Abigail and John: How a Marriage Shaped American Politics

Power changes when it meets a clear-eyed partner. That’s the thread that runs through our conversation with Dr. Kirsten Birkhaug as we trace the political and personal partnership of John and Abigail Adams—two sharp minds who treated marriage like a working lab for ideas that would shape the early republic. We open with why their story is the right entry point for Women of the Founding, then follow the through line from courtship candor to presidential counsel, guided by the letters that map their lifelong exchange.

John’s reputation as a formidable thinker grows more interesting when you watch him think with Abigail. While he serves as lawyer, revolutionary, diplomat, and president, she runs the Quincy homestead through war and inflation—hiring hands, negotiating prices, and making the farm solvent when legal coverture makes every contract harder. Her plea to “remember the ladies” was not a slogan; it was a precise push against a system that erased married women’s legal identities, blocking them from the very commerce they kept alive. We unpack those letters, the teasing reply about a “republic of petticoats,” and the way Abigail’s wider correspondence—especially with Mercy Otis Warren—kept the pressure on. The picture that emerges is not a myth of perfect founders but a credible model for how theory meets the ledger, and why that friction made John’s political judgment age unusually well.

We also share where to start if you want to read the record yourself: the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Adams Papers, the exchanges between John and Abigail, and biographies like David McCullough’s that render the texture of their days. Along the way, we contrast John’s grounded pragmatism with more untethered strains of founding-era thought, and we close with the lesson that still resonates: ideas last when they are tested against the lives they will touch. If this conversation reframes how you see the Founding, tap follow, share it with a friend who loves history, and leave a quick review telling us which Adams letter you’ll read first.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Welcome back to Civics in a year.
I am so excited because today Iam joined by Dr.
Kierston Burkhog, AssistantProfessor of Political Science
at Hope College.
She teaches courses ranging fromAmerican politics to advanced
political theory and advises theGerald R.
Ford Presidential LeadershipFellows.
Her research focuses on earlyAmerican political thought and

(00:21):
the often overlookedcontributions of women, with
recent work on figures likePhyllis Wheatley, Mercy Otis
Warren, and John Adams.
She also serves as a booksreview editor for the Journal of
Religion, Culture, andDemocracy.
Dr.
Burkog, welcome to the podcast.
And we are actually going to bedoing a couple of these together
because we're going to betalking about Women of the

(00:41):
Founding, maybe women peoplehave heard of, but don't know a
whole lot about.
And you know, you and I have hadconversations about this.
And today's episode is actuallyon John and Abigail Adams.
And we will be doing a separaterun on Abigail.
But welcome to the podcast.
And can you tell me, or maybelet viewers in a little bit to

(01:03):
our conversation on why we'restarting with John and Abigail
Adams?

SPEAKER_01 (01:08):
Great.
Thank you so much, Liz, forhaving me.
It's a delight to be here on theCivics in a Year podcast.
I think John and Abigail Adamsis in fact the best place we
could possibly start for aseries like this.
On the one hand, while JohnAdams maybe isn't the most
famous of the Founding Fathers,people do know of him, right?

(01:30):
He's our second president.
People might know about thosepesky alien and sedition acts,
or they might know him fromHamilton, the kind of bit part,
not very flattering that heplays in the musical.
John Adams is a familiar name tous.
And the reason that I think it'simportant to talk about John and
Abigail together is that it'sreally hard actually to talk
about John Adams' politicswithout talking about Abigail's

(01:54):
influence on him.
So there's a variety ofdifferent and interesting
marriages throughout thefounding generation, but I think
John and Abigail Adams havemaybe one of the most
fascinating marriages.
We know from their extremelylong exchange of letters over
the course of time that they'reapart during their courtship and

(02:14):
their marriage, that theyconsidered themselves to be
intellectual equals and thatthis, in fact, is sort of the
heart of their marriage.
One of my favorite letters fromwhen they were courting, Abigail
says, you know, we really shouldjust be very honest with each
other before we get married.
I wish you to tell me everythingyou don't like about me.
I'll tell you everything I don'tlike about you, and we'll go

(02:35):
from there.
So these were the sorts ofpeople that they were, you know,
very honest and also veryintelligent.
And like I said, a true marriageof equals.
And one of the things that sortof crops up in their letters as
John is off, you know, beinginvolved with the founding of
the nation.
He's a prominent son of liberty.
They were the kind of earlygroups who were interested in

(02:58):
the independence movement andsort of the engine behind it.
Uh, you have Abigail as a kindof sounding board for him.
He's firing off ideas to her,he's asking for her opinions on
them.
And then we see him take heropinions into account, and then
it actually filters out in theways that he enacts his own
politics.

(03:18):
So not only is he activelyseeking her advice, but he's
modifying his opinions based onthe sorts of things that she's
saying.
In a lot of ways, Abigail Adamsis the half the heart and half
the brain of the entire Adamsoperation.
And that was true throughout theentirety of John's political
career, up to his presidency andbeyond a fact that was

(03:40):
recognized by people who knewhim and the people that
surrounded him in politics.
So, yeah, I think this is aperfect place to start to sort
of talk about the important roleof women in the founding
generation.

SPEAKER_00 (03:52):
So, can you kind of go back a little bit?
Because and I love that youtalked about their letters, like
I love those kinds of primarysources.
Was their relationship kind of acommon relationship in the time
they were in, or is thissomething that like we don't
actually see in politics thatduring that time period?

SPEAKER_01 (04:11):
So, in terms of the love that they had for each
other, plenty of founders lovedtheir wives.
Even Jefferson, who has plentyof weirdness about his romantic
relationships, his wife, whodied relatively early on in the
course of the American Founding,their letters are also quite
lovely.
Found a lot of founders lovedtheir wives.

(04:31):
They were not purely inmarriages of convenience, many
of them.
The kind of thing that makesmakes John and Abigail Adams
unique is the extent to whichthey involve each other in their
daily pursuits and in fact theirpursuits of work.
So John is a politician and alawyer.

(04:52):
That is what he does byprofession.
And Abigail is involved in thiswith him.
At the same time, Abigail alsohas a sort of profession of her
own.
This is quite unique for thetime.
As John went off to help outwith the founding and be in
Philadelphia a lot, he leftbehind their family homestead in
Quincy, Massachusetts.

(05:14):
Abigail ran the whole thing.
She was doing all of the hiringand firing, all of the selling
of the product from the farm,all of the strategizing as to
how the farm would be managed,especially in the wake of the
revolution, which was a kind ofgiant economic catastrophe.
They both effectively have jobsand they're very involved with
the work of one another.

(05:35):
And they're both kind of pullingin the same direction and viewed
it as a team pursuit, which Ithink is quite unusual among the
founding generations.
Very few founders are involvingtheir wives in their political
ideas the way someone like JohnAdams is.

SPEAKER_00 (05:51):
So if I am somebody who is maybe just hearing about
this for the first time, whatare some good, maybe primary
sources to start with to startto really understand the
relationship between John andAbigail and how it affected
those around them, whether itwas politically, whether it was
their family, because we do knowone of their sons also becomes

(06:11):
president.
Where can somebody start to do alittle bit of research on these
two?

SPEAKER_01 (06:17):
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, it's hard to find a betterplace to start than their
letters.
The Massachusetts HistHistorical Society has their
collection of letters, which oneought to read.
They have all of the exchangesbetween John and Abigail
themselves, and also a bunch ofletters between, of course, John
and other founding fathers, inwhich he's frequently mentioning

(06:39):
his wife.
And also Abigail's kind of vastcollection of letters.
She's writing to a lot of peopleas well.
In fact, there's a very famousletter, which I think we'll get
to at some point here, thatAbigail writes to John.
She receives a response fromhim, and she doesn't quite love
the response she gets from him.
So she fires a letter off to herfriend Merci Otis Warren, kind
of complaining about the factthat John isn't quite taking her

(07:03):
as seriously as she wishes thathe would.
Additionally, I think there's acouple of really great
biographies that you could puton the stack here.
David McCullough's John Adamsbiography, which is the basis
for the HBO show John Adams, Ithink, paints a really beautiful
portrait of their relationshipas well.

(07:25):
And one second, I just need to-There's also a number of
biographies on Abigail Adamsherself, and a couple of
particular books on her writinghistory and the letters and the
pistolary exchanges that she hadwith the people around her that
I think are really helpfulstarting places to understand
her in her context and as shewas thinking about herself and

(07:47):
her writing.

SPEAKER_00 (07:49):
So when I think about Abigail Adams and John
Adams, I think about theirpartnership, but I also think
about her very famous plea toremember the ladies.
Can you talk to us a little bitabout what that means, kind of
the context surrounding herplea?

SPEAKER_01 (08:08):
Absolutely.
So yes, this is a letter writtenright in the late 1770s, right
as you would imagine theAmerican Revolution at its most
exciting and highesttemperatures.
And Abigail writes a letter toJohn where she just says, in
your political pursuits, asyou're establishing what is
going to be effectively a newnation, I hope that you would

(08:31):
remember to remember the ladies.
And she also has a couple ofreally interesting lines about
how all men would be tyrants ifthey could.
And there needs to be explicitprovisions made in this new
document to make sure that womenare respected in some kind of
way.
And I think that this letteroftentimes it's a fascinating
letter, and it can be read in alot of different directions, but

(08:53):
the historical context mattershere.
Specifically, what Abigail istalking about is coverture laws.
So coverture laws were theselaws that existed around the
time of the founding era,wherein women's legal identities
would be subsumed upon marriageinto the identities of their
husbands.
So women like Abigail didn'tnecessarily have independent

(09:17):
legal identities.
Their legal identities werejoined up with their husbands.
And then remember, for Abigail,that's a huge problem because
John is never around.
She writes a letter to him whenthey've been married 14 years,
and she says, And isn't itamazing?
We've been married 14 years andwe've only lived together half
that time.
So she's been running the farmeffectively for half the time

(09:38):
that they've been married, andshe can't do some of the things
that she needs to do because ofthe fact that she doesn't have a
legal identity of her own.
So I mentioned that she's doingthe hiring and the firing and
the selling and the buying, andshe is doing all of that, but
she's having to do it by proxyof male relatives, which becomes
really laborious and difficult,especially as the revolution

(10:00):
ramps up and a lot of men arepreoccupied with fighting the
war or otherwise trying to keepan economy afloat.
So this is specifically whatshe's talking about, is the fact
that women need to be rememberedas people with distinct legal
identities, uh, so that they canhave a role in the commercial
functioning of the society inwhich they live.

(10:22):
And this is something that isreally specific to her.
And John is kind of tickled bythis letter.
He thinks that this is just sortof charming of Abigail, and he
thinks, oh, you know, we'll havea republic of petticoats, you
know, if if you get the thingsthat you want or something like
that, sort of brushes her off.
And like I said, she's she isvery unhappy with this response
and fires off some letters tosome of her female friends,

(10:45):
indicating that she did not feelshe was taken seriously in this
exchange, which she communicatesto John, and later we can see
John being one of the moresympathetic figures of the
founding as regards the rightsof women.

SPEAKER_00 (10:59):
So at the end of the day, what would you want people
to know and to take away fromthe relationship between John
and Abigail Adams as it relatesto the founding, as it relates
to really thinking about howwomen shaped the founding of the
United States?

SPEAKER_01 (11:16):
One of the things that always strikes me about
John Adams is how extremely wellmany of his thoughts and ideas
about politics have aged.
If you can, if you go back andyou read John Adams' writings
about politics and about hispolitical theory and what he
thinks politics ought to looklike, there's so little to

(11:38):
disagree with, even on themargins.
He's getting so much right andhe's foreseeing so many of the
problems and making goodaccountings for how to deal with
those problems.
He's really, I think, underratedin that regard.
And when I first got intoreading him, I kept thinking,
what makes this guy sodifferent?
What makes him stand out so muchamong other founders?

(11:59):
And what I think it really doesboil down to is this was a man
who loved his wife and alwayskept one foot rooted in the
practical effects any policieshe came up with would have on
the person that he loved and hisfamily, who he was often apart
from.
And there are other founders whoaren't quite as rooted in that
sort of way.
I think Jefferson actually is apretty good example.

(12:21):
You know, Jefferson's wife diesand he's got, you know, his
estate, but at the same time,he's able to have a much more
theoretical take on politicsthat doesn't need to be as
grounded in the practicalbecause he's not concerned about
some of the real life situationsthat John is always returning to
by taking in and thinking abouthow things will affect his wife.
It's a moderating influence onhim.

(12:43):
And I think this is superimportant to remember.
So when we think of a founderwhose ideas still ring true to
us today, what is unique aboutthis founder?
This is a founder who, at root,had a really well established
marriage, and that ismeaningful.

SPEAKER_00 (12:59):
Dr.
Burkhog, thank you so much.
And listeners, this is the firstin our series of women of the
founding.
So please join us for the nextepisode, Dr.
Burkog.
I am so excited to dig into thismore video.