Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 0, History

Scholars have long prized Mercy Otis Warren as a subject of historical study because of her extensive correspondence, which shows how elite women expressed their support of the American Revolution. In this thesis, I show that her letters reveal something more fundamental than her patriotic impulse – they show her fear of losing her elite position. I demonstrate this by applying the insights of the history of emotions to the letters Mercy Otis Warren wrote between 1769 and 1780. In these letters, Mercy Otis Warren expressed the emotions of “spirit” and “sentiment” towards her family members, her community of Plymouth, and the Revolutionary cause sweeping over New England. But she expressed herself most passionately about her family's elite status and cultural power. Her letters reveal that Mercy was a product of her time, her class, and her family. In today's terms, we would call her “entitled.” Methodologically, this thesis draws on insights from social history, gender history, and the history of emotions. I place Mercy's correspondence (roughly sixty letters written and received in the period under study) into the context of her relationships with family, friends, and community. She was passionate in her letters because she and her correspondents were facing the destruction of their privileged lives. I argue that understanding Mercy Otis Warren's emotions is critical to understanding her determination to maintain her elite status (chapter 2), her unquestioning acceptance of the gender expectations of a woman in her position (chapter 3), her firm support of the Revolutionary cause (chapter 4), and her attempts to shape the nation's memory of the Revolution afterwards (chapter 5). Historians have implicitly argued that Mercy challenged the gender expectations of her day, but I find that she did not. She simply followed the lead of her male kin, who were extremely well educated and politically powerful.

Committee: Ruth Wallis Herndon Ph.D. (Advisor); Andrew Schocket Ph.D. (Committee Member); Christine Eisel (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Gender; History; Womens Studies

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2011, History

My research work focuses on the social and political identity of the loyalist exiles in St. John, New Brunswick in the Revolutionary Era. Specifically, I offer a view of the Revolution from the loyalists‘ perspective-their ideology, exile, resettlement, and relationship with Great Britain-elucidating their precarious position within and, later, between two distinct worlds. Subjected to an intense process of social ostracism and legal penalties, approximately 80,000 loyalists emigrated to England and other parts of the British Empire between 1774 and 1784. St John became the largest and most prosperous loyalist settlement. Focusing on the elite group of loyalists that settled there, I hope to demonstrate that the loyalists‘ social and political identities reflect both their own senses of self as well as outwardly inflicted labels placed on them by their adversaries, peers, and benefactors. Loyalists‘ political and social identities were full and rich, revealing a different perspective on the American Revolution as well as the relationship between British subjects, colonists, and the Empire in the eighteenth century.

Committee: Dr. Andrew R.L. Cayton PhD (Advisor); Dr. Helen Sheumaker PhD (Committee Member); Allan Winkler PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History