The Unexpected Abigail Adams with John L. Smith

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. 

Transcript

WEBVTT
 
 00:00:01.052 --> 00:00:01.853
 Hello, everyone.
 
 00:00:01.953 --> 00:00:04.294
 Welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast.
 
 00:00:04.375 --> 00:00:05.195
 I'm Bob Allison.
 
 00:00:05.235 --> 00:00:07.296
 I chair the Rev 250 advisory group.
 
 00:00:07.336 --> 00:00:09.819
 We are a consortium of about
 
 00:00:09.819 --> 00:00:11.480
 70 groups in Massachusetts
 
 00:00:11.541 --> 00:00:12.180
 planning ways to
 
 00:00:12.201 --> 00:00:13.141
 commemorate the beginnings
 
 00:00:13.182 --> 00:00:14.423
 of the American Revolution.
 
 00:00:14.983 --> 00:00:18.126
 And our guest today is John L. Smith, Jr.
 
 00:00:18.166 --> 00:00:19.266
 John, thanks for joining us.
 
 00:00:19.746 --> 00:00:21.748
 Oh, I'm pleasured with it.
 
 00:00:22.568 --> 00:00:24.789
 and john is uh let's see a
 
 00:00:24.850 --> 00:00:26.792
 long a series of careers he
 
 00:00:26.891 --> 00:00:28.472
 was in the air force
 
 00:00:28.533 --> 00:00:29.812
 reserve as well as the army
 
 00:00:29.873 --> 00:00:32.215
 reserve and he then spent a
 
 00:00:32.274 --> 00:00:33.936
 career as in corporate
 
 00:00:33.996 --> 00:00:35.756
 communications before
 
 00:00:35.856 --> 00:00:37.478
 finally retiring and devote
 
 00:00:37.518 --> 00:00:38.899
 himself to two real
 
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 passions one is acting he
 
 00:00:41.880 --> 00:00:43.781
 appeared in the conspirator
 
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 and in other films
 
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 And he's also a writer.
 
 00:00:48.484 --> 00:00:50.546
 You've written more than 30
 
 00:00:50.546 --> 00:00:53.590
 articles in the Journal of
 
 00:00:53.609 --> 00:00:54.710
 the American Revolution.
 
 00:00:54.811 --> 00:00:55.871
 And now you've come out,
 
 00:00:55.911 --> 00:00:57.774
 you've written a book on Abigail Adams,
 
 00:00:57.834 --> 00:00:59.515
 the unexpected Abigail Adams,
 
 00:00:59.555 --> 00:01:01.216
 a woman not apt to be intimidated.
 
 00:01:01.298 --> 00:01:03.539
 So thank you.
 
 00:01:04.299 --> 00:01:04.721
 Thank you.
 
 00:01:06.262 --> 00:01:07.843
 So what got you interested
 
 00:01:07.884 --> 00:01:08.765
 in Abigail Adams?
 
 00:01:09.263 --> 00:01:11.146
 Well, I was during the pandemic,
 
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 I started in the pandemic.
 
 00:01:13.287 --> 00:01:14.268
 I was thinking if I'm going
 
 00:01:14.289 --> 00:01:14.989
 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,
 
 00:01:21.114 --> 00:01:22.495
 filled with authentic
 
 00:01:22.536 --> 00:01:23.677
 quotations and so on.
 
 00:01:24.257 --> 00:01:25.237
 And so I started thinking,
 
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 I looked at the founders
 
 00:01:27.719 --> 00:01:29.262
 online carries all of the
 
 00:01:29.807 --> 00:01:30.787
 practically all of the
 
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 letters of all of the founders.
 
 00:01:33.567 --> 00:01:34.489
 And I read some Thomas
 
 00:01:34.509 --> 00:01:36.368
 Jefferson stuff is fine.
 
 00:01:36.989 --> 00:01:39.430
 But John Adams stuff was
 
 00:01:39.990 --> 00:01:42.611
 letters were pretty interesting,
 
 00:01:42.652 --> 00:01:43.731
 but every now and then John
 
 00:01:43.772 --> 00:01:45.513
 would ramble off into Latin.
 
 00:01:46.272 --> 00:01:47.614
 and lose everybody.
 
 00:01:47.733 --> 00:01:49.275
 Then I started reading reply
 
 00:01:49.314 --> 00:01:52.037
 letters from him and Abigail.
 
 00:01:52.117 --> 00:01:52.798
 I have to admit,
 
 00:01:52.878 --> 00:01:54.218
 I got hooked on Abigail
 
 00:01:54.278 --> 00:01:55.140
 because of all the things
 
 00:01:55.159 --> 00:01:55.859
 we've talked about.
 
 00:01:56.561 --> 00:01:58.822
 She addresses everything
 
 00:01:58.861 --> 00:02:01.004
 going on and what the world
 
 00:02:01.063 --> 00:02:02.204
 is like and what the world
 
 00:02:02.284 --> 00:02:05.447
 is like in Boston during the revolution.
 
 00:02:05.466 --> 00:02:05.887
 I've
 
 00:02:07.506 --> 00:02:09.068
 what their family life is going on.
 
 00:02:09.188 --> 00:02:10.289
 And also these little
 
 00:02:11.050 --> 00:02:12.173
 tidbits that she used to
 
 00:02:12.212 --> 00:02:13.854
 put into like the PS at the
 
 00:02:13.875 --> 00:02:14.575
 bottom of the letters.
 
 00:02:14.675 --> 00:02:16.998
 And I found many incredible,
 
 00:02:17.079 --> 00:02:19.262
 many of those that are very interesting.
 
 00:02:19.282 --> 00:02:19.582
 And that's,
 
 00:02:19.923 --> 00:02:21.825
 that was my first unexpected without it.
 
 00:02:24.052 --> 00:02:26.335
 And she does comment on everything.
 
 00:02:26.435 --> 00:02:27.855
 And you really get a sense
 
 00:02:27.895 --> 00:02:29.076
 of both Adamses as people.
 
 00:02:29.657 --> 00:02:29.957
 Yes.
 
 00:02:30.598 --> 00:02:31.199
 Yeah.
 
 00:02:32.199 --> 00:02:34.020
 She had very strong convictions.
 
 00:02:34.100 --> 00:02:35.641
 And she was a, I'll tell you,
 
 00:02:35.701 --> 00:02:37.603
 she was a tough lady,
 
 00:02:37.703 --> 00:02:39.064
 both physically and mentally.
 
 00:02:39.944 --> 00:02:41.967
 And it was a pleasure reading her stuff.
 
 00:02:42.967 --> 00:02:44.168
 And beautiful handwriting
 
 00:02:44.628 --> 00:02:46.330
 compared to everybody today
 
 00:02:46.409 --> 00:02:46.870
 type of writing.
 
 00:02:46.911 --> 00:02:47.411
 Right, right.
 
 00:02:48.524 --> 00:02:49.344
 And then she would write,
 
 00:02:50.185 --> 00:02:52.145
 after doing much of the yard work,
 
 00:02:52.606 --> 00:02:54.527
 the farm work during the
 
 00:02:54.568 --> 00:02:56.688
 day is hard to keep hired staff.
 
 00:02:58.471 --> 00:02:59.812
 She would come in and after
 
 00:02:59.872 --> 00:03:01.274
 dinner and putting everything away,
 
 00:03:01.313 --> 00:03:01.693
 she's like,
 
 00:03:01.834 --> 00:03:03.634
 people would call her today a super mom.
 
 00:03:04.536 --> 00:03:05.537
 And late at night,
 
 00:03:05.736 --> 00:03:06.638
 she would sit there at the
 
 00:03:06.677 --> 00:03:08.079
 desk and just write these
 
 00:03:08.740 --> 00:03:09.639
 beautiful letters.
 
 00:03:09.699 --> 00:03:10.820
 Sometimes she had to melt
 
 00:03:10.860 --> 00:03:13.203
 the ink if the ink was frozen.
 
 00:03:13.223 --> 00:03:14.264
 And that's the true story.
 
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 She would write these very
 
 00:03:17.266 --> 00:03:18.347
 beautiful letters.
 
 00:03:18.508 --> 00:03:20.149
 And I just found many,
 
 00:03:20.269 --> 00:03:22.411
 many of them were just gold mines.
 
 00:03:23.251 --> 00:03:24.050
 Oh, really, really.
 
 00:03:24.531 --> 00:03:26.472
 So what really surprised you about her?
 
 00:03:26.572 --> 00:03:27.491
 I mean,
 
 00:03:27.551 --> 00:03:28.752
 you've been thinking about this
 
 00:03:28.793 --> 00:03:29.693
 period for a while,
 
 00:03:29.733 --> 00:03:30.372
 and now you have this
 
 00:03:30.453 --> 00:03:32.212
 intense engagement with one person.
 
 00:03:32.252 --> 00:03:34.774
 So what did you find most surprising?
 
 00:03:35.574 --> 00:03:36.875
 Most surprising was that
 
 00:03:38.914 --> 00:03:39.694
 everything that she was
 
 00:03:39.754 --> 00:03:43.075
 involved with or trying to
 
 00:03:43.116 --> 00:03:44.977
 do was remarkable,
 
 00:03:45.056 --> 00:03:46.037
 not only for her and her
 
 00:03:46.076 --> 00:03:47.798
 family and the legacy of her family,
 
 00:03:48.157 --> 00:03:51.098
 but also very much supporting her husband,
 
 00:03:51.139 --> 00:03:52.699
 John, in all of it.
 
 00:03:54.022 --> 00:03:55.002
 And she never wanted to do
 
 00:03:55.122 --> 00:03:56.024
 anything that would bring
 
 00:03:56.063 --> 00:03:58.544
 discredit to John.
 
 00:03:59.025 --> 00:04:01.324
 And then overcoming some of her fears,
 
 00:04:01.365 --> 00:04:04.346
 like her biggest phobia was deep,
 
 00:04:04.665 --> 00:04:05.387
 dark water.
 
 00:04:07.247 --> 00:04:08.828
 There are very few bridges, if any,
 
 00:04:09.608 --> 00:04:10.407
 in America then.
 
 00:04:11.308 --> 00:04:12.729
 And just going over a deep
 
 00:04:12.808 --> 00:04:15.310
 river made her sweat and everything,
 
 00:04:15.370 --> 00:04:16.850
 let alone the Atlantic Ocean,
 
 00:04:16.910 --> 00:04:19.211
 which ended up going over
 
 00:04:19.290 --> 00:04:22.132
 just being united with John again.
 
 00:04:22.762 --> 00:04:24.142
 Wow, that's amazing.
 
 00:04:24.843 --> 00:04:26.244
 And you said she doesn't
 
 00:04:26.264 --> 00:04:27.043
 want to do anything to
 
 00:04:27.084 --> 00:04:27.964
 discredit her husband.
 
 00:04:28.004 --> 00:04:29.105
 She's very supportive of him.
 
 00:04:29.365 --> 00:04:31.266
 But then he, of course, is in politics.
 
 00:04:31.286 --> 00:04:32.187
 So there are a lot of people
 
 00:04:32.266 --> 00:04:33.367
 he tangles with.
 
 00:04:33.466 --> 00:04:35.567
 Does she have things to say
 
 00:04:35.627 --> 00:04:37.088
 about some of John's
 
 00:04:37.149 --> 00:04:38.410
 political adversaries?
 
 00:04:39.329 --> 00:04:40.250
 Yeah, a lot of them.
 
 00:04:41.451 --> 00:04:41.810
 And of course,
 
 00:04:41.850 --> 00:04:43.091
 she would read the newspapers,
 
 00:04:43.132 --> 00:04:43.651
 the main thing,
 
 00:04:43.711 --> 00:04:44.552
 and she got to hate
 
 00:04:44.612 --> 00:04:46.533
 newspapers here and really
 
 00:04:46.553 --> 00:04:48.935
 hate them in London and Paris.
 
 00:04:50.315 --> 00:04:50.836
 But yeah,
 
 00:04:50.896 --> 00:04:52.858
 some of the people would come out of the,
 
 00:04:56.600 --> 00:04:56.680
 oh,
 
 00:04:56.720 --> 00:04:59.822
 you might call it the fro of New York
 
 00:04:59.882 --> 00:05:01.083
 and Philadelphia.
 
 00:05:01.283 --> 00:05:02.223
 She would know that what
 
 00:05:02.244 --> 00:05:04.605
 they're saying is just totally false.
 
 00:05:04.685 --> 00:05:05.706
 I mean, completely false.
 
 00:05:05.766 --> 00:05:08.286
 And she hated that.
 
 00:05:08.346 --> 00:05:09.327
 There's a funny story when
 
 00:05:09.367 --> 00:05:10.588
 they were first retiring,
 
 00:05:11.278 --> 00:05:13.480
 retiring at the end of
 
 00:05:13.660 --> 00:05:17.103
 President John Adams' term in 1801,
 
 00:05:17.103 --> 00:05:18.204
 an opposition leader and
 
 00:05:18.305 --> 00:05:19.286
 owner of a newspaper,
 
 00:05:19.326 --> 00:05:20.526
 a scurrilous newspaper,
 
 00:05:21.166 --> 00:05:23.249
 gave Abigail a dog,
 
 00:05:23.369 --> 00:05:26.711
 which she was a huge pet lover.
 
 00:05:26.732 --> 00:05:28.074
 That's another thing that comes out.
 
 00:05:28.733 --> 00:05:30.696
 Gave her a big dog to take back,
 
 00:05:30.735 --> 00:05:32.637
 and she named the dog Satan.
 
 00:05:32.658 --> 00:05:33.478
 Wow.
 
 00:05:34.959 --> 00:05:35.519
 It's interesting,
 
 00:05:35.839 --> 00:05:37.540
 a political opponent gives her a dog,
 
 00:05:37.600 --> 00:05:38.000
 though.
 
 00:05:38.161 --> 00:05:39.461
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
 00:05:40.101 --> 00:05:42.283
 I think he was, well,
 
 00:05:42.324 --> 00:05:43.524
 let me just be nice to her
 
 00:05:43.564 --> 00:05:44.244
 on her way out.
 
 00:05:44.324 --> 00:05:47.305
 And she would just read the
 
 00:05:47.365 --> 00:05:48.706
 newspapers and just swear
 
 00:05:48.726 --> 00:05:50.747
 in her own way and just rip
 
 00:05:50.767 --> 00:05:51.687
 them to pieces.
 
 00:05:52.208 --> 00:05:53.749
 Because she was there listening.
 
 00:05:53.829 --> 00:05:55.170
 She knew what the story was.
 
 00:05:55.230 --> 00:05:56.949
 She heard it happening.
 
 00:05:57.930 --> 00:05:58.091
 Now,
 
 00:05:58.350 --> 00:06:00.552
 how had she acquired an education and
 
 00:06:00.591 --> 00:06:03.774
 the ability to be so literate,
 
 00:06:03.874 --> 00:06:04.314
 so erudite?
 
 00:06:05.028 --> 00:06:06.529
 Well, that's a good question.
 
 00:06:07.589 --> 00:06:08.230
 As usual,
 
 00:06:08.410 --> 00:06:10.071
 it was the mothers in the colonial days,
 
 00:06:10.151 --> 00:06:13.151
 it was the mother's job to
 
 00:06:13.252 --> 00:06:14.973
 train and educate the children.
 
 00:06:14.992 --> 00:06:15.812
 And then they could only do
 
 00:06:15.833 --> 00:06:16.913
 that up to a certain point,
 
 00:06:16.954 --> 00:06:17.814
 but that's okay because
 
 00:06:17.874 --> 00:06:21.096
 girls didn't need a future
 
 00:06:21.196 --> 00:06:22.136
 formal education.
 
 00:06:22.196 --> 00:06:23.976
 Boys, yes, not girls.
 
 00:06:24.076 --> 00:06:25.916
 And so she learned from her mother.
 
 00:06:26.937 --> 00:06:28.057
 And even if she could have
 
 00:06:28.098 --> 00:06:29.139
 gone to school and they had
 
 00:06:29.158 --> 00:06:30.139
 some in Massachusetts,
 
 00:06:31.139 --> 00:06:32.660
 she couldn't go because she
 
 00:06:32.699 --> 00:06:34.560
 had rheumatic fever.
 
 00:06:35.345 --> 00:06:35.865
 as a girl,
 
 00:06:36.146 --> 00:06:38.187
 and then that popped up all
 
 00:06:38.226 --> 00:06:39.168
 throughout her life.
 
 00:06:39.588 --> 00:06:40.908
 So to compensate for it,
 
 00:06:41.009 --> 00:06:44.052
 she read the libraries and
 
 00:06:44.112 --> 00:06:46.053
 had the dough of libraries
 
 00:06:46.173 --> 00:06:48.755
 at her father's house, her father's room,
 
 00:06:50.716 --> 00:06:51.858
 and her two uncles' house,
 
 00:06:52.317 --> 00:06:54.199
 one in Weymouth and one in Boston.
 
 00:06:54.779 --> 00:06:56.000
 And so she just devoured
 
 00:06:56.562 --> 00:06:57.903
 books whenever she could.
 
 00:06:59.394 --> 00:07:00.795
 And she and John certainly
 
 00:07:00.836 --> 00:07:02.057
 also shared a love of both.
 
 00:07:02.096 --> 00:07:03.699
 Yeah, absolutely.
 
 00:07:03.738 --> 00:07:04.759
 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
 
 00:07:15.632 --> 00:07:16.894
 going on in the world, becoming
 
 00:07:19.254 --> 00:07:19.855
 She'd sit in.
 
 00:07:20.235 --> 00:07:22.055
 John would host political
 
 00:07:22.115 --> 00:07:23.156
 meetings like Sons of
 
 00:07:23.196 --> 00:07:24.475
 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...
 
 00:07:47.708 --> 00:07:48.367
 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