Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Adams joked about petticoat despotism
The reply
John went on to call women a tribe more numerous and more powerful than all the rest. He wrote that Washington and all their brave heroes would have to fight the despotism of the petticoat, in a reply that teased her.
Two views of women
That teasing carries the older view of women as ambitious and devious, capable of taking over. Alongside it sits the newer view of women as delicate and unfit for business, politics, and war, which Adams also wrote about.
Abigail's work
Meanwhile John was somewhere else, doing business, and Abigail was managing the family farm and the family finances. She made investments that grew the wealth of the Adams family. The idea that a woman's place was dishes and laundry crept in slowly, over decades and decades.
What did Abigail's letter actually say?
Abigail wrote to John on March 31, 1776, asking him to remember the ladies in the new code of laws. She warned that if women were not given particular care, they would foment a rebellion and would not hold themselves bound by laws in which they had no voice. John replied on April 14 of that year. The Massachusetts Historical Society preserves the Adams family letters.
How did Abigail run the farm?
While John served in the Continental Congress and later as a diplomat in Europe, Abigail managed the family farm in Braintree, Massachusetts. She hired workers, sold goods, and dealt with tenants and debts during a period of wartime inflation. She also invested in land and government securities, and she resold goods that John sent from Europe. The couple exchanged well over a thousand letters during those separations.
What legal limits did wives face then?
Under English common law, which the colonies inherited, a married woman fell under coverture. Her legal identity was merged into her husband's, so he generally controlled her property and her earnings. Single women and widows could own property and sign contracts in their own names. Massachusetts passed its first married women's property law in 1845.
More from Civics 101
