Abigail Adams Warned John Adams: "Remember the Ladies" (1776)

In the spring of 1776, the British had just abandoned Boston. On a farm in Braintree, Massachusetts, a thirty-one-year-old woman was keeping a household and small children alive through a hard, fearful winter of war and smallpox — while her husband was in Philadelphia, at the Continental Congress, helping to build a new country. Her name was Abigail Adams. His was John. And the letter she wrote him that March carried a few now-famous lines between the war news and the household accounts — lines John Adams would brush aside. This is that letter, read aloud and uninterrupted. "I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could." John wrote back within two weeks. He could not but laugh, he told her, at her "extraordinary code of laws." The demand was set aside. But the argument Abigail opened that spring — for women to have a voice in the laws that governed them — would outlast her by generations. American women would not win the vote until 1920. She did not live to see it. — Chapters — 0:00 A farmhouse, a war, a letter 0:41 The house the soldiers left 1:07 The return of spring 1:37 "Remember the ladies" 1:53 "All men would be tyrants" 2:01 "We are determined to foment a rebellion" 2:41 A neighbour's grief 3:16 What John wrote back — About this channel — The Letters We Kept brings you real letters from history, read aloud and left to speak for themselves. No talking heads, no over-explaining — just the words, the way they were written. — Sources & notes — Letter text: Abigail Adams to John Adams, 31 March – 5 April 1776, from the Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (masshist.org/digitaladams) — public-domain. Read verbatim, lightly trimmed for length, never altered. Original spelling/punctuation lightly modernized for the read. Historical detail: Abigail Adams (b. 22 November 1744, Weymouth, MA; d. 28 October 1818, Quincy, MA) wrote from the Adams farm in Braintree (now Quincy) while John served in the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The British had evacuated Boston on 17 March 1776. John's reply of 14 April 1776 declined the request ("I cannot but laugh"). Abigail was the only woman of her era to be both wife of one U.S. president (John Adams) and mother of another (John Quincy Adams). The Nineteenth Amendment, recognizing women's right to vote, was ratified in 1920.