What does it take for a nation to remain free? For founding-era political theorist Mercy Otis Warren, the answer extends beyond the laws and institutions that govern a country. Preserving liberty also required citizens to remember what it was like to be unfree and why it was worth fighting for in the first place.
That argument was the center of a lecture delivered Monday, October 26th by Dr. Kirstin Birkhaug, an assistant professor of political science at Hope College. The finale of the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy’s Civic Virtue Lecture Series, the event examined Warren’s writings and her perspective on civic responsibility during the American founding.
Although Warren was a political writer and one of the earliest historians of the American Revolution, her contributions have often been overshadowed by her male contemporaries. Birkhaug argued that Warren’s writings offer important insights on civic virtue in the founding documents that the founding fathers did not explicitly address. While many of the Founders focused on designing political institutions, Warren was concerned with how those institutions would shape the people living under them.
Born in Massachusetts in 1728, Warren was a political theorist, writer, poet, playwright, and historian who became involved with debates surrounding American independence and the new government.
At a time when women had limited access to education, Warren received an unusually strong education, learning alongside her brother that was being prepared for further schooling by taking the place of a different brother that had dropped out. She also developed close connections and friendships with prominent politician figures during the revolutionary movement, including John and Abigail Adams.
Warren believed strongly in individual liberty and was skeptical of popular figureheads who accumulated too much power or influence, since she believed their will could infringe on personal liberties. She also reflected concerns about slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. Her views informed her understanding of the American Revolution and what its principles would require of future generations.
Warren’s concerns became clear in her 1788 essay Observations on the New Constitution. Published under the pseudonym “A Columbian Patriot,” the work criticized the proposed Constitution and reflected Anti-Federalist concerns, fearing that a strong central government could threaten individual liberty.
Warren worried that the new system didn’t provide sufficient protections against the concentration of power. She supported certain protections included in the Bill of Rights, such as the freedom of the press, which would later become a part of the constitutional framework. She ultimately opposed the Constitution when it was proposed.
Birkhaug explained that Warren was concerned about whether Americans would continue to value liberty once they had it. A constitution could establish political rights, but it could not ensure that future citizens would understand why those rights mattered or remain willing to defend them. She believed that it was essential the citizens remembered what it means “not to be free,” so they would continuously protect the freedom they have.
Warren turned to history for examples of societies that had once valued liberty, but later became oppressive or imperial. She mainly considered Greece, Rome, and Great Britain. She claimed these countries were once pioneers of freedom for the world, but experienced challenges in their relationship with liberty. In her view, luxury and the pursuit of power could distract people from the principles that made their freedom possible, which could lead to tyranny.
To guard against this, Warren believed Americans needed to cultivate civic virtues. These included love for the public good, profound reverence for the laws, contempt of riches, and what she described as “a noble haughtiness of soul.” Birkhaug interpreted this as a sense of personal dignity and pride in one’s individual liberty.
For Warren, preserving freedom required more than just limiting government. She believed that it depended on citizens who valued something more than personal wealth or individual advancement. She believed that forgetting those principles would cause oppression within and without, and even a political system founded on liberty could eventually fail to protect it.
Warren later returned to these concerns in her History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution published in 1805. The work allowed her to reflect on the Revolution and explain what she believed the events meant for the future of the United States.
Rather than simply treating history as a record of political events, Warren viewed it as a way to teach citizens why their country’s founding principals mattered. Birkhaug explained that Warren’s history was intended to preserve and educate on the meaning of the Revolution, including the injustices that led Americans to want independence.
This also helps explain why Warren’s account contained some factual inaccuracies. She wrote from memory and was not concerned only with documenting every event with precision, instead she wrote in a literary style prioritizing developing the meaning from these events. She wanted readers to understand the broader significance of the Revolution and the consequences of forgetting its lessons.
The Declaration of Independence was particularly important to Warren’s ideal vision of civic education. She believed the youth should read it frequently and know it well, not just as a famous document, but as a reminder of the grievances and errors of common law that prompted independence and the principles the revolutionaries fought for.
Birkhaug emphasized that remembering the Declaration required more than celebrating it. Citizens needed to fully absorb the historical circumstances behind it, including the oppression that prompted the movement for independence and the sacrifices made to secure it. Without the context, Americans could become attached to the language of liberty with little knowledge of the actual meaning. This could potentially lead to the decaying of this memory and cause people to lose sight of being free.
Warren’s approach also raised a broader question about how historical memory is passed down through generations. Civic education could take place in formal school settings, but it is also dependent on parents and communities to set examples for one another.
For Warren, education was not only about learning the history of the country, but it was also about developing the civic virtues needed to preserve its liberty.
Birkhaug connected the ideas of memory and civic virtue by concluding that civic virtue is a function of memory, Memory is both taught and practiced; memory and civic virtue safeguard liberty.
The audience discussion following the lecture explored how Warren’s ideas might apply beyond the founding era.
One question focused on Warren’s call for contempt towards luxury and abuse of power, asking how that principle fits within a society shaped by capitalism, Birkhaug responded that Warren would say economics are value neutral and have no internal restraints on it. It is then essential to restrain ourselves with virtues, which is why we must remember liberty and freedom.
The discussion also touched on Warren’s religious beliefs, which are thought to be a heavy influence on her political philosophy. Warren’s Puritan background shaped her understanding of morality, and she viewed Divine Providence as closely connected to the future of the American republic. Birkhaug even goes so far as to say Warren would believe liberty is “God’s will.”
Another question concerned how Warren believed civic knowledge should actually be spread. Birkhaug explained that Warren did not lay out a detailed institutional plan for civic education. Instead, her own writing served as one way to teach readers about the Revolution and reflect on the importance of liberty.
These questions highlighted a central tension in Warren’s work. Political freedom may be established through policy choices, laws, and institutions, but preserving it requires ongoing effort from the people those institutions serve.
More than two centuries later, her work offers a reminder that a republic stands not only on the institutions the founders created, but the citizens who carry its principles forward.
