[00:00:00]

Isabelle Roughol: Hello, and welcome to Broad History, a podcast about the history you think you know with women in it this time. I'm your host, Isabelle Roughol.

We know from previous episodes in this series that it was complicated for women in colonial and revolutionary America to get involved in politics. There was no franchise, of course. There was no office they could hold. Several of the women we talked about, like Abigail Adams or the Schuyler sisters, are only remembered inasmuch as they were able to influence the political men they were married to.

But every so often, rarely, a woman would stand out expressing her political views in her own name publicly, just a little bit louder than was expected. And we're talking about one such woman today, Mercy Otis Warren.

Mercy was a published poet and a playwright, a Republican in Federalist Massachusetts, a mother of five, and a political wife who ended up much more famous a politician than her husband. She's also a [00:01:00] bit of a mascot to me, and probably to the early American historians who've been on the show these last few weeks, because she was the very first historian of the Revolution.

She published an epic three-volume "History of the American Revolution," which she wrote with access to the documents and the memories of all of her patriot friends.

To talk about Mercy Otis Warren, I reached out to Rosemarie Zagarri. She's a distinguished professor of history at George Mason University and the author of the essential Mercy Otis Warren biography, "A Woman's Dilemma."

Here's Rosemarie Zagarri.

[00:01:33] Start of interview

Isabelle Roughol: Rosemarie Zagarri, hello and welcome to Broad History

Rosemarie Zagarri: Hi, it's great to be here

Isabelle Roughol: Thank you for coming on to talk about Mercy Otis Warren, and I want to start by talking about sort of her origin story. I think she stands out as being someone who's unusually educated for a woman of her generation, and so I want to talk about her formative years and how she got access to that education that so few women of her [00:02:00] generation did.

[00:02:00] Mercy's unusual education

Rosemarie Zagarri: Yes. Well, she was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1728 to a very well-connected family politically. Her father was a farmer, and a merchant, but also was very active in colonial politics and as her brother and her father would later on be in revolutionary politics. But, she was educated, with a private tutor alongside her brother.

And what we think is that her family recognized from a very early age that she was precocious, and that even though women didn't tend to get a very highly sophisticated education at this time, they were willing to give her one.

Now, I should say that in Massachusetts, girls were eligible with boys to go to primary school, and this [00:03:00] is one of the only places, if not the only place in the colonies, where there was a free public education available at the primary level.

And I also should say that it was not uncommon for women in New England to read and write, and so she would have learned that whether or not she received her fancy education. But again, because she apparently displayed this early precocity and her brother, James, was being tutored to prepare to enter Harvard University, and that was the typical path for young men at this time of the upper classes to be tutored by an individual.

She and her brother were tutored by a neighboring minister. And here's where her education differed from that of many other New England women or young girls at the time. So she read classics in translation, the ancient Homer [00:04:00] and the histories of ancient Rome and Greece. And so she learned about that. She also read the greats of English literature, Pope and Dryden and, of course, Shakespeare. And so she mastered those and o- obviously was a very astute student because we know from her later writings that she constantly has references to them. She also learned to write, and what becomes clear is that she was an excellent author. And, she was a very good poetess, and that was common among women who were literate at this day to write poetry. But she also was a prolific letter writer, and then later on, of course, she became a very, important writer of political plays and pamphlets and poetry.

So,her early education prepared her in a way that was unusual, not just for girls at this time, but for most [00:05:00] white men. I mean, most white men did not have the sophisticated kind of education that she did.

And again, we think it's because her family recognized her, her, her genius, if you will. And, uh, this is like Phyllis Wheatley in a way, who the, the enslaved woman who received a very sophisticated education because, her mistress recognized her talent. And so that's how she became who she was.

[00:05:25] How she grew up in the anti-British resistance

Isabelle Roughol: Mm-hmm. And she seems to have been very much encouraged by the men around her to nurture that talent and to be educated and to write.

Rosemarie Zagarri: Yes. Although it was always her goal and the goal of her family for her to be a wife and mother, and she did marry, and she had five sons. And I think that is how, at least in her younger life, she saw her mission, she saw her goal. It was to be a good wife and mother. But she [00:06:00] did continue to write, and she wrote poetry for her family, and they would pass it around and read it to each other.

And she was very close to her brother, James Warren. James Warren became one of the earliest leaders of the, resistance movement in Massachusetts. So in 1760, there was a famous court case called the Writs of Assistance case, which he argued, and he argued against the Crown's ability to unilaterally, impose, or the, the, the Massachusetts government ability to unilaterally search businesses without the proper warrant.

And this is often regarded as the opening salvo of resistance in Massachusetts. she was very close with him. Even when he was away at Harvard, they corresponded. After she was married, her home in Plymouth became a kind of way station for people who were very engaged [00:07:00] in the resistance movement against Britain in the 1760s.

And so,people like John Adams, as well as her brother James Warren, would often stop by. And she talks about remembering many conversations about politics by the fireside.

And it's there that the Writs of Assistance case was discussed. It's there that the latest British policies against America were discussed.

She says that in the 1770s, the idea for committees of correspondence to communicate between and among the colonies was hatched there by her friends and family. So she, undoubtedly was reading the newspapers of the time, the pamphlets of the time, which were talking about these ideas of resistance, but she also had a sort of f- front row view to the developing ideas of the resistance.

[00:07:59] For a woman to be interested in politics was rare - and inappropriate

Rosemarie Zagarri: And as [00:08:00] I said, she was in communication with her brother even when he wasn't nearby. And she was, again, very thoughtful from the beginning about politics, very engaged in politics. And this in itself was unusual because politics was thought to be an exclusively male realm. Of course, only males could vote or hold public office.

But even the idea of women being interested in politics and the id- I think the idea that women would care about politics or want to know about politics was unusual and in some s- some circles regarded as forbidden. Now over in England,Catherine Macaulay was starting to break down those barriers because in the 1750s and '60s, she was publishing her "Histories of England," which not only, you know, were about the history, but included things about politics.

And her brother, James Warren, was in communication with [00:09:00] Catherine Macaulay. And Catherine Macaulay later became a kind of example, a role model for Mercy Otis Warren when it came to writing about politics. And later on, Mercy Otis Warren herself would,would be, in correspondence with Catherine Macaulay.

[00:09:15] How Mercy picked up her brother's mantle, encouraged by the men around herx

Rosemarie Zagarri: Now, that's a long way of getting around to say that,her family knew of and encouraged her interest in politics. And it was surrounding her in the 1760s and '70s. But then by the s- early 1770s, her brother had an unfortunate mental breakdown. He was actually beaten in a political fight with a cane in Boston, and he just became totally unstable after that and retreated to the countryside and was really never again, this is around 1770, a part of the revolutionary battle after that.

But in a way, she felt I think that [00:10:00] she had to take over for her brother. And John Adams, who had become a good family friend by that point, encouraged her interest in politics, and then began to encourage her to write for publication. So after the Boston Tea Party of 1772, he encouraged her to write a poem on the Boston Tea Party, and she wrote this very elaborate poem set in ancient times about the battle among the sea nymphs and the battle over tea and, the battle for freedom. And John Adams had it published.

Now, I should say it was not published on her, under her own name, as most of her pre-Revolutionary era writings were not published under her own name. They were published either under a pseudonym or anonymously. This was partly to protect her authorship as a woman, but it was also typical of the times.

The libel laws were very strict, and, talking about [00:11:00] political figures or political ideas could be dangerous. And so she just was not simply using her name when she published her works before the American Revolution. She would after the revolution, which is very significant. But before the revolution, she did not.

Still, that was the beginning of her publishing a series of political poems and plays in Boston newspapers, in pamphlet form. And these were poems and plays that were meant to stir up resistance against what they, the colonists, had come to perceive as British infringements on their rights and liberties, to warn people that their rights were being taken away, to encourage people to think about the need, if necessary, to take up arms against Britain, and to, to just inspire people to remind them that they are a free people and should not be [00:12:00] subjected to the whims of a foreign, foreign, uh, oppressor who was trying to strip them of their cherished rights and liberties.

[00:12:09] "A masculine genius"

Rosemarie Zagarri: So,her, her fa- her brother encouraged her. John Adams encouraged her, and her husband, James Warren, encouraged her to publish these things. I will say that her husband, as supportive as he, of he, as he was of her writing, talked about her as having, and this is a quote, "a masculine genius."

A masculine genius. And so the idea was that politics was still gendered male

Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. I'm fascinated with that quote because it's something that we do a lot as humans, you know, when we meet someone who belies the preconceived notions that we might have about a particular group, in this case women, rather than say, "Oh, you know, she's capable, a capable political thinker, therefore women are, can be capable political thinkers," we exclude her from the [00:13:00] group and it's like, "Nah, she's not really like women. she has masculine abilities," rather than admit that those abilities might be feminine as well.

Rosemarie Zagarri: Exactly. Exactly. But I just think it points to how radical what she was doing was, how she was kind of an exception that they were making because she could contribute to the revolutionary cause. And it's not as if they were saying, "Oh, welcome women to politics." They were saying, Mercy Otis Warren, you're useful to us, so please help us out."

Isabelle Roughol: Hmm, right. She is tolerated because what she's doing is useful to the revolution. So, so what are the ideas that she is defending? What is she telling the American people through her writing, and how is it received?

[00:13:45] Warning the colonists and encouraging sacrifice

Rosemarie Zagarri: Okay. I mean, she became a very prolific writer with many different kinds of writings. But in the pre-revolutionary period, she is writing this political poetry partly to encourage [00:14:00] people to support the actions of the, of the Continental Congress for the boycott against British goods.

And she especially addresses women and encourages them to give up the fripperies of life like lace, and buttons, and fancy hats, and fancy clothing, and tea, and porcelain, and silver, because they-- the colonists were trying to stop trading with Br- Great Britain to hurt them economically. And so she reached out especially to other women in her poetry to try and encourage them to support the cause of resistance.

But her message was broader. In her political plays, these are satires, and I should mention that they were not meant to be performed on stage. In fact, in Massachusetts, that was not even allowed at this time because of the Puritan heritage. But they were meant to be a-- read aloud, say, in a [00:15:00] parlor. And they were actually written in verse. They were written as poetry.

And they were satires in the sense that they were characters based on local politicians who were doing the bidding of Great Britain at the expense of the colonists. And one of her chief rivals and antagonists was Thomas Hutchinson, who was American-born but who was perfectly in thrall to the British and who was willing to trample on American rights and liberties in the service of Great Britain just to advance himself.

So she has some scathing satire about people who are willing to abandon all their principles and loyalties just to advance their own personal interests. and as I mentioned before, she's very interested in warning people about these encroachments, with British policies. I mean, that had begun in the 1760s with the Stamp Act but continued through the Tea Act that were an [00:16:00] attempt to,to diminish Americans' abilities to govern themselves through their legislatures, to take away their autonomy, to take away their right to self-government.

And there were many instances of this occurring, to the, to, to the alarm of those who were paying attention. And she just wanted to warn her fellow colonists that this was a problem and a growing problem, and it might need to be, their liberties might be de- need to be defended by taking up arms.

as I mentioned, her works were primarily published in Massachusetts, but especially the pamphlets began to circulate outside of Massachusetts. she was really trying to warn people to be vigilant and virtuous and to be willing to make the sacrifices they needed to make to protect their liberties.

[00:16:50] The quintessential female politician

Isabelle Roughol: Is she then, with all this writing, is she what they called a female politician? And we should probably explain what that word means at

the time

Rosemarie Zagarri: Yes. Yes. Well, that is a [00:17:00] word that emerged around this time, female politician. And, it meant simply a woman who was engaged in political, ideas and wanted to talk or write about politics. Sometimes it was used pejoratively, sometimes it was used positively. So you can't really generalize about that.

But I think what you see is that women are becoming more politically engaged at this time, and it's partly because male political leaders realized that if they were gonna be successful in their efforts to resist Great Britain, they needed to enlist the support of women. Especially, as I mentioned, in these pre-revolutionary boycotts, women were the great consumers and often the great purchasers of the family.

And male political leaders knew that they needed to get women on board to support these efforts. And so you start to see poems and [00:18:00] essays in newspapers, appealing directly to women to support these causes. So women, were reading this, and women were starting to get more politically engaged. And then with the coming of the revolution in 1775 and then 1776, more and more women found themselves, whether they wanted to be or not, engulfed in the, war, in the results of the war, especially if British troops were nearby.

They had to worry about whether the British would take their, crops or steal their animals or even, assault them personally, threaten them physically. and more More and more women, kind of out of necessity, started to become more interested in politics because it was affecting their daily lives.

And so this term female politician started to emerge as a term to refer to women who were interested in reading about, talking about, engaged with [00:19:00] politics. And I would say that Mercy Otis Warren was kind of the preeminent female politician.

[00:19:06] Defending natural rights

Isabelle Roughol: Mm-hmm. And, she's also writing about, this notion that we see in the American Revolution, right, of natural rights. Is that right? Yeah. What do we mean by that? What do we mean by natural rights? Might wanna define that.

Rosemarie Zagarri: Yeah. So I think like other Americans at this time, educated Americans at least, she had a strong sense of the way in which the tradition of British rights and liberties, particularly the tradition of self-government, representative government of the elected legislature being the voice of the people, was a long tradition in Great Britain, embodied most especially in the House of Commons in Parliament, and then transferred to these lower houses of the colonial assemblies.

So, you know, the lower house of the Massachusetts assembly was the bastion of resistance [00:20:00] to British policies in Massachusetts, as was true in many of the other colonies. Very vocal in sending petitions and, making declarations and, alerting the people to what was happening with Great Britain.

So they were in the forefront of that. And so I think her belief in rights was grounded in this tradition of Anglo-American rights. But then as the time for revolution became, came closer, it was clear that you can't really justify revolution, on the basis of British rights. You have to turn to John Locke, say, and his theory of government, and the idea that when a king becomes a tyrant, revolution is justified.

And you had people like Thomas Jefferson, even before the Declaration of Independence, writing about natural rights and how these rights are universal, grounded in nature, given by God to all people throughout the world, and that [00:21:00] what was being violated were the colonists' basic and fundamental natural rights, not just their rights as Englishmen.

And so this is the kind of tradition that emerged,that the colonists rallied around to help justify their resistance and then their revo- revolution against Great Britain. So yes, she was a part of that. This idea of universal rights became very important in terms of extending rights to other groups besides elite white males.

And so she,was part of that intellectual process.

[00:21:35] A woman who embodies women's rights -- but does not yet advocate for them

Isabelle Roughol: So she is obviously steeped in political philosophy, and she is a woman who writes about rights. But does she write about women's rights?

Rosemarie Zagarri: Not too much. Not really. I think what we could say is that her life embodied, the transformation for women that occurred [00:22:00] by her increasing engagement in politics and by her taking part in this male-gendered political activity of politics. She continued throughout her life to mostly see herself primarily as a wife and mother.

Those are the roles that she took the most pride in. but I think the Revolution changed her. I think that she saw the impact of her ideas on the revolutionary movement. Then when the War for Independence began, she began writing, with John Adams' support, a history of the American Revolution.

It wasn't published until 1805, but it was a, a sort of eyewitness account, but not first-person. It was very steeped, as you say, in philosophy and ideas and history. But she knew a lot of the participants, so she could actually use the letters they had sent [00:23:00] her, or ask for documents that she could consult as she was writing her history.

What you will see in this history that-- is that she doesn't really mention, women voting or the rights of women per se, but she does say in her introduction that all women had as much of a stake in the Revolution and in the outcome as men, that they participated in it, that they too suffered, that they too are reaping its benefits.

And so I think she's making a claim that women are political agents, political actors, and citizens really. She doesn't use that word, but citizens of this new republic, and should be treated as such, respected as such, and had a role to play in this new government. I will say also that whereas her pre-revolutionary works were published anonymously or pseudonymously, [00:24:00] her Revolution book was published under her own name. She published a collection of poetry and plays, in the 1790s, and that was under her own name. and so I think the Revolution kind of empowered her. It politicized her, made her a political being in a sense, but it also gave her confidence in her abilities. Early on, she was asking her husband and John Adams for permission to, and this, these are her words, "transgress the boundaries of my sex."

"Transgress the boundaries of my sex." But I think by the post-revolutionary period, she was confident about her abilities as a writer, as a political thinker, and she didn't have to ask anymore for permission. And I think she felt free enough to publish works under her own name and claiming the copyright, and she was very proud of the fact that she had the copyright to these works that she published after the revolution.

And there's a very touching [00:25:00] letter she has to her favorite son where she bequeathed to him the copyright of her works to him because it's-- she says, "It's the only thing I properly own as a woman." That is because she was a married woman. She didn't have the right to own real property, real estate, and yet this intellectual property was truly hers, and she could pass it along.

So, as I say, she didn't specifically advocate for women's political rights. I think she was not, in a sense, an activist in that way and mostly saw women in traditional roles, though she saw them as being political beings. I think she was very strongly in favor of education for women. I think she saw the need for education, more general education for women.

I would say her counterpart, Judith Sargent Murray, who was also from Massachusetts, was much more radical, if you wanna call it that, on, on the points [00:26:00] about the rights of women. She too did not openly advocate women voting, but she was much more strongly, dedicated to writing about women's education and increasing opportunities for women, the capacity of women to achieve as much, intellectually and in literature and philosophy as men.

I think she was part of a process of women trying and coming to terms with the fact that they should have certain kinds of equality with men. She herself, though, was not ready to fight for, what we would call true equality.

Isabelle Roughol: I think that's the thing when, when we do women's history, w- we always want these women to be so much more in advance of their time than is realistic to ask of someone, 250 years ago. They were, I think both her and Judith quite ahead of their time, but not i- not in a way y- that we, recognize [00:27:00] as feminists, say today.

We're gonna talk more about this, her post-revolution life, talk about the Constitution, talk about the publishing of the history. But we're just gonna take a quick break first. We'll be right back.

[00:27:13] Ad break[00:27:13] The first historian of the American revolution

Isabelle Roughol: And we're back with Rosemarie Zagarri. Rosie, so you mentioned her magnum opus, "The History of the American Revolution," three volumes, a, a huge piece of work. I wanna go back a little and talk about how this piece of work came together.

It is the first really history that we have of the American Revolution written almost contemporaneously to the events.

Rosemarie Zagarri: Yes, and certainly the first written by a woman. But it almost didn't see the light of day. A lot happened between the time she started writing it and the time she published it in 1805. She did begin writing it almost immediately in, in 1776, with the encouragement of John Adams, who I [00:28:00] imagine when he encouraged her initially thought he would feature prominently and positively in her account.

in any case,

Isabelle Roughol: Careful what you wish for, right?

Rosemarie Zagarri: Yes. Yes. So in any case, she began writing it then. She wrote a lot of it during the Revolution as it was happening. I think in the 1780s, she was distracted somewhat by personal tragedies, but also by the changing political situation. So after the war ended in 1783, this future of America was in question.

It was not clear whether the union would hold. The Articles of Confederation were very weak. The states were fighting each other. I mean, not physically or not, not on the field of battle, but they were not, not getting along. The government was very ineffective. The US government was not getting respect abroad, so it was [00:29:00] not clear whether the United States would survive.

And she started writing-- turning her attention more to writing plays, which, s- some of them set in ancient times, and she actually sent them to John Adams and asked if he could get them performed in London, and he said, "Nobody wants to see an American play at this point." and she continued to write poetry.

[00:29:25] Why she opposed the Constitution

Rosemarie Zagarri: So I think she kind of put the history of the American Revolution aside for a while. And then we know in 1787, there was the movement to write a whole new form of government, create a whole new form of government for the United States, the US Constitution. And, this new Constitution of the Philadelphia Convention, where James Madison presented the first draft of that Constitution, created a very different kind of government for these United States.

[00:30:00] Whereas the Articles of Confederation was a loose union among the states, where all of the states had a lot of autonomy to govern themselves. The US Constitution presented a strong, centralized national government, and gave it the power to tax, to call up troops, to regulate interstate commerce and to do the things that were proving to be so problematic during the 1780s and were pulling the states apart.

There were many people in these young United States who were in favor of the stronger central government because they thought without it, all the blood and treasure that had been spent during the Revolutionary War would be for naught, that the human union would collapse. and so there was strong pressure for this. But before the Constitution could be implemented, it had to be sent to each of the states for [00:31:00] ratification, for approval by the people of the states.

And as it turns out, Mercy Otis Warren and her husband were not fans of this new government. And they actually each wrote pamphlets opposing the ratification of the Constitution. And Mercy Otis Warren reverted once again to publishing her work under pseudonym, a Columbian Patriot, which I think is a really interesting way to style herself. Columbia was the symbol, the icon of America. And, she was a patriot because she thought she was defending the true principles of the American Revolution in this document.

What she opposed was this centralizing tendency, putting too much power in a government that she thought was distant and far away from the people, taking power away from the local state governments,and not according them the, power that [00:32:00] they needed and deserved.

And most especially, she opposed the Constitution because it lacked a Bill of Rights, a protection for individual rights and liberties. And she said, you're creating a strong new central government, and you're not providing written guarantees for the right to freedom of speech, for the right to be protected from unwarranted search and seizures, the right to trial by jury. You're not doing that?"

And she wasn't alone in this protest, I should assure you. There were many other people, and we call them Anti-Federalists, who were also making these pleas. But as far as I know, she was the only woman to write publicly against the Constitution or even write about the Constitution publicly, publish something on the Constitution.

So again, I think that's another way in which she was, as we were talking about before, a female politician. She felt entitled to inject her voice into this very public and [00:33:00] very important debate. And she did so.

But the Constitution did pass. It became the law of the land. And in 1789, George Washington became the first president.

[00:33:12] Publishing the history and falling out with John Adams

Rosemarie Zagarri: And th-this public opposition to the Constitution did not do her or her husband any favors. This kind of put them in, in, on, on the bad list, you know? They weren't on the winning side. it meant that it was very hard. She actually, when John Adams became vice president, asked Adams, wrote a letter pleading with him to give her son a patronage appointment, you know, an appointmentfrom the federal government, and he very, very ignominiously rejected her, rebuffed her and kind of scorned her, which was very unpleasant for her. Kind of a shock, really. Um-

He

Isabelle Roughol: had a bit of a temper, John Adams.

Rosemarie Zagarri: Oh yeah. Yeah, and he carried a grudge. He carried a grudge. but,I [00:34:00] should mention though that, they had corresponded throughout the entire American Revolution, but this was the beginning of a rift between her and John Adams.

So the fact that she had been an anti-Federalist w- really didn't sit well with a lot of people. But also, even though she reconciled herself to the new government, she was always a kind of critic, a dissenter, an outsider, in a way. And she only really felt comfortable once Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1800.

And he represented a form of government that she could support at the national level, and it was a government that did devolve more power to the state governments, that was not intent on increasing the power of the national standing army or, the treasury, or taxing, all the American people. He was much more interested in [00:35:00] a decentralized, localized system of governing the United States.

And so she was just,yeah, rejoicing with his election. Her husband reentered politics at the state level. And it's about that time that she got interested again in her history of the American Revolution. She had basically put it in a desk drawer. I should also say, by this time she was... her eyesight was very bad. She was almost blind, and so she relied on other people to write for her.

But she began writing again, and she in- included sections on the presidencies of George Washington and John Adams. And with the help of a minister friend, she found a publisher for it, and it was published in 1805, this three-volume "History of the American Revolution" by Mercy Otis Warren.

And, at that time, to get a [00:36:00] book like that published, you had to have subscribers. So she had, you know, a couple hundred people who committed themselves to buying the book. But when the book came out, it flopped. I mean, it was just either ignored or reviled, and it was especially reviled by her old friend and mentor, John Adams.

Because even though she said very, very complimentary things about him during the revolutionary era in terms of how much work he did in the Continental Congress and as a diplomat abroad for the American cause, she was pretty negative about his presidency. And she attacked him for the Alien and Sedition Acts, which,stifled American free speech, and for what she saw as continuing the centralizing tendencies that had begun under Washington, strengthening the army.

The United States [00:37:00] almost went to war with France, during-- in 1798. Now, I should say, and she doesn't give Adams enough credit for this, he's actually the one who stopped that, but they actually did raise a standing army in case America was invaded by France. But, when the, "History of the American Revolution" came out and John Adams read about himself, he wrote her a series of letters that were just scathing, that were just ripping her apart.

Some of the criticisms were petty, some of the criticisms were more substantive, but what it basically came down to is, "You didn't give me enough credit." And she didn't sit there and take it. I mean, she gave as good as she got. She wrote back a series of letters defending herself, defending her choices.

But, this created a breach that lasted for over a decade between herself and Adams, John Adams. And privately, John Adams said to a friend of his, "History is [00:38:00] not the province of the ladies." I mean, he dismissed the very idea that a woman had the capability of writing a history. So it's really a full circle moment from become- being her mentor and supporter to being her greatest critic.

And I should say also that it-- the book was not well received. It was, as I say, either dismissed or, ignored or criticized, and it didn't sell very well. It was very unpopular in especially New England, which was highly Federalist, as opposed to the Jeffersonian slant that she had taken in the book.

So,she wrote this great book. It's there, and we can still read it. But for a long time, it kind of languished because her views, her take on the American Revolution, es- especially the post-revolutionary period, was not popular.

Isabelle Roughol: Hmm. Funny how the misogyny comes back about a woman's ability the second that she's not doing what you like.

Rosemarie Zagarri: [00:39:00] Exactly. Exactly. Yes

[00:39:04] Women had the right to vote in 1776 in ONE state

Isabelle Roughol: So I should, preface my next question by alerting our readers to your other book, which is called "Revolutionary Backlash." Well, one of your other books, called "Revolutionary Backlash," because I wanna ask you about, what happens sort of, what's the legacy of the work of Mercy Otis Warren and female politicians in the years that follow the Constitution, follow the Revolution?

We know that the franchise did not happen for women. Was it even considered and what is the situation with women's political rights? We often talk about the, the Seneca Falls Convention, 1848. That's a whole half century there before we get to Seneca Falls, so what happens, much closer to the Revolution and the Constitution?

Rosemarie Zagarri: Well, I'd first like to talk about one very interesting episode that is not well known, which is the fact that from 1776 to 1807, [00:40:00] women were allowed to vote on the same terms as men in one place, New Jersey. And that's

because

Isabelle Roughol: I Love New Jersey.

Rosemarie Zagarri: Each state was asked to write its own state constitution and define its own qualifications for voting.

And in New Jersey, they had a very general statement about qualified inhabitants who owned a certain amount of property being eligible to vote. Now, that use of what we would call gender language was not uncommon at this time. What was uncommon was that in 1790 and then in 1797, the New Jersey legislature actually passed enabling legislation that referred to voters as "he and she."

And so we know that the New Jersey legislature specifically enfranchised women, and we know now from poll records that have been recovered, that women actually did vote in New Jersey from [00:41:00] 1776 to 1807.

Now, I wanna hasten to add that the principle on which women were voting was different from the later expansion of the franchise or what was asked for it at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The idea was, remember one of the major protests against Great Britain was no taxation without representation.

And as you know, married women could not own their own property, and that disqualified them from voting on the face of it. But widows and unmarried women could own property, and they were in a small minority, but they could own property, and they did have to pay taxes on that property. So on that basis, New Jersey extended the franchise to women who were eligible, that is, to widows and unmarried women who met the property qualification for voting.

This [00:42:00] also enfranchised the free Blacks in the state of New Jersey who met the property qualification for voting. And what you have then is this amazing episode in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807, where women and free Blacks who met the property qualification could vote and did vote. Now this, as you can imagine, caused an uproar.

It was extremely controversial from the beginning. And it wasn't as if all women were celebrating. This wasn't as if everyone was saying, "Oh, how great. Women are voting." There was a lot of discussion about women who voted becoming manly women. That was kind of the way they talked about. And they were-- the men were afraid of "the despotism of the petticoat", as they called it.

so there was a lot of debate. It was known outside of New Jersey. And perhaps not surprisingly, Abigail Adams more or less said, If I was in New Jersey, I would be voting, [00:43:00] too." But it was very controversial. And then in 1807, the New Jersey legislature passed a law that disenfranchised, women and free Blacks by specifying that only free white males could vote.

And this was the beginning of a trend that I l- call a backlash, where there is an explicit effort to limit political rights to men. This is the most vivid example, but there were other examples as well.

[00:43:30] The influence of the French revolution and the short-lived radical transatlantic conversation about women's rights

Rosemarie Zagarri: But to get to your broader question about what was happening with women in the post-Revolutionary era, I should say the French Revolution happened, and there was this amazing transatlantic debate about the roles and rights of women in the 1790s.

And this was occurring in Britain, in France, and in the United States. People were reading what was happening in France with the role of women in the French Revolution, their [00:44:00] activism, the brief period in which they received a lot of rights, which were then taken away, I should say.

Isabelle Roughol: The backlash was horrendous. I mean, Olympe de Gouges landed under the guillotine it.

Rosemarie Zagarri: Yeah. Right, right.

Isabelle Roughol: I should say I'm a French woman, so this is near to heart.

Rosemarie Zagarri: But I think this is actually, an amazing part of the story because there's this just brief period where people in the Western world, and I'm not saying all people, I'm saying elite, literate people who are reading newspapers and magazines and, essays, pamphlets,are engaged in this transatlantic discussion about women's rights. And they are actively considering whether women should be allowed to vote and hold public office.

And a, a Brit, Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1792, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," which I think actually brought that whole discourse of the [00:45:00] rights of women into public, into the public domain, and, gave people a, a hanger on which to discuss these questions. And so the whole question was, well, did women have rights, and what rights were those?

And again, this is at the very same time women are voting in New Jersey. and so you have an example of women acting politically. This is the very same time that women are, you know, are marching on Versailles. Women can act politically in the same way as men. And of course, that was a very threatening proposition to many men.

It threatened the whole hierarchical structure of society, the gender roles, the idea that women should be wives and mothers, and men belonged in the public realm. And so it was a very contentious debate. It was a very, very fraught debate. But I will say, the ideas about women being allowed to vote and hold public office were being voiced in the 1790s on both [00:46:00] sides of the Atlantic, in Britain as well.

And,the fact that this doesn't come to fruition then, I think is just telling. I mean, I think, throughout the Western world, especially in the period after the French and American revolutions, you have a period of reaction. You have a period where there's a, a search for stability, order, retrenchment, going back to the previous way it was.

And I think that there's just a, a move to just clamp down on this debate. And so I think after, ugh, after about the 1820s in the United States, this i- idea of women acting directly in the political realm, it kinda gets pushed to the side. And actually, the idea of these female politicians gets to be reviled, gets to be dismissed and,and disparaged.

I think it, it's telling because I think that we go through periods throughout history where we have immense change, and somehow then [00:47:00] society can't incorporate all those changes, and there's a, a, reactionary moment. And I think that's what happened with the debate over women after the American Revolution.

so

Isabelle Roughol: Yeah. That's something I think the contemporary listener will recognize and can draw their own, parallels.

Rosemarie Zagarri: But the hope is, again, by the 1840s in the United States, a whole other generation was rediscovering the need for women to have political rights through the anti-slavery movement in particular, they realized they should have the vote if they really wanted to get rid of slavery. And you get this first Seneca Falls Convention, and they remember that women voted in New Jersey.

They remember that there was this example of women's political activism in the Revolution and in France. So the lessons were not for naught. It just didn't develop in a straight line in the kind of linear progress that we often so, so often [00:48:00] expect from people who lived over 200 years ago.

Isabelle Roughol: And, and to this day. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. I really appreciate your time and learning so much about our early female politicians. Thank you.

Rosemarie Zagarri: Thank you. Thank you

[00:48:16] Outro

​

Isabelle Roughol: That was Rosemarie Zagarri. Her book, books plural, "A Woman's Dilemma" and "Revolutionary Backlash" are both in the Broad History Bookshop. Link in the show notes and at broadhistory.com as always.

This concludes our revolutionary women's biographies. Go back if you haven't listened to them all. We met Abigail Adams, Eliza and Angelica Schuyler, Elizabeth Freeman, Phillis Wheatley Peters, and of course, Mercy Otis Warren. I hope that learning about their lives gave you a more complete picture of the American Revolution, it certainly did for me, and that from now on, you'll be able to rattle off their names and their accomplishments just as you might Washington, Jefferson, or Hamilton.

We [00:49:00] have one more episode in this series before we leave the American Revolution behind, and that's the second part of my conversation with Carol Berkin, who opened the series back on the 4th of July. We'll be looking at the end of the American Revolution and its consequences for women, particularly Black and Indigenous women, as well as the fate of Loyalists who didn't have a place in the United States, and then what political space the new country carved out for women.

If you've never heard of Republican motherhood and separate sphere theory, that's the episode you want to be listening to. And let me tell you, there are a lot of parallels with 2026. And that's all next week. Until then, this has been Broad History, and I've been your host, Isabelle Roughol. Music by Aaron Kenny.

I'll talk to you next week.

[00:50:00]