Abigail Adams — "Remember the Ladies," Behind-the-Scenes Influence

**Abigail Adams** was the founding generation's sharpest political observer who happened to be barred from every institution she could have run. Born Abigail Smith in 1744 in Weymouth, Massachusetts, to a prominent minister's family, she never attended school (women didn't), but she read voraciously from her father's and grandfather's libraries and became one of the most intellectually formidable people — of any gender — in 18th-century America. Her correspondence with her husband John Adams, spanning decades of separation during the Revolution and his diplomatic missions, constitutes one of the most extraordinary bodies of political writing in American history — and the primary source for understanding the private deliberations of the founding generation.