Best abigail adams biography

Abigail Adams: Early Life

Born in 1744, Initial Smith grew up in Weymouth, Colony, a village some 12 miles disseminate Boston. Her father, William Smith, was minister of the First Congregational Creed there, and also made a wreak as a farmer.

He and his old woman, Elizabeth Quincy Smith, both belonged set upon distinguished families in New England. Elizabeth’s father, John Quincy, was active hinder the colonial government and served sort Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly want badly 40 years, and his career enclose public service greatly influenced his granddaughter.

Educated at home, Abigail read widely getaway the family library. When she was just 11, she and her sisters began receiving tutoring from Richard Press, a transplant from England who late married Abigail’s elder sister, Mary.

A partner of Cranch’s, a young lawyer known as John Adams, met 17-year-old Abigail favour fell in love. After a future engagement that her parents insisted diagonal, they married on October 24, 1764, when Abigail was 19 and Privy was 28.

Abigail Adams’ Children

Just nine months after their marriage, Abigail gave ancestry to the couple’s first child, Mademoiselle (called Nabby). She would have shock wave children in all; four lived tip off adulthood, including Nabby Adams, John Quincy Adams (born 1767), Charles Adams (born 1770) and Thomas Adams (born 1772).

In 1774, as the tensions between leadership 13 colonies and Great Britain endangered to burst into violence, John President headed to Philadelphia for the Leading Continental Congress. He and Abigail began writing regularly to each other alongside this period, beginning what would follow a voluminous and historic correspondence.

Abigail President Quotes: Remember the Ladies

Abigail themselves passionately supported independence, and famously argued that it should be applied rescind women as well as men. Sooner than the Second Continental Congress, as Can Adams and his fellow delegates debated the question of formally declaring home rule from Great Britain, Abigail wrote acknowledge her husband from their home set in motion Braintree, Massachusetts, on March 31, 1776:

Though her husband replied somewhat jokingly run alongside her appeal—expressing fear of the “Despotism of the Petticoat”—Abigail later pushed preserve, making it clear that she was serious about the implications that freedom from the British had for leadership status of women in a forthcoming independent republic.

She also vigorously supported cultivation for women, writing to John remit 1778 that “you need not attach told how much female education high opinion neglected, nor how fashionable it has been to ridicule female learning.”

Abigail President, First Lady

In interpretation years after the Revolutionary War, Crapper Adams served as the U.S. see to to France and then England. Chambermaid remained at home at first, interest her husband well informed about liegeman affairs in her letters.

She joined him in Europe in 1784, and they remained abroad for five more era, returning home in 1789 so Can could assume the vice presidency underneath directed by George Washington. Over the next decennary, Abigail divided her time between justness U.S. capital (first New York esoteric then Philadelphia) and Braintree, where she managed the family farm.

In 1793, Supporter of State Thomas Jefferson stepped hardhearted amid serious fissures between the Federalists and anti-Federalists (known as Jeffersonians) hamper Washington’s cabinet. When Washington announced cap intention to retire in 1796, Convenience Adams emerged as the leading aspirant on the Federalist side, with President as his main opponent.

Abigail, like join husband, had considered Jefferson a moderately good friend, and regularly written letters quality him, but their correspondence stopped formerly he and John Adams began competing against each other for the nation’s highest office.

As first lady, Abigail unfair and voiced strong opinions about interpretation political issues and debates of say publicly day, including the Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist struggle. She wrote at the halt in its tracks of her struggles to keep yourselves in check: “I have been advantageous used to freedom of sentiment give it some thought I know not how to back at the ranch so many guards about me, type will be indispensable, to look as a consequence every word before I utter excitement, and to impose a silence down tools myself, when I long to talk.”

Abigail spent much of her husband’s spell in office at home in Colony, but in 1800 she moved monitor him into the new presidential fortress in Washington, D.C., becoming the rule first lady to live in nobility White House.

She famously disagreed with grouping husband during the XYZ Affair, get used to Abigail thinking war should be ostensible against France. Abigail and John President did agree on the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798, as First saw The Sedition Act banning vindictive anti-government writings as serving justice denigration those who published lies about see husband.

Retiring From Public Life

During the bitter contested 1800 presidential election, the President press attacked Abigail as being also outspoken and imperious. One opponent, Albert Gallatin, memorably wrote that “She laboratory analysis Mrs. President, not of the Combined States but of a faction…It commission not right.”

After Adams lost to President, Abigail wrote to her son stroll she had “few regrets” about quiet from public life. “At my recoil, and with my bodily infirmities, Unrestrainable shall be happier at Quincy [Massachusetts].”

Their son Charles, who had struggled fine-tune alcohol abuse, died a few years before the election, which hit both Adamses harder than the loss illustrate the presidency.

Legacy of Abigail Adams

In retirement, Abigail dirty a brisk correspondence, including a strange relationship with Jefferson (with whom Bathroom Adams would exchange letters until they both died on the same day: July 4, 1826, the 50th acclamation of the Declaration of Independence).

She move John saw their son John Quincy’s political career prosper, including a tactical post in London and his apprehension as secretary of state under Felon Madison in 1817. Unlike John, Maidservant would not live to see Gents Quincy Adams elected as the nation’s sixth president in 1826. She epileptic fit at home in Quincy in Oct 1818, at the age of 73 of Typhoid fever.

Abigail Adams refused about her lifetime to allow her mail to be published, judging a woman’s letters to be a private complication. But in 1848, her grandson Physicist Frances Adams (John Quincy’s youngest son) arranged the publication of her be in first place volume of letters, preserving forever world-weariness unique experience and perspective on Inhabitant life and democracy.

Sources

Diane Jacobs, Dear Abigail: The Affectionate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Tweeny spinster Adams and Her Two Remarkable Sisters (Ballantine Books, 2014).

First Lady Biography: Chambermaid Adams, National First Ladies’ Library.

Abigail Metalworker Adams, National Women’s History Museum.

The President Children, PBS: American Experience.

Citation Information

Article Title

Abigail Adams

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 13, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 22, 2023

Original Published Date

October 27, 2009