Engaging with American Democracy » August 26th: Attention on the Second Continental Congress » Abigail Adams to John Adams

Abigail Adams to John Adams

Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March & 5 April 1776

  • What rhetorical moves does Mrs. Adams make that are similar to strategies in our other texts?
    • Remember, rhetorical moves don’t have to be conscious.
    • We can locate them regardless of authorial intention.

John Adams was a prolific letter writer, and much of his correspondence has been saved and archived online. Many of his letters went to his wife while he was away on revolutionary tasks. In fact, they wrote around 1,000 letters to each other…how could they have that much to say! This particular letter–the famous “Remember the Ladies” plea–is right before the Battles of Lexington and Concord* and a few months before Jefferson et al. (Adams is in there) worked on The Declaration of Independence, but hostilities between the British and the Colonists is ongoing.

When analyzing this letter, we notice some historical events mentioned, but there’s also quite personal stuff about the house and the extended family. Abigail certainly has opinions about politics and is cautiously optimitic about her security in Braintree, MA. She’s also working on “saltpeter,” and, if there’s a lull in the conversation, I’ll be forced to play the scene from the musical 1776. Before that happens, let’s review some key parts of her letter.

Current Events Circa March 1776

  • Worries about the “Blood thirsty” nature of Southern patriots
  • Praises George Washington and references John Dunmore, an inept loyalist Governor of Virginia
  • “…a month ago. We knew not…whether when we had toild we could reap the fruits of our own industery…or whether we should not be driven from the sea coasts to seek shelter in the wilderness, but now we feel as if we might sit under our own vine and eat the good of the land.”
  • 3rd paragraph: “I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for Liberty cannot be Eaquelly Strong in the Breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow Creatures of theirs.”
    • She’s against slavery and worries that the slave-owning representatives are truly for Liberty if they enslave humans beings.
    • She also invokes “Christian principle” when bringin this up.

Family Matters

  • Smallpox in Boston, looting nearby
  • Sick neighbor she’s helping
  • Children sick and dead

Remember the Ladies

  • “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.”
  • “That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend.”
    • Abigail sees their relationship as a mutual friendship, which appears to me to mean different from Husband the Master and Wife the Subordinate, but I could be wrong.
    • Signs off as “I am Your ever faithfull Friend“
  • “Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem [sic] Being make use of that power only for our happiness.”
    • Invokes divine plans for men to protect women.

Here’s a dramatization of Mrs. Adams’s concerns from the John Adams television series (2008).

Saltpeter (Potassium Nitrate)

  • “I want to hear much oftener from you than I do”
  • “You inquire of whether I am making Salt peter. I have not yet attempted it, but after Soap making believe I shall make the experiment.”
  • “I have lately seen a small Manuscrip de[s]cribing the proportions for the various sorts of powder, fit for cannon, small arms and pistols.”

Here’s another dramatization from John Adams (2008) on homeschool arts & crafts.

John Adams’s Letter in Response

  • Virginia Minutemen get help from “Their neighbouring Sister or rather Daughter Colony of North Carolina, which is a warlike Colony, and…a pretty good Militia…seem determined to make a brave Resistance.”
  • “The Gentry are very rich, and the common People very poor. This Inequality of Property, gives an Aristocratical Turn to all their Proceedings…”
    • Responding directly to Mrs. Adams reference of “Gentry Lords” in her letter’s 1st paragraph.
    • What’s the meaning of this?
  • “But let Us take Warning and give it to our Children. Whenever Vanity, and Gaiety, a Love of Pomp and Dress, Furniture, Equipage, Buildings, great Company, expensive Diversions, and elegant Entertainments get the better of the Principles and Judgments of Men or Women there is no knowing where they will stop, nor into what Evils, natural, moral, or political, they will lead us.”
    • Calls out materialism
  • “As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh….This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out.”
    • He doesn’t seem to be taking her plea to remember the ladies seriously.
  • “We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems….We dare not exert our Power in its full Latitude.”
  • “…which would compleatly subject Us to the Despotism of the Peticoat…”

John Adams wrote a few letters before receiving Mrs. Adams’s letter with two dates, but he responds to them in his April 14, 1776 letter.

*Lexington, NC, is named after the battles in Massasschusettes, but it appears that Concord, NC, is not named for it.