Abigail Smith Adams was a Puritan born and raised.

Abigail Adams: Intellectual Puritan

Abigail Smith (1744-1818) was born to William Smith and Elizabeth Quincy of Weymouth, MA, a family peppered with Congregational clergy. Her father was a minister of solid repute, and also an educator with a fine library.

Church services and long sermons exhorting congregants to exemplary behavior, and pious thought and deeds through reason and morality, was part of her unquestioned upbringing. While Abigail was taught the domestic arts of cooking, sewing and housekeeping, it was not her strongest suit. She was intellectually inclined and a conceptual thinker. She relished difficult, thoughtful books on government and philosophy, on history and political theory. Perhaps most important, she treasured the precepts of moral behavior and a sense of upright duty.

John and Abigail Adams, Puritan parents.

At nineteen, she married John Adams, and for the next fifty-four years enjoyed a particularly happy and well-balanced union. He was fortunate with a wife whose knowledge and good judgment made her an intellectual companion. She was fortunate with a husband who appreciated her brilliance and encouraged her to speak her mind. They were cut from the same moral cloth.

Thus when it fell mostly to her, to raise their children, Abigail Adams believed it was her bound duty to raise/influence the younger generation according to the moral teachings of her own youth, including apropos quotations. She and John expected the highest virtue from them and lost no opportunity to guide – and chastise them as needed. They both may have been a little more chastising than understanding. But again, they were Puritans, and that is how Puritans behaved.

AA: The Maternal Correspondent

Young John Quincy Adams

Abigail and John were separated on and off for the better part of a decade. She remained home with the children while he was in Philadelphia, but when her husband was dispatched for diplomatic service in Europe in 1778, he took John Quincy, their ten-year-old son with him. In 1780, Abigail wrote to her brilliant twelve-year-old son, as she would an adult:

“I cannot fulfill the whole of my duty towards you…without reminding you of a failing which calls for a strict attention and watchfull [sic] care to correct. …You must curb that impetuosity of temper, for which I have frequently chid you, but which properly directed may be productive of great good. …  It will be expected of you, my son, that, as you are favored with superior advantages under the instructive eye of a tender parent, your improvement should bear some proportion to your advantages. Nothing is wanting with you but attention, diligence and steady application…. If you indulge yourself in the practise [sic] of any foible or vice in youth, it will gain strength with your years and become your conqueror…. you will not swerve from her dictates, but add justice, fortitude and every Manly Virtue which can adorn a good citizen, do Honour to your Country, and render your parents supreemly [sic] happy, particularly your ever affectionate Mother.”

Charles Adams disappointed his parents.

A year later, father and son returned home briefly. When they departed again, he took nine-year-old Charles along. The parting of Mother and son was hard, and Abigail obviously understood the differences between the intellect and maturity of her two young sons.  She wrote them both in early 1781:

“My dear sons … I fear you will think Mamma is unmindful of you if she does not write… I hope you are both well and very good children which is the best News I can possibly hear from you.” 

It was decidedly a letter to children (rather than the adult letter she wrote to 12-year-old John Quincy.) It was maternal and obviously loving. She mentioned the mild weather and asks how it is in Holland and if they learned to skate well. But invariably, she was always exhorting them to be “good.”

So did Thomas Boylston Adams

Thomas Boylston (1772-1832) barely knew his father, who was serving in Philadelphia’s Continental Congress when Tom was a baby. Then John left for a decade in Europe. By the time he returned as Vice President in 1789, Tom was at Harvard. In 1796, the young man left for Europe to serve as secretary to his brother John Quincy.

Always mindful of her duty, she wrote him: “As I consider it one of my chief Blessings to have Sons Worthy of the confidence of their Country So I hope in imitation of their Father they will serve it with honor and fidelity, and with consciences void of offense, and tho they may sometimes,{sic] meet with ingratitude, [sic] they will have, “The souls [sic] calm Sunshine and the Heart felt Joy.”

Abigail’s nephew William Shaw was brilliant – but an alcoholic like his cousins.

The ever-vigilant Abigail also believed it her duty to “lecture” her nephew, William Shaw, who at twenty-one became President John Adams’ secretary. He was a caustic, misanthropic fellow, brilliant, but a chronic alcoholic, like many in the Smith-Adams family.

“… it would be well for the Youth of our Country to attend with the veneration due to an oracle to the following eloquent observations of the late mr Burk [Edmund Burke] upon Manners –  ‘… Manners are what vex or sooth, [sic], corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarism or refine by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible opperation [sic] like that of the air we breathe in. They give the whole form and contour to our Lives. According to their quality, they aid Morals, they supply them or they totally destroy them.”

Nevertheless, despite vigilant guiding or lecturing, Abigail’s four children did not always fare well. Only John Quincy rose to his parents’ exalted expectation (although he became “chastising” as well).

The Senior Adamses wound up providing a home for their son Charles’ wife and two daughters when he died from chronic alcoholism. They provided a home for two of their daughter Nabby’s children, when her husband proved improvident. Ditto a home for Abigail’s niece, the daughter of her alcoholic brother William. And eventually home for their alcoholic and improvident son Thomas, along with his wife and seven children.

Reads the letters of Abigail Adams. THey may be a little lecturing or chastising, but oh, the substance!

Sources:

Butterfield, L.H. (ed.) – The Book of Abigail and John – Harvard University Press, 1975

Levin, Phyllis Lee – Abigail Adams – St. Martin’s Press, 1987

Massachusetts Historical Society – Letters from Abigail to John Adams, 13-14 July, 1776

https://founders.archives.gov

https://www.biography.com/us-first-lady/abigail-adams