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History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. Mercy Otis Warren
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isbn 9781614871392
Автор произведения Mercy Otis Warren
Издательство Ingram
CHAPTER XXV
Continuation of Naval Rencounters • Affair of Count Byland—Sir Hyde Parker and Admiral Zeutman • Commodore Johnstone ordered to the Cape of Good Hope • Admiral Kempenfelt—Loss of the Royal George • Baron de Rullincort’s Expedition to the Isle of Jersey • Capture of Minorca • Gibraltar again besieged, defended, and relieved • Mr. Adams’s Negociation with the Dutch Provinces
CHAPTER XXVI
General Uneasiness with Ministerial Measures in England, Scotland, and Ireland • Loud Complaints against the Board of Admiralty • Sir Hyde Parker resigns his Commission • Motion for an Address for Peace, by General Conway • Resignation of Lord George Germaine—Created a Peer of the Realm • Lord North resigns—Some Traits of his Character • Petition of the City of London for Peace • Coalition of Parties—A new Ministry • Death and Character of the Marquis of Rockingham • Lord Shelburne’s Administration • Negociations for Peace—Provisional Articles signed • Temper of the Loyalists • Execution of Captain Huddy—Consequent Imprisonment of Captain Asgill—Asgill’s Release
CHAPTER XXVII
Discontents with the Provisional Articles • Mr. Hartley sent to Paris • The Definitive Treaty agreed to, and signed by all the Parties • A General Pacification among the Nations at War • Mr. Pitt, Prime Minister in England—His Attention to East India Affairs • Some subsequent Observations
CHAPTER XXVIII
Peace proclaimed in America • General Carleton delays the Withdraw of the Troops from New York • Situation of the Loyalists—Efforts in their Favor by some Gentlemen in Parliament—Their final Destination—Their Dissatisfaction, and subsequent Conduct
CHAPTER XXIX
Conduct of the American Army on the News of Peace • Mutiny and Insurrection • Congress surrounded by a Part of the American Army • Mutineers disperse • Congress removes to Princeton • Order of Cincinnati • Observations thereon
CHAPTER XXX
A Survey of the Situation of America on the Conclusion of the War with Britain • Observations on the Declaration of Independence • Withdraw of the British Troops from New York—A few Observations on the Detention of the Western Posts • The American Army disbanded, after the Commander in Chief had addressed the Public, and taken Leave of his Fellow Soldiers—General Washington resigns his Commission to Congress
CHAPTER XXXI
Supplementary Observations on succeeding Events, after the Termination of the American Revolution • Insurrection in the Massachusetts • A general Convention of the States • A new Constitution adopted—General Washington chosen President • British Treaty negociated by Mr. Jay • General Washington’s second Retreat from public Life • General Observations
APPENDICES
Facsimile Index of the 1805 Edition
Index
MERCY OTIS WARREN (1728–1814) was the most formidable female intellectual in eighteenth-century America. In an era dominated by giants, she honorably may be numbered among the intellectuals of the second rank: those, for example, who served in colonial or state legislatures, the Continental Congress, and the Constitution-ratifying conventions and those who publicized the revolutionary cause through their writings.
Between 1772 and 1805, Warren published at least five plays1—three political satires and two verse tragedies—a collection of poems, a political pamphlet warning of the dangers of the proposed Constitution, and one of the two most important contemporary histories of the American Revolution. Beginning about 1770 she became a prolific letter writer, entering into a kind of literary apprenticeship in one of the century’s more interesting genres—the “familiar letter”—and leaving to us a legacy of more than a thousand pages of correspondence devoted to a variety of political, cultural, economic, and social themes.
Warren’s History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution was the culmination of her literary career. Through it she satisfied a powerful urge to fuse her personal and public convictions. It served as a means to unite her ethical, political, and philosophical concerns; it joined her personal religiosity with her ideological commitments; and it provided a vehicle for a female intellectual to be useful in a republican culture. For forty years Warren worked to develop the habits of mind and a style of writing that would satisfy these requirements. She thought it her principal responsibility as a poet, playwright, and historian “to form the minds, to fix the principles[,] to correct the errors, and to beckon by the soft allurements of love, as well as the stronger voice of reason, the young members of society (peculiarly my charge), to tread the path of true glory. . . .” Several years later she observed that “The Ladies of Castille,” which would be published with her collected poems in 1790, was created by a writer “who wishes only to cultivate the sentiments of public and private virtue in whatsoever falls from her pen.”2 These letters reveal that she found in writing a way to integrate private and public roles: the traditional role of mother—the young were “peculiarly my charge”—and the less conventional ambition to be a woman who gave voice to the central principles and values of the political culture.
Warren’s major literary and political aims—to form minds, fix principles, and cultivate virtue—characterized her writings from the beginning. Her satirical plays—“The Adulateur,” “The Defeat,” and “The Group”—are memorable chiefly as representative examples of early American political satire3 and as well-timed propaganda.4 Her poetry, long neglected, is now being taken seriously by scholars. That she was committed to poetry as an art and as a vehicle for political and didactic themes is evidenced by the dozens of poems that, until recently, remained unpublished and by her numerous, careful revisions of her work.5 But the best of Warren is her prose, and the best of her prose is her History.
In historical narrative Warren found the medium which, better than poetry or satire, satisfied her urge to be both an artist and a political and moral force. In her History she sustained the republican persona that she had been developing in her letters since the 1770s.6 And here she joined more successfully than ever the themes that lay at the center of her concern. These themes involved both her conception of history and her understanding of the proper role of the historian in a republican order.
Warren viewed history in terms of three fundamental conflicts: a political conflict between liberty and arbitrary power; an ethical conflict between virtue and avarice; and a philosophical conflict between reason and passion. The three were consistent with one another: History revealed a continual struggle between liberty, virtue, and reason against the blind pursuit of power, luxury, and passion. Beyond being mutually consistent, liberty, virtue, and reason were, for Warren as for many of her generation, necessary to sustain a republic. Liberty without virtue and reason to guide it led to licentiousness; virtue without reason and liberty to energize it led to passivity and quietism; and reason without liberty and virtue to focus it led to abstraction and cynicism. The need for all three animating principles demonstrated why republics had proven to be so fragile.
Warren sometimes characterized the three conflicts in the starkest terms, suggesting that she viewed history as a vast morality play—not unlike “The Sack of Rome,” which she had based on Joseph Addison’s “Cato” (1713)—in which simple, industrious, virtuous, liberty-loving republicans courageously resist the encroachments of kings, despots, and mannered aristocrats who care only to gratify their baser passions.