Megan Brophy's List: Abigail Adams

• The letters are invaluable eyewitness accounts of the Revolutionary War home front as well as excellent sources of political commentary.

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• She took an active role in politics and policy, unlike the quiet presence of Martha Washington. She was so politically active that her political opponents came to refer to her as "Mrs. President".
• 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.
• Letters exchanged throughout John's political obligations indicate that his trust in Abigail's knowledge was sincere.
• see McCullough's John Adams
• Women's rights
• In the mini-series John Adams, which premiered in March 2008 on HBO
• 1976 PBS mini-series The Adams Chronicles.

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• Shingleton, Jennifer. “Abigail Adams: The Feminist Myth.”

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• Abigail Smith Adams 1744-1818 Prolific Writer, Patriot, Abolitionist, and Early Feminist.

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• Shingleton, Jennifer. “Abigail Adams: the Feminist Myth” The Concord Review.  Retrieved on November 15, 2003 from the World Wide Web: http://www.tcr.org/abigailadams.html

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• Christina Hoff Sommers is a feminist who believes the women’s movement has taken “a wrong turn,”

  • Search for articles and books written by her.

• Has she been put on a pedestal? Or is it appropriate for her to be held up as a feminist icon?

   

  A: Yes to both. She really was ahead of her time in so many ways, but it’s a mistake to call her a feminist. She was a proto-feminist.

• In many respects, she could be described as a very strong willed driven woman, and one of the first feminists.

• Some 20th-century historians have painted what Gelles considers a false  picture of Adams as a radical feminist, citing her 1776 letter to her husband  in which she urged him to "remember the ladies and be more generous and  favorable to them than your ancestors.... 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." 

    That sounds like a strong feminist demand that women be treated as equals  to men, Gelles said, but the letter goes on to ask John to "regard us then as  Beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the  Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness." 
• Abigail Adams had a strong sense of hierarchy, Gelles said, and accepted  the patriarchal order she felt was ordained by God.

• Alice S. Rossi, a noted sociologist and feminist scholar who was a founder of the National Organization for Women
• Among her other books are “The Feminist Papers: From Adams to de Beauvoir” (Columbia University, 1973), which she edited

• his wife   had become the first in a long line of American   women to assert her desire for women’s rights.
• The words of Abigail Adams would echo through   American history, a rallying cry for other   activists who believed in the equality of   the sexes.

• hough   she wrote to her husband as his wife, she   also confronted him with his own language,   the language of liberty. After receiving   John Adams’ mocking reply to her plea for   American women, Abigail Adams wrote the   following words to her husband, predicting   the course of history:  

  “But   you must remember that Arbitrary power is   like most other things which are very hard,   very liable to be broken – and notwithstanding   all your wise Laws and Maxims we have it   in our power not only to free our selves   but to subdue our Masters, and without violence   throw both your natural and legal authority   at our feet.”

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• • Writer on feminist.com, author of "Remembering the Ladies."
• Janelle Collett is a history teacher and faculty technology leader at Springside School in Philadelphia, PA.

• MARY LOGAN ROTHSCHILD
• • Author of "De-centering Men as the Measure."

• Current Position

    
  
   

  Interim Director of Women's Studies; Professor of Women's Studies and History, Arizona State University, specializing in American Women's History, History of Feminism, and Gender Equity in Education.

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• Abigal Adams urged her husband John Adams to "remember the ladies" when he was helping to write to Declaration of Independence.
  
• I always think of Abigail Adams as a feminist as well, but there just wasn't a whole lot she could do about the situation of women at the time, other than to urge her husband to "remember the ladies" when helping to found the new government.
• Woman like Abigail Adams was strong in her own right, through that strength she gained the respect of her husband.

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  Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818); wife of John Adams; served 1797- 1801; daughter of noted Massachusetts family who became known for her letters expressing political opinions and early feminism; exhorted husband to “Remember the ladies.”