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1 results

  • Chapter 8 - Liberty, Freedom, Independence, and War

  • from Part II - Cultural Moments and the American Literary Imagination
  • Edited by Jennifer Haytock, State University College, Brockport, New York
  • Book:
    War and American Literature
    Published online:
    20 January 2021
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021, pp 121-135

  • Summary

    The defense of inalienable rights and the rhetorical allusions created by Patriot writers in the Revolutionary era ignited protests from slaves, Indians, and women, each systemically excluded from colonial society. Slaves understood the contradictions of revolutionary rhetoric as they wrote extensively in various mediums. Women did the same, with a leading female writer of the time, Mercy Otis Warren, penning plays and poetry that mobilized women to the Patriot cause and pushed them into the public sphere. Likewise, Native American Mingo war leader John Logan foretold much of wartime Indian–American relations in his famous Lament (1774), questioning the inherent lack of American support for Indian freedom and warning against their eventual destruction. These literary tools, however, won few supporters in advancing the rights of these individual groups as each experienced setbacks after the war that ensured the Revolution’s promise would be one long delayed.