It’s Women’s History Month and this is the last of five bonus episodes giving free to all. If you’ve been enjoying them, please check out my Patreon page for details on how to get these regularly, not just in March. This particular bonus is a special one. As of March 31, 2026, it has been exactly 250 years since Abigail Adams wrote her most famous line to her husband John Adams.
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There’s no denying that the wives of the American Founding Fathers were incredible, and at the top of the list is Abigail Adams. She was intelligent, educated, and admirable in so many ways. Also we just plain know more about her than most of the wives because she and John wrote letters to each other when they were separated, and that was frequent.
In March of 1776, John Adams was in Philadelphia at the Second Continental Congress. He was agitating for could we finally get around to actually declaring our independence, please? He was also writing a very influential letter called “Thoughts on Government, Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies,” in which he said, “Politics is the Science of social Happiness—and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government…. The happiness of society is the end of government.” His thoughts included some ideas that will be very familiar to those who have read the US constitution: like three branches of government, executive, judicial, and legislative, all with checks and balances on each other.
A couple months later John Adams was director of a committee of five to draft a Declaration of Independence, and lots of people thought he should write it himself. He persuaded his friend Thomas Jefferson to do it instead, but there’s no denying that both the Declaration and the future Constitution have a lot of John Adams’s ideas.
But the one and only reason that John was free to do any of this was that he had a totally awesome wife back home in Massachusetts. Abigail Adams ran the household and the farm and the business affairs as a functionally single mother because John was away.
Abigail’s Letter
In March of 1776, it was also Abigail, not John, who was living on the front line. Boston and the surrounding area had been the focus of war for almost a year. The British held the city, and George Washington was laying siege. Abigail had fled her city house for the family farm, and even though the British had now retreated, there was too much smallpox about for her to go check on the city house. In her letter, written March 31, 1776, she tells John that she asked Mr. Crane to check on the Boston house, and he had reported that the house was still standing. There was just nothing left inside it. Many of their neighbors were not so lucky.
She is relieved that the British have retreating because she had been debating all winter whether it was even worth putting in a spring crop. Wouldn’t they just be driven out of the farm as well? But now that the Brits have left she feels sure she can plant. She says, “I think the Sun looks brighter, the Birds sing more melodiously, and Nature puts on a more chearfull countanance.”
She had thoughts on what John was doing too. She wrote:
“I long to hear that you have declared an independancy—and by the way 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 perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.
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. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.”
Abigail then put down her pen and picked it up a few days later. She was in a decidedly less jaunty mood then. She’d spent the intervening days tending the neighbor’s sick children and two of them were dead. Canker fever and mumps were raging through town. But despite this she is planning to make soap for the year, and afterwards she will make salt peter. The soap is for her and the family. The salt peter was for George Washington’s army. It’s a key ingredient in gunpowder. As you can see, she had a lot on her mind.
John’s Response
Fair warning: John Adams was admirable in many, many ways, and he had a lot on his mind too, but being admirable does not mean being perfect. He totally bombed his response to her letter. In multiple ways. From a modern viewpoint, he’d have done better to not respond at all. But on April 14th, I’m sorry to say that he did respond. He has much to say about the fleet, the house in Boston, and how glad he is that Abigail is happy. Then he says:
As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh. We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government every where. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient—that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent—that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented.—This is rather too coarse a Compliment but you are so saucy, I wont blot it out.
In other words, “Aren’t you cute when you try to be political?” The idea of giving women improved rights is so startling to him that he thinks she must be joking. He also makes it clear that he considers children, women, Native Americans, and African Americans to be equally subject to people like him. This despite the fact that he was a rarity among the Founding Fathers in that he never enslaved anyone and considered the practice “abhorrent” (From John Adams to Robert J. Evans).
He goes on to expound an excuse that was common, and honestly it still is common. It’s the excuse that men are only nominally in charge. Really, they’re at the mercy of the womenfolk, who manipulate them regularly. He says:
Depend upon it, We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems. Altho they are in full Force, you know they are little more than Theory. We dare not exert our Power in its full Latitude. We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know We are the subjects. We have only the Name of Masters, and rather than give up this, which would compleatly subject Us to the Despotism of the Peticoat, I hope General Washington, and all our brave Heroes would fight. I am sure every good Politician would plot, as long as he would against Despotism, Empire, Monarchy, Aristocracy, Oligarchy, or Ochlocracy.”
Right so, John has just dug himself into a deep, deep hole. I could go on at length about it, but I’ll restrain myself and say that what he has here is a very human failure to see anything but his own perspective. He has clearly never considered that Abigail would have made a fabulous politician had she been allowed, which she wasn’t. And even more importantly, he’s never considered the plight of the many, many women who were not as fortunate as Abigail. They were not married to a flawed, but mostly kindly, relatively well-off man like himself.
Abigail’s Response
By May 7, Abigail had seen his letter, and her response is far, far more restrained than I would have been. She says:
“I can not say that I think you very generous to the Ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to Men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over Wives. But you must remember that Arbitary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.”
If she had stopped here, I would cheer, but she goes on to accept the very excuse that John proffered: the idea that women do have a certain power over men.
“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 voilence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet—
“Charm by accepting, by submitting sway
Yet have our Humour most when we obey.”
I don’t really know how to interpret this last bit. Was Abigail saving face? Did she really believe in this soft power? Did she really believe that being desirable to men gave her enough power to offset a total lack of legal rights? Did she really think that was semi-acceptable?
She may have believed it. After all, she was married to a mostly kindly, relatively well-off man. I’m not negating his flaws here; I’m just pointing out that he could have been an abusive drunk who gambled away the household money. Abigail’s life would have been very different in that case. It was very different for a great many women.
Abigail was clearly aware that not all women had it as good as she did. More aware than John was, that’s for sure. But maybe she was not aware enough to fight harder. Or maybe she simply believed that nothing she could say would make a difference.
And to be honest, she was probably right about that. The idea that women like Abigail should have a voice and representation in lawmaking would have to wait a long, long time. The 19th amendment (which would have given her the vote) was ratified in 1920. That’s 144 years after Abigail asked her husband to remember the ladies.
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Selected Sources
Adams, Abigail. “Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0241. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761 – May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 369–371.]
Adams, Abigail. “Abigail Adams to John Adams, 7 May 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0259. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761 – May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 401–403.]
Adams, John. “From John Adams to Robert J. Evans, 8 June 1819,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7148.
Adams, John. “III. Thoughts on Government, April 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0026-0004. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 4, February–August 1776, ed. Robert J. Taylor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 86–93.]
Adams, John. “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 14 April 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0248. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761 – May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 381–383.]