According to Wikipedia: "Mercy Otis Warren (September 14, 1728 - October 19, 1814) was an American writer and playwright. She was known as the "Conscience of the American Revolution". Mercy Otis was America's first female playwright, having written unbylined anti-British and anti-Loyalist propaganda plays from 1772 to 1775, and was the first woman to create a Jeffersonian (anti-Federalist) interpretation of the Revolution, entitled History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, published in three volumes in 1805."