The Adams Family

Disenfranchised people of all kinds, including “slaves, servants, women, Indians, apprentices, [and] propertyless men” did not have the full measure of freedom that landowning white males had. They were bolstered by the independent and rebellious activities and war levied against their ruling monarchy of England and inspired to challenge their lot in life. If American colonists can ask for, fight for, die for, and receive freedom and independence, why not the slave, the poor man, the woman, and the native?

Abigail Adams was married to the nation’s second president, John Adams, for more than 35 years, and served as his most trusted advisor. She, like members of other groups, capitalized on the spirit of freedom and liberation from tyranny engulfing the new country and implored her husband and his peers in Congress to “remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors [were]” (Freedom 112). Her rather harsh assessment of men (perhaps more true in her time period than our own, perhaps not) was that each would be a tyrant if given a chance, and indeed acted so in the home, particularly toward their wives. She implied that women would not stand for a system where their voices were not equally heard to men, and that wives should not be treated like object for men’s use. “Regard us then,” she wrote to her husband, “as beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.”

John Adams felt the bands of government had been loosened everywhere because all other groups were acting rebellious and more independent during this time period of the dawning of America. “The children and apprentices were disobedient, that schools and colleges were grown turbulent, that Indians slighted their guardians and Negroes grew insolent to their masters”. He considered her request for women’s equality to be an indicator that an even bigger “tribe more numerous and powerful than all the rest” were also feeling disenchanted and yearning for additional freedom. He “laughs” at her and assures her that he and his fellow men will not relinquish their role as “masters” in their “masculine systems,” and he hopes that George Washington and his peers will stand with him to fight “the despotism of the petticoat” (all quotes this paragraph from Freedom p. 113). He considers female equality and his resistance to it natural, and believes it should be suppressed in the same way other non-democratic forms of government should be, including monarchy, empire, oligarchy, and mob rule.