I’ve spent several weeks analyzing the writing of the United States Constitution and attempting to spotlight the major players and their shining moments of success and a few of their arguments that probably could have been heard outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. No one expected that writing a constitution for the first republic since Rome would be easy. But I do find their reluctance to trust the same people who had won the revolution to govern themselves a bit unsettling. What exactly does “We the People” mean to the people who are now dictating the rules of power and governance?

The Constitution had been completed and, although it had been written by delegates from the 13 states, now the 13 states had to approve the final product. Division reigned. Many of the leading figures involved in the national debate were hesitant to approve a governmental design that did not fit their idea of “civic virtue” and focused too much power in the hands of a strong, centralized government.

These critics of the written Constitution — the Anti-Federalists — were hesitant to trust a centralized government designed to represent all the people from across the new nation. How could that possibly work? The concept of a republic had always been associated with small agrarian communities of people with similar interests and basic beliefs who worked together to ensure good government. This idea that “man is governed best when governed least — and locally” was immediately at odds with the new Constitution.

Among the Anti-Federalists was one especially noteworthy but unusual voice. Mercy Otis Warren had been shattering expectations since she was a young girl in Boston, spending her days reading John Locke, Milton, Moliere, and the political thinkers of her era. The younger sister of James Otis, one of Boston’s earliest advocates for independence, and a writer whose pen dashed off stirring stories of the revolution and its heroes was called the “most accomplished woman in America” by John Adams. (She would later challenge him over his advocacy for the ratification of the Constitution.) Her rise to status as a Founding Mother found her stepping into her brother’s leadership role after he was critically injured in 1769 by a British officer.

Mercy began answering her brother’s correspondence, but her role as a voice for independence increased when she began to exchange letters with radical British historian Catharine Macaulay. Warren wrote to many of the Founding Fathers, hosted evening conversations in the home she shared with her patriot husband, James, and meticulously documented the course of the revolution. Numerous sources cite her husband’s encouragement of this unusual role as “Historian of the Independence”; he considered her to be “a genius” and to possess a “brilliant and busy imagination.” Warren also anonymously penned dramas that were thinly veiled attacks on British corruption and abuse, warning in 1773 through one character’s voice that a day would come to Boston when “murders, blood and carnage shall crimson all these streets.”

While her husband served as president of the Massachusetts provincial congress, Mercy served as his personal secretary — again, anonymously — and often “edited” his correspondence. One of my favorite edits occurred in a letter from James Warren to their good friend, John Adams. James wrote urging independence, saying, “Your Congress can be no longer in any doubts, and hesitancy about taking capital and effectual strokes.” Mercy then added a couple of sentences of her own. “You should no longer piddle at the threshold. It is time to leap into the theatre to unlock the bars, and open every gate that impedes the rise and growth of the American republic.” Fans of the Broadway musical “1776” will recognize the “piddle” remark, as John Adams uses the term in the play to criticize his colleagues in the Second Continental Congress.

So, what were Mercy Otis Warren’s reservations regarding the Constitution?

• First, the meetings had occurred in secrecy without public input. Were the heavy robes worn by King and Parliament simply to be transferred to other men who would create a government without allowing public debate?

• Warren believed that too much power had been vested in a national government at the expense of state sovereignty. How could national policy effectively govern states as different as Massachusetts and Georgia? Treating all citizens exactly the same would, in her view, treat them unequally, given their natural differences.

• The role of the executive was too broad, allowing him power that could limit the authority of the legislature. Warren and most Anti-Federalists wanted an assurance that the “voice of the people,” vested in the House of Representatives and Senate, would be supreme. But, at the same time, one particular clause related to Congress frightened the Anti-Federalists and Warren: “The Congress shall have Power… To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” Was there then no limit to the reach of Congress?

• There was no BILL OF RIGHTS. The colonists had fought a revolution, won independence, and were now authorizing a government that provided no guarantees of personal freedom for citizens. Who thought that was a good idea? Certainly not the Anti-Federalists, and the debate grew louder.

Would you feel secure without basic guarantees of personal freedom? Which freedoms would you have argued for inclusion?

Join me next week as we “fight for freedom.” This time we’ll raise our voices instead of arms!