Abigail Smith Adams
John Adams’ and his wife Abigail’s relationship is one of the best documented between a president and spouse, thanks in large part to their extensive correspondence maintained during his many extended absences, and her correspondence with many contemporaries. Abigail was present, through their letters, at most of the seminal events which led to the founding of the United States, and her letters are peppered with her opinions and advice to the founders.
She was the first First Lady to reside in the White House, then known as the President’s House, when it was still unfinished and largely unfurnished. Her residency was only for the last four months of John Adams’ only term. Abigail also has the distinction of being the first presidential spouse to exit the mansion because of her husband’s failure to win re-election.
Martha Washington had established the role of the First Lady by entertaining guests at the President’s House. Abigail continued in this role, but added to it a degree of political activity which her predecessor avoided. Abigail was known to use the press, planting stories with publishers which were favorable to her husband or unfavorable to his opponents. As the emergent Federalist Party stood in opposition to Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, Abigail was so involved in explaining Federalist goals, such as the building of a Navy and the Alien and Sedition Acts, that many supporters of Jefferson and Madison referred to her as Mrs. President.
Abigail used her influence with her husband to argue for women’s rights, including property rights. She was a passionate proponent of women’s education, and she argued for women to be liberally educated, not merely prepared for domestic responsibilities or the education of children. The terms women’s liberation or sexual equality had yet to be coined, but Abigail espoused both, in her private diaries and in her letters to her husband, Thomas Jefferson, several of the men who would later become president, and through her estate, with posterity.
It would be many years before another openly outspoken and influential First Lady would appear on the Washington scene. The amount of direct influence Abigail Adams had on the Office of the Presidency remains a subject of conjecture among historians, but it was clearly she who recognized the inherent power of the office of First Lady, and the many means available to wield it in the halls of the President’s House.