The New Year Quote by Mercy Otis Warren

It lands like a backhanded compliment to the Revolution: the British had the hardware, the training, the institutional muscle. The Americans had the one thing armies can’t reliably manufacture on schedule - morale that has been resurrected. Warren’s phrase “revivified courage and resolution” is doing more than praising grit; it’s diagnosing a political chemistry set. Courage here isn’t a stable national trait, it’s an aftereffect, “the result of sudden success after despair,” a volatile rebound that can turn ragtag forces into a coherent threat.

That’s the sly edge of Warren’s intent. As a playwright and a propagandist for the patriot cause, she understands that revolutions are staged as much as they’re fought. By conceding British superiority “in every respect necessary to military operations,” she punctures the comforting myth that victory belongs to the best-prepared. Then she rewrites the script: the decisive advantage is psychological and narrative-driven, produced by a swing in collective expectation. A single reversal of fortune doesn’t just change tactics; it changes what people believe is possible, and belief is an accelerant.

The context is a war in which early American failures could easily have hardened into fatalism. Warren captures the hinge moment when despair flips into resolve - not because conditions are suddenly ideal, but because success arrives unexpectedly, proving the empire is not invincible. The subtext is a warning and a boast at once: this kind of courage is powerful precisely because it’s precarious, dependent on maintaining momentum, on feeding the story that tomorrow can keep surprising the strong.