Abigail Smith, later Abigail Adams (1744-1818), was the wife of John Adams, the second President of the United States. Abigail, or Abby, had a very close partnership with John and so played an instrumental role in the Revolutionary War years and in the early years of an independent United States. Douglas Reid explains.
Abigail Adams in the 1760s. Painting by Benjamin Blyth.
Abigail Smith was a petite woman. She was born in the seaside village of Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1744 to Puritan parents, her father being one of two Bible scholars serving the spiritual needs of 2,100 souls. She would never receive a day of formal education but as an introverted young lady she would meet a local young lawyer named John Adams and her fate was assured. The 54- year marriage of John and Abigail Adams was a partnership of heart and mind.
Abigail proved to be a natural scholar who inhaled her father’s library in large swallows, especially the prose and poetry of John Donne and the essays of Montaigne. It helped a great deal that her father encouraged her to read and then think about what she read. Subsequently her husband would also encourage her in these self-styled seminars and three occurrences together produced a scholar of no mean standing. Add to this mix her belated blossoming and this produced a young woman of fire and desire. And Abby made a point of cultivating the friendship of two special soul mates.
Abby began a three-year correspondence with the historian Catherine Macaulay. And she also developed a more enduring friendship with Mercy Otis Warren, a playwright of even greater renown. But her steadiest sounding- board was always John. John called Abby a heroine before I did. Himself a successful lawyer and a graduate of Harvard, John would soon provide his wife a practical course in politics and that course was underway by 1768.
Events heat up
In that year John was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, the first of several state and ambassadorships he would be assigned to serve. Thus began the earliest correspondence between John and Abigail. Now, in the 1770s the enmity between Mother Britain and the renegade States grew worse, and famously flared in 1775 in Concord and Lexington. The Revolutionary War was underway.
The years 1770 – 1776 might better be judged a shadow war, which grew hotter with Concord and Lexington. Redcoats and Minute Men simmered and smouldered. Perhaps these six years could be considered as a “phoney war”. One thing was certain. John’s time away from home was growing and a consequence was that Abigail was taking over the operation of the family farm as well as the early education of their children and minding the family finances. And then there was Portia.
Portia was known in ancient Rome as the beleaguered wife of Brutus the noble conspirator. Abigail adopted Portia as a pen name when exchanging letters with her husband and Mary Otis Warren and no one else. Portia was not the only reference to a mythic being in the Adams household. So was Phoebe.
Phoebe (A Moon Goddess) was the name of Abigail’s personal “servant” during her childhood. When Abby married John Adams, Phoebe went along with her. This, of course, raises the issue of slavery. Even a cursory examination of their lives reveals a couple opposed to slavery in a nation dedicated to liberty, but this continued to bother her. And on this issue, as nearly all others, the Adams’ agreed.
Now, as the first Continental Congress approached in 1774 Abby had become the best-read woman of her time. As the representatives of the states met, John found himself increasingly seeking Abby’s input. He told her “If I could write as well as you, my sorrows would be as eloquent as yours, but upon my word I can not.” He once used a quotation included in one of her letters in a speech before Congress. Then in 1778 Congress named John Adams as Commissioner to France and later to the Netherlands. Separated for years, the Adams were reunited in France and Abby watched the antics of the “beau monde” up close and personal.
A great partnership
Following a brief time at home John would travel to the Netherlands in an attempt to induce the Dutch to lend the struggling young nation a loan. He was unsuccessful on this occasion. However a second effort in this regard would be granted at a later date. Perhaps it is significant that Abby was with him on the second hearing but not on the first.
He always shared the details of his work with his wife and sought her advice. Politics always fascinated her. John basked in the recognition that went with public service. Abigail cherished a vicarious importance as the wife of a prominent public figure. Soon John was to be appointed the first ever Minister Plenipotentiary to England. This time the Minister’s wife accompanied him throughout the appointment. Mrs. Adams proved to be the epitome of the universal observation that travel enlightens and deepens. One colleague of John’s said of her “Mrs. Adams is the most accomplished lady I have seen since I left England.
It has to be said that Abby never probed deeply into the minds and souls of the people she met in Europe but she was a keen observer of anything external. Her natural purview was monuments, buildings, flowers, trees and behavior. Probably her favorite subject was women’s education. In her view a better education, far from destroying a woman’s femininity, made them better wives and mothers. As John rose to and through the office of vice-president under Washington and then himself president, Abigail was always there, always one of the partnership. When John was scheduled to review military troops in New Jersey and could not make it, Abby acted as his proxy.
Abigail Adams first loyalty was always to John and she would never allow him to diminish his life’s work. For Abby, John remained forever the President and she never referred to him by any other name.
Now you can read Douglas’ article on Thomas Paine, the man whose book may have led to the American Revolution, here.
