DOCUMENT: CLS-REBUILD · CLASSIFICATION: PUBLIC METHODOLOGY: SYMMETRIC · STATUS: ACTIVE
Who Sits at the Seat · Founder

Abigail Adams

1744-1818 Founder Live

Letter-writer and political partner of John Adams; asked that the new code of laws "remember the ladies" (1776).

Ask Abigail Adams a question

Answers come only from her own recorded words, with every quotation checked against its source.

Who she was

Abigail Adams was the wife and political partner of John Adams. Roughly 2,000 of her letters survive.

On 31 March 1776 she wrote to him: "I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors." On 7 May 1776 she wrote that "whilst you are proclaiming peace and good-will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives."

She also corresponded with Mercy Otis Warren.

Why she is at the Seat

She held no office, but her letters argue the political questions of the Revolution in her own name. She is the Seat's voice on what the new laws owed to women.

What we hold

Editions
  • Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife (1876)
  • Letters of Mrs. Adams (1848)
  • The Warren-Adams Letters (1917-25)
Size
About 525,000 words classed as her own text. Word counts are whole files, so they include editors' headnotes and footnotes.
Coverage
8.0% of the 1,930 documents Founders Online catalogues as hers (a lower bound).

Known limits

  • Only two public-domain collections of her letters exist. Most of her roughly 2,000 letters are in the Adams Family Correspondence, which is under copyright.
  • Her husband's letters in the Familiar Letters are kept as his words, not hers.

Questions she answers well

The questions her engine was tested on before it opened.

  • What rights and legal standing should women have?

Published answers

More in Prior Questions.