Women and Politics in North America: The Experience of Abigail Adams

Abstract

This paper highlights the ambiguities of the role and place of women in North American society at the end of the 18th century, through the correspondence of Abigail Adams, wife of the second President of the United States of America. The British colonies of North America experienced rapid social and political change in the decades leading to the American Revolution. Among other things, one notes the influence of the rhetoric of Enlightenment thinkers on individual rights and, as regards American women, the spread of new ideas underlining the importance of women’s contribution to civic and republican virtues (later dubbed Republican Motherhood by historians). But, in spite of rare exceptions, this period did not result in major policy innovations for women. Their social and legal status in the British colonies of North America remained very limited partly because of the doctrine of “coverture”. Despite these social and legal constraints, very few women expressed political ideas publicly, anonymously or not, or privately. This is the case, for example, of Abigail Adams’s voluminous correspondence with her family and friends. In these letters, not only did she express political ideas, but some of them, like women’s rights, were ahead of her time.