Abigail Smith Adams
It would be remiss in any discussion of the influence of the contributions of the Adams family to omit Abigail, the wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy Adams. Martha Washington may have been the first First Lady of the United States, but if there was a First Lady of the American Revolution it was she. Abigail first met John Adams in 1759, when he was still a country lawyer of little reputation. Not until 1764 would her mother withdraw her objections over John as her son-in-law and consent to their marriage. Although Abigail had little in the way of formal education, her many surviving letters (more than 2,000) indicate a thoughtful and well-informed mind.
Abigail was forced to endure many long separations from her husband during his travels to Philadelphia, times when the operation of the Adams’ farm and the raising of her children fell solely upon her. She bore six children in twelve years, one of them stillborn and another who died at the age of two. It also fell to Abigail to supervise the family’s finances, including investing their money when John’s law practice began to become more lucrative, an unusual situation in colonial times. Despite these pressures on her time, she maintained a long correspondence with many of the founders throughout the colonial period, the Revolution, and the tumultuous founding of the government.
She exchanged letters with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and of course with her husband, John. In her letters she was frank but diplomatic, informed and opinionated, sometimes a bit catty, more often fair. There was a vivaciousness in some of her letters, and a Puritan contempt in others. In 1784 she traveled to Paris to be with her husband, and later joined him when he served as the Minister to the Court of Saint James in England. In Paris she discovered in herself a hitherto unknown enjoyment of the theatre, though her New England upbringing led her to sniff at French society and mores.
In London she found herself treated with snobbish disdain, and she learned to dislike the British and their capital city. When her husband ascended to the presidency she became politically active in Philadelphia and later in Washington, to the point that some of her husband’s enemies, and even some allies, referred to her as Mrs. President. She may have been the first political leaker in Washington, using editors whom she entertained among other guests at weekly formal dinners as listening posts for stories she would tell about her husband and the goals of his administration. In a letter to her, John once referred to what he called the “despotism of the petticoats”.
She endured the early death of three of her children, and the death through alcoholism of two of her sons for which she had held high hopes. In 1818 she wrote, regarding religion and the Great Awakening then sweeping America, “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?” Abigail was the foundation of the Adams family dynasty, and a potent force during America’s formative years, even without measuring the impact her private conversations with her husband, and others, had on the founding of the nation and the administrations of two presidents.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“John Adams” by David McCullough, 2001
“John Quincy Adams and the Union”, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, 1956
“Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1886”, by Martin Duberman, 1961
“Charles Francis Adams Jr. 1835-1915: Patrician at Bay”, by Edward C. Kirkland, 1965
“Henry Adams”, by James Truslow Adams, 1933
“C. F. Adams left $192,000”, by special to The New York Times, The New York Times, July 17, 1954
“Samuel Adams: A Life”, by Ira Stoll, 2008
“Abigail Adams: Witness to a Revolution”, by Natalie S. Bober, 1995