Abigail Adams: Letter to Thomas Boylston Adams

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In September 1796, President George Washington announced in a Philadelphia newspaper (in what came to be called his Farewell Address) that he did not want to serve a third term. America's first contested presidential election began at once, and in a field of several candidates from several states the most prominent were Vice President John Adams and the former secretary of state Thomas Jefferson. By the date of the following letter the election had already begun, but it would be about seven weeks before the final results—John Adams's election as America's second president and Jefferson's as vice president—were known.

In November 1796, Abigail's eldest son, John Quincy, was at The Hague as America's diplomatic minister to the Netherlands, and her youngest son, Thomas Boylston, was serving as his brother's secretary. Both the date and her correspondent prompted Abigail to devote a long letter, written on November 8 of that year, to one of her favorite subjects, national politics. Abigail makes no attempt to disguise her ardent support for her husband or her fear that America's growing partisan divisions might become even worse if he were defeated. She had not the slightest doubt that John Adams would make a better president than Jefferson or any other candidate. But in this and other letters of this year, she was at a loss to know whether it would be better for John to win the election and suffer four years of sharp partisan attacks to which even Washington, with all of his advantages (which she enumerates), had not been immune or to lose and enjoy a well-earned peaceful retirement in Quincy. This letter shows her struggling with the question, one that was nearly as interesting to her sons in Europe as it was to her.