Abigail Adams

Letters of Abigail Smith Adams, First Lady of the United States from 1797 to 1801 as the wife, to John Adams, her husband and president, provide a vivid picture of life in colonial Massachusetts. Abigail Adams (née Smith) mothered John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, and people see her as the first second lady and the second First Lady but only after her death coined the terms. Adams wrote the many letters, remembered today, to her husband, who meanwhile stayed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the Continental congresses. John Adams frequently sought the advice of his wife on many matters, and intellectual discussions on government and politics fill their letters. The letters are invaluable eyewitness accounts of the home front of the Revolutionary War as well as excellent sources of political commentary.