Abigail Adams: “Remember the Ladies” Letter to John Adams

Abigail's “remember the ladies” letter begins not with a statement of feminist principles or a recitation of family issues, but rather with a demand for news of the war. She asks questions about the fighting that had broken out in Virginia at the end of 1775. In June of that year—a few weeks after the battles of Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts, which marked the outbreak of the war—Lord Dunmore, the former royal governor of Virginia, had fled the capital at Williamsburg and sought shelter on ships of the Royal Navy in the York River.

Dunmore calculated that his chances of ending the rebellion would be much greater if he could find a way to divide the colonial population against itself. He issued what has become known as Dunmore's Proclamation, which declared all slaves free (provided they were young, male, and willing to fight for the British). The proclamation provoked horror and outrage among the white population of the colony, which saw it as a call for a slave rebellion. As a result, the Patriot government mustered the Virginia militia and sent it against Dunmore, who was trying to fortify the important port of Norfolk.

Early in December 1775, Dunmore tried to drive the Virginian militia out of the town, but instead the British were driven off with large losses. Between a fifth and a quarter of Dunmore's entire force became casualties. On January 1, 1776, the Royal Navy began shelling Norfolk, hoping to force the Virginians to evacuate. The Royal Navy also sent a series of landing parties ashore near Norfolk and set fire to parts of the town. The Virginia militia drove the landing parties off—but, since a large proportion of the town's residents were Loyalists (who had fled the city), the militia let the fires burn unchecked. Soon most of the town was in flames.

Abigail contrasts Dunmore's character with that of George Washington, who would have been much on her mind in March of 1776. At the beginning of the year the British were still occupying the city of Boston, as they had done since September of 1768. Washington had assumed overall command of the army at Congress's request in June 1775. He was able to encircle the British troops in Boston, but—in part because of a smallpox epidemic that had hit the city in 1774 and was still raging—he was unable to force them out. Abigail cites the threat of smallpox as the reason she has not visited the Adams's Boston home.

She goes on to talk about the mess the occupying British soldiers had made in the Adams's town house in Boston. While she is discussing the need for cleanup, she also makes a point about the respect, or lack of it, that the British have had for colonial property. She notes that the British have spared the house of John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, but that they have largely destroyed that of former Solicitor General and Loyalist Samuel Quincy.

Abigail was able to enter Boston at the end of March 1776 because Washington had finally driven the British out of the city earlier in the month. A hard freeze during the New England winter of 1774–1775 made it possible for Henry Knox, Washington's head of artillery, to bring cannon captured at Fort Ticonderoga in New York to Boston. During the night of March 4–5, Washington installed the cannon on Dorchester Heights, which overlooked the harbor. The cannon made it impossible for the British to remain in the port, and the forces evacuated Boston on March 17, about two weeks before Abigail sat down to write to her husband.

In her second paragraph Abigail condemns the slavery that sustained the Virginia economy, suggesting that slave owners were less willing to fight for their own freedom because they deprived others of theirs. It was not the first time she expressed her abolitionist sentiments to her husband. On September 22, 1774, more than a year before Dunmore issued his proclamation, she reported to John that Bostonian slaves had petitioned the royal governor for their freedom. In return, they promised to fight for him against the colony's enemies. Abigail was disgusted with the whole institution of slavery and told her husband that she thought it was positively evil for white Americans to fight for freedom while at the same time keeping African Americans as slaves.

Abigail goes on to discuss business with the spring planting at the family's farm before turning to the question of American independence. Congress had been avoiding the idea of independence throughout 1775, but the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense in January 1776 brought the idea widespread public attention. In late February colonial outrage increased when colonists learned that Parliament had passed a law allowing the seizure and confiscation of colonial merchant ships.

It was in the context of independence from Britain that Abigail launched into the most famous part of her letter. In the last two paragraphs she charges her husband with creating new laws that would respect the rights of women as well as those of men.