Abigail Adams’ Views on Republican Motherhood

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In March of 1776, the American colonies were ready to declare their independence from the British crown on the basis of what they asserted were universal and intrinsic rights. At the same moment, 51% of the free population existed without much legal identity.

The colonies, for the most part, mirrored British common law, under which single adult women had a few rights (owning property, entering contracts, bringing lawsuits), and married women had almost none. Furthermore, living conditions were physically uncomfortable for women. As if all this were not enough, the years before and during the conflict with England were economically and logistically difficult, and much was asked of women colonists.

In light of all this, was Abigail Adams revolutionary in her request, to her husband, that he “remember the ladies” (Adams)? Well, yes. Her request was in complete opposition to the prevailing laws noted above. At a time when women were giving more than even the usual service to their families, and when some would soon literally risk their lives (Deborah Sampson) (Bois), she was asking that women’s existence be made more livable in the future. The specific context in which she is pleading is marriage, a status of life that was bulwarked from change by both religion and the law.

She was also calling a spade a spade. At a time when the word “tyranny” was in regular use by the revolutionaries to describe the British king, she was applying that odious term to the habitual tendencies of men to abuse their power over women. She even threatened that if women were not party to the laws that governed them, they would have no obligation or inclination to abide by them. This was, of course, exactly the complaint that the colonists urged against the Crown, and that was certainly revolutionary!

The evidence that she was igniting a firecracker is that her husband responded with a degree of derision that seems a bit frantic. After listing all the other groups which the colonists’ actions have been accused of stirring up and making restless, he writes “But your letter was the first intimation that another tribe, more numerous and powerful than all the rest, were grown discontented. He goes on to hope that Washington’s army would fight against such “petticoat despotism”. Although he calls her “saucy”, his nervous response, and his description of women as a “tribe more numerous and powerful” shows how scary and revolutionary the thought of women’s rights seemed at that time. He ends his letter by noting again the relationship between unrest occurring among the servant class, and women’s efforts to obtain their rights. It sounds as though he had been listening; not happily, but listening nonetheless, to his wife’s reminder of the claims of women, in her March letter (Private letter from Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams, March 31, 1776) A few months later, John Adams muses about the equivalence of women, children, and men of no property, in terms of their judgement, and, it seems, although he does not explicitly state this, their vulnerability to undue influence from men of property (Letter from John Adams to John Sullivan, May 26 1776).

Ranged against her argument were ingrained beliefs that women were so consumed with child bearing and rearing that, like minor age children, they could not think clearly enough to vote or make other decisions on their own. And there was no animosity in this point of view. In his subsequent contemplation of this issue, John Adams compares women to children, but clearly does not have a scornful attitude towards women; instead, more of a complacent condescension (Letter from John Adams to John Sullivan, May 26 1776). She was asking for (and even threatening) an overthrow of the natural order of things.

However, Abigail was on track to be a prime Republican mother in another several years. Republican motherhood was a post-Revolutionary term (Kupfer). In the early Federal period, women were exhorted to make sure that all their children were fully conversant with civic concepts and expectations, to rear up a generation of civic heroes (male), fitted to lead the fledgling republic, and to correct the failings of their husbands. This involved making sure that all the children were literate, numerate, and that they had a grasp of history. In a bitter irony, in the aftermath of the war, women were deprived of even the handful of advances that had been made thus far. By the turn of century, even those states which had experimented with women’s suffrage had given rescinded it. This notion of bearing the leaders of the future seems to modern ears like a sop, a distraction to keep women from agitating seriously for substantive change. However, as a result, women such as Abigail Adams were given encouragement by to thoroughly educate their daughters (and sons), and instill in them a sense of the importance of the individual in maintaining the freedoms for which their fathers had literally given their lives. The excuse was that an enlightened citizenry would safeguard the new republic.

Abigail Adams was a type specimen of this sort of mother of the Republic, whether consciously or not. She supported the cause, she educated her brood, and she had no hesitation in letting her husband know if she thought he was being a prat, and then correcting him. Abigail Adams may have felt deep disappointment that greater advances were not made in tangible rights for women in her lifetime. However, she had certainly developed an independence of thought and autonomy during the weary years when she was managing the household and the home-front amidst the chaos of war. In any case, she applied the lessons she had learned in the Revolutionary period to the education of her own children, making lemonade out of lemons. Her care and oversight of her children is evident throughout her correspondence. The emphasis of this idea of Republican Motherhood on literacy and an informed populace served the country well, and may be at least in part why we have reasonably good education in the USA.

Mrs. Adams was not afraid to speak her mind to her husband, and her admonition to him clearly set him thinking about the issue of women’s role and rights. It may not have borne fruit until 144 years later, but there was progress eventually. Yes, she was a revolutionary. She was also pragmatic. She went along with the notion of Republican Motherhood in her own family, and admirably discharged the responsibility of providing well-prepared citizens for the next generation. It may have been a bone tossed to women to keep them quiet, but at least it had good results. We may owe to the impetus of that dubious movement the development of our co-ed schools and colleges.

Works Cited

Adams, Abigail. Private letter to John Adams, 1776. Ed. Elizabeth J. Kates. 2010.

Bois, Danuta. Margaret Corbin. 1997. Web.

Deborah Sampson. 2010. Web.

Kupfer, Sharon. Literacy, Republican Motherhood, and the Women’s Movement in the Rare Book Room. 2010. Web.

Letter from John Adams to John Sullivan, 1776. Web.

Mercy Otis Warren. 2010. Web.

Pre-Civil War Reform. Ed. S. Mintz. 2007. Web.

Private letter from Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams, 1776. Web.

The Involvement of “The Ladies”. 2010.Web.

Women’s History in America. 2010. Web.

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Abigail Adams’ Views on Republican Motherhood

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