Abigail Adams: Letter to John Quincy Adams

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Abigail wrote many letters across several decades to all four of her children, but she wrote most often to her eldest son, John Quincy, to whom she seems to have been closest. Perhaps because he was the first to leave home, journeying with his father to Europe in February 1778, and again in November 1779, and stayed away the longest, on several different European assignments, he was often in Abigail's thoughts.

Adams's letter to her son, written on January 12, 1780, is characteristic of several that Abigail wrote to him from 1778 to 1783, when she felt that he, as a raw youth exposed to the temptations of Europe, was in the greatest need of her moral exhortations. But as this letter shows, Abigail's concern for her son's good character was fully equaled by her conviction that he had a rare opportunity to see the wider world and to learn and profit from it. Moreover, he was seeing the world at a most advantageous moment in history, for “these are times in which a genius would wish to live.” Young John must ever be mindful of this blessing. He would be challenged in his travels by adversity as few youth ever were, but if he met those challenges he would be greatly rewarded. Appealing again to the lessons of Roman history and the struggles of its great patriot orator Cicero, Abigail declares: “Great necessities call out great virtues.”

John Quincy Adams greatly admired his mother, but he did not always appreciate her anxious concern for his moral welfare or her ardent encouragement of his worldly career. In his mid-teens, while living in Holland, Russia, and France, he cut back on writing letters home and drew Abigail's sharp rebuke. As late as his forties, when he was serving as America's first diplomatic minister to Russia, he still had occasion to resent what he saw as Abigail's interference in his career. But mother and son remained close over several decades, and John Quincy Adams would in time become the very model of the moral, upright statesman that Abigail hoped he would be.