ABIGAIL ADAMS

Weymouth, Massachusetts
November 11, 1744−October 28, 1818
A Woman Ahead of Her Time

Abigail Adams was unique for her time. She was an independent, forward-thinking woman who established a reputation in her own right as a strong, early advocate for women’s rights before it was fashionable. She served as a valued adviser to her husband, John Adams, the second president of the United States, on matters of government and politics. Adams also wrote a number of letters that provide contemporary readers with a firsthand account of the Revolutionary War. As First Lady, she was the first to serve as an attack dog for a president, never hesitating to come to her husband’s defense regardless of who was criticizing him. She set a precedent for women seeking a contributory role in American society, which separated her from the majority of her female contemporaries and established her own role in history as a women’s rights pioneer.

Adams’s Youth

Abigail Adams, like most girls of her era, was educated at home. She had a significant advantage over many of the other girls, though. Her father, William Smith, a Congregationalist minister, had a large private library, as did many ministers of the era, who were often the best-educated individuals in eighteenth-century America.

So did her mother’s father, John Quincy, who was a member of the colonial governor’s council and a militia colonel. The two men instilled in her a love for esoteric subjects such as philosophy, theology, ancient history, government, and law.

Adams was a straight-laced young lady in her youth. By her own admission she did not sing, dance, or play cards. For amusement she read and wrote letters to friends and relatives. Those activities helped prepare her for her life with John, whom she met at her sister Mary’s wedding in 1759.

Their courtship was slow. They were married by her father on October 25, 1764, when she was nineteen years old and he was just five days shy of his twenty-ninth birthday. John and Abigail had their first child, named Abigail (or “Nabby”), slightly less than nine months later. Their second child, John Quincy, was born two years later. Altogether, they had three sons and two daughters.

FEDERAL FACTS

John and Abigail’s son, John Quincy Adams, became the sixth president of the United States (1825–29). Like his father, he served one term.

Their first few years of marriage were typical of the time. Abigail and John lived in a series of rented houses and eventually bought their own farm, Peacefield, in 1787. But the times were turbulent, and John, who was at the forefront of the colonists’ fight for independence, traveled a lot. Abigail was often on her own, which allowed her to build a strong sense of independence. The two developed a reliance on letters to keep them up to date. Neither of them threw away all their letters, which have become a great source of the history of the time.

Quotations to Live (and Die) By!

“THE FLAME IS KINDLED, AND LIKE LIGHTNING IT CATCHES FROM SOUL TO SOUL.”

—ABIGAIL ADAMS TO JOHN ADAMS, NOVEMBER 1773

Once, when Adams was asked for permission to publish some of her political letters, she refused. She considered it improper to release a woman’s private correspondence for public consumption. Luckily, a grandson arranged for the 1848 publication of some of her letters. The collection became the first published memoir of a First Lady. The public has been reading Adams’s letters ever since.

Political Surveyor

As hostilities between the British and American armies began in 1775, the Massachusetts General Court (the colonial legislature) asked Adams, Adams’s close friend Mercy Otis Warren, and Hannah Winthrop to survey women in the colony regarding their Tory (loyal to the king) tendencies. The experience whetted Adams’s appetite for political arguments.

Adams began a flood of letters to her husband John to report on her activities as the war progressed. The flood never ended. She never let an opportunity pass to remind John that women were people with the same rights as men. She saw the revolution as a chance for Americans to create a society in which men and women were equal. He listened, but she never convinced him that her opinion on the matter was valid.

Quotations to Live (and Die) By!

“IF PARTICULAR CARE AND ATTENTION IS NOT PAID TO THE LADIES, WE ARE DETERMINED TO FOMENT A REBELLION, AND WILL NOT HOLD OURSELVES BOUND BY ANY LAWS IN WHICH WE HAVE NO VOICE OR REPRESENTATION.”

—ABIGAIL ADAMS

Adams’s Travels

When John went overseas to England and France, Abigail went along for part of the time to alleviate his loneliness. Even though his political assignments made their separation necessary at times, they took every opportunity to be together. She spent several years in Europe with him from 1784−89, which facilitated his political and social life, especially in France, since he did not speak French well. She was by his side most of the time when he served as vice president (1789−97) and president (1797−1801). Abigail moved with him when the nation’s capital was relocated from Philadelphia to Washington in 1800, and she became the first First Lady to inhabit what eventually became known as the White House.

REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS

Adams was a reporter for her husband. At a dinner party in Philadelphia when it was still the nation’s capital, she sat next to Thomas Jefferson. She pumped him with questions, wrote down the entire conversation later, and handed her notes to John.

During her husband’s presidency, she incurred a lot of criticism for her involvement with John’s Federalist Party politics. Her husband’s political rivals accused her of advocating a war with France, writing pro-administration editorials to friends and relatives and asking them to get the articles published, supporting laws that were unpopular in their views, and promoting public education for women. Their criticisms were as much gender-based as they were political. Abigail Adams was an anomaly at the time because she did not hesitate to speak her mind, which was difficult for some critics to accept.

Quotations to Live (and Die) By!

“I REGRET THE TRIFLING NARROW CONTRACTED EDUCATION OF THE FEMALES OF MY OWN COUNTRY.”

—ABIGAIL ADAMS

Later Life

Abigail did not lose her interest in politics after John lost his 1800 presidential reelection bid to Thomas Jefferson. She acted as a peacekeeper between the two, who developed a serious rift after the campaign. But Abigail did not hold anything back when she told Jefferson what she thought of the dirty politics involved in the election, telling him, “I have never felt any enmity towards you, Sir, for being elected President of the United States. But the instruments made use of and the means which were practised [sic] to effect a change have my utter abhorrence and detestation, for they were the blackest calumny and the foulest falsehoods.”

For the most part, Adams occupied her time raising her granddaughter Susanna Adams, the daughter of her alcoholic son, Charles, and writing letters to friends, relatives, and political acquaintances. Abigail Adams died of typhoid fever in the seventy-fourth year of her life.

Quotations to Live (and Die) By!

“THE WHOLE OF HER LIFE HAS BEEN FILLED UP DOING GOOD.”

—JOHN ADAMS, AS ABIGAIL LAY DYING