For the most part, Mrs. Adams’ adversity was the result of society at the time. Abigail was a very strong minded, independent woman. From the beginning, when other colonial girls in her home town of Weymouth, Mass. were learning to read for the sake of reading Bible passages, sewing, and cultivating good manners to catch a husband, she wanted more. Her father, the good Reverend William Smith - one of the few Parsons of the time to have a college education- taught all of the Smith girls to read and write. Abigail was not however, ever able to be allowed to study with the “great masters” who taught the male members of her family. The fact that she could not, she later said was one of the most crushing disappointments of her life. 

However, she was determined to learn all she could on her own, and would become one of the best read women of her time. She was definitely a lady who bucked the system of the time.  While she wouldn’t exactly be considered a Gloria Steinem of the revolutionary set, she knew the importance of education for females.

One could not deny that one of the most important plates Abigail was known to spin was the plate for her family.   As her husband’s law practice and financial situation improved, Abigail’s responsibilities as a wife expanded. John’s political aspirations often meant that her dreams of running the farm in partnership with him often turned into the reality of being left to run things on her own.  She shouldered the responsibility of overseeing servants, handling the farm accounts, and preparing the food for the family.   Not only did she have more animals to feed on their farm, but she also had to entertain more colonists of influence who came to call.

When John Adams’ ambition led him to become involved in more political activities, he moved his family to Boston.  Abigail was no longer near her parents and other sisters.  Her loneliness was lessened only by her ever expanding immediate family.  This meant she was raising children, tending the farm, and dealing with the growing hostilities between the British and the Colonists without the help of the extended family she had always counted on for support.   Boston of 1768 also had soldiers performing their daily drills practically outside the windows of the Adams’ home.  One day, her oldest son, John Quincy Adams came home to find his uncle dressed in a minute man uniform with a musket slung on his back, and his mother, Abigail, in the kitchen melting all of her treasured pewter spoons in a large kettle to make bullets!

Spinning the plate of her country had Abigail, along with the other women of the time, sacrificing their way of life.  During the war, Abigail was known to provide food and lodging for soldiers who stopped in at the Adams’ at all hours of the day and night.

Additionally, in opposition to the Townsend Acts of 1767, which placed a tax on shipments of goods coming to America from England WITHOUT consent from colonial legislatures, the men of the colonies decided that they would retaliate by boycotting all products manufactured in England.  Abigail went the route of other women and wove her own fabric, made crude handmade pins, and began to serve coffee instead of tea.  By the way, Massachusetts women did not vote, or hold office.  They had to depend on their fathers or husbands to represent them in public.  Slowly, the penny began to drop for these men.  Women were very necessary to their plans for rebellion against the British crown.  They were the ones who managed the day to day activities in the households, not the men.  Without the women, this little boycott would not succeed.  The Townsend Acts were eventually repealed in 1770…except the tax on tea.  You know the rest of that story!

Abigail also spun the plate of being a sounding board for her husband’s ideas for the fledgling country.   After her 1764 marriage, Abigail suffered through many long absences of her husband due to his career.  As a lawyer, John Adams traveled the circuit and could be away from home for weeks at a time.  It was during one of these absences that Abigail gave birth to their daughter Nabby.  In a time when dealing with business affairs was a no- no for women, Abigail traded livestock, hired help, bought land, oversaw construction, and supervised the planting and harvesting. "I hope in time to have the reputation of being as good a Farmess as my partner has of being a good Statesman," she once wrote. Along with all of these responsibilities, Abigail was in constant contact with her husband via letters they sent to one another.  While we are very used to the immediate contact of email, Facebook, texting, etc, these letters took time to get from one place to another.  If Abigail had a question about how something was to be done on the farm, or with the accounts, or if she needed advice from her husband on a childrearing matter, it took a little more time than we are used to waiting today.  Likewise, John shared his thoughts and fears about the new county’s growing pains and imminent war with his wife in these letters. 

After John Adams was elected to the First Continental Congress in Sept. of 1774, Abigail was once again left alone.  This time with three very young children to care for, and the beginnings of the Revolutionary War literally exploding all around her!  On October 24, 1774, Mrs. Adams spent her 10th anniversary at home alone with the children in Braintree.   Massachusetts Delegate Adams was too busy in congress to note the occasion.  There aren’t too many excuses that would fly to miss your 10th anniversary, but to be working on forming a new country would probably warranta pass on the occasion...maybe.

 John depended on Abigail for input on the Declaration of Independence as well as the Constitution.   Whether he was in Philadelphia, or France, or on any of his other travels, Abigail spent a lot of time writing John letters.  The letters between John and Abigail Adams are well known for not only the exchange of news of family and everyday events, but they also reflected how much John Adams relied on Abigail’s opinion of what was going on in the war, and of the events that were going on in the Continental Congress. Even after her tenure in the White House, Abigail used her writing talents to defend her husband and his policies. In a letter of July 1, 1804, Mrs. Adams took the opportunity to defend ex-president Adams's last-minute or "midnight" appointments, which had come under fire by the Republicans. Incoming President Jefferson and John Adams did not become epistolary friends again for another nine years. 

Plate spinners also like to micromanage.  The have a better way for everyone to do everything.  Kind of like the overworked career woman who won’t get a maid because a maid could never clean the house as well as she does?  Don’t laugh, they exist!  Plate spinners were also born to organize.  Check out their closets…they’re perfect!  Do you know any who alphabetize recipes?    However, they are also human, and they can’t do it all. 

Abigail tried to spin all of the plates to make the best life she could for her and her family.  Many of us could be considered guilty of the same.  Spinning all of those plates can definitely let some things fall through the cracks.  Her relationship with some of her children and children- in- law was not always the best.   Two of Abigail’s sons, Charles and Thomas, suffered from the Smith family stigmas of alcoholism and depression.  Her daughter Abigail “Nabby” married Colonel William Stephens Smith.  This was not a good marriage, and Col. Smith left the family for very long periods of time, without anyone knowing his whereabouts.  Abigail considered him “wholly devoid of judgment” and grew very weary of his many get rich quick schemes and questionable business dealings.  She even discussed with Nabby the possibility of divorce, totally unheard of at that time.  Unfortunately, Nabby died of breast cancer at the age of 48.

When her son John Quincy first married Louisa Johnson in 1797, Abigail could not be accused of being entirely open and friendly to her new daughter-in-law. They did have their problems.  In one letter to Louisa, Abigail pointed out the necessity to be frugal and to shun frivolity if she was to become a wife of her son.  Always suspicious of foreigners, Abigail also thought her European daughter-in-law lacked the substance of a sturdy American born woman, and didn’t think she would last long…literally!
     

However, Abigail soon found out what many of plate spinners find out.  You can’t be all things to all people.  No matter how hard you try to spin all of the plates, unless you’re good enough to be booked on Ed Sullivan, something’s going to come crashing to the floor.  For Abigail, the plate that seemed to always hit the floor first was her plate for women’s rights. Considered one of the earliest advocates of equal political, economic and social rights for women, Abigail saw marriage as a partnership.  In a time when women gave up all legal rights to their husbands, Abigail wanted equal legal status as men, and fought, unsuccessfully, to have women included in the Declaration of Independence.

In a letter written in March 1776, she urged her husband to take women's rights into consideration if and when the colonies gained independence: "In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors … If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to promote a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."  Ouch!  She obviously got nowhere with this, and asked her friend Mercy Otis Warren to join her in petitioning Congress so that the women could get some sort of say in the laws of the land.  When her friend didn’t reply, she once again wrote her husband about the unfairness of not taking into consideration the women of the land.  She said “I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives.”   While Adam’s didn’t seem to listen to his wife on these matters, he did manage to bring up the subject to Brigadier General Joseph Palmer under the guise of voter’s rights. 

Abigail also believed that another outcome of the Revolutionary War should be improved education for women. In the summer of 1776, she wrote another letter to her husband stating: "I most sincerely wish that our new constitution may be distinguished for Learning and Virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women”.

Boy did she have it in a nutshell!  However, while she never did seem to give up on her cause, this was one of the plates she had to let crash to the floor.  Voting rights for women didn’t get rolling until 1920.  Sometimes, we have to prioritize.  It is obvious that many other plates were spinning in her life at the time, men still had the upper hand, and she wasn’t able to overcome the ol’ boys club.  In this case it wasn’t a mistake that led Abigail Adams down the path she traveled in life.  It was definitely adversity.  She could be the poster girl for the saying

“When life hands you lemons, make lemonade”.  Not that her life was so terrible, mind you, she was definitely of the privileged class.  She did have to overcome the adversity of war, sickness, and separation of the man she loved.      

     ☺So, plate spinners one and all, here is a bit of advice.  If you decide to take up the spinning of plates, you have to know this.  The more plates you have spinning, the greater the chance of having one of them crash to the floor.   So, if you insist on living your life to the Sabre Dance, be sure that it’s the cheap plate, not the Royal Doulton that crashes.