Abigail Adams: “Remember the Ladies”

March 31, 1776

The snow was melting as Abigail Adams sat down at her desk at home in Braintree, Massachusetts, to write a letter to her husband, John, who was away in Philadelphia taking part in revolutionary activities leading up to what would soon be the Declaration of Independence. Letter writing was a norm for the loving and affectionate couple, who often referred to each other as “my dearest friend.”

For John, who would become America’s second President, among his many accomplishments related to helping America become a country and grow in its most nascent years, Abigail often served as needed support. Ironically, given his work, John struggled with deep anxiety and self-doubt. And it was Abigail who gave him the backing he needed to act with courage and fortitude. “You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator…We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them,” she had written him in one letter around the revolutionary times.

But as a result of John’s work, Abigail had also taken on the responsibilities of caring for their four children, their home, and their farm. And she was doing this all amidst the beginnings of war and trials of a smallpox epidemic. British soldiers had occupied nearby Boston for much of the previous year, and the sounds of war carried loudly and poingently across the countryside to Braintree. Cannon fire could be heard at night; fugitives fled through the towns, and disease spread in the wake of war. Abigail had kept her family safe as best she could, mindful of the smallpox spreading through the region, and watched friends lose homes and livelihoods in the war. Even after the British evacuation from the area two weeks earlier, people still lived in fear of the soldiers returning.

The angst could be felt in this letter she wrote to John. It begins,

“I wish you would ever write me a Letter half as long as I write you; and tell me if you may where your Fleet are gone? What sort of Defence Virginia can make against our common Enemy? Whether it is so situated as to make an able Defence? Are not the Gentery Lords and the common people vassals, are they not like the uncivilized Natives Brittain represents us to be? I hope their Riffel Men who have shewen themselves very savage and even Blood thirsty; are not a specimen of the Generality of the people.”

But this letter would arguably be one of the more memorable in American history. For she continued with an ardent call for equality in a time when the idea didn’t exist in any practical reality:

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency — and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”

In a way the letter was profoundly personal. By the sound of it, Abigail wanted her husband home. Yet she extracted those longings into a greater cause. The idea of women’s equality didn’t have any practical bearings in the function of the land. And yet she stood strong and so prescient, predicting a women’s rights movement that would unfold in full force a century later.

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Notes

Read a snapshot about Eleanor Roosevelt & the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Sources

• “Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, 16 October 1774.” Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17741016aa
• “Letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March – 5 April 1776.” Massachusetts Historical Society, https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760331aa
• Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Foundation, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abigail_Adams_by_Gilbert_Stuart.jpg