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{{Infobox_Officeholder
| name= Abigail Adams
| image= Abigail Adams.jpg
| imagesize= 200px
| caption= Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blythe, 1766
| birth_date= {{birth date|1744|11|11}}
| birth_place= [[Weymouth, Massachusetts|Weymouth]], [[Province of Massachusetts Bay]]
| death_date= {{death date and age|1818|10|28|1744|11|11}}
| death_place= [[Quincy, Massachusetts|Quincy]], [[Massachusetts]], [[United States|U.S.A.]]
| occupation= [[First Lady of the United States]], [[Second Lady of the United States]]
| religion= [[Congregational]]
| spouse= [[John Adams]]
| children= "[[Abigail “Nabby” Adams Smith|Abigail "Nabby"]]", [[John Quincy Adams|John Quincy]], Susanna, [[Charles Adams (1770–1800)|Charles]], Thomas and Elizabeth (stillborn)
| relations= William and Elizabeth Quincy Smith
| signature=
| order= 2nd
| title= [[First Lady of the United States]]
| term_start= [[March 4]], [[1797]]
| term_end= [[March 4]], [[1801]]
| predecessor= [[Martha Washington]]
| successor= [[Martha Jefferson Randolph]]
| order2= 1st
| title2= [[Second Lady of the United States]]
| term_start2= [[May 16]], [[1789]]
| term_end2= [[March 4]], [[1797]]
| predecessor2= ''None''
| successor2= [[Anna Thompson Gerry]]
}}
'''Abigail Adams''' (née Smith) ([[November 11]], [[1744]] – [[October 28]], [[1818]]) was the wife of [[John Adams]] the second [[President of the United States]] and mother of [[John Quincy Adams]], the sixth, and is regarded as the first [[Second Lady of the United States]] and the second [[First Lady of the United States]] though the terms were not coined until after her death.

Adams is remembered today for the many letters she wrote to her husband while he stayed in [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]], during the [[Continental Congress]]es. [[John Adams]] frequently sought the advice of his wife on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics. The letters are invaluable eyewitness accounts of the [[Revolutionary War]] home front as well as excellent sources of political commentary.

==Early life and family==

Abigail was born in the [[North Parish Congregational Church]] at [[Weymouth, Massachusetts]] on [[November 11]], [[1744]] to Rev. William Smith and Elizabeth Quincy Smith. By the calendar used today, it would be [[November 22]]. On her mother's side, she was descended from the Quincys, a well-known family in the [[Massachusetts colony]], by whom she descended from King [[Edward I of England]] and King [[Edward III of England]].<ref>[http://www.whosyomama.com/gabroaddrick3/4/26100.htm Ancestors of Abigail SMITH<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref><ref>[http://genealogia.netopia.pt/pessoas/pes_show.php?id=32176 GeneAll.net<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Her father (1707-1783), a liberal Congregationalist, and other forebears were [[Congregational church|Congregational]] ministers, and leaders in a society that held its clergy in high esteem. However, he did not preach about the predestination, original sin, or the full divinity of Christ, instead emphasizing the importance of reason and morality.<ref name= uua>[http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/abigailadams.html Abigail Adams]</ref>

Although she did not receive a formal education, her mother taught her and her sisters Mary (1746-1811) and Elizabeth (known as Betsy) to read, write, and cipher; her father's, uncle's and grandfather's large libraries enabled them to study English and French literature.<ref name= uua/> As an intellectually open-minded woman for her day, Abigail's ideas on women's rights and government would eventually play a major role, albeit indirectly, in the founding of the U.S.

==Marriage to John Adams and family==
Abigail Smith met [[John Adams]] in 1759, and the two were exchanging love letters by 1762; John called her 'Miss Adorable' and Abigail called him 'Dearest Friend'. They married on [[October 25]], [[1764]], just before Abigail's 20th birthday. John and Abigail Adams lived on a farm in [[Braintree, Massachusetts|Braintree]] (later renamed Quincy) before moving to [[Boston]] where his law practice expanded. In ten years she gave birth to five children:
[[Abigail “Nabby” Adams Smith|Abigail]] (1765-1813), the future President [[John Quincy Adams]] (1767-1848), Susanna Boylston (1768-1770), [[Charles Adams (1770–1800)|Charles]] (1770-1800), and Thomas Boylston (1772-1832). A sixth child, Elizabeth, was stillborn in 1775. She looked after family and home when he went traveling as circuit judge. "Alas!" she wrote in December 1773, "How many snow banks divide thee and me...."

In 1784, she and her daughter Abigail, who was known in the family as 'Nabby', joined her husband and her eldest uncle, John Quincy at his diplomatic post in [[Paris]]. After 1785, she filled the role of wife of the first United States Minister to the [[Kingdom of Great Britain]]. They returned in 1788 to a house known as the "[[Old House (Quincy, Massachusetts)|Old House]]" in Quincy, which she set about vigorously enlarging and weird findings. It is still standing and open to the public as part of [[Adams National Historical Park]]. Nabby later died of breast cancer.

==Wife of the Vice President==

As wife of the first Vice President, Abigail became a good friend to [[Martha Washington]] and a valued help in official entertaining, drawing on her experience of courts and society abroad. After 1791, however, poor health forced her to spend as much time as possible in Quincy. Illness or trouble found her resolute; as she once declared, she would "not forget the blessings which sweeten life."

==First Lady==
When John Adams was elected [[President of the United States]], she continued a formal pattern of entertaining, becoming the first hostess of the yet-uncompleted [[White House]]. The city was wilderness, the President's House far from completion. Her private complaints to her family provide blunt accounts of both, but for her three months in Washington she duly held her dinners and receptions. She mentioned that fires had to be lit constantly to keep the cold, cavernous place warm and she describes setting up her laundry in one of the great rooms. She took an active role in politics and policy, unprecedented by Martha Washington. She was so politically active that her political opponents came to refer to her as "Mrs. President".
The Adamses retired to Quincy in 1801 after John Adams' defeat in his bid for a second term as President of the United States. She followed her son's political career earnestly as her letters to contemporaries show.
==Death==
[[Image:Abigail adams.jpg|right|thumbnail|Adams later in life]]

Abigail Adams died on [[October 28]], [[1818]] of [[typhoid fever]], several years before her son became president, and is buried beside her husband in a crypt located in the [[United First Parish Church, Quincy, Massachusetts|United First Parish Church]] (also known as the ''Church of the Presidents'') in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was 73 years old; John Adams was 90 when he died.
Her last words were "Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long."

==Political viewpoints==

===Women's Rights===
Adams was an advocate of married women's property rights and more opportunities for women, particularly in the field of education. Women, she believed, should not submit to laws not made in their interest, nor should they be content with the simple role of being companions to their husbands. They should educate themselves and thus be recognized for their intellectual capabilities, so they could guide and influence the lives of their children and husbands. She is best known for her [[March]] [[1775]] letter to John Adams and the Continental Congress, requesting that they

:''...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.''<ref name= uua/>
To this, John answered:''...as to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh...Depend upon it, we know better Than to repeal our masculine systems...''

===Slavery===
Along with her husband, Adams believed that slavery was not only evil, but a threat to the American democratic experiment. A letter written by her on [[March 31]], [[1776]] explained that she doubted most of the Virginians had such the "passion for Liberty" they claimed they did, since they "depriv[ed] their fellow Creatures" of freedom.<ref name= uua/>

A notable incident regarding this happened in 1791, where a local slave came to her house asking to be taught how to write. Subsequently, she placed the boy in a local evening school, though not without objections from a neighbor. Abigail responded that he was "a Freeman as much as any of the young Men and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? ... I have not thought it any disgrace to my self to take him into my parlor and teach him both to read and write."

==Religious beliefs==
Abigail Adams, as well as her husband, was an active member of the [[First Parish Church]] in Quincy, which became [[Unitarian]] in doctrine by 1753. In a letter to John Quincy Adams dated [[May 5]], [[1816]], she wrote of her religious beliefs:

:''I acknowledge myself a unitarian—Believing that the Father alone, is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ derived his Being, and all his powers and honors from the Father ... There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.''<ref name= uua/>

She also asked [[Louisa Adams]] in a letter dated [[January 3]], [[1818]], "when will Mankind be convinced that true Religion is from the Heart, between Man and his creator, and not the imposition of Man or creeds and tests?"

==Legacy==
===Memorials===
An [[Adams Memorial]] is proposed in Washington, D.C., honoring Abigail, her husband, and other members of their family. A [[Abigail Adams Cairn|cairn]] now crowns the nearby hill from which she and her son John Quincy Adams watched the [[Battle of Bunker Hill]] and the burning of Charlestown. At that time she was minding the children of [[Joseph Warren|Dr. Joseph Warren]], President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, who was killed in the battle
===Theatre===
Passages from Adams' letters to her husband figured prominently in songs from the Broadway musical ''[[1776 (musical)|1776]]'' (and the 1972 film of it, with [[Virginia Vestoff]] as Abigail Adams). (In the musical, their time apart is given a comically suggestive twist, when she agrees to send him [[potassium nitrate|saltpeter]], ostensibly to help with the preparation of gunpowder, but perhaps to quell down his sexual frustration as well.)

===Television===

Adams was played by [[Kathryn Walker]] in the 1976 [[PBS]] mini-series [[The Adams Chronicles]]. In the mini-series "John Adams", which premiered in March 2008 on [[HBO]], Adams was played by [[Laura Linney]].

===Portrait on currency===
{{wikiquote}}
The [[First Spouse Program]] under the [[Presidential $1 Coin Act]] authorizes the [[United States Mint]] to issue 1/2 ounce $10 gold coins to honor the first spouses of the United States. Abigail Adams's coin was released on [[June 19]], [[2007]], and sold out in just hours.

<gallery>
Image:Abigail Adams First Spouse Coin obverse.jpg|Obverse
Image:Abigail Adams First Spouse Coin reverse.jpg|Reverse
</gallery>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==Bibliography==
*Nagel, Paul C. 1987. [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/NAGADX.html ''The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters.''] New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195038746

*Bober, Natalie S. 1995. ''Abigail Adams: Witness to a revolution'' New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division.

==External links==
*[http://www.abigailadams.org/ Short summary of Abigail's Life]
*[http://virtualology.com/abigailadams/ Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson, John Fiske and Stanley L. Klos. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889 ]
*[http://www.masshist.org/adams/biographical.cfm#second Adams family biographies - Massachusetts Historical Society]
*[http://www.familytales.org/results.php?tla=aba Collection of Abigail Adams Letters]
*[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/ADAMYD.html My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams, Harvard University Press]
*[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/NAGADX.html The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and Daughters, Harvard University Press]
*[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/NAGDEX.html Descent from Glory: Four Generations of the John Adams Family, Harvard University Press]
*[http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/ADAADA.html ''Adams Family Correspondence.'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press]
*[http://abigailadamsbirthplace.org/ Abigail Adams Birthplace - Museum in Weymouth, Massachusetts]

{{-}}
{{start box}}
{{s-hon}}
{{succession box|
before=[[Martha Dandridge Custis Washington]]|
title=[[First Ladies of the United States|First Lady of the United States]]|
years=1797&ndash;1801|
after=[[Martha Jefferson Randolph]]
}}
{{end box}}
{{US First Ladies}}
{{US Second Ladies}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Abigail}}
[[Category:First Ladies of the United States]]
[[Category:Second Ladies of the United States]]
[[Category:Women in the American Revolution]]
[[Category:Adams family]]
[[Category:American feminists]]
[[Category:American Unitarians]]
[[Category:People from Norfolk County, Massachusetts]]
[[Category:1744 births]]
[[Category:1818 deaths]]
[[Category:Massachusetts colonial people]]
[[Category:People of Massachusetts in the American Revolution]]
[[Category:People from Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Parents of Presidents of the United States]]
[[Category:Americans of English descent]]
[[Category:People from Braintree, Massachusetts]]

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Revision as of 23:57, 17 April 2008

Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blythe, 1766
2nd First Lady of the United States
In office
March 4, 1797 – March 4, 1801
Preceded byMartha Washington
Succeeded byMartha Jefferson Randolph
1st Second Lady of the United States
In office
May 16, 1789 – March 4, 1797
Preceded byNone
Succeeded byAnna Thompson Gerry
Personal details
Born(1744-11-11)November 11, 1744
Weymouth, Province of Massachusetts Bay
DiedOctober 28, 1818(1818-10-28) (aged 73)
Quincy, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
SpouseJohn Adams
RelationsWilliam and Elizabeth Quincy Smith
Children"Abigail "Nabby"", John Quincy, Susanna, Charles, Thomas and Elizabeth (stillborn)
OccupationFirst Lady of the United States, Second Lady of the United States

Abigail Adams (née Smith) (November 11, 1744October 28, 1818) was the wife of John Adams the second President of the United States and mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth, and is regarded as the first Second Lady of the United States and the second First Lady of the United States though the terms were not coined until after her death.

Adams is remembered today for the many letters she wrote to her husband while he stayed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the Continental Congresses. John Adams frequently sought the advice of his wife on many matters, and their letters are filled with intellectual discussions on government and politics. The letters are invaluable eyewitness accounts of the Revolutionary War home front as well as excellent sources of political commentary.

Early life and family

Abigail was born in the North Parish Congregational Church at Weymouth, Massachusetts on November 11, 1744 to Rev. William Smith and Elizabeth Quincy Smith. By the calendar used today, it would be November 22. On her mother's side, she was descended from the Quincys, a well-known family in the Massachusetts colony, by whom she descended from King Edward I of England and King Edward III of England.[1][2] Her father (1707-1783), a liberal Congregationalist, and other forebears were Congregational ministers, and leaders in a society that held its clergy in high esteem. However, he did not preach about the predestination, original sin, or the full divinity of Christ, instead emphasizing the importance of reason and morality.[3]

Although she did not receive a formal education, her mother taught her and her sisters Mary (1746-1811) and Elizabeth (known as Betsy) to read, write, and cipher; her father's, uncle's and grandfather's large libraries enabled them to study English and French literature.[3] As an intellectually open-minded woman for her day, Abigail's ideas on women's rights and government would eventually play a major role, albeit indirectly, in the founding of the U.S.

Marriage to John Adams and family

Abigail Smith met John Adams in 1759, and the two were exchanging love letters by 1762; John called her 'Miss Adorable' and Abigail called him 'Dearest Friend'. They married on October 25, 1764, just before Abigail's 20th birthday. John and Abigail Adams lived on a farm in Braintree (later renamed Quincy) before moving to Boston where his law practice expanded. In ten years she gave birth to five children: Abigail (1765-1813), the future President John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), Susanna Boylston (1768-1770), Charles (1770-1800), and Thomas Boylston (1772-1832). A sixth child, Elizabeth, was stillborn in 1775. She looked after family and home when he went traveling as circuit judge. "Alas!" she wrote in December 1773, "How many snow banks divide thee and me...."

In 1784, she and her daughter Abigail, who was known in the family as 'Nabby', joined her husband and her eldest uncle, John Quincy at his diplomatic post in Paris. After 1785, she filled the role of wife of the first United States Minister to the Kingdom of Great Britain. They returned in 1788 to a house known as the "Old House" in Quincy, which she set about vigorously enlarging and weird findings. It is still standing and open to the public as part of Adams National Historical Park. Nabby later died of breast cancer.

Wife of the Vice President

As wife of the first Vice President, Abigail became a good friend to Martha Washington and a valued help in official entertaining, drawing on her experience of courts and society abroad. After 1791, however, poor health forced her to spend as much time as possible in Quincy. Illness or trouble found her resolute; as she once declared, she would "not forget the blessings which sweeten life."

First Lady

When John Adams was elected President of the United States, she continued a formal pattern of entertaining, becoming the first hostess of the yet-uncompleted White House. The city was wilderness, the President's House far from completion. Her private complaints to her family provide blunt accounts of both, but for her three months in Washington she duly held her dinners and receptions. She mentioned that fires had to be lit constantly to keep the cold, cavernous place warm and she describes setting up her laundry in one of the great rooms. She took an active role in politics and policy, unprecedented by Martha Washington. She was so politically active that her political opponents came to refer to her as "Mrs. President".

The Adamses retired to Quincy in 1801 after John Adams' defeat in his bid for a second term as President of the United States. She followed her son's political career earnestly as her letters to contemporaries show.

Death

Adams later in life

Abigail Adams died on October 28, 1818 of typhoid fever, several years before her son became president, and is buried beside her husband in a crypt located in the United First Parish Church (also known as the Church of the Presidents) in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was 73 years old; John Adams was 90 when he died.

Her last words were "Do not grieve, my friend, my dearest friend. I am ready to go. And John, it will not be long."

Political viewpoints

Women's Rights

Adams was an advocate of married women's property rights and more opportunities for women, particularly in the field of education. Women, she believed, should not submit to laws not made in their interest, nor should they be content with the simple role of being companions to their husbands. They should educate themselves and thus be recognized for their intellectual capabilities, so they could guide and influence the lives of their children and husbands. She is best known for her March 1775 letter to John Adams and the Continental Congress, requesting that they

...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.[3]

To this, John answered:...as to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh...Depend upon it, we know better Than to repeal our masculine systems...

Slavery

Along with her husband, Adams believed that slavery was not only evil, but a threat to the American democratic experiment. A letter written by her on March 31, 1776 explained that she doubted most of the Virginians had such the "passion for Liberty" they claimed they did, since they "depriv[ed] their fellow Creatures" of freedom.[3]

A notable incident regarding this happened in 1791, where a local slave came to her house asking to be taught how to write. Subsequently, she placed the boy in a local evening school, though not without objections from a neighbor. Abigail responded that he was "a Freeman as much as any of the young Men and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? ... I have not thought it any disgrace to my self to take him into my parlor and teach him both to read and write."

Religious beliefs

Abigail Adams, as well as her husband, was an active member of the First Parish Church in Quincy, which became Unitarian in doctrine by 1753. In a letter to John Quincy Adams dated May 5, 1816, she wrote of her religious beliefs:

I acknowledge myself a unitarian—Believing that the Father alone, is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ derived his Being, and all his powers and honors from the Father ... There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.[3]

She also asked Louisa Adams in a letter dated January 3, 1818, "when will Mankind be convinced that true Religion is from the Heart, between Man and his creator, and not the imposition of Man or creeds and tests?"

Legacy

Memorials

An Adams Memorial is proposed in Washington, D.C., honoring Abigail, her husband, and other members of their family. A cairn now crowns the nearby hill from which she and her son John Quincy Adams watched the Battle of Bunker Hill and the burning of Charlestown. At that time she was minding the children of Dr. Joseph Warren, President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, who was killed in the battle

Theatre

Passages from Adams' letters to her husband figured prominently in songs from the Broadway musical 1776 (and the 1972 film of it, with Virginia Vestoff as Abigail Adams). (In the musical, their time apart is given a comically suggestive twist, when she agrees to send him saltpeter, ostensibly to help with the preparation of gunpowder, but perhaps to quell down his sexual frustration as well.)

Television

Adams was played by Kathryn Walker in the 1976 PBS mini-series The Adams Chronicles. In the mini-series "John Adams", which premiered in March 2008 on HBO, Adams was played by Laura Linney.

Portrait on currency

The First Spouse Program under the Presidential $1 Coin Act authorizes the United States Mint to issue 1/2 ounce $10 gold coins to honor the first spouses of the United States. Abigail Adams's coin was released on June 19, 2007, and sold out in just hours.

References

Bibliography

  • Bober, Natalie S. 1995. Abigail Adams: Witness to a revolution New York: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division.
Honorary titles
Preceded by First Lady of the United States
1797–1801
Succeeded by