1 00:00:02,990 --> 00:00:06,990 Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. 2 00:00:06,990 --> 00:00:11,990 Today, I want to talk about one of our founding mothers, and I love that term. 3 00:00:11,990 --> 00:00:16,990 When I was in school, I had a constitutional history professor 4 00:00:16,990 --> 00:00:21,990 who was always very respectful, I guess, or very... 5 00:00:21,990 --> 00:00:24,990 He had a lot of admiration for not just the founding fathers, 6 00:00:24,990 --> 00:00:28,990 but for the women who helped make this country what it is today. 7 00:00:28,990 --> 00:00:32,990 And we don't hear about them as much, but they are no less important. 8 00:00:32,990 --> 00:00:36,990 And today, I want to talk about who I think is one of the most important women 9 00:00:36,990 --> 00:00:40,990 or founding mothers, and her name was Mercy Otis Warren. 10 00:00:40,990 --> 00:00:45,990 What a name, right? I feel like that name, you're just destined for great things. 11 00:00:45,990 --> 00:00:49,990 But we can learn, I think, two really important lessons 12 00:00:49,990 --> 00:00:52,990 from looking at Mercy Otis Warren's life. 13 00:00:52,990 --> 00:00:57,990 And the first one is the power of parents taking control of their kids' education 14 00:00:57,990 --> 00:01:01,990 and not outsourcing it or not following even the norms, 15 00:01:01,990 --> 00:01:05,990 just because they're the norms, and I'll get to what I mean by that, obviously, in a minute. 16 00:01:05,990 --> 00:01:08,990 But I think we can also learn the power of words. 17 00:01:08,990 --> 00:01:13,990 And personally, because I am a writer in real life when I'm not podcasting, 18 00:01:13,990 --> 00:01:17,990 words are my trade, right? I'm a wordsmith, I joke. 19 00:01:17,990 --> 00:01:21,990 And so it's always powerful to me to look to examples of people from the past 20 00:01:21,990 --> 00:01:28,990 who were just so powerful and so articulate, people like Thomas Payne, 21 00:01:28,990 --> 00:01:31,990 or people like even Patrick Henry, who I don't know if he wrote, 22 00:01:31,990 --> 00:01:34,990 actually, this would be a good homework assignment for me or you to look up. 23 00:01:34,990 --> 00:01:37,990 I don't know if he wrote, give me liberty or give me death, 24 00:01:37,990 --> 00:01:40,990 or if he just spoke from the heart. 25 00:01:40,990 --> 00:01:42,990 If he spoke from the heart, I am even more impressed, 26 00:01:42,990 --> 00:01:44,990 because that kind of improv is impressive. 27 00:01:44,990 --> 00:01:48,990 But Mercy Otis Warren is in a league of her own. 28 00:01:48,990 --> 00:01:50,990 She's also incredible. 29 00:01:50,990 --> 00:01:53,990 So let's get right down to it. Let's talk about Mercy Otis Warren. 30 00:01:53,990 --> 00:01:57,990 So Mercy Otis Warren is born in 1728. 31 00:01:57,990 --> 00:02:01,990 And every time I say these dates for people who are big in founding history, 32 00:02:01,990 --> 00:02:05,990 it's important to kind of think, okay, what was going on during this time? 33 00:02:05,990 --> 00:02:09,990 And obviously, as John Adams famously said, I'm going to butcher this quote, 34 00:02:09,990 --> 00:02:14,990 he said that the revolution started long before the declaration was signed. 35 00:02:15,990 --> 00:02:18,990 The revolution started in the hearts and minds of the people, 36 00:02:18,990 --> 00:02:22,990 you know, 10, 15, 20 years earlier. 37 00:02:22,990 --> 00:02:27,990 And so 1728, you still have a lot of things going on where the revolution is brewing. 38 00:02:27,990 --> 00:02:32,090 It's a very, it's a very interesting time to be alive. 39 00:02:32,090 --> 00:02:36,090 And so she is born in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. 40 00:02:36,090 --> 00:02:39,090 Massachusetts is, of course, like the place to be if you're for liberty, 41 00:02:39,090 --> 00:02:43,090 obviously every 13 colony played their role, 42 00:02:43,090 --> 00:02:46,090 but Boston particularly is known as the cradle of liberty. 43 00:02:46,090 --> 00:02:50,090 Massachusetts, you know, you have people like John Adams, Sam Adams, you have, 44 00:02:50,090 --> 00:02:55,090 you have so many just firecrackers of people coming out of them. 45 00:02:55,090 --> 00:02:58,090 Massachusetts and Mercy Otis Warren is one of them. 46 00:02:58,090 --> 00:03:01,090 And she is one of 13 children. 47 00:03:01,090 --> 00:03:04,090 Can you imagine parents out there? 48 00:03:04,090 --> 00:03:07,090 You think, you know, three to three to five or whatever, 49 00:03:07,090 --> 00:03:12,090 however many you have as a lot, imagine 13 children running around. 50 00:03:12,090 --> 00:03:15,090 And during this time, homeschool is the norm, right? 51 00:03:15,090 --> 00:03:17,090 Obviously it wasn't called homeschool. 52 00:03:17,090 --> 00:03:18,090 It was just educating. 53 00:03:18,090 --> 00:03:23,090 Parents would either educate children themselves or they would call in tutors. 54 00:03:23,090 --> 00:03:30,090 And then, you know, it was, it was less formal, but kind of more effective, right? 55 00:03:30,090 --> 00:03:34,090 I think for a lot of homeschooling parents or unschooling parents or self-directed learning parents, 56 00:03:34,090 --> 00:03:39,090 whatever you want to call it, this is more of the model that you guys follow 57 00:03:39,090 --> 00:03:43,090 and probably for good reason because it was so, it was so impactful. 58 00:03:43,090 --> 00:03:48,090 So most of the time in these days, the emphasis was going to be on the, 59 00:03:48,090 --> 00:03:49,090 the boys of the family. 60 00:03:49,090 --> 00:03:51,090 That's just the way it is. 61 00:03:51,090 --> 00:03:55,090 I'm not going to, you know, go back into history and pick, you know, 62 00:03:55,090 --> 00:03:56,090 nitpick and how bad that was. 63 00:03:56,090 --> 00:03:59,090 Obviously, we know now that education is for everybody. 64 00:03:59,090 --> 00:04:03,090 But during this time, there was just more emphasis on educating the boys of your family 65 00:04:03,090 --> 00:04:06,090 because the boys were going to grow up and, and they needed, you know, 66 00:04:06,090 --> 00:04:09,090 careers to provide for their family. 67 00:04:09,090 --> 00:04:14,090 And at this time, obviously, and still today, you know, women, women have kids and, 68 00:04:14,090 --> 00:04:16,090 and they, they are the homemakers. 69 00:04:16,090 --> 00:04:18,090 But back then, that was like primarily their role. 70 00:04:18,090 --> 00:04:23,090 It was abnormal to see, you know, a woman in a profession like law, 71 00:04:23,090 --> 00:04:25,090 well, not abnormal unheard of. 72 00:04:25,090 --> 00:04:28,090 It wasn't, it wasn't happening in law or politics. 73 00:04:28,090 --> 00:04:33,090 But that obviously meant that the concentration of the time was going towards educating the boys. 74 00:04:34,090 --> 00:04:38,090 But this is one thing I really love about Mercy Otis Warren's household, 75 00:04:38,090 --> 00:04:40,090 her parents, and especially her father. 76 00:04:40,090 --> 00:04:43,090 He didn't really subscribe to that. 77 00:04:43,090 --> 00:04:46,090 He wanted his kids to be educated equally. 78 00:04:46,090 --> 00:04:50,090 He wanted to raise a daughter who not only formed her own opinions, 79 00:04:50,090 --> 00:04:51,090 but spoke her mind. 80 00:04:51,090 --> 00:04:54,090 And so one thing that he did is he encouraged, you know, 81 00:04:54,090 --> 00:04:57,090 this robust debate at the dinner table. 82 00:04:57,090 --> 00:05:00,090 When they sat down, and maybe this is like some of you guys do too, 83 00:05:00,090 --> 00:05:02,090 when you're eating dinner, when they sat down as a family, 84 00:05:02,090 --> 00:05:04,090 they would discuss what was going on. 85 00:05:04,090 --> 00:05:05,090 They would discuss books. 86 00:05:05,090 --> 00:05:08,090 They would discuss, you know, current events, law, politics. 87 00:05:08,090 --> 00:05:12,090 The kind of thing that you didn't, you didn't really see happening. 88 00:05:12,090 --> 00:05:16,090 And Mercy Otis Warren was not just, you know, a spectator of these conversations. 89 00:05:16,090 --> 00:05:18,090 She was an active participant. 90 00:05:18,090 --> 00:05:22,090 And she was encouraged to participate by her brothers and her dad. 91 00:05:22,090 --> 00:05:26,090 And, you know, and I'm actually not sure how educated her mother was. 92 00:05:26,090 --> 00:05:27,090 I couldn't find that information. 93 00:05:27,090 --> 00:05:30,090 But we do know, obviously, that they placed a great deal of importance. 94 00:05:30,090 --> 00:05:32,090 Education was very important to this family. 95 00:05:32,090 --> 00:05:37,090 And so they encouraged their daughter to be as educated as enlightened at the boys, 96 00:05:37,090 --> 00:05:38,090 which was amazing. 97 00:05:38,090 --> 00:05:42,090 And that was going to set her entire career up for success later on. 98 00:05:42,090 --> 00:05:47,090 So when they, the boys, the sons would have their lessons or tutors would come in. 99 00:05:47,090 --> 00:05:52,090 You know, Mercy was not really supposed to be listening in, but she was, you know, 100 00:05:52,090 --> 00:05:57,090 she had a thirst for knowledge, a thirst for education, which, you know, 101 00:05:57,090 --> 00:06:03,090 can you imagine growing up in a world where, and I hate to say that school is education. 102 00:06:03,090 --> 00:06:04,090 We've talked about this before. 103 00:06:04,090 --> 00:06:08,090 Some schools are, you can't get, you know, they're, they're good schools out there. 104 00:06:08,090 --> 00:06:10,090 Usually not public, but you can. 105 00:06:10,090 --> 00:06:16,090 But, you know, there's, there's a interesting perspective that when school wasn't available, 106 00:06:16,090 --> 00:06:24,090 that thirst for education almost came more powerfully because there was no other way to access it. 107 00:06:25,090 --> 00:06:30,090 And that's, I think, kind of the, the spirit behind unschooling or self-directed education, 108 00:06:30,090 --> 00:06:36,090 where it's like, we all have this really innate, this, this natural born urge to learn. 109 00:06:36,090 --> 00:06:42,090 But when we're forced to do it, sometimes it's not as exciting as when we're drawn to it organically. 110 00:06:42,090 --> 00:06:44,090 And that's what happened with Mercy Otis Warren. 111 00:06:44,090 --> 00:06:49,090 So during her upbringing, you know, she's, she's listening in on these, these lessons with philosophy and politics 112 00:06:49,090 --> 00:06:53,090 and law and all these things, she sneaks into her uncle's library and she's devouring books 113 00:06:53,090 --> 00:06:57,090 and this is where she really developed just an appreciation of love of words. 114 00:06:57,090 --> 00:07:03,090 And she started, you know, loving poetry and, and drama like plays and ideas. 115 00:07:03,090 --> 00:07:06,090 And so she's going to take this with her as she grows up. 116 00:07:06,090 --> 00:07:09,090 Now you have to think about a family like this. 117 00:07:09,090 --> 00:07:14,090 It's not just going to be Mercy that comes out being very, you know, well read and educated. 118 00:07:14,090 --> 00:07:17,090 In fact, her brother, his name was James Otis Jr. 119 00:07:17,090 --> 00:07:22,090 So James Otis Jr. is going to become a big advocate for liberty. 120 00:07:22,090 --> 00:07:26,090 He coined the phrase taxation without representation is tyranny. 121 00:07:26,090 --> 00:07:30,090 This actually always makes me laugh because that is not the phrase that we remember. 122 00:07:30,090 --> 00:07:33,090 We all say, you know, no taxation representation. 123 00:07:33,090 --> 00:07:39,090 But I guess at the time, uh, represent taxation without representation is tyranny, 124 00:07:39,090 --> 00:07:41,090 which doesn't really roll off the tongue. 125 00:07:41,090 --> 00:07:42,090 But that's okay. 126 00:07:42,090 --> 00:07:43,090 So James Otis Jr. 127 00:07:43,090 --> 00:07:50,090 Obviously he's going to be somebody who's very passionate about independence from, from England and for liberty. 128 00:07:50,090 --> 00:07:55,090 He believed in natural law that we were all born free with a right to life, liberty and property. 129 00:07:55,090 --> 00:08:00,090 And that, you know, injustice and unlawful government should be challenged. 130 00:08:00,090 --> 00:08:02,090 So he is going to be at the forefront of this. 131 00:08:02,090 --> 00:08:04,090 So this is the family. 132 00:08:04,090 --> 00:08:05,090 And you know, I apologize. 133 00:08:05,090 --> 00:08:11,090 I think earlier in the podcast, I said the Warren family because her name is Mercy Otis Warren for getting her name was Mercy Otis. 134 00:08:11,090 --> 00:08:19,090 So it was the Otis family because Mercy Otis is going to grow up and she is going to marry James Warren 135 00:08:19,090 --> 00:08:21,090 and become Mercy Otis Warren. 136 00:08:21,090 --> 00:08:23,090 And he's a merchant and also a legislator. 137 00:08:23,090 --> 00:08:26,090 So he's also very actively involved in politics. 138 00:08:26,090 --> 00:08:28,090 And here's one thing I love about this. 139 00:08:28,090 --> 00:08:31,090 You know, marriages and you didn't see this a lot. 140 00:08:31,090 --> 00:08:35,090 But back then, marriages weren't always about like love. 141 00:08:35,090 --> 00:08:37,090 It was, it was convenience. 142 00:08:37,090 --> 00:08:38,090 It was money. 143 00:08:38,090 --> 00:08:42,090 Sometimes you married like a woman with a, with a rich family. 144 00:08:42,090 --> 00:08:44,090 So you could get that money in here. 145 00:08:44,090 --> 00:08:49,090 Because remember at this time, let's say you were a daughter of a man who owned property. 146 00:08:49,090 --> 00:08:54,090 Well, you weren't allowed to inherit that property after your father died. 147 00:08:54,090 --> 00:08:58,090 It would go to the husband because it had to be a male. 148 00:08:58,090 --> 00:09:02,090 So there was a lot of reasons for men to marry women who maybe had more money. 149 00:09:02,090 --> 00:09:08,090 But in this case, her husband James is so respectful and just really loves her intellect. 150 00:09:08,090 --> 00:09:12,090 So this was a marriage not of convenience, but a marriage of mutual respect. 151 00:09:13,090 --> 00:09:24,090 And they just, you know, imagine, I just think about the cool conversations they would have at their dinner tables, you know, where they were talking about these ideas that most women just not, it's not that they, they weren't allowed to talk about. 152 00:09:24,090 --> 00:09:26,090 They wouldn't get arrested or anything, but they just didn't. 153 00:09:26,090 --> 00:09:28,090 It wasn't, it wasn't common for the day. 154 00:09:28,090 --> 00:09:33,090 So mercy is going to have five children of her own and she's going to run a household. 155 00:09:33,090 --> 00:09:40,090 She's going to be a mother, but that is not going to stop her from also being very actively involved in the things that she's passionate about. 156 00:09:40,090 --> 00:09:42,090 So politics, obviously, and writing. 157 00:09:42,090 --> 00:09:49,090 And so this is something that she is going to take into her adult life and balance it with being a mother and, and, you know, tending to the house. 158 00:09:49,090 --> 00:09:51,090 So she's kind of a superhero. 159 00:09:51,090 --> 00:09:53,090 So mercy begins writing poetry. 160 00:09:53,090 --> 00:09:55,090 She begins writing essays. 161 00:09:55,090 --> 00:09:58,090 You know, she has just a wig with words. 162 00:09:58,090 --> 00:10:01,090 And she also has a knack for dramas or for plays. 163 00:10:01,090 --> 00:10:06,090 And this is how she's really going to persuade. 164 00:10:07,090 --> 00:10:09,090 She persuades through humor. 165 00:10:09,090 --> 00:10:11,090 So she would write satirical plays. 166 00:10:11,090 --> 00:10:12,090 And what does satire mean? 167 00:10:12,090 --> 00:10:15,090 So we're an essay is going to be straight to the point. 168 00:10:15,090 --> 00:10:22,090 Think of Thomas painting common sense is going to say, obviously, he was made more eloquent than this that he's going to say, you know, the king is bad. 169 00:10:22,090 --> 00:10:23,090 The crown is bad. 170 00:10:23,090 --> 00:10:25,090 We need to rebel in satire. 171 00:10:25,090 --> 00:10:33,090 It's going to be a humorous depiction of the king or whoever it is doing terrible things and maybe pretending like he's so great. 172 00:10:33,090 --> 00:10:38,090 It's going to poke fun of the hypocrisy or of the, the, the bad side of people. 173 00:10:38,090 --> 00:10:43,090 But in a funny way, and people really do learn through humor, or they appreciate humor, just like they appreciate storytelling. 174 00:10:43,090 --> 00:10:46,090 And in this case, she, I want to get the name of the playwright. 175 00:10:46,090 --> 00:10:47,090 She wrote a play called. 176 00:10:47,090 --> 00:10:55,090 I think it was the home to read this at a later mocking the Massachusetts governor, Thomas Hutchinson, who was a real tyrant. 177 00:10:55,090 --> 00:11:06,090 So she puts this on what a bold move right to be doing this in the middle of Massachusetts, which is like ground zero for the revolution. 178 00:11:06,090 --> 00:11:09,090 So she becomes a very respected writer. 179 00:11:09,090 --> 00:11:15,090 Now she did sometimes write under a pen name because you have to remember at this time it was very dangerous to be that outspoken against the crown. 180 00:11:15,090 --> 00:11:18,090 So there was a time when she did that. 181 00:11:18,090 --> 00:11:23,090 But she never really, she never backed down from politics, even if it was under a pseudonym. 182 00:11:23,090 --> 00:11:35,090 And it's going to take the revolution, the British rule this, this, you know, fight for liberty is going to take a very personal role in her life because her brother, the one she was very close to whose name was also James. 183 00:11:35,090 --> 00:11:42,090 He is going to be brutally assaulted physically by British officers so much so that he has to step away from his public life. 184 00:11:42,090 --> 00:11:44,090 And that's going to really impact her. 185 00:11:44,090 --> 00:11:47,090 So she's going to continue speaking out continue writing. 186 00:11:47,090 --> 00:11:51,090 So after the revolution, she doesn't, she doesn't hold back then either. 187 00:11:51,090 --> 00:11:53,090 This is one thing I find really interesting. 188 00:11:53,090 --> 00:12:01,090 So we've talked before about the Articles Confederation and how, you know, there's a lot of things that the Articles Confederation actually maybe didn't get so wrong. 189 00:12:01,090 --> 00:12:04,090 You know, there were a lot of people that didn't like it because it didn't give. 190 00:12:04,090 --> 00:12:07,090 There was no federal, you know, central authority. 191 00:12:07,090 --> 00:12:12,090 And, you know, sometimes I think like that's a feature, not a bug and there were some, some kinks to be worked out, obviously. 192 00:12:13,090 --> 00:12:22,090 But there's a lot of, there's a lot of people even today that think that maybe in there some ways that the Articles Confederation got things right and the Constitution maybe didn't. 193 00:12:22,090 --> 00:12:29,090 And one way I think this is, this manifests itself really interesting is looking at how the founding mothers and fathers thought of it. 194 00:12:29,090 --> 00:12:33,090 And Mercy Otis Warren actually was not a huge fan of the Constitution. 195 00:12:33,090 --> 00:12:36,090 She didn't think it adequately protected individual rights. 196 00:12:37,090 --> 00:12:42,090 And so I think that's really interesting that she's actually going to be an outspoken anti-fed. 197 00:12:42,090 --> 00:12:45,090 So really interesting, a little tidbit there for after the revolution. 198 00:12:45,090 --> 00:12:51,090 She's also going to write one of the first history books about the founding, she earned in 1805. 199 00:12:51,090 --> 00:12:54,090 And she's going to have, you know, a first hand, you know, knowledge of it. 200 00:12:54,090 --> 00:12:56,090 She was friends with all the people. 201 00:12:56,090 --> 00:12:58,090 She was one of Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams. 202 00:12:58,090 --> 00:13:00,090 Like these were her, these were her buddies. 203 00:13:01,090 --> 00:13:09,090 And she was a fan to be so well respected in a world dominated where by men where women weren't allowed to have that much say in things. 204 00:13:09,090 --> 00:13:18,090 Mercy Otis Warren was, was she earned her respect and it wasn't, it wasn't, it was through her grit and it was through her talent. 205 00:13:18,090 --> 00:13:21,090 It was through her ability to really speak to people through words. 206 00:13:21,090 --> 00:13:28,090 And when a high, high praise that she got, John Adams, and I'm going to quote him here, said that she was the most accomplished woman in America. 207 00:13:28,090 --> 00:13:34,090 She says a lot coming from him because I think his own wife Abigail Adams is either tied or second place for that. 208 00:13:34,090 --> 00:13:35,090 She had her own role. 209 00:13:35,090 --> 00:13:38,090 So Mercy Otis Warren is a powerful lesson to us. 210 00:13:38,090 --> 00:13:48,090 First of all, how parents can really change the course of their children's life through taking control of their education and doing what they think is best and not what the norm is of the time. 211 00:13:49,090 --> 00:13:59,090 And second, how words can be powerful, how you can overcome, you know, even, even gender boundaries as far as back in the day when women didn't, didn't have all these abilities. 212 00:13:59,090 --> 00:14:04,090 But she broke through that by just being really good at what she did. 213 00:14:04,090 --> 00:14:08,090 She wasn't trying to necessarily like compete against the male writers. 214 00:14:08,090 --> 00:14:10,090 No, she found her own niche. 215 00:14:10,090 --> 00:14:17,090 She found her own way to be to specialize in drama and poetry and essays in a way that was very uniquely hers. 216 00:14:17,090 --> 00:14:21,090 And she was able to stand out and get the respect of all these founding fathers and framers. 217 00:14:21,090 --> 00:14:23,090 And I think that's just incredible. 218 00:14:23,090 --> 00:14:30,090 If you want to learn more about Mercy Otis Warren and other incredible people, then I highly recommend the Courageous Heroes book. 219 00:14:30,090 --> 00:14:33,090 There is a chapter on Mercy Otis Warren that is so great. 220 00:14:33,090 --> 00:14:36,090 So we will wrap it up there as always. 221 00:14:36,090 --> 00:14:38,090 Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. 222 00:14:38,090 --> 00:14:40,090 And until next time, I will talk to you later.