Abigail Adams

Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blythe, 1766
2nd First Lady of the United States
In office March 4, 1797 – March 4, 1801
Preceded by	Martha Washington
Succeeded by	Martha Jefferson Randolph
1st Wife of the Vice President of the United States
In office May 16, 1789 – March 4, 1797
Preceded by	None
Succeeded by	Anna Thompson Gerry
Personal details
Born	(1744-11-11)November 11, 1744 Weymouth, Province of Massachusetts Bay
Died	October 28, 1818(1818-10-28) (aged 73) Quincy, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Spouse	John Adams
Relations	William and Elizabeth Quincy Smith
Children	Abigail "Nabby", John Quincy, Susanna, Charles, Thomas, and Elizabeth (stillborn)
Occupation	First Lady of the United States, Second Lady of the United States

Abigail Adams (née Smith) (November 11, 1744 – October 28, 1818) was the wife of John Adams, the second President of the United States, and mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth, and is regarded as the first Second Lady of the United States and the second First Lady of the United States though the terms were not coined until after her death.

Adams is remembered for the many letters she wrote to her husband while he stayed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the Continental Congresses. John Adams frequently sought the advice of his wife on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics. The letters are invaluable eyewitness accounts of the Revolutionary War home front as well as excellent sources of political commentary.

Early life and family

Abigail was born in the North Parish Congregational Church at Weymouth, Massachusetts on November 11, 1744 to Rev. William Smith and Elizabeth Quincy Smith. By the calendar used today, it would be November 22. On her mother's side, she was descended from the Quincy family, a well-known political family in the Massachusetts colony. Her father (1707-1783), a liberal Congregationalist, and other forebears were Congregational ministers, and leaders in a society that held its clergy in high esteem. However, he did not preach about predestination, original sin, or the full divinity of Christ, instead emphasizing the importance of reason and morality.

Abigail was a sickly child, too sick to send to school. Although she did not receive a formal education, her mother taught her and her sisters Mary (1746-1811) and Elizabeth (known as Betsy) to read, write, and cipher; her father's, uncle's and grandfather's large libraries enabled them to study English and French literature. As an intellectually open-minded woman for her day, Abigail's ideas on women's rights and government would eventually play a major role, albeit indirectly, in the founding of the U.S. She became one of the most erudite women ever to serve as First Lady and is today regarded as an early heroine of the women's liberation movement.

Marriage and children

Although Adams had known the Smith family since he was a boy, he paid no attention to the delicate child nine years his junior. But in 1762, when John tagged along with his friend Richard Cranch, who was engaged to Abigail's older sister Mary, he was quickly attracted to the petite, shy seventeen-year-old brunette who was forever bent over some book. He was surprised to learn that she knew so much about poetry, philosophy, and politics, considered inappropriate reading for a woman in those days.

Although Abigail's father approved of the match, her mother was appalled that a Smith would throw her life away on a country lawyer whose manners still reeked of the farm, but eventually she gave in. They married on October 25, 1764, just five days before John's 29th birthday in the Smith's home in Weymouth, MA. Abigail wore a square-necked gown of white challis; John appeared in a dark blue coat, contrasting light breeches and white stockings, a gold-embroidered satin waistcoat his mother had made for the occasion, and buckle shoes. Rev. Smith (the bride's father) performed the nuptials.

After the reception, the couple mounted a single horse and rode off to their new home, the small cottage and farm that John had inherited from his father in Braintree, MA (later renamed Quincy) before moving to Boston where his law practice expanded.

In ten years she gave birth to five children:

• Abigail (1765-1813)
• John Quincy Adams (1767-1848)
• Susanna Boylston (1768-1770)
• Charles (1770-1800)
• Thomas Boylston (1772-1832)
• A sixth child, Elizabeth, was stillborn in 1777

She looked after family and home when he went traveling as circuit judge. "Alas!" she wrote in December 1773, "How many snow banks divide thee and me...."

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 United States Minister to the Kingdom of Great 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.

She raised her two younger sons throughout John Adams' 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 included relentless and continual reminders of what the children owed to virtue and the Adams tradition.

Wife of the Vice President

As wife of the first Vice President, Abigail became a good friend to Martha Washington and a valued help in official entertaining, drawing on her experience of courts and society abroad. After 1791, however, poor health forced her to spend as much time as possible in Quincy. Illness or trouble found her resolute; as she once declared, she would "not forget the blessings which sweeten life."

First Lady

When John Adams was elected President of the United States, she continued a formal pattern of entertaining. The removal of the capital to Washington in 1800, Abigail Adams became the first First Lady to preside over 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 complained that, despite the thick woods nearby, she could find no one willing to chop and haul firewood for the First Family. Mrs. Adams' health, never robust, suffered in Washington. She took an active role in politics and policy, unprecedented by Martha Washington. She was so politically active that her political opponents came to refer to her as "Mrs. President".

The Adamses retired to Quincy in 1801 after John Adams' defeat in his bid for a second term as President of the United States. She followed her son's political career earnestly as her letters to contemporaries show. In later years she renewed correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, whose political opposition to her husband had hurt her deeply.

Death

Adams later in life

Abigail Adams died on October 28, 1818, of typhoid fever, several years before her son became president, and 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. She was 73 years old; John Adams was 90 when he died.

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

Adams was an advocate of married women's property rights and 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 Adams 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.

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."

Slavery

Along with her husband, Adams believed that slavery was not only evil, but 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 the "passion for Liberty" they claimed they did, since they "deprive[d] their fellow Creatures" of freedom.

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. Abigail 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.""

Religious beliefs

Abigail Adams, as well as her husband, was an active member of the First Parish Church in Quincy, which became Unitarian in doctrine by 1753. In a letter to John Quincy Adams 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.

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?"

Legacy

Memorials

File:Abigail adams statue.jpg

Adams as part of the Boston Women's Memorial on Commonwealth Ave.

A cairn — a mound of rough stones — crowns the nearby hill from which she and her son, John Quincy, watched the Battle of Bunker Hill and the burning of Charlestown. At that time she was minding the children of Dr. Joseph Warren, President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, who was killed in the battle. An Adams Memorial has been proposed in Washington, D.C., honoring Abigail, her husband, and other members of their family.

Theatre

Passages from Adams' letters to her husband figured prominently in songs from the Broadway musical 1776.

Television

Adams was played by Kathryn Walker 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.

Portrait on currency

The First Spouse Program under the Presidential $1 Coin Act authorizes the United States Mint to issue 1/2 ounce $10 gold coins and bronze medal duplicates 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.

• 
  Obverse
• Reverse
  Reverse
• 
  Obverse (bronze medal)
• Reverse (bronze medal)
  Reverse (bronze medal)

Bibliography

• Nagel, Paul C. 1987. The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195038746

• Bober, Natalie S. 1995. Abigail Adams: Witness to a revolution New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division.

External links

• Short summary of Abigail's Life
• Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889
• Adams family biographies - Massachusetts Historical Society
• Collection of Abigail Adams Letters
• My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams, Harvard University Press
• The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters, Harvard University Press
• Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family, Harvard University Press
• Adams Family Correspondence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press
• Abigail Adams Birthplace - Museum in Weymouth, Massachusetts
• Ancestors of Abigail Smith

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