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1. Ellen Lothrop. 2. Marcia, like aa’s Portia, was a Romanized pen name she used in correspondence with her husband and the Adamses. Rosemarie Zagarri suggests mow borrows it from the wife of the Roman orator Hortensius, without further comment. See A Woman’s Dilemma: Mercy Otis Warren and the American Revolution (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1995), 85. But the meaning behind such a name is much more complex than Zagarri suggests. That same Marcia was originally married to Cato the Younger, the famed republican, who in turn gave a pregnant Marcia to his friend Hortensius for a wife at the latter’s request. At Hortensius’s death, Cato remarried Marcia. Thus the original idea may simply have been that Marcia was a Roman matron with strong republican views. But Cato and Marcia had a daughter named Marcia, who, in Joseph Addison’s play Cato, was a vigorous opponent of Caesar. Therefore, it is equally possible that mow identified with the daughter of republicans as much as she did the wife of one. See Philip Hicks, “Portia and Marcia: Female Political Identity and the Historical Imagination, 1770–1800,” William and Mary Quarterly 62 (2005): 265–94. In addition, in her political plays, she uses the name Hortensius to refer to ja rather than her own husband, whom she styles as Rusticus. 3. mow refers in turn to John Adams, Nathaniel Lothrop (husband of Ellen), jo2, Judge Robert Livingston (the father of Janet Montgomery), Janet Montgomery (before she was married), and Chancellor Robert Livingston (Janet’s brother). 25 to janet livingston montgomery Plymouth January 20th 1776 Whilst all America weeps the loss of the brave Montgomery, his amiable Lady will permit a stranger of her own sex, to mingle the sympathetic Sigh and to pour the tear of condolence, into her wounded bosom. And though her sorrow may be too recent and too big to admit an immediate abatement, it may be some consolation to know that while the Public mourns the death of the hero and the patriot, the compassionate individual commiserates the breach on private happiness, and the interruption of social and domestic felicity. Yet when the united voice of America aroused his martial Genius and prompted him to lend his valiant arm to repel the insolence of power and to struggle with the despotic Foes of the unalienable rights of man; the uncertain events of war, and the viciosity[?] of all human affairs, doubtless, Madam, had such an influence on your mind as to lead you to the font of perfection, the spring of every virtue, 64  to janet montgomery, january 1776 which alone is able to give fortitude sufficient to bear us above the tumults of time, the painful convulsions of civil discord, and the decisive stroke which dissolves the tenderest ties of human happiness. But while you are deriving comfort from the highest source, it may still further brighten the clouded moment[?] to reflect that the number of your friends are not confined to the narrow limits of a Province, but by the happy union of the American Colonies (suffering equally by the rigour of oppression) the affections of the inhabitants are cemented; and the Urn of the companion of your heart will be sprinkled with the tears of thousands who revere the character of the commander at the gates of Quebec, though not personally acquainted with General Montgomery. And though he fell with the laurels fresh blooming on his brow, every lover of his country will regret the premature stroke that robbed it of an officer of such tried and acknowledged merit. The Canadian field will be distinguished in the annals of time and marked with peculiar glory when future ages shall wreath the garland picked from the choicest flowers of fame to crown the memory of a Wolfe1 & a Montgomery. While one of those illustrious names written in characters of blood gives additional honour to the glorious reign of a British Monarch, the other will announce to posterity the efforts of virtue (in a painful era) to resist the tyranny of his successors. But perhaps Madam, you will be ready to say the gratitude of contemporaries and the plaudits of the admiring world are light in the balance when the tears of the orphaned babe and the painful agitation of the widowed bosom are laid in the opposite scale. And indeed though we silently acquiesce in the designations of Providence and adore the sovereign arbiter of the fates...

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