On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to John Adams in Philadelphia, where he was preparing the case for independence. She asked him to remember the ladies. He did not. The letter and his response are at Founders Online. Both are worth reading.
John Adams had been in Philadelphia since May 1775. Abigail Adams was managing their farm in Braintree, Massachusetts, raising their four children, running the household accounts, and keeping her husband informed about conditions in Massachusetts through a sustained correspondence that ran throughout the Revolutionary period. The letters are the primary record of her thinking during this period.
On March 31, 1776, she wrote one of the most quoted letters in American history. Congress was approaching the decision on independence. She asked John to remember, in constructing the new laws, that women had interests of their own. She specifically asked that the new code not put unlimited power in the hands of husbands, and warned that women would not consider themselves bound by laws in which they had no voice.
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 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.
John Adams responded on April 14, 1776. He called the letter saucy and affected to be amused by it. He wrote that the men knew better than to repeal their masculine systems, and that in practice men were the subjects and women the masters in most households. The response was not the answer she had asked for. Both letters are at Founders Online. Reading the response alongside the original makes the exchange complete.
As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh. We have been told that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government every where. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient, that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent, that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their Masters. But your Letter was the first Intimation that another Tribe more numerous and powerfull than all the rest were grown discontented.
The Adams family papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society span four generations and more than three hundred years of American history. The founding-era correspondence between Abigail and John Adams runs from 1762 through the end of the presidency in 1801. The MHS published a definitive edition in multiple volumes. Founders Online carries the complete digitized text of the correspondence with editorial notes. The letters are public domain and freely accessible.
The March 31, 1776 letter is the most famous in the correspondence. It should be read alongside John Adams's April 14 response, Abigail's April 27 follow-up, and her May 7 letter to Mercy Otis Warren discussing the exchange. Together they form a complete record of a specific argument at a specific historical moment.
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