Adams's life is one of the most documented of the first ladies: she is remembered for the many letters she wrote to her husband while he stayed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the Continental Congresses. John frequently sought the advice of Abigail on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics. The letters serve as eyewitness accounts of the American Revolutionary War home front.
As with several of her ancestors, Adams's father was a liberal Congregationalist minister: a leader in a Yankee society that held its clergy in high esteem. Smith did not focus his preaching on predestination or original sin; instead he emphasized the importance of reason and morality.[2] Adams was a sickly child and was not considered healthy enough for formal schooling. Although she did not receive a formal education, her mother taught her and her sisters Mary (1739–1811) and Elizabeth (1742–1816, known as Betsy) to read, write and cipher; her father's, uncle's and grandfather's large libraries enabled the sisters to study English and French literature.[2] As an intellectually open-minded woman for her day, Adams' ideas on women's rights and government would eventually play a major role, albeit indirectly, in the founding of the United States. She became one of the most erudite women ever to serve as First Lady.[3]
Smith married Elizabeth Quincy in 1742, and together they had four children, including three daughters: one born in 1743, Abigail born in 1744 and another born in 1745. Their only son, born in 1746,[4] died of alcoholism in 1787.[5] In 1764 Smith presided over the marriage of John Adams and his daughter. In July of 1775 his wife Elizabeth, with whom he had been married for 33 years, died of smallpox. In 1784, at age 77, Smith died.
Marriage and children
As third cousins,[6] Abigail and John had known each other since they were children. In 1762, John accompanied his friend Richard Cranch to the Smith household. Cranch was engaged to Adams' older sister, Mary, and would be the parents of federal judge William Cranch. John was quickly attracted to the petite, shy, 17-year-old brunette who was forever bent over some book. He was surprised to learn she knew so much about poetry, philosophy and politics.
Although Adams' father approved of the match, her mother was appalled that her daughter would marry a country lawyer whose manner still reeked of the farm, but eventually she gave in.The couple married on October 25, 1764, in the Smiths' home in Weymouth. Smith, Abigails' father performed the ceremony. After the reception, the couple mounted a single horse and rode off to their new home, the small cottage and farm John had inherited from his father in Braintree, Massachusetts. Later they moved to Boston, where his law practice expanded.
Adams was responsible for family and farm when her husband was on his long trips. "Alas!", she wrote in December 1773, "How many snow banks divide thee and me." She raised her two younger sons throughout John's prolonged absences. She also raised her elder grandchildren, including George Washington Adams and a younger John Adams, while John Quincy Adams was minister to Russia. Her childrearing style included relentless and continual reminders of what the children owed to virtue and the Adams tradition.[9]
As the mother of John Quincy Adams, she was the First First Lady to also be the mother of a president.
Europe
In 1784, she and her daughter Nabby joined her husband and her eldest son, John Quincy, at her husband's diplomatic post in Paris. After 1785, she filled the role of wife of the first U.S. minister to the Court of St James's (Britain). They returned in 1788 to a house known as the "Old House" in Quincy, which she set about vigorously enlarging and remodeling. It is still standing and open to the public as part of Adams National Historical Park. Nabby later died of breast cancer, having endured three years of severe pain.
Abigail Adams in later life
First Lady
When John was elected President of the United States, Abigail continued a formal pattern of entertaining. With the removal of the capital to Washington in 1800, she became the first First Lady to reside at the White House, or President's House as it was then known. The city was wilderness, the President's House far from completion. She found the unfinished mansion in Washington "habitable" and the location "beautiful"; but she complained that, despite the thick woods nearby, she could find no one willing to chop and haul firewood for the First Family. Abigail did use the East Room of the White House to hang up the laundry.[10] Adams' health, never robust, suffered in Washington. She took an active role in politics and policy, unlike the quiet presence of Martha Washington. She was so politically active, her political opponents came to refer to her as "Mrs. President".
After John's defeat in his presidential re-election campaign, the family retired to Quincy in 1800. Abigail followed her son's political career earnestly, as her letters to her contemporaries show. In later years, she renewed correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, whose political opposition to her husband had hurt her deeply.
Abigail and John's marriage is well documented through their correspondence and other writings. Letters exchanged throughout John's political obligations indicate his trust in Abigail's knowledge was sincere. "She could quote poetry more readily than could John Adams," states McCullogh. Their correspondence illuminated their mutual emotional and intellectual respect. John often excused himself to Abigail for his "vanity",[11] exposing his need for her approval.
Death
Adams died on October 28, 1818,[1] of typhoid fever. She is buried beside her husband in a crypt located in the United First Parish Church (also known as the Church of the Presidents) in Quincy, Massachusetts.[12] She was 73 years old, exactly two weeks shy of her 74th birthday.
Her last words were, "Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long."
Political viewpoints
Women's rights
Abigail Adams wrote about the troubles and concerns she had as an eighteenth-century woman[13] and she was an advocate of married women's property rights, more opportunities for women, particularly in the field of education. Women, she believed, should not submit to laws not made in their interest, nor should they be content with the simple role of being companions to their husbands. They should educate themselves and thus be recognized for their intellectual capabilities, so they could guide and influence the lives of their children and husbands. She is known for her March, 1776 letter to John and the Continental Congress, requesting that they, "...remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable 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 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."[2]
John declined Abigail's "extraordinary code of laws," but acknowledged to Abigail, "We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope General Washington and all our brave heroes would fight."[14]
Slavery
Adams believed that slavery was evil and a threat to the American democratic experiment. A letter written by her on March 31, 1776, explained that she doubted most of the Virginians had such "passion for Liberty" as they claimed they did, since they "deprive[d] their fellow Creatures" of freedom.[2]
A notable incident regarding this happened in Philadelphia in 1791, where a free black youth came to her house asking to be taught how to write. Subsequently, she placed the boy in a local evening school, though not without objections from a neighbor. Adams responded that he was "a Freeman as much as any of the young Men and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? ... I have not thought it any disgrace to my self to take him into my parlor and teach him both to read and write."[15]
Religious beliefs
Adams was an active member of First Parish Church in Quincy, which became Unitarian in doctrine by 1753.[16] Her theological views evolved over the course of her life. In a letter to her son near the end of her life, dated May 5, 1816, she wrote of her religious beliefs:
I acknowledge myself a unitarian – Believing that the Father alone, is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ derived his Being, and all his powers and honors from the Father ... There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.[2]
She also asked Louisa Adams in a letter dated January 3, 1818, "When will Mankind be convinced that true Religion is from the Heart, between Man and his creator, and not the imposition of Man or creeds and tests?"[17]
Legacy
Historian Joseph Ellis has found that the 1200 letters between John and Abigail "constituted a treasure trove of unexpected intimacy and candor, more revealing than any other correspondence between a prominent American husband and wife in American history."[18] Ellis (2011) says that Abigail, although self-educated, was a better and more colorful letter-writer than John, even though John was one of the best letter-writers of the age. Ellis argues that Abigail was the more resilient and more emotionally balanced of the two, and calls her one of the most extraordinary women in American history.[18]
An Adams Memorial has been proposed in Washington, D.C., honoring Adams, her husband and other members of their family. One of the subpeaks of New Hampshire's Mount Adams (whose main peak is named for her husband) is named in her honor.[21]
Popular culture
Passages from Adams' letters to her husband figured prominently in songs from the Broadway musical 1776.[2]Virginia Vestoff played Adams in the original 1969 Broadway production of 1776 and recreated the role for the film version in 1972. On television, Kathryn Walker and Leora Dana in the 1976 PBS mini-series The Adams Chronicles. In the mini-series John Adams, which premiered in March 2008 on HBO, she was played by Laura Linney. Linney enjoyed portraying Adams, saying that "she is a woman of both passion and principle."[9] A revolution-era Abigail, circa 1781, is portrayed by Michelle Trachtenberg, on the television series, Sleepy Hollow, in the season 2 episode, "Pittura Infamante" (January 19, 2015), her assistance being crucial in ending a series of unexplained murders from the period. Adams is a featured figure on Judy Chicago's installation piece The Dinner Party, being represented as one of the 999 names on the Heritage Floor.[22]
Portrait on currency
The First Spouse Program under the Presidential $1 Coin Program authorizes the United States Mint to issue half-ounce $10 gold coins and bronze medal duplicates[23] to honor the first spouses of the United States. The Abigail Adams coin was released on June 19, 2007, and sold out in just hours. She is pictured on the back of the coin writing her most famous letter to John Adams. In February 2009 Coin World reported that some 2007 Abigail Adams medals were struck using the reverse from the 2008 Louisa Adams medal, apparently by mistake.[24] These pieces, called mules, were contained within the 2007 First Spouse medal set.[24] The U.S. Mint has not released an estimate of how many mules were made.
^G. J. Barker-Benfield, "Stillbirth and Sensibility The Case of Abigail and John Adams," Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal, Spring 2012, Vol. 10 Issue 1, pp 2–29
^ abGarry Wills, Henry Adams and the Making of America, 2005; p. 24; Wills cites the criticisms of Paul Nagel "and others"
^U.S. Mint: First Spouse Program. Accessed 2008-06-27. "The United States Mint also produces and make available to the public bronze medal duplicates of the First Spouse Gold Coins."
^ abGilkes, Paul (February 16, 2009). "First Spouse medals set holds Adams mule". Coin World. 50 (2549): 1. Some collectors have begun receiving a First Spouse medal mule – a piece bearing the obverse for Abigail Adams and a reverse intended for the Louisa Adams medal. The mules surfaced in some of the 2007 First Spouse sets...
References
Barker-Benfield, G.J. Abigail and John Adams: The Americanization of Sensibility (University of Chicago Press; 2010).
Bober, Natalie S. 1995. Abigail Adams: Witness to a revolution New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division.
Chicago, Judy. The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation. London: Merrell (2007). ISBN 1-85894-370-1
Ellis, Joseph J. First Family: Abigail and John Adams (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010).
Gelles, Edith B. Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
Gelles, Edith B. First Thoughts: Life and Letters of Abigail Adams (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998), reissued as Abigail Adams: A Writing Life (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).
Gelles, Edith B. Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage (New York: William Morrow, 2009) – finalist for the 2010 George Washington Book Prize.
Holton, Woody. Abigail Adams: A Life (New York: Free Press, 2009) – winner of the 2010 Bancroft Prize.
Kaminski, John P., editor The Quotable Abigail Adams (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009).
