The Fair Sex: White Women and Racial Patriarchy in the Early American Republic

5. From Revolution to Racial Patriarchy: The Political Pragmatism of Abigail Adams

From Revolution to Racial Patriarchy The Political Pragmatism of Abigail Adams If perticular care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. —Abigail Adams, 1776 Government of States and Kingdoms, tho God knows badly enough managed, I am willing should be solely administered by the Lords of the Creation. I should contend only for domestick government, and think that best administered by the female. —Abigail Adams, 1796 The most remarkable thing about Abigail Adams as a political thinker is that she completely reversed her political principles within two decades. During the mid-1770s, as hostilities intensified between England and the colonies, Abigail supported American independence . At that time she spoke the language of the Enlightenment. Noting the ramifications of a universalized human being with natural rights, she opposed the institution of slavery as an abhorrence to republican principles. She also criticized patriarchal privileges. She denounced the “tyranny” of men that excluded women from “ingenious” education, deprived them of proprietary and political rights, and subordinated them in marriages. But by the early 1780s, she had dropped her criticism of gender inequity, and the rest of her public life bears testimony of a journey away from a utopia of equal rights toward hierar5 114 chy and conservatism. The language of fair sex ideology would replace her talk of natural rights, and her acceptance of racial patriarchy would replace her egalitarian ideals. As the wife of a rising politician who would fill the offices of a foreign minister, the first vice president, and second president of the United States, Mrs. Adams gradually merged her political goals with those of her husband and signed on to racial patriarchy. What I will undertake here is a narrative of Abigail’s intellectual journey from radical revolutionary to advocate of racial patriarchy. This theoretical journey will necessarily entail brief coverage of historical details, because Abigail was actively engaged in the political events of her day. She was a doer more than a thinker, a politician more than a philosopher, an achiever more than a perfectionist. As a doer, politician , and achiever, her views stemmed from praxis in a world in which men and women vied for power, competed over resources, and articulated different visions of the nation and its foundational principles. Abigail Adams tested but was careful never to exceed the boundaries of proper femininity. The views that she held were seldom outside of the mainstream Anglo majority, and when they were, she kept them close to home. She would not publish anything in her own name during her lifetime. Her prudence with respect to sexual boundaries, as well as her willingness to support her husband’s career, is probably why she was able to attain greater fame than the more intellectual Mercy Warren . Abigail had neither the depth of insight nor the philosophical or historical understandings of politics that Mercy had, but Mrs. Adams was hardly dull. She was sharp, politically savvy, organized, and resourceful . Abigail Adams was a political pragmatist par excellence.1 She had an unusual ability to feel out a political situation, grasp its perimeters, and work within them. She experimented with her political positions in her correspondence. When her views were met with resistance, she typically changed them so as not to be in conflict with those in power around her. Lacking the formal education that her husband had enjoyed , she read on her own and never allowed her limitations, such as a difficulty with spelling, to prevent her from writing letters and articulating important household or political information. Occasionally, she did contemplate the nature of man, religious duty, and political principles , but compared to Mercy Warren, she was more interested in what was happening in the world than why. From Revolution to Racial Patriarchy | 115 Reviewing Abigail’s political journey thus offers a small window into the era in which she lived. It was an era during which radical thinking came into being, created a nation, and was subsequently deemed a threat to civilized order. Abigail’s Acceptance of Patriotic Duty The story of Abigail’s pragmatism really begins when she takes on the commitment to be the wife of a frequently absent husband-politician. The couple had already been married ten years when John asked Abigail to join him in the revolutionary struggle. She...