Security to a certain extent. Discussing, this is what we should be doing. Energy sectors, water sectors, transportation sectors, aviation this is what swe should be doing. That is a good start. It is not enough. There will be a lot of debate and conflict. There should be. We will continue this conversation as the months go on. Senator jay rockefeller, chairman of the commerce, science, and transportation committee. Thank you for being on the the communicators. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] abigail would grow to be the equal. She has revealed herself as an18th century women but her concerns sound very modern to us today. John and Abigail Adams had become so prominent in the minds of americans because of the collection papers and the publications that have opened them up to the world. The story of Abigail Adams in the revolutionary wares the story of sacrifice, of commitment to country and abigail rose to the occasion. Abigail was adamantly opposed to slavery. She was quite a behind the scenes dynamo, think. You cannot rule without including what women want and what women have to contribute. The backdrop of the adams brief occupancy of the white house is what political defeat and personal tragedy. She is worried about her husband and defendeds him against slander. She is concerned about her children and their upbringing and their education. She could hold her own with anybody in her own time and she was her husbands equal. Abigail smith married john adams at age 19. Over 54 years of marriage, they have five Children Together including a future president. Ahead of the time in many ways, and a writer perhaps unparalleled to any first lady. Abigail pens this to her husband during the american revolution. All history at every age exhibits instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours. Good evening, welcome to cspans first ladys influence and image. For the next 90 minutes, will be with be learning more about abigail adam, the second first lady of the United States. We have two guests at our table who spent most of the professional careers learning about the adams and bringing their writings to the public. Let me introduce them to you. The author of numerous books including a writing life and abby gill and john portrait of a marriage. And james taylor, jim taylors the editor and chief of the adams paper at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Thanks to both of you and welcome. Well, Abigail Adams just by vir thief fact of being the wife of the second president and a mother of another president who earned her place in history. You say, in your book, she is an historical figure in her own right. How so . Primarily because she left us letters and we have a record of her life. Her letters are not ordinary. They are extraordinary. They are wonderfully written and there are many, many of them. So abigail was a letter writer at a time when women couldnt public all publication so her letters became her outlet and they are the best record we have of womens role in the american ref lugs and for the period of the Early National government for the United States. Last week in the program we learned with great sar row that Martha Washington burned the papers of her correspondence with her husband, george. Only two of them remained. We got the opposite here. Thousands and thousands of them. Explain the scope of the trove of materials that you have to work with as scholars through the writings of the adams family. The adams family gave two of the Massachusetts Historical Society a collection. We never accounted them individually, but probably 70,000plus documents over several generations and probably about 300,000 pages. For abigail and john, which is, i think, the most important of the collection, there are about 1170 letters they exchange. How frequently did they write . It depended. We dont have any letters after 1801 because after john leaves the white house, they are together almost all the time, but for a period, for example, when there is fairly regular mail delivery between massachusetts and philadelphia, or later washington, d. C. , they wrote at least once a week, and sometimes twice week. I almost think they were like phone calls. This letter is an interactive one. We hope you will take part. In 15 minutes, well take your telephone calls and put the phone number on the screen so you can phone in a question. There are two other ways you can be involved as well. If you go to twitter and use the hashtag first lady well include the tweet, the questions by twitter and you can go to cspans Facebook Page and we have posted a spot where you can send questions in tonight. Will actually start with a facebook comment. Sophia who writes, she looks like a tough cookie. Well, looking at the words of Abigail Adams, she of was she a tough cookie . Oh my goodness, no. Yes and no. In fact, one of the things that is important to understand about abigail, she started out as naive young woman who expected, her expectations where to have a normal life bike like her mother did. The revolution disrupted that and her whole life shifted, and this is one of the reasons she has become so very great a model for us as women is that she used the opportunity of this disruption in her life to grow as person. So she begins as naive young woman, and she does become a very sophisticated worldly, opinionated kind of woman. Think think this is one of the things that makes her most attractive. A good character in a novel develops overtime. She is like a good character in a novel. She develops. Well, what were her roots . Where was she born . What was the upbringing such she became a woman of writers . She was the daughter of a minister, reverend william smith. Her mother was descended from, there was mobility in new england, the clergy and the political world of new england of Massachusetts Baycol lonni so her mothers family were nortons and quincys and so she grew up in a household that was quite middle class for that time and had two sisters and one brother. She was, by all reports, sickly as a child, and therefore did not go to any kind of public schooling of which there were a few. But was educated at home by her mother and she read at random in her fathers library. When in the course of reading her wright did she become political . Can you describe her politics . I am trying to think. Very, very early on when john is active at the continental congress. She craves news. She wants the newspapers from philadelphia. She wants papers when they are published. We know she is consuming the news at that time. Because all the news was what was printed. She begins, i would say, by the mild 1770s she is onboard. And in what capacity . What is her political thinking . She was an ard ent revolutionary. She was very supportive, not only of the revolution, but the fact that john was participating, as a matter of fact, they were partners in everything that he did. As matter of fact, at some point, she writes to her as thanks her for being a partner in the activity. Later on, i think she is, i would say, perhaps more conservative than john in some ways when it came to national politics. We will be look at some of her letters throughout the program, but a very famous one is used in the open. Remember the ladies. That is a letter that spoke particular interest to you. You write that the scope of it. We always hear that section. Really much broader. Why is that letter significant in understanding Abigail Adams. Her letter does many things. My sense of abigail is that she wrote at night and she would enter a kind of referee, in which she followed the thought pattern wherever it went. So she changes topics in her letters very many times, and so it starts out with a political statement about why these southerners can favor slavery and still be, doing a rebellion against a tyranny. And she questions that . And she questions that. And then she moves on and, in the middle of a paragraph, remember the ladies statement. You guess on still further to the just that if john didnt like this idea, actually, it was remarkable thing, because he was actually in a position to do something, to make a change, because he was on the committee that was drafting the decoration of independence, so he actually could have made it move for womens rights at that time, and it is remarkable she did suggest that. Give us a sense of what powers women had in society at that time. I mean, they could not publish under their own names. They could not vote. How could women be influential . I think it is much more subtle thing. In the same way that, if a decision many times a decision ismated even today, and people think that the husband makes the decision, well, there is a Kitchen Table discussion that guess on before that, and i think that probably, in the adams household, there were a lot of Kitchen Table discussion between john and abigail, and abigail may not have been most obvious in making the decision, but i think she influenced jn a lot. We know much let later after the revolution when he has this political career, that she is influential in helping him formulate some of the ideas. I want to tell you a little bit about what the country looked like in 1800 as john adams was leaving office. We have some sta ticks that well put on the screen to give some of the scope. Foreexample, by that point, and the census in 1800, interestingly was done by john marshall, who went ton the supreme court, ultimately done by secretary of state james madison, all such familiar names from history in the census chief at that time. The population was 5. 3 million across 16 states. There were 998,000 blacks. About 19 of the population. Only 12 of them free. And that 5. 3 million was 35 growth in the country just in ten years since the 1790 census. One interesting thing though, the average Life Expectancy was just 39 years. The largest cities in the country were new york, philadelphia and baltimore, unchanged from ten years ago. What are the things we should take away from those statistics, that snap shot of america . Well, i think one of the things is there is an expansion going on. This is one of the things that is very difficult for the adams is because politics are changing and the changing politics means that they are new englanders, they are federalist. As time guess by, as the population moves south and westward, it makes it more difficult for the politics that they believe in. And again, were going to invite your telephone calls. Well go to calls and few minutes. I am told you want to read as you passage from one of the letters. I would like to remark on the 39year life span. Yes. That is not exactly accurate to the extent that if children died, much more rapidly, so that if a child survived at 12, probably the life span with a much longer. And many, many people lived into their 7os as the adams did. But the adams five children, now how many survived to adulthood . For you. Four. Right. You are getting a passage ready for us. You wanted to read us from the letter we tacked about earlier and remember the ladies. Right. Well, in this particular letter, abigail was writing about conditions in her life and what was going on in her world, and she said you have declared the independence, she knew john was on this committee, and by the way, in the 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 faithful to them than your ancestors, which is an old remarkable statement for a woman to have made in that era. Based on the relationship that we see detailed in the led of letters, would vit been a surprising thing for her to say . No, i dont think so at all. As we go back to the kit chen table, i am sure that before he rode off to philadelphia, she filled his ear with a lot of ideas along the way. But john and his response notes that there are several groups of people servant, slaves, et cetera, are also moved during this time to think about their rights and their independence. What was her viewpoint on slavery . She was opposed to slavery. She had a servant, a black servant who, in fact, had ban slave of her father, and i think she woman had, a was the story. Phoebe, did she have the right to be free after or continue as servant . I cannot remember. Abigail cared for her for the rest of her life. Right. After her parents died. Right. Right. Abigail cared for her. In fact, she lived in the adams house. Right. But the business was farm. And so how did they manage to work the farm . What kind of labor did they use to support family labor . Farming. They did have hired labor. It became very problematic for abigail during the war. The whole situation of having will be are on the land. I want to go back to the letter a little bit. Because you mentioned jns response to her. But what she does in this letter, in addition to saying,eas that southerners can support a revolution, when they themselves keep people in slavery, then she guess and says remember the ladies. Then she says, if you are fot going to Pay Attention to this, we ladies will have our own rebellion. Then it guess on if you are her to say, you should treat us the same way that god treats people. And she invokes the entire hierarchy. In this one letter, she brings out so many ideas, i would suggest that her threat to the revolution was one of the ways that the adams is related to anticipate other, which is they teased each other. His response to hers with a tease also. Well, it sounds to me as if every prop, any tribe, is going to make a revolution. And jokes are a way that people have of deescalating an argument, and it brings it down to normal, so one of the ways in which they relayed it it seems to me. These prolific letter writers, how did they meet each other . They met at her fathers house, we went as a dinner guest with a friend, a lifelong friend who Richard Cranch who then married the elder sister of be abigail. Abigail was only not yet 15 at that time that was not particularly, at least in his diary, was not particularly enthusiastic about her at first. Apparently, things changed over the years. He was nine years older than her. Was 23. He had a girlfriend at the time . Right. There is an amazing story that he wases about to propose to this woman. Right. And one of his friends bursts in and broke the mood, i guess you would say. Right. Then she went off and married somebody else. It came within a whisker, at least, proposing to somebody else. Right. She was lawyer. Would that have ban profession that her family appreciated her for . Well, the family just said it was not. When Charles Francis adams wrote about it. He suggested that the family disapproved of her marrying a lawyer. She was also very young when she met them. I think they were being protktive of her as well. Did she know she was going to be choose toking a life of politics . Well, no one knew about the revolution coming. I mean, it is one thing we have to keep in mind that all of this is happening period of time when there is no revolution. There was no ref lugs on the horizon. They think of themselves as british people. And sure, he was interested in politics the way young men were. He was, i think, running for office by this time. Very, very local. Yes. Right. His trajectory was to great lawyer in massachusetts. That is what he saw. Right. He was following that lawn. He probably would have been. Well, it is important to note, because these two were married for 54 years. As we are hearing from our guest, they were great partners. This was, even if it was in the beginning not the love match, it grew to become one. We have an example one letter. This is called the miss adorable letter well show it to you next. Thigh what is so appealing about the familys series is the intimacy that the letters reveal. The earliest extent letter we have dates to october 17, 62. He call it the miss of adorable letter because that is how john opens the letter. It is john writing to abigail. He says miss adorable by the same tongue that the hero sat up with you last night, i hear bye orderer to you give him as many kiss and as many hours of your company after 9 00 after he shall please to demand. And charge them to my account. He continues, i presume i have a good right to draw upon you for the kiss. Of consequence the accounts between us is in favor of yours. So very teasing afessing it a tone, and there is some wonderful moments in the courtship correspondence. It is fun during this sorries to bring the founding fathers, people that we see, and these very dimensional poses come to life and have real human personalities. These people were clearly having fun and enjoyed one another. I think, this is one of the most appealing things about john and abby gill and some of the other adams, but particularly jn and abigail. They have a life that you can follow because of the document. You see them in good times and in bad. You see death in the family. You see triumph. It is, i was going to say it is like abby, but pit is not exactly. It is a wonderful story. He reason it is because we have so many documents. There is texture there that you dont have with the other founders. Based on how you described her admonitions to john about remembering the ladies. Brenda elliot on twitter wants to know, would you say Abigail Adams was the mother of womens rights in the United States . I think one the things we know by reading abigails let hers that is women were aware of their subordinate role in the 18th century. Because we have abby gills letters where she writes, we know that she was not exemplary. Other women in the period of time, her good friend warned for for in tans, was totally agreeing with her, and totally a colleague, i think that one think of things we have learned in the Womens Movement in the late 20s, early 21st century that is we can trace the movement for womens rights back further and further in history and abigail happens to be an outstanding example because she left us letters that say these things. She was also eloquent. Not everyone could write like abigail. Abigail was wonderful writer. First telephone call. It come comes from jan watch usn new york city. Hi,ian, you are on. Hi, hi, good evening. So while abigail was certainly one of the first Great American female writers, she would b