Key figures: Abigail Adams, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Abigail Smith Adams
Summary
Abigail Adams emerged in 1778 as a model of independent domestic and financial management amid war and transatlantic separation. When her husband John Adams departed Massachusetts in February 1778 to serve as commissioner to France during the formal negotiation of the Franco-American alliance, Abigail assumed full responsibility for managing the family farm, household, finances, and care of their children who remained in Massachusetts—coordinating wartime provisions and navigating currency inflation. Her documented correspondence from 1778, preserved in the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society and published in Founders Online, reveals her as an active political observer who relayed wartime news and intelligence back to John in Paris.
Abigail’s 1778 correspondence reflects the challenges facing American home-front women. She managed household finances amid the collapsing Continental dollar (then experiencing rapid devaluation), corresponded about the war’s progress and British military movements, and maintained the social standing of the Adams family in Massachusetts despite her husband’s absence and her own modest financial circumstances. She wrote frequently and urgently to John in Paris, sometimes expressing frustration with delayed letters and the dangers of wartime transatlantic communication. Her letters document the isolation of wives left behind: John departed in February 1778, and Abigail’s correspondence through the year reveals her managing household crises, agricultural decisions, and child-rearing alone.
Of particular significance is her September 1778 correspondence with her son John Quincy Adams, then 11 years old and in France with his father. She coached him on his education and moral development across thousands of miles of ocean, demonstrating how the Revolutionary War fragmented American families and forced women to parent across continents. Her letters reveal both her political acuity—she understood the significance of the Franco-American alliance her husband negotiated—and her domestic resilience in maintaining household stability during America’s financial and military crisis.
Abigail’s 1778 experience foreshadowed her later prominence in the early republic. Her reputation as a thoughtful political correspondent, established through her wartime letters, would contribute to her influence in John Adams’ later presidency (1797–1801). Contemporary accounts and later biographies recognized her role in supporting the Revolutionary cause through effective household management and steady correspondence that kept John Adams informed of home-front conditions and political developments.
John Adams’ Departure and the Adams Farm
On February 13, 1778, John Adams departed his home in Braintree (in the part of the town later incorporated as Quincy), Massachusetts, boarding the Continental Navy frigate Boston, bound for France with their ten-year-old son John Quincy Adams. Their departure left Abigail in sole charge of the Adams family farm in Braintree. She managed planting schedules, hired and supervised farmhands, negotiated with local suppliers, and made all financial decisions independently throughout 1778. Her letters from spring and summer 1778 document specific agricultural decisions: coordinating corn and potato plantings, deciding whether to sell hay at current market prices or store it against further depreciation, and navigating the wartime shortage of farm labor as men enlisted or fled to more lucrative wartime occupations.
The farm was the family’s principal economic asset during an economically destabilizing period. Abigail’s success in maintaining it as a productive enterprise while raising the three children still at home demonstrated the practical competence of women in the Revolutionary generation that formal records of the period systematically undercount.
Household Economics Under Currency Inflation
The collapsing Continental dollar directly threatened the Adams household. John Adams sent money from Paris, but the currency’s rapid depreciation — falling to 6:1 or worse against silver by late 1778 — meant nominally adequate remittances purchased far less than expected upon arrival. Abigail’s 1778 letters document her acute awareness of this problem: she tracked exchange rates, converted Adams’ remittances into stable commodities when possible, and invested available cash in land rather than currency to preserve household wealth against inflation. She purchased goods for resale at a profit as prices rose, effectively functioning as a small-scale commodity trader to offset the dollar’s decline. This financial improvisation, documented in the Adams Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, illustrates how American households coped with the broader revolutionary war financing crisis through individual economic adaptation rather than public relief.
Political Correspondent and Intelligence Source
Abigail Adams’ 1778 letters to John in Paris served a political function beyond personal communication. Writing from Massachusetts, she reported on British military movements and Loyalist activities, public morale, news from Congress, and local responses to wartime policy. Her July 1778 letters described Massachusetts public reaction to the Carlisle Peace Commission’s overtures — confirming that Patriot opinion firmly rejected any settlement short of full independence. John Adams relied on Abigail’s dispatches to understand the home-front political landscape he had left behind, making her an informal intelligence source in his diplomatic work even from across the Atlantic.
She also maintained an active correspondence with Mercy Otis Warren, another politically engaged Massachusetts woman who was simultaneously building her own network of political commentary in 1778. Both women occupied similar positions — educated, politically informed wives of prominent Patriots, managing households independently — and their mutual correspondence created a small but significant network of women’s political analysis that operated outside formal political institutions.
Guiding John Quincy Adams from Afar
Among the most distinctive aspects of Abigail Adams’ 1778 correspondence was her sustained guidance of her eleven-year-old son John Quincy Adams, then attending French schools in Paris. Her 1778 letters to him stressed moral education, intellectual development, and civic obligation. She urged him to study Latin, French, and Greek intensively; to observe European political life carefully; and to regard his time abroad as service to the American republic’s future leadership needs. Her September 1778 letter advised him to practice the languages he heard daily and treat France as an irreplaceable educational laboratory.
These letters reveal her as an educator forming the next generation of American leadership across thousands of miles of ocean — a role Revolutionary-era women exercised through correspondence and domestic authority rather than through formal institutions. That John Quincy Adams would become the sixth President of the United States gives retrospective weight to the educational investment Abigail made during the 1778 separation.
Significance
Abigail Adams’ 1778 experience exemplifies the indispensable but often overlooked work of American women during the Revolutionary War. Her independent management of property, finances, and household during her husband’s diplomatic service abroad demonstrates that wartime governance was not solely a military and political phenomenon—it extended into the domestic sphere where women bore responsibility for economic survival. Her correspondence illuminates the parallel experience of separation and uncertainty faced by American families and reveals how women’s political awareness developed through necessity and isolation. Her 1778 letters, preserved as historical documents, became part of the primary-source record of the Revolution and contributed to the recognition that women’s domestic work and political thought were integral to American independence.
See Also
- Mercy Otis Warren
- Continental Dollar Crisis of 1778
- Revolutionary War Financing in 1778
- Franco-American Alliance (1778)
- Valley Forge Encampment