Abigail Smith Adams

Born: November 22, 1744 Weymouth, Massachusetts

Died: October 28, 1818 Quincy, Massachusetts

President: John Adams 1797–1801

Overview: Abigail Adams was the wife of American president John Adams and the mother of the sixth president, John Quincy Adams. She also established herself as one of the most respected intellects and champions of women's rights of her time. She had no formal schooling, but by availing herself of the few options available to women, she achieved a remarkably broad and sophisticated education. Her voluminous letters, not only to her husband but also to the leading figures of her time, open an important window on the eventful years in which she lived.

Early Life

Abigail was the second of four children born to William Smith and Elizabeth Quincy Smith. Her father, a Congregational minister, was descended from a prosperous family of merchants. Her mother came from one of Massachusetts's oldest and most prominent families of landowners, public officials, and merchants.

Elizabeth Smith exercised close supervision of her children. As she fell victim to more than her fair share of the illnesses of the day, Abigail became the special object of maternal watchfulness, in response to which Abigail occasionally voiced her disapproval in the privacy of her personal letters. From their mother, Abigail and her sisters learned a patient submission to their duty in whatever life brought them. Nevertheless, the Smith household was hardly a gloomy one. William Smith's good nature balanced any severity on the part of his wife, and Abigail was especially close to her Grandmother Quincy, whom she described as a “merry and chatty” woman.

Smith softened the harder edges of his New England Congregational Calvinist Puritanism by accentuating its positive contributions to daily living. That is the faith his daughter embraced when she formally became a member of the Weymouth church in 1759.

Consistent with practices of the day, Abigail received no formal education, but she enjoyed her father's substantial library and the informal tutoring of educated relatives and friends, under whose guidance she became conversant with classical and contemporary literature and history. Particularly influential in her early years was Richard Cranch, who became acquainted with the family when she was eleven. Although self-taught, the English-born Cranch developed a passion for scholarship and mastered the classical languages and a substantial body of biblical and secular knowledge. By the time he married Mary Smith, Abigail's older sister, he had infected Abigail with a zeal for life and literature.

John Adams, a twenty-seven-year-old lawyer from Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, became a regular visitor to the Cranch home in 1759. By the end of 1761, John began to think seriously about Abigail, then seventeen, whom he described as “a constant feast… Prudent, modest, delicate, soft, sensible, obliging, active,” and physically passionate. It became family lore that the Smiths considered the struggling lawyer an unworthy suitor for their daughter, but the record suggests that at least William Smith welcomed John's petition for his daughter's hand and that his wife offered no strong objection.

Marriage and Family

Abigail married John Adams on October 25, 1764, a month before her twentieth birthday. They established their home in his hometown of Braintree. Soon after their union, John stated his expectations of her:

For her part, Abigail enjoyed being out from under her mother's watchful eye, but when her husband was away on business, she suffered from loneliness, especially for her sisters. The Adamses' first child, Abigail, called Nabby, was born on July 14, 1765.

John Quincy Adams, John and Abigail's second child, was born on July 11, 1767. A daughter, Susanna, followed at the end of 1768 but died thirteen months later. A second son, whom they named Charles, was born in May, 1770, followed by Thomas Boylston in September, 1772. In the meantime, Abigail's husband became ever more deeply involved in the American independence movement. The family moved to Boston just before the birth of their last child so that John could be closer to his clients and political interests, and Abigail took advantage of her new home to meet a number of influential Bostonians. Among her new acquaintances was Mercy Otis Warren, who, as a mother of five and an aspiring literary figure, became a lifelong friend, correspondent, and inspiration.

By the early 1770's, John Adams had become a leading political figure in Boston. In August, 1774, he departed Boston for Congress in Philadelphia, the first of his several prolonged absences from his family. Although she regretted his absence and dreaded the prospect of war, Abigail supported the position her husband and others of like mind were taking. In a letter to Catharine Macaulay in 1774, she wrote that “the only alternative which every American thinks of is Liberty or Death.” The colonies did not desire independence unless Britain forced it on them, she explained. Connected “by blood, by commerce, by one common language, by one common religion as Protestants, and as good and loyal subjects of the same king,” they earnestly wished that “the three fold cord of Duty, interest and filial affection” would not snap. “'Tis the Gordean knot. It can never be untied, but the sword may cut it.”

John returned home in November, 1774, but returned to Philadelphia and the Second Continental Congress the following April. Only one week before he left, shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. More than a year before the Congress voted independence, Abigail predicted it:

With the actual coming of independence, Abigail began to think about, and to force John to consider, the role of women in the new republic. John did not deny Abigail's reasoning that, in theory, women were included among the governed whose consent gave moral legitimacy to government. He held that their delicacy, domesticity, and primary concern for their children, however, made them more valuable as a private influence on husbands and sons than in any public capacity. Abigail did not quarrel with this position: An educated and enlightened wife and mother would be an important instrument for the inculcation of those virtues essential for the survival of the very tenuous, even experimental, republic. Toward that end, however, the republic had to produce learned women.

On July 9, 1777, Abigail gave birth to their last child, a little girl who died soon following her arrival in the world. Devastated by her second loss, Abigail's despair was lifted only upon John's return, for what he thought would be his final prolonged time away from home, in November. Their anticipation of domestic bliss, however, quickly vanished when John was notified that the Congress had appointed him as one of its three commissioners to France. Abigail was deeply troubled and considered accompanying John to Europe. The difficulties of ocean travel during the winter and in time of war, however, convinced both of them that she should remain behind. Instead, John took John Quincy with him. Abigail stayed behind with Nabby and the two younger boys.

John and John Quincy did not return to Braintree until August, 1779, and then, within weeks, Congress summoned John to be its minister plenipotentiary to negotiate peace with Great Britain. In November, 1779, he and Abigail parted again; this time he took Charles and John Quincy. John and Abigail would not see each other for three years. When, in the fall of 1783, following the restoration of peace, Congress appointed John Adams, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin to a new commission to negotiate a commercial treaty with England, John urged Abigail to join him, and she accepted. In June, 1784, Abigail left Braintree to join her husband.

Abigail and John spent a year in Paris and three years in London, the experience of which expanded Abigail's political, social, and cultural knowledge of the world. It also deepened her republican sensibilities and commitment to the better education of American women. Abigail learned to feel at home in French society, but she was not impressed by the majority of the French, voicing her disapproval of what she held to be their ostentatious dress, idle chatter, and loose morals. A notable exception was the Marquise de Lafayette, wife of a hero of the American Revolution, whom Abigail found friendly and unaffected. Abigail came to enjoy the theater and opera but was shocked at the immodest apparel of French dancers. She was also scandalized by the crime and prostitution in the streets of Paris.

With a year in Paris behind her to bolster her, Abigail entered London society with confidence. She found English society no more to her liking than French society. By her own estimation, it suffered from too much formality and not enough of the sincerity and warmhearted social intercourse on which she had thrived in her homeland. Paying and receiving calls were required of her as the wife of the American minister to England, but in gatherings of women, Abigail felt alone. At mixed parties, she preferred the conversation and attention of the men, and her closest friends were Americans living in London.

The Adams family returned home in 1788. In 1789 John was elected vice president of the United States, and Abigail found herself dividing her time among the farm in Braintree and the U.S. capitals of New York and Philadelphia. Abigail's political philosophy had changed from her experience abroad, as had John's, and their philosophies continued to mirror each other. She was no longer confident that the masses could become enlightened or that American republicanism could bring about a universal moral revival. All people throughout history displayed the same fundamental needs and were driven by the same passions. She wrote to her daughter: “I am sometimes led to think that human nature is a very perverse thing, and much more given to evil than good.” To preserve American freedom, enlightened and virtuous leaders had to preside over the government. Ideally, though, an elite of virtue and wisdom, not of wealth or heredity, should govern.

Abigail's attitudes toward women changed as well. She now regarded women in general as no more capable of universal enlightenment than men. No mass reformation of American women would preserve the republic. Hope lay, instead, in attaching equal importance to the education of both sexes so that both might “move with honour and dignity in their proper sphere.” The proper sphere for women was considered to be marriage and motherhood, and conjugal fidelity stood highest in the “ranks of female virtues.” The future of the country depended on creating homes with loving, educated, devout parents and daughters of sufficient virtue to become wives and mothers to patriots. Abigail believed that women in the United States enjoyed a situation relative to men more favorable than that experienced by women at any other time and place. “Consequently there is more conjugal Fidelity and domestic happiness here than is to be found any where else,” but women had to make use of that situation to better the nation. In 1790, she wrote:

For most of her husband's second term in office as vice president, illness forced Abigail to live in Braintree. This spared her the agony of witnessing firsthand the quarreling of former allies in the cause of independence over differences in political philosophy and the running of the new nation.

Particularly difficult for Abigail was the growing estrangement between John and his friend Thomas Jefferson. The two disagreed on nearly every issue: the power of the federal government versus that of the states, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton's plan to fund the federal debt, and even what the United States' proper position should be on the French Revolution.

In 1794, largely as a result of the years he had spent abroad with his father, John Quincy Adams was named minister to the Netherlands. Two years later, when George Washington announced that he would not accept a third term in office, it became clear that John Adams would be his successor. Abigail let her feelings be known to her husband concerning the prospect of being First Lady. She doubted that she had the “patience, prudence, discretion” of Martha Washington, who had gracefully avoided all controversy. Abigail's outspokenness, she feared, would prove detrimental to her husband as president. “I should say that I have been so used to a freedom of sentiment that I know not how to place so many guards about me, as will be indispensable, to look at every word before I utter it, and to impose a Silence upon My Self when I long to talk.” John responded: “I have no concern on your Account but for your health. A Woman can be silent, when she will.”

Presidency and First Ladyship

Abigail served as First Lady from 1797 to 1801, during her husband's single term as president. It was a tumultuous period, during which her husband became embroiled in highly contentious international and domestic political controversies. Abigail supported John's policies and became an ardent Federalist, though no friend of her husband's greatest Federalist foe, Alexander Hamilton. In the process, Abigail was criticized for her partisanship, as well as for the influence she allegedly had over her husband.

The experience of being the president's wife confirmed in Abigail her view of the role of women in republican America. She had no illusion that women would soon be permitted the vote, and she was content to see them participate in the political process only through private influence on their husbands and sons. At the same time, she insisted that the separate roles of the sexes were coordinate and of equal importance. While First Lady, she wrote:

John was not only willing that Abigail should be his “fellow Labourer,” even in his capacity as president; he insisted on it. “I never wanted your Advice and assistance more in my life,” he wrote soon after his inauguration. Two weeks later he pleaded, “The Times are critical and dangerous, and I must have you here to assist me.” He needed her to manage the presidential household and to meet his social obligations, to be sure, but he also wanted the confidence that he gained from her critical support. Being well aware of her responsibilities to John and his office only deepened Abigail's anxiety, but she nevertheless hastened to his side.

Abigail's greatest satisfaction came from her private role as confidante of, and counselor to, the president. She was intensely concerned with the issue that dominated his administration: relations between the United States and France. That issue divided nearly everyone in Philadelphia, including, once again, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. By the summer of 1798, Abigail wanted Congress to declare war on France as a means of rallying the American people against foreign subversion. However, John delayed asking for a declaration of war because he lacked sufficient support in Congress to make any war effectual. In time, Abigail grew closer to her husband's position that not only was Great Britain no bulwark against the perils of the French Revolution, its jealousy toward American prosperity, even in independence, would lead it to promote continued friction between the United States and France. The answer, both Adamses agreed, was not to follow the more extreme Federalist lead of establishing stronger ties with Great Britain, but rather to render the United States “independent of foreign attachments” altogether.

At the same time, Abigail watched with concern the growing power of Alexander Hamilton, who proved to be Adams's rival within his own party. She perceived Hamilton to be a man driven by ambition without the check of virtue she saw in her husband. She also supported the Federalist-led congressional action known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The former she saw as a necessary response to the threat “foreigners” posed to the country. The latter would serve to muzzle the most objectionable Republican editors, who, she believed, were libeling her husband. John Adams had not asked Congress for this legislation, but he signed the bills with little hesitation.

By 1800 the Hamiltonians sought to replace Adams as their president. By May, Abigail realized they presented a threat and that the odds did not favor John's reelection. She wrote to John Quincy Adams in Europe: “If the people judge that a change in the chief Majestracy of the Nation is for its peace, safety and happiness, they will no doubt make it.” She voiced her confidence not only in John's conduct regarding U.S. diplomatic difficulties with France and England, but that in matters generally, history would vindicate the wisdom of his administration.

Abigail expressed little bitterness over her husband's defeat, except against Hamilton and Vice President-elect Aaron Burr, to whose intrigues she attributed John's removal from office. She accepted the election results with more resignation than disappointment. She had few regrets because, at her age and with her poor health, she felt she would be happier in Braintree, now called Quincy. She felt no resentment against Jefferson, the victor. Instead, she hoped that his administration would be “as productive of the peace, happiness, and prosperity of the nation as the two former ones.” She left immediately for home; John followed on the morning of Jefferson's inauguration, without attending the affair. For the first time in thirty-six years of married life, John and Abigail Adams did not have to anticipate another long separation from each another.

John and Abigail returned to private life in Quincy. They lived comfortably in retirement but not with great wealth, for John's commitment to public service had left him little opportunity for pecuniary gain. The last quarter-century of her life had severely tested Abigail's inner strength. Chronic illness had plagued her for much of that time and equally painful absences from her husband even more. Her separation from John Quincy proved difficult, ameliorated only by his distinguished service to the nation (she would not live to see him become president). Her daughter, Nabby, would fight an unsuccessful battle with cancer, finally succumbing in 1813.

John divided his time between the farm and his books, enjoying “a tranquility and a freedom from care” he had not known before. Abigail was more restless but consoled herself with the thought that labor in the garden would yield flowers and fruit rather than the crop of “calumny” and “ingratitude” harvested from public service.

Abigail initiated a correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, showing that she still cared about him, despite his estrangement from her husband. Following Abigail's letter expressing regret at the death of Jefferson's daughter Polly in 1804, Jefferson replied with a long, warm letter expressing his continuing esteem for the Adams family. In attempting to explain why political differences had broken their friendship, he opened the door for them to at least attempt to clear the air of years of disharmony. John knew nothing of the correspondence until, after five months of writing, Abigail showed John the letters. John merely noted that he had nothing to say about them. It would take eight more years for John Adams and Thomas Jefferson to renew their friendship. In 1818 Abigail contracted typhus fever and died on October 28. She was buried in the First Church in Quincy. John died on July 4, 1826, fifty years from the date he signed the Declaration of Independence.

Legacy

Perhaps Abigail Adams's greatest legacy was her letters, which her grandson Charles Francis Adams began publishing in 1840. These letters provide an invaluable source of information on the revolutionary era and years of the early republic, on subjects ranging from family life to life at the courts of Europe, and from American politics and religion to the role of women in the early republic. They also give a personal view of the life of one of the United States' earliest female figures of strength, intelligence, and insight.

Abigail had conversed with statesmen of Europe and the United States, and she wrote long letters of political commentary. She developed a keen sense of the liabilities of being female in a male-dominated society. She denounced the potential for tyranny in the legal subjection of wives to husbands, and she believed a woman should be free to make a prudent choice of a mate and to limit the number of children she bore. Refusing to accept the widely held views on the inferiority of the female intellect, she added her influence to the growing demand for the education of young women. Her acceptance of the doctrine of separate spheres for men and women fixed the boundaries of her feminism. Within those limits, however, she maintained that the private political role of women in a republic was as important as the public role of men.

Abigail Adams was not an original thinker; she wrote no books and led no reform movements. Her greatness lay in her example. She demonstrated that an intelligent, spirited woman, given the opportunity, could lead a rewarding life and make a significant contribution to her country. As her son John Quincy Adams put it: “Her life gave the lie to every libel on her sex that was ever written.”

Suggested Readings