She was a wife, mother, confidant, and a social and political advisor during one of the most tumultuous periods of American history. Despite never being elected to an office, in recognition of her power of influence and sagacity her portrait now hangs permanently in the Senate Chamber of the Massachusetts General Court. Few women in the period of the American Revolution and early Republic left behind such a voluminous correspondence as Abigail Adams. As her husband John got further involved in the cause of American independence and sovereignty, Abigail's circle of friends and admirers grew in like proportion, eventually leading her from Weymouth, Massachusetts to the great courts of Europe. We talk with John L. Smith, Jr., , author of The Unexpected Abigail Adams: A Woman not Apt to be Intimidated.
She was a wife, mother, confidant, and a social and political advisor during one of the most tumultuous periods of American history. Despite never being elected to an office, in recognition of her power of influence and sagacity her portrait now hangs permanently in the Senate Chamber of the Massachusetts General Court. Few women in the period of the American Revolution and early Republic left behind such a voluminous correspondence as Abigail Adams. As her husband John got further involved in the cause of American independence and sovereignty, Abigail's circle of friends and admirers grew in like proportion, eventually leading her from Weymouth, Massachusetts to the great courts of Europe. We talk with John L. Smith, Jr., , author of The Unexpected Abigail Adams: A Woman not Apt to be Intimidated.
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast.
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I'm Bob Allison.
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I chair the Rev 250 advisory group.
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We are a consortium of about
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70 groups in Massachusetts
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planning ways to
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commemorate the beginnings
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of the American Revolution.
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And our guest today is John L. Smith, Jr.
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John, thanks for joining us.
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Oh, I'm pleasured with it.
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and john is uh let's see a
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long a series of careers he
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was in the air force
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reserve as well as the army
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reserve and he then spent a
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career as in corporate
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communications before
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finally retiring and devote
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himself to two real
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passions one is acting he
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appeared in the conspirator
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and in other films
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And he's also a writer.
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You've written more than 30
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articles in the Journal of
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the American Revolution.
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And now you've come out,
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you've written a book on Abigail Adams,
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the unexpected Abigail Adams,
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a woman not apt to be intimidated.
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So thank you.
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Thank you.
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So what got you interested
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in Abigail Adams?
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Well, I was during the pandemic,
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I started in the pandemic.
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I was thinking if I'm going
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to be locked up in
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isolation for one or two years,
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I can finally write that
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book that I've been
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mentally preparing for,
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filled with authentic
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quotations and so on.
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And so I started thinking,
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I looked at the founders
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online carries all of the
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practically all of the
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letters of all of the founders.
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And I read some Thomas
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Jefferson stuff is fine.
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But John Adams stuff was
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letters were pretty interesting,
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but every now and then John
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would ramble off into Latin.
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and lose everybody.
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Then I started reading reply
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letters from him and Abigail.
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I have to admit,
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I got hooked on Abigail
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because of all the things
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we've talked about.
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She addresses everything
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going on and what the world
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is like and what the world
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is like in Boston during the revolution.
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I've
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what their family life is going on.
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And also these little
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tidbits that she used to
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put into like the PS at the
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bottom of the letters.
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And I found many incredible,
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many of those that are very interesting.
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And that's,
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that was my first unexpected without it.
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And she does comment on everything.
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And you really get a sense
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of both Adamses as people.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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She had very strong convictions.
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And she was a, I'll tell you,
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she was a tough lady,
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both physically and mentally.
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And it was a pleasure reading her stuff.
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And beautiful handwriting
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compared to everybody today
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type of writing.
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Right, right.
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And then she would write,
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after doing much of the yard work,
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the farm work during the
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day is hard to keep hired staff.
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She would come in and after
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dinner and putting everything away,
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she's like,
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people would call her today a super mom.
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And late at night,
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she would sit there at the
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desk and just write these
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beautiful letters.
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Sometimes she had to melt
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the ink if the ink was frozen.
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And that's the true story.
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She would write these very
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beautiful letters.
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And I just found many,
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many of them were just gold mines.
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Oh, really, really.
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So what really surprised you about her?
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I mean,
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you've been thinking about this
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period for a while,
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and now you have this
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intense engagement with one person.
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So what did you find most surprising?
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Most surprising was that
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everything that she was
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involved with or trying to
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do was remarkable,
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not only for her and her
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family and the legacy of her family,
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but also very much supporting her husband,
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John, in all of it.
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And she never wanted to do
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anything that would bring
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discredit to John.
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And then overcoming some of her fears,
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like her biggest phobia was deep,
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dark water.
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There are very few bridges, if any,
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in America then.
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And just going over a deep
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river made her sweat and everything,
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let alone the Atlantic Ocean,
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which ended up going over
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just being united with John again.
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Wow, that's amazing.
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And you said she doesn't
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want to do anything to
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discredit her husband.
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She's very supportive of him.
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But then he, of course, is in politics.
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So there are a lot of people
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he tangles with.
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Does she have things to say
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about some of John's
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political adversaries?
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Yeah, a lot of them.
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And of course,
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she would read the newspapers,
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the main thing,
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and she got to hate
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newspapers here and really
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hate them in London and Paris.
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But yeah,
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some of the people would come out of the,
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oh,
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you might call it the fro of New York
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and Philadelphia.
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She would know that what
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they're saying is just totally false.
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I mean, completely false.
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And she hated that.
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There's a funny story when
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they were first retiring,
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retiring at the end of
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President John Adams' term in 1801,
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an opposition leader and
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owner of a newspaper,
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a scurrilous newspaper,
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gave Abigail a dog,
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which she was a huge pet lover.
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That's another thing that comes out.
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Gave her a big dog to take back,
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and she named the dog Satan.
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Wow.
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It's interesting,
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a political opponent gives her a dog,
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though.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I think he was, well,
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let me just be nice to her
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on her way out.
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And she would just read the
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newspapers and just swear
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in her own way and just rip
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them to pieces.
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Because she was there listening.
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She knew what the story was.
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She heard it happening.
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Now,
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how had she acquired an education and
00:06:00.591 --> 00:06:03.774
the ability to be so literate,
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so erudite?
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Well, that's a good question.
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As usual,
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it was the mothers in the colonial days,
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it was the mother's job to
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train and educate the children.
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And then they could only do
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that up to a certain point,
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but that's okay because
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girls didn't need a future
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formal education.
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Boys, yes, not girls.
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And so she learned from her mother.
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And even if she could have
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gone to school and they had
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some in Massachusetts,
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she couldn't go because she
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had rheumatic fever.
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as a girl,
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and then that popped up all
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throughout her life.
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So to compensate for it,
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she read the libraries and
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had the dough of libraries
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at her father's house, her father's room,
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and her two uncles' house,
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one in Weymouth and one in Boston.
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And so she just devoured
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books whenever she could.
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And she and John certainly
00:07:00.836 --> 00:07:02.057
also shared a love of both.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And he was so proud of
00:07:05.401 --> 00:07:07.142
Abigail in the beginning
00:07:07.182 --> 00:07:08.283
when she was doing all that,
00:07:08.303 --> 00:07:10.666
plus keeping up the household and so on.
00:07:11.949 --> 00:07:13.110
And that's how she really
00:07:13.149 --> 00:07:15.612
started picking up what was
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going on in the world, becoming
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She'd sit in.
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John would host political
00:07:22.115 --> 00:07:23.156
meetings like Sons of
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Liberty inside of his house,
00:07:25.156 --> 00:07:26.437
and she would sit in on him,
00:07:26.656 --> 00:07:28.336
and that's how she absorbed it,
00:07:28.377 --> 00:07:29.358
just like a sponge.
00:07:31.218 --> 00:07:32.098
And she had very strong
00:07:32.137 --> 00:07:33.538
opinions about a lot of things, too,
00:07:33.579 --> 00:07:35.559
which she shares with John
00:07:35.678 --> 00:07:37.339
and with others whom she writes.
00:07:38.040 --> 00:07:39.300
Very much on slavery,
00:07:39.560 --> 00:07:41.821
and they were like minds on slavery.
00:07:42.521 --> 00:07:45.141
But women's education, and of course,
00:07:45.201 --> 00:07:46.541
remember the ladies, and...
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investments,
00:07:48.588 --> 00:07:53.470
and they explored different
00:07:53.571 --> 00:07:56.112
avenues of things happening at the time.
00:07:56.192 --> 00:07:58.413
But she had very strong opinions,
00:07:58.492 --> 00:07:59.192
and most of all,
00:07:59.252 --> 00:08:01.894
they bordered along the
00:08:01.913 --> 00:08:02.814
same lines as John.
00:08:03.714 --> 00:08:05.855
Except for women's, well, no,
00:08:05.915 --> 00:08:07.036
not for women's education.
00:08:07.536 --> 00:08:08.357
Remember the ladies,
00:08:08.396 --> 00:08:10.096
there's only so much he
00:08:10.137 --> 00:08:11.218
could do during that time.
00:08:12.137 --> 00:08:12.317
Yeah,
00:08:12.879 --> 00:08:14.538
and then he doesn't take this seriously.
00:08:14.598 --> 00:08:14.699
No.
00:08:17.031 --> 00:08:17.750
Now, remember,
00:08:17.790 --> 00:08:20.612
the ladies was mostly what
00:08:20.992 --> 00:08:22.232
Abigail mostly meant on
00:08:22.252 --> 00:08:23.593
that was if you want to
00:08:23.632 --> 00:08:24.952
have a successful republic,
00:08:25.312 --> 00:08:27.334
you had to have educated citizens.
00:08:28.514 --> 00:08:30.314
And mothers were usually
00:08:30.394 --> 00:08:32.495
teaching the young kids.
00:08:32.554 --> 00:08:34.375
But when she said, remember the lady,
00:08:34.414 --> 00:08:35.355
she was talking again,
00:08:35.456 --> 00:08:36.635
mostly about protection of
00:08:36.676 --> 00:08:39.355
married women from abusive husbands.
00:08:39.797 --> 00:08:41.976
And that was another unexpected.
00:08:42.037 --> 00:08:43.437
I didn't know so much abuse
00:08:43.577 --> 00:08:45.398
probably went on in between.
00:08:46.126 --> 00:08:48.388
between husband and wives.
00:08:50.629 --> 00:08:51.950
And again, as you said,
00:08:52.070 --> 00:08:53.210
most of the reason for
00:08:53.309 --> 00:08:54.490
educating women was in
00:08:54.551 --> 00:08:55.431
their role as mothers.
00:08:55.490 --> 00:08:56.652
So can we talk a little bit
00:08:56.692 --> 00:08:58.331
about Abigail as a mother?
00:08:58.351 --> 00:08:59.352
Because most of their marriage,
00:08:59.393 --> 00:09:00.812
John is away and she is
00:09:00.832 --> 00:09:02.573
then responsible not only
00:09:02.614 --> 00:09:04.054
for the children, but for the farm,
00:09:04.134 --> 00:09:04.835
for the business.
00:09:04.875 --> 00:09:06.855
So what is she like as a mother?
00:09:08.136 --> 00:09:10.738
She is very organized and very
00:09:11.875 --> 00:09:12.996
When she has a task,
00:09:13.138 --> 00:09:14.859
she sees it and goes ahead with it.
00:09:15.240 --> 00:09:16.260
And whether it's six days a
00:09:16.280 --> 00:09:17.481
week or seven days a week,
00:09:18.243 --> 00:09:20.245
she was running an entire
00:09:20.325 --> 00:09:21.687
farm with hundreds of acres
00:09:22.326 --> 00:09:24.068
and also buying property
00:09:24.149 --> 00:09:25.009
while John was gone.
00:09:25.070 --> 00:09:26.392
So they had some type of retirement,
00:09:26.432 --> 00:09:26.851
she figured.
00:09:27.633 --> 00:09:30.235
And she invented an investment company,
00:09:31.115 --> 00:09:34.279
marketing company, where...
00:09:36.404 --> 00:09:37.725
She would be selling
00:09:37.785 --> 00:09:39.326
wholesale material that
00:09:39.365 --> 00:09:40.525
they bought from wholesale
00:09:40.927 --> 00:09:46.087
and bring it over here and sell it.
00:09:47.188 --> 00:09:48.509
So this is when they're in
00:09:48.788 --> 00:09:50.049
Europe that she's buying
00:09:50.110 --> 00:09:51.769
things there and selling them here?
00:09:52.110 --> 00:09:53.850
Well, John's buying things there.
00:09:53.870 --> 00:09:55.250
He thinks he had a terrible
00:09:55.291 --> 00:09:55.991
head for retail.
00:09:57.537 --> 00:09:58.836
business and sometimes he
00:09:58.876 --> 00:10:00.658
would buy things over there
00:10:00.717 --> 00:10:01.557
that were needed like
00:10:01.638 --> 00:10:05.398
handkerchiefs here and pay
00:10:05.477 --> 00:10:06.499
more than retail.
00:10:06.558 --> 00:10:07.558
And he'd send them over here
00:10:07.619 --> 00:10:08.859
and she would say, John, you just,
00:10:09.219 --> 00:10:10.038
I tell you what, John,
00:10:10.178 --> 00:10:11.099
don't do this anymore.
00:10:11.499 --> 00:10:12.298
I'll make friends.
00:10:12.318 --> 00:10:13.679
I'll make some contacts with
00:10:14.139 --> 00:10:15.539
people over there and buy them directly.
00:10:15.559 --> 00:10:16.600
And he was all in favor of that.
00:10:16.840 --> 00:10:18.159
He never got the wholesale
00:10:18.620 --> 00:10:19.860
retail connection.
00:10:21.821 --> 00:10:22.100
Yeah.
00:10:22.201 --> 00:10:24.341
And she was, um, in the meantime,
00:10:24.381 --> 00:10:25.361
don't forget there she's
00:10:25.442 --> 00:10:26.522
educating their children.
00:10:26.881 --> 00:10:27.062
Right.
00:10:27.385 --> 00:10:27.927
in the parlor,
00:10:27.947 --> 00:10:30.708
one of which was John Quincy Adams.
00:10:31.370 --> 00:10:32.990
How many children do the Adamses have?
00:10:33.751 --> 00:10:37.054
They had, actually, they had six children,
00:10:38.216 --> 00:10:39.716
two led to adulthood,
00:10:40.717 --> 00:10:43.740
and then two of their older girls,
00:10:43.941 --> 00:10:46.884
or younger girls, one died stillborn.
00:10:46.943 --> 00:10:48.264
It's very, very sad,
00:10:48.325 --> 00:10:49.446
and if you think the whole
00:10:50.006 --> 00:10:50.967
book is based upon
00:10:53.241 --> 00:10:54.702
happier, fun things,
00:10:55.082 --> 00:10:55.823
you have to get to that
00:10:55.884 --> 00:10:56.804
section because that was,
00:10:56.845 --> 00:10:59.366
and Abigail did a great job
00:10:59.427 --> 00:11:00.187
of describing it.
00:11:01.607 --> 00:11:04.390
Another baby girl lived 13 months.
00:11:04.811 --> 00:11:06.613
Oh, my goodness.
00:11:07.033 --> 00:11:08.134
That's what it was like then.
00:11:08.653 --> 00:11:09.335
Yeah, yeah.
00:11:10.134 --> 00:11:12.096
And we're talking with John Smith,
00:11:12.177 --> 00:11:14.578
author of The Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:11:14.739 --> 00:11:16.480
A Woman Not to be Intimidated,
00:11:16.581 --> 00:11:18.662
which gives us a look into
00:11:19.202 --> 00:11:21.924
the life and mind of Abigail Adams.
00:11:22.883 --> 00:11:24.303
And then one of the, of course,
00:11:24.384 --> 00:11:26.326
one of the sons is John Quincy Adams,
00:11:26.385 --> 00:11:29.048
but then Charles has troubles.
00:11:29.988 --> 00:11:30.248
Yeah.
00:11:31.149 --> 00:11:34.851
Charles was a kind of a, well,
00:11:34.892 --> 00:11:36.212
he was a tragic character.
00:11:37.133 --> 00:11:39.955
And I don't get into it,
00:11:40.014 --> 00:11:43.597
but there's rumors that he,
00:11:43.658 --> 00:11:44.357
I'll put it this way.
00:11:44.938 --> 00:11:46.600
The word was used sensitive
00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:48.301
when everyone talked about
00:11:48.341 --> 00:11:50.982
meeting Charles in America or in America.
00:11:51.962 --> 00:11:54.163
or in France or London,
00:11:55.163 --> 00:11:56.504
the word sensitive came up
00:11:56.543 --> 00:11:59.585
a lot and is touched on by a few people.
00:11:59.664 --> 00:12:00.686
And I didn't go there in the
00:12:00.706 --> 00:12:02.086
book because I have no idea,
00:12:03.025 --> 00:12:08.748
but he might have been of a different,
00:12:11.716 --> 00:12:14.596
sexual orientation and it
00:12:15.018 --> 00:12:17.138
possibly caused him to be a
00:12:17.198 --> 00:12:18.178
tragic alcoholic.
00:12:18.658 --> 00:12:20.440
Actually, Adam's family had,
00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:21.620
it seemed like,
00:12:21.660 --> 00:12:22.801
a predisposition for
00:12:22.860 --> 00:12:26.182
alcoholism going back through there.
00:12:27.682 --> 00:12:29.943
But Charles was a tragic
00:12:30.004 --> 00:12:33.206
figure as well as Nabi.
00:12:33.285 --> 00:12:35.567
Nabi had her share with
00:12:37.318 --> 00:12:38.899
There was no modern medicine, of course,
00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:41.883
and she felt something in
00:12:41.923 --> 00:12:46.505
her left breast around 1811.
00:12:46.505 --> 00:12:48.707
And this is shown in graphic
00:12:48.748 --> 00:12:50.528
detail in the HBO.
00:12:50.990 --> 00:12:51.690
Right, yeah.
00:12:52.149 --> 00:12:53.211
Although the location is
00:12:53.250 --> 00:12:54.491
different inside the house.
00:12:55.052 --> 00:12:58.215
And they operated and removed the cancer,
00:12:58.235 --> 00:12:59.216
and they were sure they got
00:12:59.235 --> 00:13:00.376
it all but two years ago.
00:13:00.677 --> 00:13:01.278
Two years later,
00:13:01.898 --> 00:13:04.039
she came back from her house in New York,
00:13:04.120 --> 00:13:06.522
and she knew it was the end.
00:13:10.485 --> 00:13:12.586
it was pretty tough it was
00:13:12.667 --> 00:13:14.688
yeah yeah and we don't
00:13:14.869 --> 00:13:16.750
really appreciate that that
00:13:16.850 --> 00:13:19.514
these uh the problems the
00:13:19.573 --> 00:13:21.254
lives that these people had
00:13:21.335 --> 00:13:25.078
um yeah and despite this
00:13:25.399 --> 00:13:27.181
they're doing these extraordinary things
00:13:27.778 --> 00:13:29.279
Yeah.
00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:30.639
There's been a few quotes
00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:32.500
that Abigail writes.
00:13:32.561 --> 00:13:34.041
I wonder if people in the future,
00:13:34.380 --> 00:13:36.322
and I'm paraphrasing this tremendously,
00:13:36.802 --> 00:13:38.342
I wonder if people in the
00:13:38.403 --> 00:13:39.964
future will appreciate or
00:13:40.043 --> 00:13:43.004
even know of the tragedies
00:13:43.065 --> 00:13:43.764
we've gone through.
00:13:45.981 --> 00:13:46.763
She could have had a,
00:13:48.043 --> 00:13:49.283
had she married John still,
00:13:49.724 --> 00:13:50.703
she could have had a great
00:13:50.764 --> 00:13:54.745
life just doing what she wanted to do,
00:13:54.806 --> 00:13:56.287
which was being a good wife,
00:13:56.326 --> 00:13:57.067
supportive wife,
00:13:57.726 --> 00:13:59.587
and raising educated children.
00:13:59.628 --> 00:14:01.489
That's basically all she wanted in life.
00:14:02.149 --> 00:14:03.490
But things intervene,
00:14:03.570 --> 00:14:04.649
outside things intervene,
00:14:04.690 --> 00:14:05.730
just as it does today.
00:14:06.410 --> 00:14:06.931
That's true.
00:14:07.051 --> 00:14:07.471
That's true.
00:14:08.032 --> 00:14:08.172
Now,
00:14:08.192 --> 00:14:10.273
do you think she was happy being a
00:14:10.373 --> 00:14:11.572
politician's wife and being
00:14:11.633 --> 00:14:12.894
so much in public life?
00:14:13.860 --> 00:14:14.561
Yes and no.
00:14:14.581 --> 00:14:14.980
I mean,
00:14:15.081 --> 00:14:17.501
she loved seeing how the sausage is
00:14:17.542 --> 00:14:19.081
made of supporting her
00:14:19.121 --> 00:14:21.602
husband and hearing being
00:14:21.643 --> 00:14:23.322
in the same room as the
00:14:23.602 --> 00:14:24.703
discussions went on and
00:14:24.744 --> 00:14:26.323
then getting so frustrated
00:14:26.384 --> 00:14:28.044
reading in the newspaper
00:14:28.125 --> 00:14:29.004
like it's like they weren't
00:14:29.044 --> 00:14:30.884
even in the universe, same universe.
00:14:30.945 --> 00:14:33.905
And so that part was very, very,
00:14:35.365 --> 00:14:38.366
very frustrating for her.
00:14:38.427 --> 00:14:39.326
She loved being home,
00:14:39.346 --> 00:14:41.008
but she liked being in the
00:14:41.067 --> 00:14:41.868
circle of things, too.
00:14:42.580 --> 00:14:42.740
Right.
00:14:43.240 --> 00:14:44.260
And then she, of course,
00:14:44.301 --> 00:14:46.602
grows up in Weymouth and a
00:14:47.644 --> 00:14:50.285
relatively small but prosperous place.
00:14:50.326 --> 00:14:51.886
And then she moves to what's
00:14:51.927 --> 00:14:53.248
now Quincy with her husband,
00:14:53.469 --> 00:14:54.249
a small house.
00:14:55.370 --> 00:14:57.772
And Boston to her was the metropolis.
00:14:57.792 --> 00:14:59.173
And then suddenly she is in
00:14:59.253 --> 00:15:00.793
Paris and in London.
00:15:00.813 --> 00:15:02.434
That must be a startling change.
00:15:02.796 --> 00:15:06.177
It was very startling to her.
00:15:06.479 --> 00:15:08.139
And my actually my favorite
00:15:08.159 --> 00:15:09.740
part of the book is when
00:15:09.801 --> 00:15:10.741
she gets on the ship.
00:15:12.062 --> 00:15:14.884
to go over to London and if
00:15:14.923 --> 00:15:15.465
you want to call them
00:15:15.504 --> 00:15:17.346
adventures and eye-opening experiences,
00:15:17.826 --> 00:15:18.847
the people and things she
00:15:18.927 --> 00:15:21.629
sees in France and Paris and in London,
00:15:22.711 --> 00:15:26.153
to me, and the fun stuff too overseas,
00:15:27.034 --> 00:15:29.716
she loved doing that.
00:15:30.157 --> 00:15:31.599
But after a few years, of course,
00:15:31.818 --> 00:15:32.980
she was homesick to be away.
00:15:33.399 --> 00:15:35.361
But many, many of the stories,
00:15:35.442 --> 00:15:37.644
the fun stories of Paris
00:15:37.823 --> 00:15:38.924
and London are in the book.
00:15:39.303 --> 00:15:40.464
And that's the type of
00:15:40.484 --> 00:15:42.004
flavor I wanted for the whole book.
00:15:42.664 --> 00:15:45.046
Yeah, it's really an extraordinary story.
00:15:45.125 --> 00:15:45.346
I mean,
00:15:45.666 --> 00:15:47.386
her observations of things and of
00:15:47.486 --> 00:15:48.927
people are terrific.
00:15:48.988 --> 00:15:50.307
And she has some, you know,
00:15:50.388 --> 00:15:51.548
her first encounter with
00:15:51.609 --> 00:15:52.668
Benjamin Franklin,
00:15:52.749 --> 00:15:54.110
and she has an exaggerated
00:15:54.149 --> 00:15:54.769
idea of the great.
00:15:54.789 --> 00:15:55.330
She said,
00:15:55.350 --> 00:15:56.309
we've always been taught to
00:15:56.389 --> 00:15:57.791
revere Dr. Franklin,
00:15:58.150 --> 00:15:59.692
and he must be a great Christian.
00:16:00.172 --> 00:16:01.772
And then when she gets to Noman Parish,
00:16:01.792 --> 00:16:03.052
she has something of a different view.
00:16:03.831 --> 00:16:05.653
something of a different, and she had a,
00:16:06.053 --> 00:16:06.953
her first meeting with
00:16:07.014 --> 00:16:08.534
Franklin was at her uncle's
00:16:08.554 --> 00:16:10.897
house in Mount Wollaston in
00:16:11.336 --> 00:16:12.018
Braintree then.
00:16:12.758 --> 00:16:15.539
And it was kind of, it was kind of so-so,
00:16:15.740 --> 00:16:16.000
you know,
00:16:16.059 --> 00:16:17.321
she wasn't impressed and she was
00:16:17.360 --> 00:16:18.501
let down by the fact that
00:16:18.822 --> 00:16:19.962
the great Benjamin Franklin,
00:16:19.982 --> 00:16:20.523
who had been a,
00:16:21.203 --> 00:16:23.645
like a media God when she was growing up,
00:16:24.426 --> 00:16:25.206
was kind of boring.
00:16:25.706 --> 00:16:25.947
Yeah.
00:16:26.687 --> 00:16:26.868
Yeah.
00:16:27.988 --> 00:16:28.828
She might've caught him on a
00:16:28.869 --> 00:16:30.070
bad day or something, but.
00:16:31.581 --> 00:16:32.861
It wouldn't talk a lot when
00:16:32.881 --> 00:16:33.761
he was in company.
00:16:33.841 --> 00:16:36.383
Throughout the book,
00:16:36.423 --> 00:16:37.864
I made a list of all of the,
00:16:38.104 --> 00:16:39.445
when you think about it, it's amazing.
00:16:40.024 --> 00:16:41.365
All of the people during the
00:16:41.424 --> 00:16:44.606
founding era that Abigail got to know.
00:16:45.267 --> 00:16:46.628
And I can rattle off a list of,
00:16:47.567 --> 00:16:49.568
of course she did.
00:16:50.129 --> 00:16:51.289
She worked with George and
00:16:51.309 --> 00:16:52.129
Martha Washington.
00:16:52.725 --> 00:16:53.865
in what they would call the
00:16:53.884 --> 00:16:54.885
White House back then.
00:16:55.806 --> 00:16:56.725
And Thomas Jefferson,
00:16:56.745 --> 00:16:57.927
certainly a love-hate,
00:16:58.067 --> 00:17:00.187
love-hate relationship with Jefferson.
00:17:00.888 --> 00:17:03.548
And believe it or not, Sally Hemings also,
00:17:03.628 --> 00:17:04.489
she got to know her for
00:17:04.528 --> 00:17:05.548
about three weeks when
00:17:05.808 --> 00:17:08.349
Jefferson sent for Pauli to
00:17:08.369 --> 00:17:10.089
come over and Sally Hemings.
00:17:10.470 --> 00:17:11.911
So she got to know her, and of course,
00:17:11.931 --> 00:17:12.310
Franklin.
00:17:12.790 --> 00:17:14.392
Paul Revere was their mailman.
00:17:14.451 --> 00:17:15.332
I think that's pretty cool.
00:17:15.352 --> 00:17:17.272
He would bring letters to the house.
00:17:18.192 --> 00:17:20.433
And the Lafayettes.
00:17:22.114 --> 00:17:24.734
Marquis and Adrienne, and John Paul Jones,
00:17:24.795 --> 00:17:27.596
which was not what she expected.
00:17:28.855 --> 00:17:30.375
Can you talk a little bit
00:17:30.415 --> 00:17:32.196
about her encounter with John Paul Jones?
00:17:32.217 --> 00:17:33.876
Because that's an unexpected pairing.
00:17:33.957 --> 00:17:37.458
It was at a dinner party in France,
00:17:37.758 --> 00:17:38.239
in Paris.
00:17:39.179 --> 00:17:41.298
And John Paul Jones was there.
00:17:41.398 --> 00:17:42.220
And I'll try to be...
00:17:44.619 --> 00:17:46.300
Abigail does it much better than I do.
00:17:46.361 --> 00:17:50.521
But he was very effeminate.
00:17:51.448 --> 00:17:52.188
And you would never think
00:17:52.228 --> 00:17:55.670
this from the- And he knew
00:17:55.750 --> 00:17:58.411
best which colognes to go
00:17:58.451 --> 00:17:59.990
with which dresses.
00:18:00.371 --> 00:18:04.173
And you read this and you go, well, okay.
00:18:04.413 --> 00:18:05.292
Not that that's bad,
00:18:05.333 --> 00:18:06.713
but he wasn't what I expected.
00:18:07.854 --> 00:18:10.015
The reason she wrote back to Mary,
00:18:10.335 --> 00:18:11.415
her sister in America,
00:18:11.895 --> 00:18:13.896
was after all the publicity
00:18:14.297 --> 00:18:15.836
John Paul Jones was getting
00:18:16.337 --> 00:18:17.438
here and in London,
00:18:17.758 --> 00:18:19.479
he wasn't what I was expecting.
00:18:21.624 --> 00:18:24.487
And then, of course, Alexander Hamilton.
00:18:27.368 --> 00:18:29.391
She was a believer in a
00:18:29.611 --> 00:18:35.115
pseudoscience called physiognomy.
00:18:35.135 --> 00:18:38.178
That's a term.
00:18:38.198 --> 00:18:40.279
And physiognomy told her
00:18:40.359 --> 00:18:42.221
when she looked in Alexander's eyes,
00:18:42.922 --> 00:18:43.782
she saw the devil.
00:18:44.884 --> 00:18:47.385
So needless to say that she
00:18:47.425 --> 00:18:49.407
wasn't a big fan of Alexander Hamilton.
00:18:50.663 --> 00:18:51.364
And other than that,
00:18:51.423 --> 00:18:56.369
King George III and Queen
00:18:56.430 --> 00:18:57.770
Charlotte and King Louis XVI.
00:18:58.913 --> 00:19:01.056
So did she meet King George III?
00:19:01.296 --> 00:19:01.796
Yeah.
00:19:01.836 --> 00:19:03.798
In fact, she met him a few times.
00:19:03.857 --> 00:19:05.278
When you go to London and
00:19:05.318 --> 00:19:06.619
you're the wife of a diplomat,
00:19:06.920 --> 00:19:07.881
you have to go to the
00:19:08.060 --> 00:19:10.363
levees or the circles about
00:19:10.442 --> 00:19:11.182
once a week or so.
00:19:11.542 --> 00:19:13.005
You'll meet both of them
00:19:13.045 --> 00:19:15.125
again or maybe one or the other.
00:19:15.787 --> 00:19:19.730
But when she describes those in her book,
00:19:20.250 --> 00:19:25.874
she's very almost modernly sarcastic.
00:19:25.933 --> 00:19:28.036
The first time, it was very, very nervous.
00:19:28.692 --> 00:19:30.733
And a few other times,
00:19:31.193 --> 00:19:32.955
she was writing to her sister Mary that,
00:19:33.796 --> 00:19:34.237
by the way,
00:19:34.297 --> 00:19:35.678
you have to wait for two or
00:19:35.718 --> 00:19:36.759
three hours sweating.
00:19:37.219 --> 00:19:39.320
And when the king or queen
00:19:39.820 --> 00:19:40.842
finally make it up to you,
00:19:41.242 --> 00:19:42.784
they always ask the same question.
00:19:43.463 --> 00:19:44.365
Did you walk today?
00:19:44.384 --> 00:19:48.449
And she answered, being very sarcastic,
00:19:48.489 --> 00:19:52.172
she answers back to him, yes, your sire.
00:19:52.892 --> 00:19:54.854
And really, she wrote afterwards to Mary,
00:19:55.454 --> 00:19:55.734
if I
00:19:57.842 --> 00:19:59.502
If I didn't have to get
00:19:59.583 --> 00:20:02.065
ready all day long for this stupid thing,
00:20:02.144 --> 00:20:02.865
I could have walked.
00:20:06.147 --> 00:20:07.528
But those type of things.
00:20:07.989 --> 00:20:08.710
Great.
00:20:08.769 --> 00:20:10.310
Yeah, we're talking with John Smith,
00:20:10.431 --> 00:20:12.752
author of The Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:20:12.813 --> 00:20:14.713
A Woman Not to be Intimidated.
00:20:16.494 --> 00:20:17.395
So what about her
00:20:17.536 --> 00:20:19.336
observations of King Louis
00:20:19.478 --> 00:20:21.239
XVI and Marie Antoinette?
00:20:21.806 --> 00:20:23.666
Those are the couple that
00:20:23.707 --> 00:20:25.728
she met the least number of times,
00:20:25.807 --> 00:20:27.009
maybe only once or twice.
00:20:29.410 --> 00:20:30.789
She was very sad when
00:20:32.330 --> 00:20:35.432
actually the king and queen
00:20:35.512 --> 00:20:37.433
fell in France.
00:20:38.334 --> 00:20:39.615
Thomas Jefferson was all for
00:20:39.674 --> 00:20:41.174
it and boosted her up in some letters.
00:20:42.996 --> 00:20:44.196
You can't expect to move from
00:20:45.345 --> 00:20:46.567
one political party to
00:20:46.666 --> 00:20:48.888
another in a pillow.
00:20:48.949 --> 00:20:52.232
So she thought they were treated unfairly,
00:20:52.472 --> 00:20:55.696
and she was no fan of kings and queens,
00:20:55.757 --> 00:20:57.878
but they were treated unfairly.
00:21:00.423 --> 00:21:02.244
And then there's a reaction
00:21:02.625 --> 00:21:03.605
in this country,
00:21:03.645 --> 00:21:05.906
an interesting reaction in this country.
00:21:06.186 --> 00:21:07.626
And then because John is
00:21:07.707 --> 00:21:10.087
writing about a civil war
00:21:10.127 --> 00:21:11.528
that happened in France and
00:21:11.588 --> 00:21:12.710
he sees the terror that's
00:21:12.730 --> 00:21:13.529
coming in France,
00:21:13.609 --> 00:21:14.590
he knows this is going to
00:21:14.611 --> 00:21:16.010
end in a military despotism.
00:21:16.050 --> 00:21:16.471
And for that,
00:21:16.510 --> 00:21:18.751
he's called the Duke of Braintree.
00:21:18.852 --> 00:21:20.932
He wants to establish a monarchy.
00:21:21.193 --> 00:21:22.653
And so how does she respond
00:21:22.673 --> 00:21:23.615
to this real intense
00:21:23.674 --> 00:21:24.914
criticism of her husband
00:21:24.954 --> 00:21:26.036
when he's vice president?
00:21:26.776 --> 00:21:27.076
Again,
00:21:27.136 --> 00:21:30.179
it was the fact that she was there
00:21:30.239 --> 00:21:31.079
through the whole thing on
00:21:31.319 --> 00:21:33.221
both sides of the Atlantic,
00:21:34.202 --> 00:21:35.063
knew the big picture,
00:21:35.963 --> 00:21:38.405
and they just wrote scurrilous rumors.
00:21:39.207 --> 00:21:40.867
And she hated it and ripped it up and
00:21:42.511 --> 00:21:43.813
I just did some swearing.
00:21:43.853 --> 00:21:46.973
In fact, when he was, John was president,
00:21:47.473 --> 00:21:48.114
John Adams,
00:21:48.875 --> 00:21:50.836
she acted like she wanted to
00:21:50.875 --> 00:21:51.635
be there for most of the
00:21:51.655 --> 00:21:52.855
time because this is the big league.
00:21:53.136 --> 00:21:54.037
She wanted to be there most
00:21:54.076 --> 00:21:55.176
of the time and John needed
00:21:55.217 --> 00:21:58.179
her desperately because without Abigail,
00:21:58.199 --> 00:22:01.519
he was just volcanic.
00:22:02.861 --> 00:22:06.422
And so she was there and she
00:22:06.481 --> 00:22:07.603
heard everything and she
00:22:09.554 --> 00:22:11.615
She just hated politics from
00:22:11.654 --> 00:22:12.335
that point on.
00:22:12.634 --> 00:22:19.897
There's a great quote that she did.
00:22:20.397 --> 00:22:24.318
Boiling fatty meat to politicians,
00:22:25.159 --> 00:22:27.240
if they're kept on the fire long enough,
00:22:27.900 --> 00:22:28.881
turned out to be much of
00:22:28.921 --> 00:22:29.961
the scum is rising.
00:22:30.020 --> 00:22:32.801
And that's what she equated to newspapers.
00:22:33.382 --> 00:22:35.903
Well, that's a great quote.
00:22:36.734 --> 00:22:37.996
But there's a lot of funny
00:22:38.115 --> 00:22:39.056
quotes in the book, too.
00:22:39.096 --> 00:22:41.597
I mean, just cute or funny ones.
00:22:41.657 --> 00:22:42.698
She meant some of them to be
00:22:42.738 --> 00:22:44.278
taken seriously and some not.
00:22:44.618 --> 00:22:45.559
For instance,
00:22:46.961 --> 00:22:48.080
she was somewhere and she was
00:22:48.121 --> 00:22:49.622
writing a letter to her uncle,
00:22:50.282 --> 00:22:50.923
Cotton Tufts,
00:22:50.962 --> 00:22:52.884
who was also not only a surgeon,
00:22:53.483 --> 00:22:55.986
but a pretty good bank investment person.
00:22:56.046 --> 00:22:57.787
And he's mainly the person
00:22:57.826 --> 00:22:59.887
who taught her debits and credits.
00:23:00.888 --> 00:23:03.430
And she was writing him a letter in it.
00:23:04.520 --> 00:23:07.442
went down and was talking about tax,
00:23:07.442 --> 00:23:09.104
6% tax and things like that.
00:23:09.144 --> 00:23:10.084
And at the very end of the
00:23:10.144 --> 00:23:11.625
PS where a lot of her stuff,
00:23:11.865 --> 00:23:13.986
good stuff is embedded, she said, hey,
00:23:14.046 --> 00:23:14.467
by the way,
00:23:14.507 --> 00:23:16.007
can you buy me two lottery tickets?
00:23:17.929 --> 00:23:18.469
Interesting.
00:23:18.888 --> 00:23:20.529
Because lotteries then,
00:23:20.769 --> 00:23:22.250
I think the two of that
00:23:22.290 --> 00:23:24.811
time was paying for a new
00:23:25.333 --> 00:23:27.554
building or road and a toll bridge.
00:23:27.993 --> 00:23:29.634
Hey, buy me a couple lottery tickets,
00:23:29.694 --> 00:23:29.954
okay?
00:23:29.974 --> 00:23:30.315
Interesting.
00:23:32.472 --> 00:23:33.472
Now, a few years ago,
00:23:33.512 --> 00:23:34.874
you wrote an article about
00:23:35.574 --> 00:23:38.174
John telling Abigail her faults, that is,
00:23:38.194 --> 00:23:39.454
sending her letters.
00:23:40.055 --> 00:23:40.974
Can we talk a little bit
00:23:40.994 --> 00:23:41.934
about that exchange?
00:23:42.615 --> 00:23:43.336
Sure.
00:23:43.776 --> 00:23:44.736
And unfortunately,
00:23:44.776 --> 00:23:47.356
this one's not in the book,
00:23:47.376 --> 00:23:48.497
but it'll be in a second
00:23:48.537 --> 00:23:50.377
thing of other quotations.
00:23:50.998 --> 00:23:53.878
But they were planning on getting married,
00:23:54.699 --> 00:23:55.638
John and Abigail.
00:23:56.311 --> 00:23:58.074
And John had to call it off
00:23:58.114 --> 00:23:59.414
at the last minute because
00:23:59.474 --> 00:24:00.596
he'd been exposed to
00:24:00.955 --> 00:24:03.518
positively and exposed to smallpox.
00:24:04.378 --> 00:24:06.661
And so he had to go through
00:24:07.682 --> 00:24:10.263
all the procedures to make
00:24:10.304 --> 00:24:13.166
yourself ready to take a
00:24:13.227 --> 00:24:15.588
shot or the drag of germs
00:24:15.648 --> 00:24:16.950
through your veins.
00:24:17.109 --> 00:24:19.172
And he was going to be gone from
00:24:20.230 --> 00:24:21.352
Abigail for a long time.
00:24:21.392 --> 00:24:22.592
And so when John had a lot
00:24:22.633 --> 00:24:24.433
of fresh time on his hands,
00:24:24.493 --> 00:24:25.374
it wasn't a good thing.
00:24:25.794 --> 00:24:27.174
No.
00:24:27.414 --> 00:24:28.276
Somewhere in the past when
00:24:28.316 --> 00:24:29.737
they'd been dating, he says, by the way,
00:24:29.836 --> 00:24:30.257
Abigail,
00:24:30.277 --> 00:24:31.178
I'm going to have to tell you
00:24:31.198 --> 00:24:34.480
some of the things wrong
00:24:34.500 --> 00:24:35.700
with you so you can fix them.
00:24:36.101 --> 00:24:38.221
And she had asked, being nice,
00:24:38.642 --> 00:24:39.442
would you tell me the
00:24:39.482 --> 00:24:41.263
things that bother you and I'll fix them?
00:24:41.903 --> 00:24:44.246
And so like a dumb husband he was almost,
00:24:44.905 --> 00:24:47.386
he sent Abigail a list of
00:24:47.448 --> 00:24:48.147
all the faults and
00:24:48.669 --> 00:24:50.589
And you can tell just by her
00:24:50.869 --> 00:24:54.152
stark language that she did
00:24:54.192 --> 00:24:55.692
not care for them and she
00:24:56.292 --> 00:24:57.413
wouldn't even answer some of them.
00:24:58.294 --> 00:25:00.154
Like, you have to learn to sing.
00:25:00.674 --> 00:25:00.994
Okay,
00:25:01.035 --> 00:25:03.076
but I sing like a screeching peacock.
00:25:05.277 --> 00:25:07.018
It was not a pleasant thing.
00:25:07.317 --> 00:25:07.837
No, no.
00:25:08.999 --> 00:25:11.099
It's good advice not to send someone.
00:25:11.119 --> 00:25:13.941
When someone asks you, what are my faults?
00:25:14.040 --> 00:25:15.082
Usually you don't tell them.
00:25:15.871 --> 00:25:16.351
But John,
00:25:16.451 --> 00:25:18.352
being the honest lawyer that he was,
00:25:18.392 --> 00:25:20.112
you know, said, okay, here they are,
00:25:20.132 --> 00:25:20.991
one through seven.
00:25:22.853 --> 00:25:24.593
But he lived through that exercise too.
00:25:25.313 --> 00:25:25.472
Yeah.
00:25:26.594 --> 00:25:26.773
Well,
00:25:28.733 --> 00:25:30.414
now it is a striking thing with the
00:25:30.454 --> 00:25:32.434
successful Adamses do marry well,
00:25:32.575 --> 00:25:34.415
that they have someone who
00:25:34.455 --> 00:25:35.756
can kind of keep them in
00:25:35.836 --> 00:25:37.276
line and keep them focused.
00:25:37.296 --> 00:25:38.135
And that does seem to be the
00:25:38.176 --> 00:25:39.596
case with John and Abigail,
00:25:39.696 --> 00:25:41.537
that she really does give him,
00:25:42.657 --> 00:25:44.038
you can't really imagine him without her.
00:25:44.763 --> 00:25:46.484
No, he called her his ballast.
00:25:46.625 --> 00:25:48.027
And for non-nautical people,
00:25:48.106 --> 00:25:51.189
a ballast is pieces of iron or things,
00:25:51.930 --> 00:25:53.030
heavy things put along,
00:25:53.270 --> 00:25:54.832
installed along the keel of
00:25:54.892 --> 00:25:56.773
a boat so that especially
00:25:56.834 --> 00:25:57.974
in those oceans when they
00:25:57.994 --> 00:25:59.155
would sail in the wintertime,
00:25:59.596 --> 00:26:00.797
sometimes they would frost up,
00:26:00.896 --> 00:26:02.518
cast over and just sink.
00:26:03.558 --> 00:26:05.780
You never got a clue that, you know,
00:26:05.800 --> 00:26:07.021
the boat was never coming
00:26:07.061 --> 00:26:08.242
back and the people were lost.
00:26:08.363 --> 00:26:11.184
And so John called Abigail
00:26:11.224 --> 00:26:13.346
his keel or his ballast.
00:26:14.559 --> 00:26:16.221
And that was very true all
00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:17.121
the way up until they
00:26:17.161 --> 00:26:19.221
retired from the presidency.
00:26:21.282 --> 00:26:23.663
Now, and Jefferson,
00:26:23.943 --> 00:26:25.244
she and Jefferson exchanged
00:26:25.285 --> 00:26:27.085
letters while Jefferson is president,
00:26:27.184 --> 00:26:28.266
actually after she learns
00:26:28.326 --> 00:26:29.665
that his daughter, Polly,
00:26:29.786 --> 00:26:31.507
whom she knew in France, had died.
00:26:31.567 --> 00:26:32.647
She died, Polly died.
00:26:32.807 --> 00:26:33.327
Yes.
00:26:34.929 --> 00:26:35.189
Well,
00:26:36.548 --> 00:26:38.529
when Thomas first came over to Paris
00:26:38.710 --> 00:26:40.671
and Thomas and John and
00:26:40.770 --> 00:26:42.892
Abigail were all together and
00:26:43.709 --> 00:26:44.628
walking amongst the
00:26:44.989 --> 00:26:46.069
shrubberies and everything
00:26:46.130 --> 00:26:47.730
in Paris and Versailles.
00:26:48.569 --> 00:26:48.910
She was,
00:26:49.009 --> 00:26:50.070
it was probably some of the
00:26:50.090 --> 00:26:51.310
happiest times of her life.
00:26:51.371 --> 00:26:54.071
And Tom Jefferson said it was for his too.
00:26:54.652 --> 00:26:55.612
And they,
00:26:55.731 --> 00:26:57.311
the three of them got along very well.
00:26:58.113 --> 00:26:59.952
And then the election of
00:26:59.952 --> 00:27:02.653
1800 happened and John was
00:27:02.693 --> 00:27:03.693
running against Thomas.
00:27:04.530 --> 00:27:06.211
And it was not pleasant.
00:27:06.271 --> 00:27:06.592
I mean,
00:27:06.652 --> 00:27:08.071
there's some of the things that
00:27:08.112 --> 00:27:11.053
Thomas paid Callender to write,
00:27:12.493 --> 00:27:16.355
muck smucking reporter to write,
00:27:16.494 --> 00:27:17.996
just destroy their friendship then.
00:27:19.435 --> 00:27:20.797
And then John got back at
00:27:20.836 --> 00:27:21.696
him not to give back
00:27:23.195 --> 00:27:23.976
but just to do it,
00:27:24.415 --> 00:27:26.817
of midnight appointments of
00:27:26.857 --> 00:27:28.519
judges just as he was leaving.
00:27:29.239 --> 00:27:32.541
And for some reason it wasn't known,
00:27:32.642 --> 00:27:35.763
but Jefferson always blamed
00:27:36.284 --> 00:27:38.365
his anger on the whole situation,
00:27:39.346 --> 00:27:44.990
on John installing those list of judges,
00:27:45.569 --> 00:27:47.151
which gets me to one of my
00:27:47.191 --> 00:27:48.491
two favorite quotes in the book,
00:27:49.260 --> 00:27:51.342
which I think is very interesting.
00:27:51.803 --> 00:27:52.903
I was always trying to show
00:27:52.962 --> 00:27:55.884
that Abigail was, in effect,
00:27:56.345 --> 00:27:57.566
John's chief of staff.
00:27:57.766 --> 00:27:59.267
And even though that phrase
00:27:59.326 --> 00:28:00.728
wasn't invented until, I think,
00:28:01.628 --> 00:28:04.529
the Truman years, she was, and many, many,
00:28:04.569 --> 00:28:07.352
many people, visitors and diplomats,
00:28:07.652 --> 00:28:09.554
wrote much of the same thing.
00:28:10.134 --> 00:28:12.895
And so when John lost the election,
00:28:13.536 --> 00:28:15.096
Abigail was leaving two weeks early.
00:28:15.136 --> 00:28:16.538
I'm getting the hell out of here.
00:28:16.557 --> 00:28:17.979
I'm going back to the farm.
00:28:18.898 --> 00:28:21.000
uh john sent her a letter
00:28:21.020 --> 00:28:21.941
and it caught up with her
00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:23.461
on the road and he says but
00:28:23.481 --> 00:28:25.323
what about the judges I
00:28:25.383 --> 00:28:26.683
need to know which judges
00:28:26.743 --> 00:28:27.865
I'm supposed to appoint and
00:28:28.164 --> 00:28:28.986
we have the president
00:28:29.086 --> 00:28:31.586
asking his wife that kind
00:28:31.606 --> 00:28:33.508
of says something and she
00:28:33.548 --> 00:28:36.049
wrote at the very end okay
00:28:36.109 --> 00:28:37.570
well I want to see the list
00:28:37.611 --> 00:28:40.593
of judges and in fact that
00:28:40.732 --> 00:28:42.213
not only solidifies the
00:28:42.253 --> 00:28:45.395
fact that she dealt in some avenue of uh
00:28:48.338 --> 00:28:49.219
being who she was,
00:28:49.900 --> 00:28:54.800
but it also became one of
00:28:54.861 --> 00:28:56.701
my two favorite quotes from the book.
00:28:58.282 --> 00:28:58.843
Yeah, that's great.
00:28:59.623 --> 00:29:00.884
And then she blames
00:29:00.983 --> 00:29:02.144
Jefferson for not
00:29:02.263 --> 00:29:04.325
reappointing John Quincy as
00:29:04.365 --> 00:29:05.766
he was like a bankruptcy
00:29:05.806 --> 00:29:06.846
commissioner in Boston.
00:29:06.925 --> 00:29:07.645
Yes, yes.
00:29:09.186 --> 00:29:11.067
They had a feud going on and off,
00:29:11.087 --> 00:29:12.948
and Jefferson would write
00:29:12.988 --> 00:29:14.769
her a little bit, and then Polly died,
00:29:14.828 --> 00:29:14.888
and
00:29:16.194 --> 00:29:17.895
And Abigail would say, I'm so sorry.
00:29:17.915 --> 00:29:19.497
I heard your daughter died.
00:29:19.616 --> 00:29:22.519
And he said, in effect, he said, yeah,
00:29:22.679 --> 00:29:23.318
Polly died.
00:29:23.599 --> 00:29:23.960
But, hey,
00:29:24.019 --> 00:29:25.421
I didn't appreciate the fact that
00:29:25.461 --> 00:29:26.500
your husband, you know,
00:29:26.560 --> 00:29:29.202
did the midnight appointment.
00:29:29.282 --> 00:29:30.084
You're useless.
00:29:30.144 --> 00:29:31.585
And so I don't think she
00:29:31.625 --> 00:29:32.464
ever wrote him again.
00:29:33.085 --> 00:29:34.306
But then, you know,
00:29:34.365 --> 00:29:36.267
John and Thomas started
00:29:36.867 --> 00:29:39.368
their 14-year-long wedding
00:29:39.849 --> 00:29:41.830
escapade that still lives on today.
00:29:42.671 --> 00:29:43.153
Yes, yes.
00:29:43.634 --> 00:29:44.857
And what is your other
00:29:44.959 --> 00:29:45.902
favorite quote from the book?
00:29:47.830 --> 00:29:49.152
The favorite quote, you mean?
00:29:49.551 --> 00:29:49.731
Yeah,
00:29:49.811 --> 00:29:51.132
you told us about the one about the
00:29:51.192 --> 00:29:51.652
judges.
00:29:51.951 --> 00:29:52.613
The judges.
00:29:52.653 --> 00:29:54.432
The other one was the one based,
00:29:54.593 --> 00:29:58.275
it's embedded inside the quote calling,
00:29:58.394 --> 00:30:00.214
I'm not apt to be intimidated, you know.
00:30:01.195 --> 00:30:02.796
And that one really struck
00:30:02.836 --> 00:30:04.757
me as a strong statement by
00:30:04.777 --> 00:30:06.356
a woman or anybody during those times.
00:30:06.896 --> 00:30:08.018
But what situation?
00:30:08.077 --> 00:30:09.198
And real quickly,
00:30:09.218 --> 00:30:10.318
what came around that was
00:30:10.818 --> 00:30:14.519
in September of 1776,
00:30:14.519 --> 00:30:15.721
The Americans had just lost
00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:17.301
the first big pitched battle,
00:30:17.561 --> 00:30:19.022
Battle of Long Island.
00:30:19.824 --> 00:30:20.763
And there were curious
00:30:20.864 --> 00:30:22.204
rumors running all around
00:30:22.265 --> 00:30:24.926
like John Adams had been killed.
00:30:24.967 --> 00:30:27.888
John Adams was taken prisoner and so on.
00:30:28.588 --> 00:30:30.309
And he wrote to her just as
00:30:31.770 --> 00:30:35.034
the whole thing was blowing up.
00:30:35.334 --> 00:30:37.615
You're good about not listening to rumors,
00:30:37.674 --> 00:30:38.455
especially these.
00:30:38.516 --> 00:30:39.175
Don't do that.
00:30:40.037 --> 00:30:41.377
And she goes, you don't have to tell me.
00:30:41.458 --> 00:30:43.298
I'm not apt to be intimidated, you know.
00:30:44.215 --> 00:30:46.457
And that says a lot about Abigail.
00:30:46.517 --> 00:30:48.096
She was a tough lady
00:30:48.156 --> 00:30:49.257
mentally and physically.
00:30:50.077 --> 00:30:51.637
Although she was, we think,
00:30:51.698 --> 00:30:54.638
about five foot tall, maybe 5'1",
00:30:55.398 --> 00:30:57.199
and had a dark complexion, we know,
00:30:57.259 --> 00:30:59.579
because a diplomat wrote to
00:30:59.640 --> 00:31:00.900
her later on and said, you know,
00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:01.740
when I first met you,
00:31:01.780 --> 00:31:02.961
I thought you were Egyptian.
00:31:02.980 --> 00:31:06.261
It's possible that she had a
00:31:06.301 --> 00:31:07.041
dark complexion.
00:31:07.122 --> 00:31:08.922
But I like the little things, too,
00:31:08.981 --> 00:31:11.202
that come up that you dwell on.
00:31:11.957 --> 00:31:12.356
That's good.
00:31:12.617 --> 00:31:14.378
Yeah, we were talking with John Smith,
00:31:14.519 --> 00:31:17.422
a author from the Tampa Bay area,
00:31:18.002 --> 00:31:19.144
now the Tampa Bay area,
00:31:19.344 --> 00:31:20.424
about his biography,
00:31:20.484 --> 00:31:22.247
The Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:31:22.307 --> 00:31:25.089
a woman not apt to be intimidated.
00:31:25.809 --> 00:31:27.192
And it's fortunate for us
00:31:27.311 --> 00:31:28.432
that she and John were
00:31:28.492 --> 00:31:29.753
separated for so long
00:31:29.794 --> 00:31:31.056
because they wrote so many
00:31:31.096 --> 00:31:31.955
letters to each other.
00:31:31.996 --> 00:31:33.377
But that must have had taken
00:31:33.438 --> 00:31:34.278
a toll on her.
00:31:35.519 --> 00:31:35.960
Well, she...
00:31:38.064 --> 00:31:39.464
doing things around the farm
00:31:39.605 --> 00:31:41.246
and taking care of business,
00:31:41.385 --> 00:31:42.946
John was always in the back of her mind.
00:31:42.987 --> 00:31:45.048
And why am I not getting letters?
00:31:45.167 --> 00:31:48.410
And Sam Adams just got to
00:31:48.450 --> 00:31:49.471
Congress and he's written
00:31:49.490 --> 00:31:51.672
his wife 10 letters and I have none.
00:31:52.452 --> 00:31:53.212
And why is that?
00:31:53.432 --> 00:31:55.213
It always took a toll on her.
00:31:56.775 --> 00:31:58.435
And once finally the whole
00:31:58.476 --> 00:32:02.519
thing got so ridiculous in 1778 or nine,
00:32:03.720 --> 00:32:05.721
she decided they got in a tiff.
00:32:06.441 --> 00:32:07.402
It's one of the only fights
00:32:08.944 --> 00:32:10.405
noted in their letters.
00:32:10.826 --> 00:32:11.925
She got in a tiff about,
00:32:11.945 --> 00:32:14.086
I'm getting tired of getting no letters.
00:32:14.426 --> 00:32:15.948
Sometimes he'd send her a big package.
00:32:15.988 --> 00:32:17.367
She'd be very happy,
00:32:17.689 --> 00:32:19.328
open it up and it's four newspapers.
00:32:19.348 --> 00:32:22.810
So they got in a tiff and
00:32:23.451 --> 00:32:24.971
John went back and forth
00:32:25.031 --> 00:32:26.612
and there's excerpts in it in the book.
00:32:26.652 --> 00:32:27.732
But John says, okay,
00:32:27.792 --> 00:32:28.712
now let me do some
00:32:28.772 --> 00:32:29.854
complaining for a change.
00:32:30.374 --> 00:32:32.295
So that was the whole letter
00:32:32.335 --> 00:32:33.454
writing thing was come to an end.
00:32:33.474 --> 00:32:35.256
And that's one of the reasons she decided,
00:32:35.296 --> 00:32:35.496
you know,
00:32:35.516 --> 00:32:36.895
I'm going to have to cross the
00:32:36.935 --> 00:32:38.136
Atlantic and go see John.
00:32:39.368 --> 00:32:41.131
But yeah, for the most part,
00:32:42.412 --> 00:32:43.814
they lived in those letters,
00:32:44.013 --> 00:32:46.676
and it's a treasure for all
00:32:46.696 --> 00:32:47.458
of us left over.
00:32:47.798 --> 00:32:50.740
Although she hated, she told many people,
00:32:50.820 --> 00:32:52.383
destroy this letter, burn this letter,
00:32:52.824 --> 00:32:53.845
because if you were a
00:32:56.835 --> 00:32:59.395
fine-heeled colonial woman,
00:33:00.215 --> 00:33:01.477
the proper thing to do was
00:33:01.576 --> 00:33:03.137
write the first letter and
00:33:03.198 --> 00:33:04.998
then copy it over and then
00:33:05.159 --> 00:33:06.719
with errors and things
00:33:06.778 --> 00:33:07.839
corrected and then copy it
00:33:07.900 --> 00:33:08.779
over and then copy it over
00:33:08.839 --> 00:33:09.980
two or three times and send it.
00:33:10.441 --> 00:33:12.721
And she would always mention that and say,
00:33:12.741 --> 00:33:13.882
I don't have time for that stuff.
00:33:17.344 --> 00:33:17.523
Yes.
00:33:17.544 --> 00:33:19.104
So we've been talking with John Smith,
00:33:19.144 --> 00:33:19.884
the author of The
00:33:19.984 --> 00:33:21.464
Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:33:21.545 --> 00:33:23.105
A Woman Not Apt to be Intimidated.
00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:25.821
A book coming out end of April.
00:33:25.922 --> 00:33:26.982
Look forward to it.
00:33:27.403 --> 00:33:28.924
And you can also check out
00:33:29.005 --> 00:33:30.425
what you have written on
00:33:30.506 --> 00:33:32.027
the American Journal of the
00:33:32.067 --> 00:33:33.127
American Revolution.
00:33:35.049 --> 00:33:37.050
So congratulations on doing
00:33:37.071 --> 00:33:38.051
this and thank you for
00:33:38.512 --> 00:33:39.493
giving us this new
00:33:39.653 --> 00:33:41.075
perspective on Abigail Adams.
00:33:41.601 --> 00:33:42.721
Well, thank you.
00:33:42.740 --> 00:33:43.821
I appreciate it very much.
00:33:44.281 --> 00:33:45.742
There's a few books on Abigail,
00:33:45.782 --> 00:33:47.563
but they haven't been written.
00:33:47.583 --> 00:33:48.544
The latest one hasn't been
00:33:48.564 --> 00:33:49.983
written for about 11 or 12 years.
00:33:50.704 --> 00:33:54.306
And she was due this human
00:33:54.365 --> 00:33:58.208
look to expose some of the, not expose,
00:33:58.248 --> 00:33:59.567
but to tell people that
00:34:00.067 --> 00:34:01.128
some of the things she said
00:34:01.148 --> 00:34:03.450
and were doing was funny.
00:34:03.490 --> 00:34:04.289
And I never heard this.
00:34:04.369 --> 00:34:05.049
For instance,
00:34:05.931 --> 00:34:07.891
when John and Abigail first
00:34:07.931 --> 00:34:09.112
retired to Peacefield,
00:34:11.001 --> 00:34:12.800
like a retired couple,
00:34:13.322 --> 00:34:14.442
John got addicted to
00:34:14.501 --> 00:34:15.762
reading romance novels.
00:34:16.742 --> 00:34:19.625
And she writes that to one
00:34:19.644 --> 00:34:21.105
of her girlfriends.
00:34:21.164 --> 00:34:23.166
I can't get them off these romance novels.
00:34:24.027 --> 00:34:25.387
So that's a thing that you
00:34:25.427 --> 00:34:26.068
never hear in the
00:34:26.846 --> 00:34:27.226
in the book.
00:34:27.726 --> 00:34:28.887
And I'd like to go into the
00:34:28.927 --> 00:34:30.909
fact that Abigail was an
00:34:31.010 --> 00:34:32.391
animal lover and none of
00:34:32.451 --> 00:34:33.192
those were put in,
00:34:33.452 --> 00:34:35.373
very few of them put in the book,
00:34:35.434 --> 00:34:37.376
but she loved animals.
00:34:37.456 --> 00:34:39.998
And when John Quincy's wife
00:34:40.038 --> 00:34:41.298
would visit Peacefield,
00:34:41.378 --> 00:34:42.500
she called it Noah's Ark
00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:44.081
because there's so many
00:34:44.161 --> 00:34:45.001
animals running around.
00:34:45.722 --> 00:34:47.324
But the funniest part was
00:34:48.005 --> 00:34:50.407
she liked songbirds and dogs.
00:34:50.586 --> 00:34:51.969
Those are her two favorite things.
00:34:52.548 --> 00:34:55.170
But cats, she couldn't figure out cats.
00:34:55.210 --> 00:34:55.331
Now,
00:34:55.371 --> 00:34:57.893
they had cats on the farm getting mice
00:34:57.932 --> 00:34:58.313
and so on.
00:34:58.333 --> 00:34:59.434
But when she went to France
00:35:00.213 --> 00:35:01.255
and she couldn't speak the
00:35:01.315 --> 00:35:03.235
language and was trying for
00:35:03.295 --> 00:35:04.817
some angle to get in with
00:35:05.036 --> 00:35:05.557
other French people,
00:35:06.157 --> 00:35:07.858
she knows they all have these cats.
00:35:08.739 --> 00:35:12.121
And she used the term kind of like cats.
00:35:12.141 --> 00:35:16.105
And it's not in her letters if she
00:35:17.744 --> 00:35:18.045
you know,
00:35:18.706 --> 00:35:21.349
ended up getting a cat or if she didn't.
00:35:22.230 --> 00:35:24.172
But that annoyed her, the whole cat thing.
00:35:25.213 --> 00:35:25.932
Do you know what kind of a
00:35:25.972 --> 00:35:27.655
dog Satan was or any of the
00:35:27.695 --> 00:35:29.436
other dogs that she had?
00:35:29.456 --> 00:35:31.119
It was some type of large,
00:35:32.400 --> 00:35:35.643
something like a wolfhound
00:35:35.702 --> 00:35:36.443
or something like that.
00:35:36.483 --> 00:35:38.505
But if you look at his paws, she said,
00:35:38.947 --> 00:35:39.226
you know,
00:35:39.266 --> 00:35:40.809
this is going to turn into a big boy.
00:35:41.447 --> 00:35:41.708
Wow.
00:35:41.748 --> 00:35:42.447
So it was a puppy.
00:35:43.628 --> 00:35:44.688
He might have done that just
00:35:44.789 --> 00:35:46.869
because the dog would turn
00:35:46.909 --> 00:35:48.291
into this huge monster
00:35:48.690 --> 00:35:50.231
inside their house and rolling around.
00:35:50.271 --> 00:35:53.672
But Satan was a good dog.
00:35:54.393 --> 00:35:55.414
She had another one named
00:35:55.474 --> 00:35:57.855
Juno that she absolutely loved.
00:35:57.875 --> 00:36:01.056
Some of them were her
00:36:01.155 --> 00:36:02.577
favorite because if you think about it,
00:36:03.376 --> 00:36:06.277
Back in those days, there were no CDs,
00:36:06.338 --> 00:36:09.380
no record players, no radios or anything.
00:36:09.420 --> 00:36:11.061
Music was very hard to come
00:36:11.081 --> 00:36:11.862
by unless you're in a
00:36:11.902 --> 00:36:15.085
church or some type of special occasion.
00:36:15.445 --> 00:36:16.746
So she liked songbirds
00:36:16.806 --> 00:36:17.567
because they had a
00:36:17.606 --> 00:36:19.889
melodious sound going through the house.
00:36:19.929 --> 00:36:20.789
And sometimes she says
00:36:20.809 --> 00:36:21.871
they're so damn loud,
00:36:22.311 --> 00:36:23.552
they'd have to tell them to shut up.
00:36:26.293 --> 00:36:27.235
Well, that's great.
00:36:28.675 --> 00:36:30.677
Of course, she bought the house in Quincy,
00:36:30.797 --> 00:36:31.257
or Braintree,
00:36:31.277 --> 00:36:32.617
and then she had to redo it.
00:36:32.679 --> 00:36:34.840
So she oversaw the rebuilding of,
00:36:35.119 --> 00:36:36.581
or actually the extension of it,
00:36:36.740 --> 00:36:38.161
because it wasn't as big as
00:36:38.322 --> 00:36:39.762
they thought when they were... No,
00:36:39.983 --> 00:36:41.784
it was... She knew it came up,
00:36:42.224 --> 00:36:44.106
and she was a good investment person.
00:36:44.126 --> 00:36:45.728
She always looked at any
00:36:45.907 --> 00:36:46.708
investment with the
00:36:46.788 --> 00:36:48.510
exception of one that I'll go into.
00:36:49.070 --> 00:36:51.271
But she bought Peacefield
00:36:52.112 --> 00:36:52.972
when it was just up for
00:36:53.012 --> 00:36:55.454
sale and started remodeling and re...
00:36:57.396 --> 00:36:58.798
enlarging and doing a lot of
00:36:58.838 --> 00:37:00.561
the work that needed to be
00:37:00.621 --> 00:37:01.521
done because nobody had
00:37:01.561 --> 00:37:02.523
lived in it for a little while.
00:37:03.525 --> 00:37:05.947
And that was going to be
00:37:05.987 --> 00:37:07.510
their retirement place,
00:37:08.070 --> 00:37:09.172
the second retirement place.
00:37:09.231 --> 00:37:11.034
First, she was buying some Vermont land.
00:37:12.545 --> 00:37:16.829
And she pretty much was, that was a scam.
00:37:17.550 --> 00:37:19.472
And she bought four or five
00:37:20.291 --> 00:37:22.153
acres of parcels of Vermont
00:37:22.193 --> 00:37:23.695
land up on the Canadian border,
00:37:24.076 --> 00:37:25.277
four or five parcels,
00:37:25.356 --> 00:37:26.737
because she bought one for
00:37:26.797 --> 00:37:27.918
both of her four children
00:37:28.318 --> 00:37:29.300
and then one for John.
00:37:29.480 --> 00:37:31.842
Because of course, being a married woman,
00:37:31.882 --> 00:37:33.023
she had absolutely no
00:37:33.083 --> 00:37:35.105
rights to do anything.
00:37:35.625 --> 00:37:37.445
And so she bought those and John told her,
00:37:37.465 --> 00:37:39.628
don't ever do that again.
00:37:41.356 --> 00:37:42.478
Wow.
00:37:43.418 --> 00:37:45.280
So she didn't buy more land in Vermont,
00:37:45.340 --> 00:37:45.800
but she did.
00:37:45.902 --> 00:37:47.663
No, no, Vermont.
00:37:47.782 --> 00:37:49.664
The parcels went to the boys,
00:37:50.565 --> 00:37:51.947
and they even had a hard
00:37:52.007 --> 00:37:55.351
time in their will dumping those turkeys.
00:37:57.813 --> 00:37:58.153
Thank you.
00:37:58.393 --> 00:37:59.835
I know there's a lot more in the book.
00:37:59.916 --> 00:38:00.876
Anything else we should talk
00:38:00.936 --> 00:38:02.018
about before we let you go?
00:38:04.699 --> 00:38:06.541
Just the idea, well,
00:38:06.601 --> 00:38:07.942
we could talk about Hayden
00:38:08.121 --> 00:38:10.123
and the squatter situation,
00:38:10.202 --> 00:38:12.304
which is just like we do today,
00:38:12.465 --> 00:38:15.246
or slavery and the Adamses.
00:38:17.527 --> 00:38:20.268
Well, what about slavery and the Adamses?
00:38:20.329 --> 00:38:21.429
Or we can have you back to
00:38:21.469 --> 00:38:23.130
talk about when the book came out.
00:38:23.931 --> 00:38:26.072
Well, slavery, most people don't,
00:38:26.193 --> 00:38:27.833
another one of those unexpected,
00:38:28.474 --> 00:38:29.175
don't know that in the 1770s,
00:38:29.195 --> 00:38:29.474
all slavery,
00:38:31.985 --> 00:38:33.646
Slavery existed in all 13
00:38:33.646 --> 00:38:34.666
colonies or states.
00:38:35.706 --> 00:38:39.867
And believe it or not, Abigail's father,
00:38:39.907 --> 00:38:43.568
who was a congressionalist minister,
00:38:45.389 --> 00:38:47.148
Abigail grew up in a
00:38:47.188 --> 00:38:48.748
household with four or five slaves.
00:38:49.889 --> 00:38:52.369
And she was, starting with her adulthood,
00:38:52.429 --> 00:38:54.251
she was adamantly, John too,
00:38:55.030 --> 00:38:57.030
both adamantly against slavery.
00:38:58.110 --> 00:39:00.632
Privately, Abigail wondered if slavery
00:39:01.773 --> 00:39:05.753
slavery wasn't paid back for
00:39:05.813 --> 00:39:08.753
the sin to America of slavery.
00:39:09.333 --> 00:39:11.914
And then, and then in her other,
00:39:14.054 --> 00:39:16.315
in her other life,
00:39:17.516 --> 00:39:19.516
she probably got off track there.
00:39:22.717 --> 00:39:23.016
Okay.
00:39:23.036 --> 00:39:25.077
So she sees slavery as a sin
00:39:25.697 --> 00:39:27.677
and the revolution,
00:39:27.697 --> 00:39:29.177
we have all of these ways
00:39:29.257 --> 00:39:30.277
of paying for it.
00:39:30.297 --> 00:39:30.838
And then she,
00:39:31.615 --> 00:39:33.297
They don't own slaves, the Adamses.
00:39:34.157 --> 00:39:37.179
Publicly, she wondered if the hypocrisy,
00:39:37.239 --> 00:39:38.420
which everybody knew was
00:39:39.081 --> 00:39:40.201
there but didn't say anything,
00:39:40.280 --> 00:39:41.461
if the hypocrisy of
00:39:42.202 --> 00:39:43.202
Americans fighting for
00:39:43.222 --> 00:39:44.324
their freedom was
00:39:44.344 --> 00:39:48.065
hypocritical to preventing
00:39:48.186 --> 00:39:50.306
others from being free.
00:39:50.407 --> 00:39:52.208
So it was no easy thing.
00:39:52.268 --> 00:39:53.949
But she had one slave named Phoebe,
00:39:55.369 --> 00:39:56.851
and Phoebe became part of
00:39:56.891 --> 00:39:59.693
the family after Abigail's
00:40:00.413 --> 00:40:01.193
father passed on.
00:40:02.557 --> 00:40:03.338
And she,
00:40:03.858 --> 00:40:05.199
when they were in England and
00:40:05.260 --> 00:40:06.942
France for an extended period of time,
00:40:07.382 --> 00:40:08.682
Phoebe and her husband
00:40:08.722 --> 00:40:09.704
would stay inside their
00:40:09.724 --> 00:40:11.284
house and do things and
00:40:11.304 --> 00:40:13.067
keep it warm and things like that.
00:40:15.628 --> 00:40:17.869
But the squatter, the squatter story,
00:40:18.010 --> 00:40:19.070
and there's,
00:40:19.130 --> 00:40:21.873
it was in the news headlines
00:40:21.914 --> 00:40:23.675
yesterday about squatting.
00:40:23.875 --> 00:40:27.197
So it still goes on, but real quickly,
00:40:27.358 --> 00:40:28.679
she had hired this guy
00:40:28.719 --> 00:40:30.880
named Hayden in Braintree.
00:40:31.324 --> 00:40:32.545
And his two sons in history
00:40:32.565 --> 00:40:35.527
doesn't even know which Hayden it was.
00:40:35.586 --> 00:40:36.427
What's his name?
00:40:37.068 --> 00:40:37.628
But he hired,
00:40:37.807 --> 00:40:39.568
she hired Hayden and the two
00:40:39.608 --> 00:40:41.570
boys and almost immediately the boys,
00:40:42.329 --> 00:40:42.530
well,
00:40:42.751 --> 00:40:44.652
she hired him to do work in the
00:40:44.711 --> 00:40:47.833
fields and the two boys
00:40:47.893 --> 00:40:49.833
almost immediately enlisted
00:40:49.893 --> 00:40:51.054
in the army because the pay
00:40:51.094 --> 00:40:51.735
was much better.
00:40:51.755 --> 00:40:54.675
And so paraphrasing it,
00:40:54.755 --> 00:40:56.876
she went out to any Hayden
00:40:56.936 --> 00:40:57.898
was living in the,
00:40:58.501 --> 00:41:00.963
john adams birth house right
00:41:00.963 --> 00:41:03.365
75 feet from yeah yeah it
00:41:03.385 --> 00:41:05.547
was and she says well your
00:41:05.748 --> 00:41:06.768
boys are gone so I guess
00:41:06.789 --> 00:41:08.489
you have to go and this is
00:41:08.530 --> 00:41:09.650
another story about women's
00:41:09.690 --> 00:41:11.632
rights I guess you have to
00:41:11.672 --> 00:41:13.213
go and he goes no I don't
00:41:13.233 --> 00:41:14.153
think I'm going anywhere
00:41:15.215 --> 00:41:19.117
and he would not budge and
00:41:19.137 --> 00:41:22.541
then finally abigail wrote
00:41:22.581 --> 00:41:25.023
to john adams and said you
00:41:25.063 --> 00:41:26.384
have to get this guy out of
00:41:26.423 --> 00:41:27.125
here and don't
00:41:28.106 --> 00:41:29.887
Don't make me look bad on this.
00:41:30.007 --> 00:41:30.547
I'm serious.
00:41:30.688 --> 00:41:31.387
You need to get out.
00:41:32.068 --> 00:41:34.530
John, being the average lawyer, said,
00:41:34.550 --> 00:41:37.652
I'm going to give you a piece of paper,
00:41:38.273 --> 00:41:39.313
gets four or five of your
00:41:39.353 --> 00:41:41.155
friends to notarize it,
00:41:41.235 --> 00:41:42.076
that you're signing it,
00:41:42.376 --> 00:41:43.336
take it to the sheriff.
00:41:43.757 --> 00:41:44.737
I'll let them know that
00:41:44.898 --> 00:41:46.719
you're coming and the
00:41:46.759 --> 00:41:48.440
sheriff will evict Hayden.
00:41:49.260 --> 00:41:51.262
And then the communication
00:41:51.302 --> 00:41:52.884
goes dark and we don't know
00:41:52.923 --> 00:41:54.385
what happened if Hayden got out.
00:41:54.844 --> 00:41:55.824
Well, we know he got out,
00:41:55.945 --> 00:41:58.146
but two and a half years later, she,
00:41:58.367 --> 00:42:00.748
Abigail, paid for Hayden to leave.
00:42:01.088 --> 00:42:01.929
She hated doing that.
00:42:03.210 --> 00:42:04.431
She didn't even write to John.
00:42:04.471 --> 00:42:05.411
She was writing to a
00:42:06.132 --> 00:42:07.213
congressional aide or so.
00:42:07.733 --> 00:42:08.614
Wow.
00:42:09.896 --> 00:42:15.739
Well, problems in the Adams household.
00:42:16.059 --> 00:42:18.322
So we've been talking with John Smith,
00:42:18.681 --> 00:42:21.463
author of The Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:42:21.523 --> 00:42:23.405
A Woman Not Apt to be Intimidated.
00:42:24.135 --> 00:42:25.237
I look forward to reading it.
00:42:25.297 --> 00:42:26.277
Thank you for this.
00:42:26.338 --> 00:42:27.260
And thank you for all of the
00:42:27.320 --> 00:42:28.621
other work you've done,
00:42:28.661 --> 00:42:30.202
really telling stories and
00:42:30.402 --> 00:42:33.025
about the things we didn't know.
00:42:33.045 --> 00:42:35.228
It's been great reading your
00:42:35.268 --> 00:42:36.009
work over the years.
00:42:36.088 --> 00:42:37.411
I might look forward to more of it.
00:42:38.030 --> 00:42:39.152
Well, thank you very much, Bob.
00:42:39.193 --> 00:42:39.492
Thank you.
00:42:41.304 --> 00:42:43.226
And so I want to thank Jonathan Lane,
00:42:43.266 --> 00:42:43.865
our producer,
00:42:43.905 --> 00:42:45.728
and then our listeners around the world.
00:42:46.188 --> 00:42:46.668
Every week,
00:42:46.789 --> 00:42:48.349
I thank people in particular
00:42:48.409 --> 00:42:49.811
places who are tuning in.
00:42:49.851 --> 00:42:51.373
And if you are in one of these places,
00:42:51.432 --> 00:42:53.434
send Jonathan Lane an email,
00:42:53.494 --> 00:42:55.876
jlane at revolution250.org,
00:42:55.936 --> 00:42:57.378
and they'll send you some
00:42:57.418 --> 00:42:58.818
of our Rev 250 stuff.
00:42:58.878 --> 00:42:59.980
We got a nice message the
00:43:00.019 --> 00:43:01.621
other day from someone in Long Beach,
00:43:01.661 --> 00:43:02.382
California.
00:43:03.282 --> 00:43:03.902
So this week,
00:43:03.943 --> 00:43:05.525
I want to thank our listeners
00:43:05.605 --> 00:43:07.106
in actually Quincy and
00:43:07.166 --> 00:43:08.606
Weymouth in Massachusetts.
00:43:08.646 --> 00:43:08.766
Yes.
00:43:09.588 --> 00:43:10.650
franklin tennessee
00:43:11.150 --> 00:43:13.273
steubenville ohio seneca
00:43:13.293 --> 00:43:15.416
falls new york henrietta
00:43:15.516 --> 00:43:18.018
oklahoma and tampa palm
00:43:18.059 --> 00:43:19.742
harbor and new smyrna beach
00:43:19.902 --> 00:43:20.623
in the great state of
00:43:20.643 --> 00:43:21.864
florida so thank you all
00:43:21.923 --> 00:43:23.586
and all places between and
00:43:23.606 --> 00:43:24.967
beyond and now we will be
00:43:25.027 --> 00:43:26.891
piped out on the road to boston