CR: They also came to love us, and better yet, like us.
Chapter Two
OTHER LIVES
EARLY AMERICA
COMPANIONATE MARRIAGE
Women were in short supply in the early years of New World settlement, which gave them a certain advantage when it came to marriage. Lonely men would pay for single women to cross the treacherous Atlantic, plus give the brave maidens a sizable sum in tobacco leaf as a payment to persuade them to become their brides. It put women in a better position than they would have held in the old countries, where the weight of hundreds or thousands of years of tradition governed the rules of marriage. Here, though men certainly headed the household, they depended on women to work alongside them carving civilization out of the wilderness. And early colonists trying to impose English laws governing property rights and inheritance soon found that European laws differed, often giving women a greater share and a greater say than the English, and women from the Continent were not willing to submit to the English strictures. So, from the beginning, the institution of marriage in this country was shaped by forces different from the ones left behind. Women acted as partners, junior partners to be sure, but still partners, in these colonial marriages. Then, with the coming of the American Revolution and the absence of many men from home, women managed the farms and businesses. Not only did the war have a practical effect on marriages, it had a philosophical one as well. As the colonists threw over the king, and the voices of enlightenment filled the land, women questioned the authority of their husbands. It would be a couple of hundred years before the laws caught up with the egalitarian sentiments of some of the women of Revolutionary times, but their own marriages reflected their sense of partnership. Lucky for us, we have first-person accounts of one of the most remarkable of those unions—that of the nation’s second president, John Adams, and his wife, Abigail.
Abigail and John Adams: Friends of the Heart
When John Adams met Abigail Smith in 1759, she was a lively fifteen-year-old minister’s daughter in Weymouth, Massachusetts, he was a somewhat stuffy twenty-three-year-old Harvard graduate, studying law. It was not love at first sight; Adams thought the three Smith sisters a little too sharp-tongued for his taste. But a couple of years later he changed his mind, and started calling at the Smith household regularly. It didn’t take long for him to fall completely in love, and for Abigail to passionately respond. How do we know? They’ve told us so. They wrote hundreds of letters over the years and many of those extraordinary missives were preserved. What they tell is a fascinating story—a story of the American colonies on the road to revolution, then war, then the struggles of a new nation. Abigail paints vivid pictures of eighteenth-century life in Massachusetts, detailing the everyday activities of a wife and mother, and the extraordinary anxieties of a woman alone in tumultuous times. John gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the events leading up to the Declaration of Independence, and of diplomatic life in Europe. They exchange political information and express political views. Abigail’s most famous admonition to her husband as he helped form a new government, that he and his colleagues “remember the ladies,” is but one of many of her strong statements on affairs of state. But, above all, the Adams letters tell the story of a marriage, a marriage of genuine partnership for more than fifty years. Because the couple were separated by momentous events, their letters give us a close view throughout a ten-year window in their marriage when the only way they could communicate was through the primitive post. From the time of their courtship in the early 1760s until Abigail joined John in Europe in 1784, we can see the relationship evolve and mature through the letters. Even today, it’s rare to find a union like the one we learn about from this couple’s own words; think how unusual it must have been in the late eighteenth century!
John Adams doesn’t seem to have been a very fun-loving person—except with Abigail. In their courtship, he addressed her as “Miss Adorable,” and ordered her, at age seventeen, to give him “many kisses…I presume I have good right to draw upon you for the kisses as I have given two or three millions at least.” When he went to Boston for a lengthy and dangerous inoculation procedure against smallpox, it wasn’t the treatment he was worried about, it was his six-week separation from his lady love. Once he went home to Braintree, a town not far from Boston to the south, he couldn’t wait to see her: “I am, until then, and forever after will be your admirer and friend, and lover.” Even as he proclaims his love, though, the always priggish Adams tells Abigail he will write her a list of her faults: “You’ll be surprised, when you come to find the number of them.” From the tone of her next letter, she was understandably miffed and curious, and demanded the accounting: “There can be no time more proper than the present, it will be harder to erase them when habit has strengthened and confirmed them.” But then, a couple of weeks later, she beat him to it, letting him know she’d heard from her friends that he had a few failings of his own—his haughtiness and unsociability: “I expect you to clear up these matters, without being in the least saucy.” That got a quick response, with him telling her that she neglects some social skills such as cardplaying and singing, that she lacks a certain bashfulness, that she walks funny, hangs her head oddly, and crosses her legs. Her retort? “A gentleman has no business to concern himself about the legs of a lady.” John Adams certainly knew he wasn’t taking up with a shy violet when he finally married Abigail in 1764.
He set up law practice and she set about having babies. Abigail, John Quincy, Susanna, who died before she was two, Charles, and Thomas had all been born by the time Abigail went to visit her parents in 1773 and had occasion to write John at home: “The roads at present are impassible with any carriage…. My daily thoughts and nightly slumbers visit thee, and thine.” John traveled the court circuit and wrote home regularly urging his wife to watch her spending, and giving her various instructions for managing the farm and bringing up the children in his absence. One letter from this venerated founder, dated July 1, 1774, two years almost to the day before he would help lead the revolution for independence, sounds like one of those consumer groups’ warnings to modern parents. He recounts that some facts came out in a trial about the effects of loud noises on children: “A gun was fired near a child…the child fell immediately into fits, which impaired his reason, and is still a living idiot. Another child was sitting on a chamber floor. A man rapped suddenly and violently on the boards which made the floor under the child tremble. The child was so startled, and frightened, that it fell into fits, which never were cured. This may suggest a caution to keep children from sudden frights and surprises.”
The next year John went off to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, writing letters to Abigail filled with news of deliberations “grave and serious indeed,” but also loaded with lessons on how to run the farm and raise the children: “Frugality must be our support. Our expenses in this journey will be very great…. The education of our children is never out of my mind. Train them to virtue, habituate them to industry, activity and spirit…. It is time, my dear, for you to teach them French.” Still, important matters like whether to move the law office to Braintree from Boston, he leaves to her judgment of whether the problems with the British are becoming threatening. She provides him with regular accounts of the preparations for war, including “mounting cannon upon Beacon Hill, digging entrenchments upon the Neck, placing cannon there, encamping a regiment there, throwing up breast works, etc., etc.” He tells her, in case of real danger, to “fly to the woods with our children.” How abandoned she must have felt! And how lonely.
“I dare not express to you at 300 miles distance how ardently I long for your return.” She couldn’t wait to see him:
“The idea plays about my heart, unnerves my hand whilst I write, awakens all the tender sentiments that years have increased and matured, and which when with me were every day dispensing to you.” And she hoped he couldn’t wait to see her: “May the like sensations enter thy breast, and (in sp
ite of all the weighty cares of state) mingle themselves with those I wish to communicate.”
When the fighting started, she described their house as a scene of confusion: “Soldiers coming in for lodging…sometimes refugees from Boston tired and fatigued seek an asylum for a day or night, a week—you can hardly imagine how we live.” Then, a few weeks later: “Courage I know we have in abundance, conduct I hope we shall not want, but powder—where shall we get a sufficient supply?” With a house full of babies, she was worried about the soldiers’ lack of ammunition. But then, even as battles raged around her, Abigail gives news of the farm: “The English grass will not yield half so great a crop as last year. Fruit promises well, but the caterpillars have been innumerable.” And, ever practical despite the turmoil of war, she asks John to buy her some pins: “The cry for pins is so great that what we used to buy for 7.6 are now 20 shillings and not to be had for that.” He, for once, was duly impressed: “It gives me more pleasure than I can express to learn that you sustain with so much fortitude, the shocks and terrors of the times. You are really brave, my dear, you are an heroine.” But she is a heroine with a complaint: “All the letters I receive from you seem to be written in so much haste, that they scarcely leave room for a social feeling…I want some sentimental effusions of the heart. I am sure you are not destitute of them or are they all absorbed in the great public?” It was a complaint she would have cause to repeat in the years ahead.
As Abigail struggled with managing the farm, tending to her own and the children’s illnesses and her mother’s death, she also thought a good deal about John’s endeavor. When he first arrived in Philadelphia, he was almost in awe of the men in the Congress, but soon he wrote, “I am wearied to death with the life I lead. The business of the Congress is tedious, beyond expression. This assembly is like no other that ever existed. Every man in it is a great man—an orator, a critic, a statesman, and therefore every man upon every question must show his oratory, his criticism and his political abilities.” They might be remembered now as larger-than-life “Founding Fathers,” but they took forever to do anything. In Abigail’s mind, the mission of the Congress was clear—to declare independence from Britain in short order, but she wondered what would come after that: “If a form of government is to be established here what one will be assumed?…If we separate from Britain what Code of Laws will be established? How shall we be governed so as to retain our liberties?” Months later, in March of 1776, she’s still worrying the question: “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.”
It was truly a shocking concept, and John rudely rejected it. “As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh…. We know better than to repeal our masculine systems. Although they are in full force, you know they are little more than theory. We dare not exert our power in its full latitude. We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in practice you know we are the subjects. We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this, which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope General Washington and all our brave heroes would fight.” So much for the ladies. But John was not entirely heartless; he missed her and wanted some form of communication other than letters: “I want to hear you think, or to see your thoughts. The conclusion of your letter makes my heart throb, more than a cannonade would.” Abigail tried to suffer her solitude in silence, telling John that “all domestic pleasures and enjoyments are absorbed in the great important duty you owe your country…. Thus do I suppress every wish, and silence every murmur, acquiescing in a painful separation from the companion of my youth, and the friend of my heart.” But she still wanted to have a say in his work: “I can not say that I think you very generous to the ladies, for whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken—and not withstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters.” Not so much has changed in the “power play” of marriage as we might think.
John must have decided that silence was the better part of wisdom, because he didn’t address the matter again, but he was willing to give Abigail her due. As the Continental Congress came closer to declaring independence, he took time to congratulate her on her management of the farm: “I begin to be jealous that our neighbors will think affairs more discreetly conducted in my absence than at any other time…. I think you shine as a stateswoman, as well as a farmeress. Pray where do you get your maxims of state, they are very apropos.” Then, after the praise, he told her the disappointing news that he wouldn’t be coming home anytime soon: “The affairs of America, are in so critical a state, such great events are struggling for birth, that I must not quit this station at this time…. I am, with constant wishes and prayers for your health and prosperity, forever yours.” It was indeed a critical time. it was May 27, 1776. Two weeks later the Congress appointed Adams to a committee of five to draft a statement of independence from Britain.
Finally, on July 3, John delivered the news Abigail had been waiting to read: “Yesterday the greatest question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among men.” The Declaration of Independence had been approved. But John’s rejoicing soon gave way to fear about his family. He heard through the grapevine that Abigail had taken herself and the children off for the dangerous smallpox inoculations without asking or telling him. He frantically wondered why no one reported to him on their condition: “Do my friends think that I have been a politician so long as to have lost all feeling? Do they suppose I have forgotten my wife and children?” He assured Abigail that he didn’t expect her to be in touch: “Don’t mistake me, I don’t blame you. Your time and thoughts must have been wholly taken up, with your own and your family’s situation and necessities. But twenty other persons might have informed me.” Abigail couldn’t be kept down by the weakness caused by the inoculation. She rallied and sent off a stirring description of the reading of the Declaration from the statehouse in Boston: “the cry from the balcony was God Save our American States and then 3 cheers which rended the air, the bells rang, the privateers fired, the forts and batteries, the cannon were discharged, the platoons followed and every face appeared joyful.” While she stayed in Boston for the duration of the antismallpox regimen, Abigail attended public worship regularly: “I rejoice in a preacher who has some warmth, some energy, some feeling. Deliver me from your cold phlegmatic preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands. I thank heaven I am not so constituted myself and so connected.” Ahem.
Independence had been declared; now what? “We daily see the necessity of a regular government,” Abigail fretted in August; particularly galling her was the neglect of education. Then she added another one of her shockers: “If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters who every day experience the want of it?…If we mean to raise heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women. The world perhaps would laugh at me, and accuse me of vanity, but you I know have a mind too enlarged and liberal to disregard the sentiment.” Abigail herself had no formal education; she acquired her extensive literary and historical knowledge at home, where various friends of her father guided her reading and conversation. She was so determined that young girls not be deprived of schooling that she returned to the subject whenever she saw an opening.
It was late summe
r 1776, John Adams had spent most of two years away from home, and Abigail missed him terribly. Now that independence had been declared, she was more than ready for him to return: “with the purest affection I have held you to my bosom till my whole soul has dissolved in tenderness and my pen fallen from my hand.” She tells him she knows he feels the same way and says of such pleasures, “tell me they are not inconsistent with the stern virtue of a senator and a patriot.” The senator and patriot was taking his time coming home, and by September, Abigail had had it: “I cannot consent to your tarrying much longer…whilst you are engaged in the senate your own domestic affairs require your presence at home…your wife and children are in danger of wanting bread…. I know the weight of public cares lie so heavy upon you that I have been loath to mention your private ones.” It was one thing to found a nation, but what about the family? Finally, in October, Adams left Philadelphia and headed home. But not for long. After only a couple of months, it was back to Congress. John’s brief sojourn in Braintree made its mark, however: Abigail was pregnant.
Returning to an assembly of revolutionaries meant a perilous journey for Adams as he skirted British-occupied territory and made his way to Baltimore, where Congress had convened. He was not a happy man: “When I reflect upon the prospect before me of so long an absence from all that I hold dear in this world, I mean all that contributes to my private personal happiness, it makes me melancholy. When I think on your circumstances I am more so, and yet I rejoice at them in spite of all this melancholy.” Not only were Abigail’s personal “circumstances” of pregnancy difficult, the political circumstances made for hazardous conditions everywhere. British ships blockaded New England, creating a flour shortage. Here’s Abigail in March 1777: “There is such a cry for bread in the town of Boston as I suppose was never before heard, and the bakers deal out but a loaf a day to the largest families.” When a friend of hers died in childbirth in April, Abigail grew apprehensive about her own condition: “Every thing of this kind naturally shocks a person in similar circumstances. How great the mind that can overcome the fear of death!” John, too, regretted his plight. Worried that the war was going badly and frustrated by Congress, he lamented, “Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.” What would he think about posterity now?
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