For Immediate Release Contact: Pat Kremer/Nancy O’Shea (312) 665-7100 (For Media Use Only) Abigail Smith Adams Though she often expressed regret about her lack of formal learning, Abigail Adams read the classics in her father’s large library, taught herself to read French, and joined in spirited conversations with the well-educated guests who passed through the family home. As a result, she became a learned and witty young woman, independent in thought, and a prolific correspondent. Abigail left behind more than 2,000 letters, giving us frank and lively pictures of her courtship with John Adams, the political struggles of a young nation, the character of her fellow countrymen and Europeans she met while living abroad, and her life raising a family and running her husband’s considerable farming and business affairs. From her letters we learn that Abigail strongly supported the movement for independence, taking a broader view of it than did her husband. In 1776, while the founders were preparing to write the Declaration of Independence, she advised Adams to “remember the Ladies and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors….If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voices or Representation.” Abigail also favored the abolition of slavery, writing to John that she had doubts about Virginians’ “passion for Liberty,” since they “deprive their fellow creatures of theirs.” In the White House, she continued to be involved in the political discussions of the day—perhaps more than any first lady until the twentieth century. She backed her husband’s decision to defy his inherited cabinet and defuse an undeclared war against France. And she defended his pardoning John Fries, who had been sentenced to death for a brief and unsuccessful revolt against federal taxes. But her judgment was not infallible; her support of the repressive Alien and Sedition Acts—the “Patriot Acts” of their day—was even stronger than her husband’s; he later considered their passage his biggest political mistake. Continue