Abigail Adams | Letter to John Adams, March 31, 1776
Abigail Adams wrote detailed letters to John Adams while he was serving as a delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. She moved to Braintree, Massachusetts, during the British occupation of Boston but described conditions in the city and surrounding area. She often highlighted the difficulties that the civilian population faced and their responses to them. But Abigail Adams also discussed specifically political matters, as here where she calls on her husband to grant women more legal rights under the new government.
Do not you want to see Boston; I am fearfull of the small pox, or I should have been in before this time. I got Mr. Crane to go to our House and see what state it was in. I find it has been occupied by one of the Doctors of a Regiment, very dirty, but no other damage has been done to it . . . am determined to get it cleand as soon as possible. . . .
I feel very differently at the approach of spring to what I did a month ago. We knew not then whether we could plant or sow with safety, . . . but now we feel as if we might sit under our own vine and eat the good of the land. . . .
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 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.
Source: Abigail Adams to John Adams, March 31–April 5, 1776, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Digital Adams Project, http:/
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