Colonial life, crowded as it was with hard and unremitting toil, left
scant leisure for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. There was
little money in private purses or public treasuries to be dedicated to
schools, libraries, and museums. Few there were with time to read long
and widely, and fewer still who could devote their lives to things that
delight the eye and the mind. And yet, poor and meager as the
intellectual life of the colonists may seem by way of comparison, heroic
efforts were made in every community to lift the people above the plane
of mere existence. After the first clearings were opened in the forests
those efforts were redoubled, and with lengthening years told upon the
thought and spirit of the land. The appearance, during the struggle with
England, of an extraordinary group of leaders familiar with history,
political philosophy, and the arts of war, government, and diplomacy
itself bore eloquent testimony to the high quality of the American
intellect. No one, not even the most critical, can run through the
writings of distinguished Americans scattered from Massachusetts to
Georgia--the Adamses, Ellsworth, the Morrises, the Livingstons,
Hamilton, Franklin, Washington, Madison, Marshall, Henry, the Randolphs,
and the Pinckneys--without coming to the conclusion that there was
something in American colonial life which fostered minds of depth and
power. Women surmounted even greater difficulties than the men in the
process of self-education, and their keen interest in public issues is
evident in many a record like the _Letters_ of Mrs. John Adams to her
husband during the Revolution; the writings of Mrs. Mercy Otis Warren,
the sister of James Otis, who measured her pen with the British
propagandists; and the patriot newspapers founded and managed by women.