Personal Statement: Abigail Adams As A Revolutionary Nation

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Second Paper Assignment: Abigail Adams Abigail Adams has been historically remembered for being the wife of the second president of the United States, John Adams, and the mother of the sixth, John Quincy Adams. A close historical examination of her life, however, reveals that she is someone who deserves to be understood on her own terms. As the title of Charles Akers’ biography of Abigail Adams puts it, she was truly a revolutionary American woman who espoused the republican ideology of virtue for self-government. Akers describes her as having “the widest range of experience” (Akers 1) out of all the American women of her time, as seen in the over two thousand letters written by her, mostly to her husband who was often on the road. Abigail …show more content…

Although it is certainly true that she was limited in many aspects as a woman, this paper will deny the assertion that Abigail Adams was excluded from significant participation in the American Revolution and early Republic due to her gender, because she was indeed politically active in holding and demonstrating strong beliefs about government, …show more content…

The main theme of the republican ideology during the time of the American Revolution was to practice virtue over luxury. Virtue, being putting the public good over personal interest, and luxury, being to desire personal wealth and comfort, Abigail Adams firmly believed in practicing virtue and having the important role as a republican mother of instilling that same virtue in her children. She believed there was a “responsibility of the mother in shaping the mind and character of the ‘tender twigs’ entrusted to her care” (Akers 29) to ensure the virtuous children be fit for self-government. She wrote, “I am sensible I have an important trust committed to me” (Akers 29-30), and saw her childrearing as vital to the revolutionary cause. As seen in her letter to one of her sons, John Quincy Adams, who is in France with his father as a young boy, Abigail encourages her son to see virtue in the hardship, that “great necessities call out great virtues” (“Letter to John Quincy Adams”). In this obvious time of hardship for her son, who was averse to going abroad at the age of twelve, she heartens him to see the positives and to become more upright from the experience. This uncomfortableness of new experience for John

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