition to this, she also makes a point to illuminate several important yet neglected individual and the part that they played in the struggle. The historical significance of such accounts are further augmented by the fact that Warren herself was personally acquanted, either in person or through correspondance. Her relationships, fortunately enough, were not restricted to obscure figures, but rather extended to many figures of enduring stature, such as John Adams.

Ultimately, the main value of the work is that it presents a contemporary scholarly exposition of the events of the American Revolution through the eyes of an individual who clearly embodied the libertarian and republican tendencies of the era. In the same vein, the work garners further importance as an example of the Anti-Federalist tradition. Warren, as many may know, was an outspoken opponent of the Constitution, writing as the reknowned "Columbian Patriot." The final chapter of this work offers further insight into this aspect of her though, so much so that Herbert J. Storing included it in his 7 volume collection of Anti-Federalist material.

Although the value of this work is immense, it goes without saying that one should not engage it as the definitive account of the Revolution. One should, of course, consult the works of modern scholars to gain a more comprehensive account of era. Still, Warren's volumes stand as perhaps the finest contemporary account of the Revolution, and they certainly deserve more attention than they have received in the nearly two centuries that they have been available.