Abigail Adams Letter Speaks for Women
In Pursuit essay series continues this week with historian Joseph Ellis’s examination of Abigail Adams, the outspoken second first lady.
In the founding era of America where scant letters give historians insight into Martha Washington, it is Abigail Adams, the second first lady of the United States and her prolific correspondence with her husband, John Adams, that helps fill the historic gap.
This week, In Pursuit, a bi-partisan initiative created by the Washington, D.C.-based organization More Perfect, continues its series of essays spotlighting the lessons of U.S. presidents and select first ladies with the goal of distilling their wisdom about leadership and democracy. Historian Joseph Ellis’s essay “A Courageous Voice Can Echo Across History” discusses how the “deliberative” act of writing letters during that period sent a sustaining message for generations of women to come.
As a couple, Ellis writes, the Adams believed they had an “opportunity and obligation to record their thoughts” for the future. From that extensive correspondence comes what Ellis describes as the most famous letter in the entire collection, written by Abigail Adams.
She writes: “... 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. 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.”
Ellis describes how she went even further with this threat:
“But you must remember that Arbitrary power is like most things which are very hard … and notwithstanding all your wise Laws and Maxims we have it in our power, not only to free ourselves, but to subdue our Masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet.”
The question Ellis poses to the reader asks: What to do if you are a highly intelligent New England woman with ardent political convictions about gender equality that you realize will never come into existence during your lifetime, or even for your female descendants?
Ellis explores that dilemma, which becomes a reoccurring theme for many succeeding first ladies in support of gender equality to this day. Read the full essay
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