We Are Determined to Foment a Rebellion Letter to Mercy Otis Warren, 1776

This section, Call to Reform, begins with a letter from Abigail Smith Adams to Mercy Otis Warren. Both women were early unitarians be-fore there was an official Unitarian church in the United States. They also shared a concern that the new government of the republic should provide equity for women.

ABIGAIL SMITH ADAMS (1744-1818) was a lady of letters, afarmer, a patriot of the American Revolution, and First Lady of the United States. Writing just before the signing of the Declaration of Indepen-dence, she expressed to her friend her frustration at the negative re-sponse she had received from her husband, John Adams (later the sec-ond president of the United States), when she asked him to make sure the laws for the new country be based on "just and liberal principles" that would apply to women as well as men. When he scoffed at her re-quest, she threatened to foment "a Rebellion" if the rights of women were ignored.

See the Biographical Sketch on pages 8-12.

Braintree, Massachusetts, April 27, 1776

To Mercy Otis Warren,

He [Mr. Adams] is very saucy to me, in return for a list of female griev-ances which I transmitted to him. I think I will get you to join me in a petition to Congress. I thought it was very probable our wise statesmen would erect a new government and form a new code oflaws. I ventured to speak a word in behalf of our sex who are rather hardly dealt with by the laws of England which gives such unlimited power to the hus-band to use his wife ill. I requested that our legislators would consider our case and as all men of delicacy and sentiment are averse to exercis-ing the power they possess, yet as there is a natural propensity in human nature to domination I thought the most generous plan was to put it out of the power of the arbitrary and tyranick to injure us with

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impunity by establishing some laws in our favor upon just and liberal principles.

1 believe I even threatened fomenting a Rebellion in case we were not considered and assured him we would not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we had neither a voice nor representation.

In return he tells me he cannot but laugh at my extraordinary code of laws that he had heard their struggle had loosened the bonds of government, that children and apprentices were disobedient, that schools and colleges were grown turbulent, that Indians slighted their guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But my letter was the first intimation that another Tribe more numerous and power-ful than all the rest were grown discontented. This is rather too coarse a compliment, he adds, but that I am so saucy he won't blot it out.

So I have helped the sex abundantly, but I will tell him I have only been making trial of the disinterestedness of his virtue [and] when weighed in the balance have found it wanting.

It would be bad policy to grant us greater power say they since under all the disadvantage we labor we have the ascendancy over their hearts

"And charm by accepting, by submitting sway."

.. Biographical Sketch Born: November 11, 1744, Weymouth, Massachusetts Died: October 28,1818, Braintree (now Quincy),

Massachusetts Buried: In the crypt under the United First Parish

Church (Unitarian), Quincy, Massachusetts

Resourceful, competent, self-sufficient, willful, opinionated, witty, and vivacious, Abigail Adams is one of our most remarkable foremothers. Remembered chiefly as the wife of John Adams, second president of the United States, and the mother of John Quincy Adams, fifth president, she left a voluminous correspondence whose keen intelligence shows her to be a formidable force in her own right. Through her letters, she reveals a dedication to principle, a commitment to rights for women

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Biographical Sketch

and people of color, a fierce partisanship to her husband's (and her family's) interests, an irreverent sense of humor, and an absolute sin cerity.

Born in the parsonage of the First (Congregational) Church ofWey-mouth to the Reverend William Smith and Elizabeth Quincy, Abigail was raised simply and without pretension, in spite of the fact that her relatives, especially on her mother's side, were among the leading Puri-tan families of their time. To her great regret, she received no formal schooling, although she certainly benefited from the many books and lively conversation in the parsonage. Her lack of education later embar-rassed her, as she was very self-conscious of her inability to spell or punctuate properly as well as of her inability to speak or read French. Even so, Abigail would become a devoted reader of history and an as-tute judge of its impact upon her own time.

Received into the Congregational church in 1759 at age fourteen, Abigail first met John Adams that same year. By 1762, he and Abigail were exchanging love letters that are so frankly affectionate and full of mischievous humor that it is hard to remember the authors are of the most revered Puritan stock.

Abigail Smith and John Adams were married in 1764, v.hen he was twenty-nine and she almost twenty. Their marriage, one of history's great partnerships, was also one of its great love stories. Rather than re-sent his wife's abilities to manage a farm and raise a family without him (during his long absences on the nation's business), John took consid-erable pride in her accomplishments. He jokingly told her that she was so successful in budgeting, planting, managing staff, regulating live-stock, buying provisions, and nursing and educating their children that the neighbors would surely remark on how much better things seemed to be in his absence.

After accompanying her husband on diplomatic missions to France and England from 1783-1788, Abigail was glad to return to the Adams farm in Braintree. As she wrote to Thomas Jefferson, she preferred her farm to "the court of St. James, where I seldom meet with characters so inoffensive as my Hens and chickings, or minds so well improved as my garden." 1 5

A visit below the Mason-Dixon line solidified Abigail's conviction, passionately shared by her husband, that slavery was not only evil but a threat to the American democratic experiment. Both believed in offer-ing opportunities of education and advancement to Mrican Americans and had little use for the Southern slavery accommodationists. At one

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point, Abigail wrote that she doubted the distinguished Virginians in the corridors of power had quite the "passion for Liberty" they claimed to have, since they were used to "depriving their fellow Creatures" of freedom. 16

Just before John's inauguration as president, Abigail wrote to him regarding a black servant boy who had come to her requesting the opportunity to go to school and to learn to write. When she enrolled the boy in a local evening school, one of the neighbors came to her to report serious objections of some unnamed "others" to the presence of the black boy in the school. Abigail swiftly responded that the boy is "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 pro-cure 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."l? Her firm response to this neighbor apparently put an end to the complaints.

In an often-quoted letter to her husband, written just before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Abigail spoke up for more opportunities for women. Although she did not insist on full enfran-chisement for women, she warned of the consequences of ignoring women:

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 Hus-bands. 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 Re-bellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation. l8

A fervent advocate of education for women and for married wo-men's property rights, Abigail was determined that women should be recognized for their intellectual capabilities; for their ability to shoul-der responsibilities for managing household, family, and financial af-fairs; and for their capacity to morally guide and influence the lives of their children and husbands. She believed women should be seen as more than decorous companions to their husbands, willing to submit to laws clearly not in their own best interest.

Disturbingly, both Abigail and John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts during Adams's single term in the presidency. De-signed to put a stop to virulent criticism of the president of the United States, this controversial set of laws prosecuted those who attacked the policies of John Adams for sedition and possibly treason.

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Biographical Sketch

As First Lady, Abigail showed her usual good cheer and refusal to wallow in self-pity. The White House was a cavernous structure so cold and damp that fires had to be kept lit constantly in those rooms that were to be at all habitable. Abigail set up a laundry in one of the great rooms and spanned clotheslines across its vast space.

Both Abigail and John Adams were active members of the First Parish Church in Quincy, which was already Unitarian in theology by the 1750s, even though the official founding of the American Unitarian Association would not take place until 1825. 19 Abigail's theology is clearly stated in her letters. To her son, John Quincy, she wrote: "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."20 Her conviction was clear, as she explained later: "There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three:' To her daughter-in-law, Louisa, she confessed: "True religion is from the Heart, between JMan and his creator, and not the imposition of Man or Creeds and tests:'21

After leaving public life in 1800, both John and Abigail enjoyed a productive retirement at their homestead in Braintree. The parents of four children, they took pleasure in the rise of their son John Quincy Adams to prominence, first as a U.S. senator, then as minister to Russia, and finally in 1817 as James Monroe's secretary of state. They worried about the errant ways of their sons Thomas and Charles and were con-cerned about their beloved daughter Nabby's profligate and spendthrift husband. On the whole, however, they took much pleasure in their family, prospering farm, and community.

Abigail fell ill with typhus (also described as a nervous or bilary fever) early in October 1818 and died several weeks later.

Biographical Sketch by LAURIE CARTER NOBLE

.. Writings of Abigail Adams Adams, Charles Francis, ed. Letters of Mrs. Adams. Boston: C. C. Little &

J. Brown, 1840. Butterfield, L. H., ed. The Adams Papers: Adams Family Correspondence. 2 vols.

New York: Atheneum, 1963. Butterfield, 1. H., Marc Friedlaender, and Mary-Jo Kline, eds. The Book of Abi-

gail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Cappon, Lester J., ed. The Adams-Jefferson Letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.

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.. Biographical Resources Akers, Charles W. Abigail Adams, An American Woman. Boston: Little, Brown,

1980. Levin, Phyllis Lee. Abigail Adams. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. Nagel, Paul C. The Adams Women: Abigail and Louisa Adams, Their Sisters and

Daughters. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Whitney, Janet. Abigail Adams. Boston: Little, Brown, 1947 .

.. Archives Most of Abigail Adams's correspondence is in the Adams Papers at the Massa-chusetts Historical Society in Boston and has been published on microfilm. The Warren-Adams Letters (Collections, vols. LXXII-LXXIII) document her friendship with Mercy Otis Warren.

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