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Editor’s Note

This edition of Mercy Otis Warren’s History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution. Interspersed with Biographical, Political and Moral Observations reprints the first edition of the work published in Boston by Manning and Loring in 1805. To produce a new edition of the text, designed for general readers as well as scholars, we have made several concessions to modernity.

First, and most important, whereas the History originally appeared in three volumes, the present edition is in two. To help the reader make an easy correspondence between this edition and the first, we have used three devices: we have noted the original volume number in the running head; we have (following Manning and Loring’s original) numbered the chapters consecutively through the volumes and (again like Manning and Loring) placed the chapter number in the margin of each page; and we have inserted the original page numbers in brackets in the text to mark page breaks. By noting the volume, chapter, and page numbers of the original edition on each page of this one, the reader can tell at a glance exactly how the two correspond. Dates in the margins, intended to remind the reader which year is being discussed, are also preserved from the original.

Second, Manning and Loring’s typography has been modernized. The long “s” has been replaced by the less elegant but more readable standard “s.” Also, where Manning and Loring placed quotation marks down the left margin as well as at the end of lengthy quotations, we have opted to place quotation marks only immediately before and after all quoted passages, except when they were best displayed as extracts, according to standard modern practice, without the marks. We have, in addition, silently corrected obvious misprints. We thought it unnecessary to announce such corrections—inserting a missing “i” in “reconciliation,” for example—when reproducing the original typographical error would bear no significance to a modern reader.

We have not, however, altered Warren’s orthography. We have preserved, for example, such spellings as “manoeuvre” and “connexion,” and such abbreviations as the military title “gen.” or the clerical title “rev.” More important, Warren herself abandoned the “u” in “all words of Latin origin, such as honor, error &c. and [chose] to retain it only in words of Saxon origin, such as endeavour.”¹ She rejected the extraneous “u” deliberately to repudiate a symbol of English cultural dominance and to announce that her work was American. Noah Webster, lexicographer, historian, and commentator on culture, called for precisely such a change in orthography in a ringing plea for an American national culture based upon a national language.²

Third, Warren’s “Notes,” contained in appendices at the end of each of her three volumes, have been divided for the sake of convenience. This division affects only the notes appearing in the original volume II, over half of which now appear at the end of the present first volume, the remainder falling at the end of the present second volume. The notes are keyed to the pages in both the original and the present edition.

Warren’s original index, corresponding to the pagination of the 1805 edition, is reprinted here in facsimile. A new index, designed to support modern inquiries, is also provided.

Warren’s References

Warren read widely all her life. Rev. Jonathan Russell introduced her to Sir Walter Raleigh’s The History of the World (1614) when she was a youth, and she continued to read history avidly. She knew her native New England through the works of Cotton Mather and Thomas Prince as well as those of later writers, and she was knowledgeable about the history of the other colonies as well. Though she was perfectly placed, as an Otis and a Warren, to have firsthand information about the most recent events, she also scoured the newspapers and magazines. She was familiar with the Massachusetts Historical Society and its recent Collections.

Nor did she confine her readings to America and its affairs. Her footnotes evidence her familiarity with such general works as William Belsham’s Memoirs of the Reign of George III and the Modern Universal History, as well as Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. She kept abreast of English periodicals such as The Annual Register and The Remembrancer, and she maintained a lively interest in Parliamentary debates. She was also remarkably up-to-date on new publications, particularly those concerned with politics and contemporary history and those that contained documents relating to recent events. Her interest in the French Revolution, about which she read in Edmund Burke, Catharine Macaulay, and James Mackintosh, among others, is a case in point.

Citations in the History and references in her letters show a strong familiarity not only with books and writers she admired—the Bible, of course, numerous classical authors, William Shakespeare, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison (especially his play “Cato”), William Paley, John Locke, Adam Smith, Mackintosh, Macaulay, and Burke (except on the French Revolution)—but also with those whom she deplored—David Hume (because he was a skeptic), Edward Gibbon (whom she admired, but thought suspect for his skepticism and Tory stance), Lord Bolingbroke (a great moralist, but a Tory), and Lord Chesterfield (who was, as Warren saw it, more concerned with style, taste, and wit than with substantive values).³

Many of the quotations in the History represent acts of virtuosity on her part, identifying her as a widely read and well-informed person. She was highly opinionated politically and morally, and she found support for her most cherished views in a great variety of sources. One consequence of her wide-ranging reading habits is that many of her quotations and citations have been difficult, and a few have been impossible, to track down.

To the modern reader, eighteenth-century footnotes are idiosyncratic, to say the least. They are frequently vague, oblique, and insufficient. The reader of Warren’s text will find quotations from and references to “Gibbon on the decline and fall of the Roman empire,” which originally appeared in six volumes; or what appears to be a lengthy quotation from “Mackintosh,” which is accurate enough, but which turns out to be two quotations that are separated by a hundred pages; or citations to the same work under three different titles and an author of a different name; or a quotation from “Montesquieu,” the sense of which is readily found in The Spirit of the Laws, though the quotation is not.

The point is not that Warren was unusually careless, or that she invented language to suit her needs. On the contrary, her relatively extensive use of footnotes evidences that she was uncommonly scrupulous in revealing her sources.⁴ Like most historians prior to the twentieth century, Warren often wrote from memory. She did not always have at hand the book, pamphlet, or letter that she intended to quote. Occasionally, she worked from notes; even passages from her own letters, where she had turned a phrase particularly well, appear in the History. Until recently, moreover, precise quotation was not a scholarly ideal. (Warren would be amused, perhaps amazed, at the idea that one who professes to be a historian would, two hundred years later, attempt to find her sources.)

My point is that because Warren sometimes misquoted and sometimes provided inaccurate citations, I cannot be completely confident in all cases that I have found the sources that she used. I have, in preparing this annotated edition of the History, attempted to track down all of Warren’s footnotes. While a few quotations that she did not footnote are scattered through the text, I confined myself to those for which she did provide references. She presupposed that she wrote for a broadly literate audience and that the members of that audience would either know the quotations or, more likely, take them for granted as common fare. It turns out, moreover, that many of her fugitive quotations are tied to a footnote a page or two later. All of Warren’s original footnotes remain in place, indicated, as in the first edition, by asterisks, daggers, and double daggers. In most cases I have supplied a more complete reference, set off by brackets, immediately after her footnote.

Naturally, in providing expanded footnotes I have tried, wherever possible, to cite the specific source that Warren actually used. Failing that, I have cited a source—for instance, a collection such as Force’s American Archives—which contains her specific source. In some cases, particularly when I cannot be sure that I have uncovered the correct document, I suggest a source that reads very much like the one Warren cites. In all such cases, I indicate my lack of surety by introducing the source with “See” or “Probably.”

Acknowledgments

During the preparation of this edition, several friends and colleagues have proved to me, once again, how generous scholars are. Linda Levy Peck took valuable time from her own researches to wade through Nathanael Greene’s letters at The Henry E. Huntington Library. Daniel J. McInerney found G. F. A. Wendeborn when I persisted in looking for Dr. F. A. Wenderburne and all the Wedderburnes in the British Museum Catalogue. Eugene F. Miller helped me narrow the field on Warren’s fugitive quotation of “a celebrated writer.” Mary Elizabeth Regan graciously provided me with a copy of her Ph.D. dissertation on Warren. Leonora Woodman, Dan McInerney, and Mark U. Edwards read versions of the introductory materials and made suggestions that improved them. Working with the staff at Liberty Fund, Inc. has been, yet again, a joy.

A number of librarians and archivists saved me much time and expense by responding to queries on some of Warren’s references. Joel Silver helped make Indiana University’s Lilly Library, where I did the bulk of my source work, accessible and enjoyable. Dennis M. Conrad, associate editor of the Nathanael Greene Papers, searched through as yet unorganized Greene letters to find specific ones for me. James Fox of the New-York Historical Society located Gates, Cadwallader, and Reed letters. Anne-Marie Schaaf helped me with references to holdings in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The staffs of the University of Michigan’s Graduate Library and the William L. Clements Library were gracious and helpful.

I owe a special debt to my friend and colleague Cheryl Z. Oreovicz, who is preparing a biography of Warren. For most of the last dozen years we have taught together, shared materials, and fought over interpretations of Warren’s religious thought, politics, intellectual influences, and style. She has generously allowed me to use Warren materials that she has collected, and she has read the introduction to this volume. I have received the lion’s share of the benefit of these exchanges.

If these volumes were mine, rather than Warren’s, to dedicate, I would dedicate them to my mother—like Warren a bright, talented woman who was years ahead of her time.

Lester H. Cohen