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Introduction

Written nearly a year after open conflict began, this letter finds Abigail Adams reflecting on the costs of war while urging her husband to consider questions of liberty and authority as independence loomed. It replies to John’s recent correspondence from Congress and introduces themes that would make this letter one of the most remembered in their exchange.

Letter Text

I long to hear that you have declared an independency, 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 favorable 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.

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 imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.

HAL 1776 Commentary

This letter expands the scope of the Adams correspondence beyond immediate wartime concerns to fundamental questions of rights and representation. Abigail’s appeal—half playful, half serious—reveals her acute understanding of power and law at a moment when political structures were being remade. Within the broader series, it stands as a reminder that the struggle for independence prompted not only national revolution, but challenges to social and domestic hierarchies as well.

Source

Founders Online, National Archives.
Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March 1776.
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0092