Abigail Adams has been lauded by historians and at least one president, Harry Truman, for her grit and keen insight. As the second of the first ladies, Abigail experienced firsthand the fight for a nation and the establishment of America. In fact, it was perhaps the Revolutionary War that shaped who she would become as first lady.
Described as a true partner to America’s first vice president and second president, Abigail was a proud Massachusetts native. Born in 1744, she married John Adams, raised her children, and died in the same colony-turned-state. She even named one of her children after the coastal Massachusetts city that would become her final resting place: Quincy. Abigail and John had six children—three daughters and three sons—and four of them lived to adulthood, with John Quincy Adams becoming the sixth U.S. president.
Although a devoted mother, Abigail was also an avid reader with a curious, and often assertive, countenance. It was her sharp mind, even at 15 years old, that caught the attention of 24-year-old John, a country attorney with business in the community of Weymouth, where Abigail was born and raised.
A Witness to the War’s Start
Throughout their courtship and then 54-year marriage, at least 1,100 letters were exchanged between them. Abigail’s personality, interests, and character are clearly revealed in well-preserved primary sources. One such letter captures Abigail’s fortitude. It was written after the Battle of Bunker Hill, during which she was caring for not only her own four small children but also the four children of Dr. Joseph Warren, then president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. His wife had died a few years earlier. Instead of staying in the relative safety of their home, 10 miles away from the fighting, she snuck away to a Penn Hill granite outcropping to watch smoke rising from Charlestown, which was burning.Afterward, when she learned that Warren had been killed in the fighting, she wrote to her husband: “My bursting Heart must find vent at my pen. I have just heard that our dear Friend Dr. Warren is no more but fell gloriously fighting for his Country—saying better to die honourably in the field than ignominiously hang upon the Gallows. Great is our Loss.” She ends the letter, “I cannot compose myself to write any further at present.”
An Able Advisor
It was during the eight-year War for Independence, while Abigail and John were often apart due to his role as a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses and as a diplomat in France and Holland, that Abigail solidified her role as his confidante and advisor. Letters between them showed how she read documents, news reports, and speeches in their entirety and offered insight. For example, a June 25, 1795, letter expressed: “It is reported here that 19 Senators are for a ratification of all but the 12th article of the Treaty. Greenleafs paper contains daily Some weak foolish superficial sausy reflections & abuses.”
In one of her most oft-quoted letters, dated March 31, 1776, she asks John pointed questions about the political and military aspects of the war. Then, she implores him to consider, in his role as a leader of a new nation, a forward-thinking concept: “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.” One appeal to her husband on behalf of women was to make formal education free and accessible, with one reason being that educated mothers could better prepare their sons to become astute citizens and leaders in the new republic.
Not only did the Adams family survive the Revolutionary War, it thrived. Abigail joined John in Europe for four years after America’s independence from Britain was secure. She entertained and conversed with high-ranking officials and affluent individuals while John was a diplomat, and she did the same during his two terms as vice president (1789–1797) and one term as president (1797–1801). However, she also made good use of her intellect and writing skills by penning defenses of her husband and his policies.
Abigail was so much recognized as more than the wife of John, the mother of his children, and a political hostess that essayist Judith Sargent Murray of Gloucester and Boston wrote to a cousin in 1798, “It is confidently asserted that every transaction of his administration is now laid before her—she is not only his bosom friend, but his aid and his Councellor in every emergency … [so that the politicians] declare that was the President called out of time, they should rather see Mrs. Adams in the Presidential chair than any other character now existing in America.”
