WEBVTT
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome to the Revolution 250 podcast.
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I'm Bob Allison.
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I chair the Rev 250 advisory group.
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We are a consortium of about
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70 groups in Massachusetts
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planning ways to
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commemorate the beginnings
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of the American Revolution.
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And our guest today is John L. Smith, Jr.
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John, thanks for joining us.
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Oh, I'm pleasured with it.
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and john is uh let's see a
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long a series of careers he
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was in the air force
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reserve as well as the army
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reserve and he then spent a
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career as in corporate
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communications before
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finally retiring and devote
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himself to two real
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passions one is acting he
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appeared in the conspirator
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and in other films
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And he's also a writer.
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You've written more than 30
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articles in the Journal of
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the American Revolution.
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And now you've come out,
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you've written a book on Abigail Adams,
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the unexpected Abigail Adams,
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a woman not apt to be intimidated.
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So thank you.
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Thank you.
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So what got you interested
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in Abigail Adams?
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Well, I was during the pandemic,
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I started in the pandemic.
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I was thinking if I'm going
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to be locked up in
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isolation for one or two years,
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I can finally write that
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book that I've been
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mentally preparing for,
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filled with authentic
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quotations and so on.
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And so I started thinking,
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I looked at the founders
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online carries all of the
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practically all of the
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letters of all of the founders.
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And I read some Thomas
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Jefferson stuff is fine.
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But John Adams stuff was
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letters were pretty interesting,
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but every now and then John
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would ramble off into Latin.
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and lose everybody.
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Then I started reading reply
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letters from him and Abigail.
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I have to admit,
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I got hooked on Abigail
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because of all the things
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we've talked about.
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She addresses everything
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going on and what the world
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is like and what the world
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is like in Boston during the revolution.
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I've
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what their family life is going on.
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And also these little
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tidbits that she used to
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put into like the PS at the
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bottom of the letters.
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And I found many incredible,
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many of those that are very interesting.
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And that's,
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that was my first unexpected without it.
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And she does comment on everything.
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And you really get a sense
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of both Adamses as people.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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She had very strong convictions.
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And she was a, I'll tell you,
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she was a tough lady,
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both physically and mentally.
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And it was a pleasure reading her stuff.
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And beautiful handwriting
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compared to everybody today
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type of writing.
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Right, right.
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And then she would write,
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after doing much of the yard work,
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the farm work during the
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day is hard to keep hired staff.
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She would come in and after
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dinner and putting everything away,
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she's like,
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people would call her today a super mom.
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And late at night,
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she would sit there at the
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desk and just write these
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beautiful letters.
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Sometimes she had to melt
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the ink if the ink was frozen.
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And that's the true story.
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She would write these very
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beautiful letters.
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And I just found many,
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many of them were just gold mines.
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Oh, really, really.
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So what really surprised you about her?
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I mean,
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you've been thinking about this
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period for a while,
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and now you have this
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intense engagement with one person.
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So what did you find most surprising?
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Most surprising was that
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everything that she was
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involved with or trying to
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do was remarkable,
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not only for her and her
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family and the legacy of her family,
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but also very much supporting her husband,
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John, in all of it.
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And she never wanted to do
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anything that would bring
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discredit to John.
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And then overcoming some of her fears,
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like her biggest phobia was deep,
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dark water.
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There are very few bridges, if any,
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in America then.
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And just going over a deep
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river made her sweat and everything,
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let alone the Atlantic Ocean,
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which ended up going over
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just being united with John again.
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Wow, that's amazing.
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And you said she doesn't
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want to do anything to
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discredit her husband.
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She's very supportive of him.
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But then he, of course, is in politics.
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So there are a lot of people
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he tangles with.
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Does she have things to say
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about some of John's
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political adversaries?
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Yeah, a lot of them.
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And of course,
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she would read the newspapers,
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the main thing,
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and she got to hate
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newspapers here and really
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hate them in London and Paris.
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But yeah,
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some of the people would come out of the,
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oh,
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you might call it the fro of New York
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and Philadelphia.
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She would know that what
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they're saying is just totally false.
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I mean, completely false.
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And she hated that.
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There's a funny story when
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they were first retiring,
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retiring at the end of
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President John Adams' term in 1801,
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an opposition leader and
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owner of a newspaper,
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a scurrilous newspaper,
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gave Abigail a dog,
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which she was a huge pet lover.
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That's another thing that comes out.
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Gave her a big dog to take back,
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and she named the dog Satan.
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Wow.
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It's interesting,
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a political opponent gives her a dog,
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though.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I think he was, well,
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let me just be nice to her
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on her way out.
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And she would just read the
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newspapers and just swear
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in her own way and just rip
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them to pieces.
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Because she was there listening.
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She knew what the story was.
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She heard it happening.
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Now,
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how had she acquired an education and
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the ability to be so literate,
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so erudite?
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Well, that's a good question.
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As usual,
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it was the mothers in the colonial days,
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it was the mother's job to
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train and educate the children.
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And then they could only do
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that up to a certain point,
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but that's okay because
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girls didn't need a future
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formal education.
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Boys, yes, not girls.
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And so she learned from her mother.
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And even if she could have
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gone to school and they had
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some in Massachusetts,
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she couldn't go because she
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had rheumatic fever.
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as a girl,
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and then that popped up all
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throughout her life.
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So to compensate for it,
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she read the libraries and
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had the dough of libraries
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at her father's house, her father's room,
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and her two uncles' house,
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one in Weymouth and one in Boston.
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And so she just devoured
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books whenever she could.
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And she and John certainly
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also shared a love of both.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And he was so proud of
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Abigail in the beginning
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when she was doing all that,
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plus keeping up the household and so on.
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And that's how she really
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started picking up what was
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going on in the world, becoming
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She'd sit in.
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John would host political
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meetings like Sons of
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Liberty inside of his house,
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and she would sit in on him,
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and that's how she absorbed it,
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just like a sponge.
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And she had very strong
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opinions about a lot of things, too,
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which she shares with John
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and with others whom she writes.
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Very much on slavery,
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and they were like minds on slavery.
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But women's education, and of course,
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remember the ladies, and...
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investments,
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and they explored different
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avenues of things happening at the time.
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But she had very strong opinions,
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and most of all,
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they bordered along the
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same lines as John.
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Except for women's, well, no,
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not for women's education.
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Remember the ladies,
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there's only so much he
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could do during that time.
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Yeah,
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and then he doesn't take this seriously.
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No.
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Now, remember,
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the ladies was mostly what
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Abigail mostly meant on
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that was if you want to
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have a successful republic,
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you had to have educated citizens.
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And mothers were usually
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teaching the young kids.
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But when she said, remember the lady,
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she was talking again,
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mostly about protection of
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married women from abusive husbands.
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And that was another unexpected.
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I didn't know so much abuse
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probably went on in between.
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between husband and wives.
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And again, as you said,
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most of the reason for
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educating women was in
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their role as mothers.
00:08:55.490 --> 00:08:56.652
So can we talk a little bit
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about Abigail as a mother?
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Because most of their marriage,
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John is away and she is
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then responsible not only
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for the children, but for the farm,
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for the business.
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So what is she like as a mother?
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She is very organized and very
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When she has a task,
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she sees it and goes ahead with it.
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And whether it's six days a
00:09:16.280 --> 00:09:17.481
week or seven days a week,
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she was running an entire
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farm with hundreds of acres
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and also buying property
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while John was gone.
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So they had some type of retirement,
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she figured.
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And she invented an investment company,
00:09:31.115 --> 00:09:34.279
marketing company, where...
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She would be selling
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wholesale material that
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they bought from wholesale
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and bring it over here and sell it.
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So this is when they're in
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Europe that she's buying
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things there and selling them here?
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Well, John's buying things there.
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He thinks he had a terrible
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head for retail.
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business and sometimes he
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would buy things over there
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that were needed like
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handkerchiefs here and pay
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more than retail.
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And he'd send them over here
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and she would say, John, you just,
00:10:09.219 --> 00:10:10.038
I tell you what, John,
00:10:10.178 --> 00:10:11.099
don't do this anymore.
00:10:11.499 --> 00:10:12.298
I'll make friends.
00:10:12.318 --> 00:10:13.679
I'll make some contacts with
00:10:14.139 --> 00:10:15.539
people over there and buy them directly.
00:10:15.559 --> 00:10:16.600
And he was all in favor of that.
00:10:16.840 --> 00:10:18.159
He never got the wholesale
00:10:18.620 --> 00:10:19.860
retail connection.
00:10:21.821 --> 00:10:22.100
Yeah.
00:10:22.201 --> 00:10:24.341
And she was, um, in the meantime,
00:10:24.381 --> 00:10:25.361
don't forget there she's
00:10:25.442 --> 00:10:26.522
educating their children.
00:10:26.881 --> 00:10:27.062
Right.
00:10:27.385 --> 00:10:27.927
in the parlor,
00:10:27.947 --> 00:10:30.708
one of which was John Quincy Adams.
00:10:31.370 --> 00:10:32.990
How many children do the Adamses have?
00:10:33.751 --> 00:10:37.054
They had, actually, they had six children,
00:10:38.216 --> 00:10:39.716
two led to adulthood,
00:10:40.717 --> 00:10:43.740
and then two of their older girls,
00:10:43.941 --> 00:10:46.884
or younger girls, one died stillborn.
00:10:46.943 --> 00:10:48.264
It's very, very sad,
00:10:48.325 --> 00:10:49.446
and if you think the whole
00:10:50.006 --> 00:10:50.967
book is based upon
00:10:53.241 --> 00:10:54.702
happier, fun things,
00:10:55.082 --> 00:10:55.823
you have to get to that
00:10:55.884 --> 00:10:56.804
section because that was,
00:10:56.845 --> 00:10:59.366
and Abigail did a great job
00:10:59.427 --> 00:11:00.187
of describing it.
00:11:01.607 --> 00:11:04.390
Another baby girl lived 13 months.
00:11:04.811 --> 00:11:06.613
Oh, my goodness.
00:11:07.033 --> 00:11:08.134
That's what it was like then.
00:11:08.653 --> 00:11:09.335
Yeah, yeah.
00:11:10.134 --> 00:11:12.096
And we're talking with John Smith,
00:11:12.177 --> 00:11:14.578
author of The Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:11:14.739 --> 00:11:16.480
A Woman Not to be Intimidated,
00:11:16.581 --> 00:11:18.662
which gives us a look into
00:11:19.202 --> 00:11:21.924
the life and mind of Abigail Adams.
00:11:22.883 --> 00:11:24.303
And then one of the, of course,
00:11:24.384 --> 00:11:26.326
one of the sons is John Quincy Adams,
00:11:26.385 --> 00:11:29.048
but then Charles has troubles.
00:11:29.988 --> 00:11:30.248
Yeah.
00:11:31.149 --> 00:11:34.851
Charles was a kind of a, well,
00:11:34.892 --> 00:11:36.212
he was a tragic character.
00:11:37.133 --> 00:11:39.955
And I don't get into it,
00:11:40.014 --> 00:11:43.597
but there's rumors that he,
00:11:43.658 --> 00:11:44.357
I'll put it this way.
00:11:44.938 --> 00:11:46.600
The word was used sensitive
00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:48.301
when everyone talked about
00:11:48.341 --> 00:11:50.982
meeting Charles in America or in America.
00:11:51.962 --> 00:11:54.163
or in France or London,
00:11:55.163 --> 00:11:56.504
the word sensitive came up
00:11:56.543 --> 00:11:59.585
a lot and is touched on by a few people.
00:11:59.664 --> 00:12:00.686
And I didn't go there in the
00:12:00.706 --> 00:12:02.086
book because I have no idea,
00:12:03.025 --> 00:12:08.748
but he might have been of a different,
00:12:11.716 --> 00:12:14.596
sexual orientation and it
00:12:15.018 --> 00:12:17.138
possibly caused him to be a
00:12:17.198 --> 00:12:18.178
tragic alcoholic.
00:12:18.658 --> 00:12:20.440
Actually, Adam's family had,
00:12:21.000 --> 00:12:21.620
it seemed like,
00:12:21.660 --> 00:12:22.801
a predisposition for
00:12:22.860 --> 00:12:26.182
alcoholism going back through there.
00:12:27.682 --> 00:12:29.943
But Charles was a tragic
00:12:30.004 --> 00:12:33.206
figure as well as Nabi.
00:12:33.285 --> 00:12:35.567
Nabi had her share with
00:12:37.318 --> 00:12:38.899
There was no modern medicine, of course,
00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:41.883
and she felt something in
00:12:41.923 --> 00:12:46.505
her left breast around 1811.
00:12:46.505 --> 00:12:48.707
And this is shown in graphic
00:12:48.748 --> 00:12:50.528
detail in the HBO.
00:12:50.990 --> 00:12:51.690
Right, yeah.
00:12:52.149 --> 00:12:53.211
Although the location is
00:12:53.250 --> 00:12:54.491
different inside the house.
00:12:55.052 --> 00:12:58.215
And they operated and removed the cancer,
00:12:58.235 --> 00:12:59.216
and they were sure they got
00:12:59.235 --> 00:13:00.376
it all but two years ago.
00:13:00.677 --> 00:13:01.278
Two years later,
00:13:01.898 --> 00:13:04.039
she came back from her house in New York,
00:13:04.120 --> 00:13:06.522
and she knew it was the end.
00:13:10.485 --> 00:13:12.586
it was pretty tough it was
00:13:12.667 --> 00:13:14.688
yeah yeah and we don't
00:13:14.869 --> 00:13:16.750
really appreciate that that
00:13:16.850 --> 00:13:19.514
these uh the problems the
00:13:19.573 --> 00:13:21.254
lives that these people had
00:13:21.335 --> 00:13:25.078
um yeah and despite this
00:13:25.399 --> 00:13:27.181
they're doing these extraordinary things
00:13:27.778 --> 00:13:29.279
Yeah.
00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:30.639
There's been a few quotes
00:13:31.000 --> 00:13:32.500
that Abigail writes.
00:13:32.561 --> 00:13:34.041
I wonder if people in the future,
00:13:34.380 --> 00:13:36.322
and I'm paraphrasing this tremendously,
00:13:36.802 --> 00:13:38.342
I wonder if people in the
00:13:38.403 --> 00:13:39.964
future will appreciate or
00:13:40.043 --> 00:13:43.004
even know of the tragedies
00:13:43.065 --> 00:13:43.764
we've gone through.
00:13:45.981 --> 00:13:46.763
She could have had a,
00:13:48.043 --> 00:13:49.283
had she married John still,
00:13:49.724 --> 00:13:50.703
she could have had a great
00:13:50.764 --> 00:13:54.745
life just doing what she wanted to do,
00:13:54.806 --> 00:13:56.287
which was being a good wife,
00:13:56.326 --> 00:13:57.067
supportive wife,
00:13:57.726 --> 00:13:59.587
and raising educated children.
00:13:59.628 --> 00:14:01.489
That's basically all she wanted in life.
00:14:02.149 --> 00:14:03.490
But things intervene,
00:14:03.570 --> 00:14:04.649
outside things intervene,
00:14:04.690 --> 00:14:05.730
just as it does today.
00:14:06.410 --> 00:14:06.931
That's true.
00:14:07.051 --> 00:14:07.471
That's true.
00:14:08.032 --> 00:14:08.172
Now,
00:14:08.192 --> 00:14:10.273
do you think she was happy being a
00:14:10.373 --> 00:14:11.572
politician's wife and being
00:14:11.633 --> 00:14:12.894
so much in public life?
00:14:13.860 --> 00:14:14.561
Yes and no.
00:14:14.581 --> 00:14:14.980
I mean,
00:14:15.081 --> 00:14:17.501
she loved seeing how the sausage is
00:14:17.542 --> 00:14:19.081
made of supporting her
00:14:19.121 --> 00:14:21.602
husband and hearing being
00:14:21.643 --> 00:14:23.322
in the same room as the
00:14:23.602 --> 00:14:24.703
discussions went on and
00:14:24.744 --> 00:14:26.323
then getting so frustrated
00:14:26.384 --> 00:14:28.044
reading in the newspaper
00:14:28.125 --> 00:14:29.004
like it's like they weren't
00:14:29.044 --> 00:14:30.884
even in the universe, same universe.
00:14:30.945 --> 00:14:33.905
And so that part was very, very,
00:14:35.365 --> 00:14:38.366
very frustrating for her.
00:14:38.427 --> 00:14:39.326
She loved being home,
00:14:39.346 --> 00:14:41.008
but she liked being in the
00:14:41.067 --> 00:14:41.868
circle of things, too.
00:14:42.580 --> 00:14:42.740
Right.
00:14:43.240 --> 00:14:44.260
And then she, of course,
00:14:44.301 --> 00:14:46.602
grows up in Weymouth and a
00:14:47.644 --> 00:14:50.285
relatively small but prosperous place.
00:14:50.326 --> 00:14:51.886
And then she moves to what's
00:14:51.927 --> 00:14:53.248
now Quincy with her husband,
00:14:53.469 --> 00:14:54.249
a small house.
00:14:55.370 --> 00:14:57.772
And Boston to her was the metropolis.
00:14:57.792 --> 00:14:59.173
And then suddenly she is in
00:14:59.253 --> 00:15:00.793
Paris and in London.
00:15:00.813 --> 00:15:02.434
That must be a startling change.
00:15:02.796 --> 00:15:06.177
It was very startling to her.
00:15:06.479 --> 00:15:08.139
And my actually my favorite
00:15:08.159 --> 00:15:09.740
part of the book is when
00:15:09.801 --> 00:15:10.741
she gets on the ship.
00:15:12.062 --> 00:15:14.884
to go over to London and if
00:15:14.923 --> 00:15:15.465
you want to call them
00:15:15.504 --> 00:15:17.346
adventures and eye-opening experiences,
00:15:17.826 --> 00:15:18.847
the people and things she
00:15:18.927 --> 00:15:21.629
sees in France and Paris and in London,
00:15:22.711 --> 00:15:26.153
to me, and the fun stuff too overseas,
00:15:27.034 --> 00:15:29.716
she loved doing that.
00:15:30.157 --> 00:15:31.599
But after a few years, of course,
00:15:31.818 --> 00:15:32.980
she was homesick to be away.
00:15:33.399 --> 00:15:35.361
But many, many of the stories,
00:15:35.442 --> 00:15:37.644
the fun stories of Paris
00:15:37.823 --> 00:15:38.924
and London are in the book.
00:15:39.303 --> 00:15:40.464
And that's the type of
00:15:40.484 --> 00:15:42.004
flavor I wanted for the whole book.
00:15:42.664 --> 00:15:45.046
Yeah, it's really an extraordinary story.
00:15:45.125 --> 00:15:45.346
I mean,
00:15:45.666 --> 00:15:47.386
her observations of things and of
00:15:47.486 --> 00:15:48.927
people are terrific.
00:15:48.988 --> 00:15:50.307
And she has some, you know,
00:15:50.388 --> 00:15:51.548
her first encounter with
00:15:51.609 --> 00:15:52.668
Benjamin Franklin,
00:15:52.749 --> 00:15:54.110
and she has an exaggerated
00:15:54.149 --> 00:15:54.769
idea of the great.
00:15:54.789 --> 00:15:55.330
She said,
00:15:55.350 --> 00:15:56.309
we've always been taught to
00:15:56.389 --> 00:15:57.791
revere Dr. Franklin,
00:15:58.150 --> 00:15:59.692
and he must be a great Christian.
00:16:00.172 --> 00:16:01.772
And then when she gets to Noman Parish,
00:16:01.792 --> 00:16:03.052
she has something of a different view.
00:16:03.831 --> 00:16:05.653
something of a different, and she had a,
00:16:06.053 --> 00:16:06.953
her first meeting with
00:16:07.014 --> 00:16:08.534
Franklin was at her uncle's
00:16:08.554 --> 00:16:10.897
house in Mount Wollaston in
00:16:11.336 --> 00:16:12.018
Braintree then.
00:16:12.758 --> 00:16:15.539
And it was kind of, it was kind of so-so,
00:16:15.740 --> 00:16:16.000
you know,
00:16:16.059 --> 00:16:17.321
she wasn't impressed and she was
00:16:17.360 --> 00:16:18.501
let down by the fact that
00:16:18.822 --> 00:16:19.962
the great Benjamin Franklin,
00:16:19.982 --> 00:16:20.523
who had been a,
00:16:21.203 --> 00:16:23.645
like a media God when she was growing up,
00:16:24.426 --> 00:16:25.206
was kind of boring.
00:16:25.706 --> 00:16:25.947
Yeah.
00:16:26.687 --> 00:16:26.868
Yeah.
00:16:27.988 --> 00:16:28.828
She might've caught him on a
00:16:28.869 --> 00:16:30.070
bad day or something, but.
00:16:31.581 --> 00:16:32.861
It wouldn't talk a lot when
00:16:32.881 --> 00:16:33.761
he was in company.
00:16:33.841 --> 00:16:36.383
Throughout the book,
00:16:36.423 --> 00:16:37.864
I made a list of all of the,
00:16:38.104 --> 00:16:39.445
when you think about it, it's amazing.
00:16:40.024 --> 00:16:41.365
All of the people during the
00:16:41.424 --> 00:16:44.606
founding era that Abigail got to know.
00:16:45.267 --> 00:16:46.628
And I can rattle off a list of,
00:16:47.567 --> 00:16:49.568
of course she did.
00:16:50.129 --> 00:16:51.289
She worked with George and
00:16:51.309 --> 00:16:52.129
Martha Washington.
00:16:52.725 --> 00:16:53.865
in what they would call the
00:16:53.884 --> 00:16:54.885
White House back then.
00:16:55.806 --> 00:16:56.725
And Thomas Jefferson,
00:16:56.745 --> 00:16:57.927
certainly a love-hate,
00:16:58.067 --> 00:17:00.187
love-hate relationship with Jefferson.
00:17:00.888 --> 00:17:03.548
And believe it or not, Sally Hemings also,
00:17:03.628 --> 00:17:04.489
she got to know her for
00:17:04.528 --> 00:17:05.548
about three weeks when
00:17:05.808 --> 00:17:08.349
Jefferson sent for Pauli to
00:17:08.369 --> 00:17:10.089
come over and Sally Hemings.
00:17:10.470 --> 00:17:11.911
So she got to know her, and of course,
00:17:11.931 --> 00:17:12.310
Franklin.
00:17:12.790 --> 00:17:14.392
Paul Revere was their mailman.
00:17:14.451 --> 00:17:15.332
I think that's pretty cool.
00:17:15.352 --> 00:17:17.272
He would bring letters to the house.
00:17:18.192 --> 00:17:20.433
And the Lafayettes.
00:17:22.114 --> 00:17:24.734
Marquis and Adrienne, and John Paul Jones,
00:17:24.795 --> 00:17:27.596
which was not what she expected.
00:17:28.855 --> 00:17:30.375
Can you talk a little bit
00:17:30.415 --> 00:17:32.196
about her encounter with John Paul Jones?
00:17:32.217 --> 00:17:33.876
Because that's an unexpected pairing.
00:17:33.957 --> 00:17:37.458
It was at a dinner party in France,
00:17:37.758 --> 00:17:38.239
in Paris.
00:17:39.179 --> 00:17:41.298
And John Paul Jones was there.
00:17:41.398 --> 00:17:42.220
And I'll try to be...
00:17:44.619 --> 00:17:46.300
Abigail does it much better than I do.
00:17:46.361 --> 00:17:50.521
But he was very effeminate.
00:17:51.448 --> 00:17:52.188
And you would never think
00:17:52.228 --> 00:17:55.670
this from the- And he knew
00:17:55.750 --> 00:17:58.411
best which colognes to go
00:17:58.451 --> 00:17:59.990
with which dresses.
00:18:00.371 --> 00:18:04.173
And you read this and you go, well, okay.
00:18:04.413 --> 00:18:05.292
Not that that's bad,
00:18:05.333 --> 00:18:06.713
but he wasn't what I expected.
00:18:07.854 --> 00:18:10.015
The reason she wrote back to Mary,
00:18:10.335 --> 00:18:11.415
her sister in America,
00:18:11.895 --> 00:18:13.896
was after all the publicity
00:18:14.297 --> 00:18:15.836
John Paul Jones was getting
00:18:16.337 --> 00:18:17.438
here and in London,
00:18:17.758 --> 00:18:19.479
he wasn't what I was expecting.
00:18:21.624 --> 00:18:24.487
And then, of course, Alexander Hamilton.
00:18:27.368 --> 00:18:29.391
She was a believer in a
00:18:29.611 --> 00:18:35.115
pseudoscience called physiognomy.
00:18:35.135 --> 00:18:38.178
That's a term.
00:18:38.198 --> 00:18:40.279
And physiognomy told her
00:18:40.359 --> 00:18:42.221
when she looked in Alexander's eyes,
00:18:42.922 --> 00:18:43.782
she saw the devil.
00:18:44.884 --> 00:18:47.385
So needless to say that she
00:18:47.425 --> 00:18:49.407
wasn't a big fan of Alexander Hamilton.
00:18:50.663 --> 00:18:51.364
And other than that,
00:18:51.423 --> 00:18:56.369
King George III and Queen
00:18:56.430 --> 00:18:57.770
Charlotte and King Louis XVI.
00:18:58.913 --> 00:19:01.056
So did she meet King George III?
00:19:01.296 --> 00:19:01.796
Yeah.
00:19:01.836 --> 00:19:03.798
In fact, she met him a few times.
00:19:03.857 --> 00:19:05.278
When you go to London and
00:19:05.318 --> 00:19:06.619
you're the wife of a diplomat,
00:19:06.920 --> 00:19:07.881
you have to go to the
00:19:08.060 --> 00:19:10.363
levees or the circles about
00:19:10.442 --> 00:19:11.182
once a week or so.
00:19:11.542 --> 00:19:13.005
You'll meet both of them
00:19:13.045 --> 00:19:15.125
again or maybe one or the other.
00:19:15.787 --> 00:19:19.730
But when she describes those in her book,
00:19:20.250 --> 00:19:25.874
she's very almost modernly sarcastic.
00:19:25.933 --> 00:19:28.036
The first time, it was very, very nervous.
00:19:28.692 --> 00:19:30.733
And a few other times,
00:19:31.193 --> 00:19:32.955
she was writing to her sister Mary that,
00:19:33.796 --> 00:19:34.237
by the way,
00:19:34.297 --> 00:19:35.678
you have to wait for two or
00:19:35.718 --> 00:19:36.759
three hours sweating.
00:19:37.219 --> 00:19:39.320
And when the king or queen
00:19:39.820 --> 00:19:40.842
finally make it up to you,
00:19:41.242 --> 00:19:42.784
they always ask the same question.
00:19:43.463 --> 00:19:44.365
Did you walk today?
00:19:44.384 --> 00:19:48.449
And she answered, being very sarcastic,
00:19:48.489 --> 00:19:52.172
she answers back to him, yes, your sire.
00:19:52.892 --> 00:19:54.854
And really, she wrote afterwards to Mary,
00:19:55.454 --> 00:19:55.734
if I
00:19:57.842 --> 00:19:59.502
If I didn't have to get
00:19:59.583 --> 00:20:02.065
ready all day long for this stupid thing,
00:20:02.144 --> 00:20:02.865
I could have walked.
00:20:06.147 --> 00:20:07.528
But those type of things.
00:20:07.989 --> 00:20:08.710
Great.
00:20:08.769 --> 00:20:10.310
Yeah, we're talking with John Smith,
00:20:10.431 --> 00:20:12.752
author of The Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:20:12.813 --> 00:20:14.713
A Woman Not to be Intimidated.
00:20:16.494 --> 00:20:17.395
So what about her
00:20:17.536 --> 00:20:19.336
observations of King Louis
00:20:19.478 --> 00:20:21.239
XVI and Marie Antoinette?
00:20:21.806 --> 00:20:23.666
Those are the couple that
00:20:23.707 --> 00:20:25.728
she met the least number of times,
00:20:25.807 --> 00:20:27.009
maybe only once or twice.
00:20:29.410 --> 00:20:30.789
She was very sad when
00:20:32.330 --> 00:20:35.432
actually the king and queen
00:20:35.512 --> 00:20:37.433
fell in France.
00:20:38.334 --> 00:20:39.615
Thomas Jefferson was all for
00:20:39.674 --> 00:20:41.174
it and boosted her up in some letters.
00:20:42.996 --> 00:20:44.196
You can't expect to move from
00:20:45.345 --> 00:20:46.567
one political party to
00:20:46.666 --> 00:20:48.888
another in a pillow.
00:20:48.949 --> 00:20:52.232
So she thought they were treated unfairly,
00:20:52.472 --> 00:20:55.696
and she was no fan of kings and queens,
00:20:55.757 --> 00:20:57.878
but they were treated unfairly.
00:21:00.423 --> 00:21:02.244
And then there's a reaction
00:21:02.625 --> 00:21:03.605
in this country,
00:21:03.645 --> 00:21:05.906
an interesting reaction in this country.
00:21:06.186 --> 00:21:07.626
And then because John is
00:21:07.707 --> 00:21:10.087
writing about a civil war
00:21:10.127 --> 00:21:11.528
that happened in France and
00:21:11.588 --> 00:21:12.710
he sees the terror that's
00:21:12.730 --> 00:21:13.529
coming in France,
00:21:13.609 --> 00:21:14.590
he knows this is going to
00:21:14.611 --> 00:21:16.010
end in a military despotism.
00:21:16.050 --> 00:21:16.471
And for that,
00:21:16.510 --> 00:21:18.751
he's called the Duke of Braintree.
00:21:18.852 --> 00:21:20.932
He wants to establish a monarchy.
00:21:21.193 --> 00:21:22.653
And so how does she respond
00:21:22.673 --> 00:21:23.615
to this real intense
00:21:23.674 --> 00:21:24.914
criticism of her husband
00:21:24.954 --> 00:21:26.036
when he's vice president?
00:21:26.776 --> 00:21:27.076
Again,
00:21:27.136 --> 00:21:30.179
it was the fact that she was there
00:21:30.239 --> 00:21:31.079
through the whole thing on
00:21:31.319 --> 00:21:33.221
both sides of the Atlantic,
00:21:34.202 --> 00:21:35.063
knew the big picture,
00:21:35.963 --> 00:21:38.405
and they just wrote scurrilous rumors.
00:21:39.207 --> 00:21:40.867
And she hated it and ripped it up and
00:21:42.511 --> 00:21:43.813
I just did some swearing.
00:21:43.853 --> 00:21:46.973
In fact, when he was, John was president,
00:21:47.473 --> 00:21:48.114
John Adams,
00:21:48.875 --> 00:21:50.836
she acted like she wanted to
00:21:50.875 --> 00:21:51.635
be there for most of the
00:21:51.655 --> 00:21:52.855
time because this is the big league.
00:21:53.136 --> 00:21:54.037
She wanted to be there most
00:21:54.076 --> 00:21:55.176
of the time and John needed
00:21:55.217 --> 00:21:58.179
her desperately because without Abigail,
00:21:58.199 --> 00:22:01.519
he was just volcanic.
00:22:02.861 --> 00:22:06.422
And so she was there and she
00:22:06.481 --> 00:22:07.603
heard everything and she
00:22:09.554 --> 00:22:11.615
She just hated politics from
00:22:11.654 --> 00:22:12.335
that point on.
00:22:12.634 --> 00:22:19.897
There's a great quote that she did.
00:22:20.397 --> 00:22:24.318
Boiling fatty meat to politicians,
00:22:25.159 --> 00:22:27.240
if they're kept on the fire long enough,
00:22:27.900 --> 00:22:28.881
turned out to be much of
00:22:28.921 --> 00:22:29.961
the scum is rising.
00:22:30.020 --> 00:22:32.801
And that's what she equated to newspapers.
00:22:33.382 --> 00:22:35.903
Well, that's a great quote.
00:22:36.734 --> 00:22:37.996
But there's a lot of funny
00:22:38.115 --> 00:22:39.056
quotes in the book, too.
00:22:39.096 --> 00:22:41.597
I mean, just cute or funny ones.
00:22:41.657 --> 00:22:42.698
She meant some of them to be
00:22:42.738 --> 00:22:44.278
taken seriously and some not.
00:22:44.618 --> 00:22:45.559
For instance,
00:22:46.961 --> 00:22:48.080
she was somewhere and she was
00:22:48.121 --> 00:22:49.622
writing a letter to her uncle,
00:22:50.282 --> 00:22:50.923
Cotton Tufts,
00:22:50.962 --> 00:22:52.884
who was also not only a surgeon,
00:22:53.483 --> 00:22:55.986
but a pretty good bank investment person.
00:22:56.046 --> 00:22:57.787
And he's mainly the person
00:22:57.826 --> 00:22:59.887
who taught her debits and credits.
00:23:00.888 --> 00:23:03.430
And she was writing him a letter in it.
00:23:04.520 --> 00:23:07.442
went down and was talking about tax,
00:23:07.442 --> 00:23:09.104
6% tax and things like that.
00:23:09.144 --> 00:23:10.084
And at the very end of the
00:23:10.144 --> 00:23:11.625
PS where a lot of her stuff,
00:23:11.865 --> 00:23:13.986
good stuff is embedded, she said, hey,
00:23:14.046 --> 00:23:14.467
by the way,
00:23:14.507 --> 00:23:16.007
can you buy me two lottery tickets?
00:23:17.929 --> 00:23:18.469
Interesting.
00:23:18.888 --> 00:23:20.529
Because lotteries then,
00:23:20.769 --> 00:23:22.250
I think the two of that
00:23:22.290 --> 00:23:24.811
time was paying for a new
00:23:25.333 --> 00:23:27.554
building or road and a toll bridge.
00:23:27.993 --> 00:23:29.634
Hey, buy me a couple lottery tickets,
00:23:29.694 --> 00:23:29.954
okay?
00:23:29.974 --> 00:23:30.315
Interesting.
00:23:32.472 --> 00:23:33.472
Now, a few years ago,
00:23:33.512 --> 00:23:34.874
you wrote an article about
00:23:35.574 --> 00:23:38.174
John telling Abigail her faults, that is,
00:23:38.194 --> 00:23:39.454
sending her letters.
00:23:40.055 --> 00:23:40.974
Can we talk a little bit
00:23:40.994 --> 00:23:41.934
about that exchange?
00:23:42.615 --> 00:23:43.336
Sure.
00:23:43.776 --> 00:23:44.736
And unfortunately,
00:23:44.776 --> 00:23:47.356
this one's not in the book,
00:23:47.376 --> 00:23:48.497
but it'll be in a second
00:23:48.537 --> 00:23:50.377
thing of other quotations.
00:23:50.998 --> 00:23:53.878
But they were planning on getting married,
00:23:54.699 --> 00:23:55.638
John and Abigail.
00:23:56.311 --> 00:23:58.074
And John had to call it off
00:23:58.114 --> 00:23:59.414
at the last minute because
00:23:59.474 --> 00:24:00.596
he'd been exposed to
00:24:00.955 --> 00:24:03.518
positively and exposed to smallpox.
00:24:04.378 --> 00:24:06.661
And so he had to go through
00:24:07.682 --> 00:24:10.263
all the procedures to make
00:24:10.304 --> 00:24:13.166
yourself ready to take a
00:24:13.227 --> 00:24:15.588
shot or the drag of germs
00:24:15.648 --> 00:24:16.950
through your veins.
00:24:17.109 --> 00:24:19.172
And he was going to be gone from
00:24:20.230 --> 00:24:21.352
Abigail for a long time.
00:24:21.392 --> 00:24:22.592
And so when John had a lot
00:24:22.633 --> 00:24:24.433
of fresh time on his hands,
00:24:24.493 --> 00:24:25.374
it wasn't a good thing.
00:24:25.794 --> 00:24:27.174
No.
00:24:27.414 --> 00:24:28.276
Somewhere in the past when
00:24:28.316 --> 00:24:29.737
they'd been dating, he says, by the way,
00:24:29.836 --> 00:24:30.257
Abigail,
00:24:30.277 --> 00:24:31.178
I'm going to have to tell you
00:24:31.198 --> 00:24:34.480
some of the things wrong
00:24:34.500 --> 00:24:35.700
with you so you can fix them.
00:24:36.101 --> 00:24:38.221
And she had asked, being nice,
00:24:38.642 --> 00:24:39.442
would you tell me the
00:24:39.482 --> 00:24:41.263
things that bother you and I'll fix them?
00:24:41.903 --> 00:24:44.246
And so like a dumb husband he was almost,
00:24:44.905 --> 00:24:47.386
he sent Abigail a list of
00:24:47.448 --> 00:24:48.147
all the faults and
00:24:48.669 --> 00:24:50.589
And you can tell just by her
00:24:50.869 --> 00:24:54.152
stark language that she did
00:24:54.192 --> 00:24:55.692
not care for them and she
00:24:56.292 --> 00:24:57.413
wouldn't even answer some of them.
00:24:58.294 --> 00:25:00.154
Like, you have to learn to sing.
00:25:00.674 --> 00:25:00.994
Okay,
00:25:01.035 --> 00:25:03.076
but I sing like a screeching peacock.
00:25:05.277 --> 00:25:07.018
It was not a pleasant thing.
00:25:07.317 --> 00:25:07.837
No, no.
00:25:08.999 --> 00:25:11.099
It's good advice not to send someone.
00:25:11.119 --> 00:25:13.941
When someone asks you, what are my faults?
00:25:14.040 --> 00:25:15.082
Usually you don't tell them.
00:25:15.871 --> 00:25:16.351
But John,
00:25:16.451 --> 00:25:18.352
being the honest lawyer that he was,
00:25:18.392 --> 00:25:20.112
you know, said, okay, here they are,
00:25:20.132 --> 00:25:20.991
one through seven.
00:25:22.853 --> 00:25:24.593
But he lived through that exercise too.
00:25:25.313 --> 00:25:25.472
Yeah.
00:25:26.594 --> 00:25:26.773
Well,
00:25:28.733 --> 00:25:30.414
now it is a striking thing with the
00:25:30.454 --> 00:25:32.434
successful Adamses do marry well,
00:25:32.575 --> 00:25:34.415
that they have someone who
00:25:34.455 --> 00:25:35.756
can kind of keep them in
00:25:35.836 --> 00:25:37.276
line and keep them focused.
00:25:37.296 --> 00:25:38.135
And that does seem to be the
00:25:38.176 --> 00:25:39.596
case with John and Abigail,
00:25:39.696 --> 00:25:41.537
that she really does give him,
00:25:42.657 --> 00:25:44.038
you can't really imagine him without her.
00:25:44.763 --> 00:25:46.484
No, he called her his ballast.
00:25:46.625 --> 00:25:48.027
And for non-nautical people,
00:25:48.106 --> 00:25:51.189
a ballast is pieces of iron or things,
00:25:51.930 --> 00:25:53.030
heavy things put along,
00:25:53.270 --> 00:25:54.832
installed along the keel of
00:25:54.892 --> 00:25:56.773
a boat so that especially
00:25:56.834 --> 00:25:57.974
in those oceans when they
00:25:57.994 --> 00:25:59.155
would sail in the wintertime,
00:25:59.596 --> 00:26:00.797
sometimes they would frost up,
00:26:00.896 --> 00:26:02.518
cast over and just sink.
00:26:03.558 --> 00:26:05.780
You never got a clue that, you know,
00:26:05.800 --> 00:26:07.021
the boat was never coming
00:26:07.061 --> 00:26:08.242
back and the people were lost.
00:26:08.363 --> 00:26:11.184
And so John called Abigail
00:26:11.224 --> 00:26:13.346
his keel or his ballast.
00:26:14.559 --> 00:26:16.221
And that was very true all
00:26:16.240 --> 00:26:17.121
the way up until they
00:26:17.161 --> 00:26:19.221
retired from the presidency.
00:26:21.282 --> 00:26:23.663
Now, and Jefferson,
00:26:23.943 --> 00:26:25.244
she and Jefferson exchanged
00:26:25.285 --> 00:26:27.085
letters while Jefferson is president,
00:26:27.184 --> 00:26:28.266
actually after she learns
00:26:28.326 --> 00:26:29.665
that his daughter, Polly,
00:26:29.786 --> 00:26:31.507
whom she knew in France, had died.
00:26:31.567 --> 00:26:32.647
She died, Polly died.
00:26:32.807 --> 00:26:33.327
Yes.
00:26:34.929 --> 00:26:35.189
Well,
00:26:36.548 --> 00:26:38.529
when Thomas first came over to Paris
00:26:38.710 --> 00:26:40.671
and Thomas and John and
00:26:40.770 --> 00:26:42.892
Abigail were all together and
00:26:43.709 --> 00:26:44.628
walking amongst the
00:26:44.989 --> 00:26:46.069
shrubberies and everything
00:26:46.130 --> 00:26:47.730
in Paris and Versailles.
00:26:48.569 --> 00:26:48.910
She was,
00:26:49.009 --> 00:26:50.070
it was probably some of the
00:26:50.090 --> 00:26:51.310
happiest times of her life.
00:26:51.371 --> 00:26:54.071
And Tom Jefferson said it was for his too.
00:26:54.652 --> 00:26:55.612
And they,
00:26:55.731 --> 00:26:57.311
the three of them got along very well.
00:26:58.113 --> 00:26:59.952
And then the election of
00:26:59.952 --> 00:27:02.653
1800 happened and John was
00:27:02.693 --> 00:27:03.693
running against Thomas.
00:27:04.530 --> 00:27:06.211
And it was not pleasant.
00:27:06.271 --> 00:27:06.592
I mean,
00:27:06.652 --> 00:27:08.071
there's some of the things that
00:27:08.112 --> 00:27:11.053
Thomas paid Callender to write,
00:27:12.493 --> 00:27:16.355
muck smucking reporter to write,
00:27:16.494 --> 00:27:17.996
just destroy their friendship then.
00:27:19.435 --> 00:27:20.797
And then John got back at
00:27:20.836 --> 00:27:21.696
him not to give back
00:27:23.195 --> 00:27:23.976
but just to do it,
00:27:24.415 --> 00:27:26.817
of midnight appointments of
00:27:26.857 --> 00:27:28.519
judges just as he was leaving.
00:27:29.239 --> 00:27:32.541
And for some reason it wasn't known,
00:27:32.642 --> 00:27:35.763
but Jefferson always blamed
00:27:36.284 --> 00:27:38.365
his anger on the whole situation,
00:27:39.346 --> 00:27:44.990
on John installing those list of judges,
00:27:45.569 --> 00:27:47.151
which gets me to one of my
00:27:47.191 --> 00:27:48.491
two favorite quotes in the book,
00:27:49.260 --> 00:27:51.342
which I think is very interesting.
00:27:51.803 --> 00:27:52.903
I was always trying to show
00:27:52.962 --> 00:27:55.884
that Abigail was, in effect,
00:27:56.345 --> 00:27:57.566
John's chief of staff.
00:27:57.766 --> 00:27:59.267
And even though that phrase
00:27:59.326 --> 00:28:00.728
wasn't invented until, I think,
00:28:01.628 --> 00:28:04.529
the Truman years, she was, and many, many,
00:28:04.569 --> 00:28:07.352
many people, visitors and diplomats,
00:28:07.652 --> 00:28:09.554
wrote much of the same thing.
00:28:10.134 --> 00:28:12.895
And so when John lost the election,
00:28:13.536 --> 00:28:15.096
Abigail was leaving two weeks early.
00:28:15.136 --> 00:28:16.538
I'm getting the hell out of here.
00:28:16.557 --> 00:28:17.979
I'm going back to the farm.
00:28:18.898 --> 00:28:21.000
uh john sent her a letter
00:28:21.020 --> 00:28:21.941
and it caught up with her
00:28:22.000 --> 00:28:23.461
on the road and he says but
00:28:23.481 --> 00:28:25.323
what about the judges I
00:28:25.383 --> 00:28:26.683
need to know which judges
00:28:26.743 --> 00:28:27.865
I'm supposed to appoint and
00:28:28.164 --> 00:28:28.986
we have the president
00:28:29.086 --> 00:28:31.586
asking his wife that kind
00:28:31.606 --> 00:28:33.508
of says something and she
00:28:33.548 --> 00:28:36.049
wrote at the very end okay
00:28:36.109 --> 00:28:37.570
well I want to see the list
00:28:37.611 --> 00:28:40.593
of judges and in fact that
00:28:40.732 --> 00:28:42.213
not only solidifies the
00:28:42.253 --> 00:28:45.395
fact that she dealt in some avenue of uh
00:28:48.338 --> 00:28:49.219
being who she was,
00:28:49.900 --> 00:28:54.800
but it also became one of
00:28:54.861 --> 00:28:56.701
my two favorite quotes from the book.
00:28:58.282 --> 00:28:58.843
Yeah, that's great.
00:28:59.623 --> 00:29:00.884
And then she blames
00:29:00.983 --> 00:29:02.144
Jefferson for not
00:29:02.263 --> 00:29:04.325
reappointing John Quincy as
00:29:04.365 --> 00:29:05.766
he was like a bankruptcy
00:29:05.806 --> 00:29:06.846
commissioner in Boston.
00:29:06.925 --> 00:29:07.645
Yes, yes.
00:29:09.186 --> 00:29:11.067
They had a feud going on and off,
00:29:11.087 --> 00:29:12.948
and Jefferson would write
00:29:12.988 --> 00:29:14.769
her a little bit, and then Polly died,
00:29:14.828 --> 00:29:14.888
and
00:29:16.194 --> 00:29:17.895
And Abigail would say, I'm so sorry.
00:29:17.915 --> 00:29:19.497
I heard your daughter died.
00:29:19.616 --> 00:29:22.519
And he said, in effect, he said, yeah,
00:29:22.679 --> 00:29:23.318
Polly died.
00:29:23.599 --> 00:29:23.960
But, hey,
00:29:24.019 --> 00:29:25.421
I didn't appreciate the fact that
00:29:25.461 --> 00:29:26.500
your husband, you know,
00:29:26.560 --> 00:29:29.202
did the midnight appointment.
00:29:29.282 --> 00:29:30.084
You're useless.
00:29:30.144 --> 00:29:31.585
And so I don't think she
00:29:31.625 --> 00:29:32.464
ever wrote him again.
00:29:33.085 --> 00:29:34.306
But then, you know,
00:29:34.365 --> 00:29:36.267
John and Thomas started
00:29:36.867 --> 00:29:39.368
their 14-year-long wedding
00:29:39.849 --> 00:29:41.830
escapade that still lives on today.
00:29:42.671 --> 00:29:43.153
Yes, yes.
00:29:43.634 --> 00:29:44.857
And what is your other
00:29:44.959 --> 00:29:45.902
favorite quote from the book?
00:29:47.830 --> 00:29:49.152
The favorite quote, you mean?
00:29:49.551 --> 00:29:49.731
Yeah,
00:29:49.811 --> 00:29:51.132
you told us about the one about the
00:29:51.192 --> 00:29:51.652
judges.
00:29:51.951 --> 00:29:52.613
The judges.
00:29:52.653 --> 00:29:54.432
The other one was the one based,
00:29:54.593 --> 00:29:58.275
it's embedded inside the quote calling,
00:29:58.394 --> 00:30:00.214
I'm not apt to be intimidated, you know.
00:30:01.195 --> 00:30:02.796
And that one really struck
00:30:02.836 --> 00:30:04.757
me as a strong statement by
00:30:04.777 --> 00:30:06.356
a woman or anybody during those times.
00:30:06.896 --> 00:30:08.018
But what situation?
00:30:08.077 --> 00:30:09.198
And real quickly,
00:30:09.218 --> 00:30:10.318
what came around that was
00:30:10.818 --> 00:30:14.519
in September of 1776,
00:30:14.519 --> 00:30:15.721
The Americans had just lost
00:30:15.760 --> 00:30:17.301
the first big pitched battle,
00:30:17.561 --> 00:30:19.022
Battle of Long Island.
00:30:19.824 --> 00:30:20.763
And there were curious
00:30:20.864 --> 00:30:22.204
rumors running all around
00:30:22.265 --> 00:30:24.926
like John Adams had been killed.
00:30:24.967 --> 00:30:27.888
John Adams was taken prisoner and so on.
00:30:28.588 --> 00:30:30.309
And he wrote to her just as
00:30:31.770 --> 00:30:35.034
the whole thing was blowing up.
00:30:35.334 --> 00:30:37.615
You're good about not listening to rumors,
00:30:37.674 --> 00:30:38.455
especially these.
00:30:38.516 --> 00:30:39.175
Don't do that.
00:30:40.037 --> 00:30:41.377
And she goes, you don't have to tell me.
00:30:41.458 --> 00:30:43.298
I'm not apt to be intimidated, you know.
00:30:44.215 --> 00:30:46.457
And that says a lot about Abigail.
00:30:46.517 --> 00:30:48.096
She was a tough lady
00:30:48.156 --> 00:30:49.257
mentally and physically.
00:30:50.077 --> 00:30:51.637
Although she was, we think,
00:30:51.698 --> 00:30:54.638
about five foot tall, maybe 5'1",
00:30:55.398 --> 00:30:57.199
and had a dark complexion, we know,
00:30:57.259 --> 00:30:59.579
because a diplomat wrote to
00:30:59.640 --> 00:31:00.900
her later on and said, you know,
00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:01.740
when I first met you,
00:31:01.780 --> 00:31:02.961
I thought you were Egyptian.
00:31:02.980 --> 00:31:06.261
It's possible that she had a
00:31:06.301 --> 00:31:07.041
dark complexion.
00:31:07.122 --> 00:31:08.922
But I like the little things, too,
00:31:08.981 --> 00:31:11.202
that come up that you dwell on.
00:31:11.957 --> 00:31:12.356
That's good.
00:31:12.617 --> 00:31:14.378
Yeah, we were talking with John Smith,
00:31:14.519 --> 00:31:17.422
a author from the Tampa Bay area,
00:31:18.002 --> 00:31:19.144
now the Tampa Bay area,
00:31:19.344 --> 00:31:20.424
about his biography,
00:31:20.484 --> 00:31:22.247
The Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:31:22.307 --> 00:31:25.089
a woman not apt to be intimidated.
00:31:25.809 --> 00:31:27.192
And it's fortunate for us
00:31:27.311 --> 00:31:28.432
that she and John were
00:31:28.492 --> 00:31:29.753
separated for so long
00:31:29.794 --> 00:31:31.056
because they wrote so many
00:31:31.096 --> 00:31:31.955
letters to each other.
00:31:31.996 --> 00:31:33.377
But that must have had taken
00:31:33.438 --> 00:31:34.278
a toll on her.
00:31:35.519 --> 00:31:35.960
Well, she...
00:31:38.064 --> 00:31:39.464
doing things around the farm
00:31:39.605 --> 00:31:41.246
and taking care of business,
00:31:41.385 --> 00:31:42.946
John was always in the back of her mind.
00:31:42.987 --> 00:31:45.048
And why am I not getting letters?
00:31:45.167 --> 00:31:48.410
And Sam Adams just got to
00:31:48.450 --> 00:31:49.471
Congress and he's written
00:31:49.490 --> 00:31:51.672
his wife 10 letters and I have none.
00:31:52.452 --> 00:31:53.212
And why is that?
00:31:53.432 --> 00:31:55.213
It always took a toll on her.
00:31:56.775 --> 00:31:58.435
And once finally the whole
00:31:58.476 --> 00:32:02.519
thing got so ridiculous in 1778 or nine,
00:32:03.720 --> 00:32:05.721
she decided they got in a tiff.
00:32:06.441 --> 00:32:07.402
It's one of the only fights
00:32:08.944 --> 00:32:10.405
noted in their letters.
00:32:10.826 --> 00:32:11.925
She got in a tiff about,
00:32:11.945 --> 00:32:14.086
I'm getting tired of getting no letters.
00:32:14.426 --> 00:32:15.948
Sometimes he'd send her a big package.
00:32:15.988 --> 00:32:17.367
She'd be very happy,
00:32:17.689 --> 00:32:19.328
open it up and it's four newspapers.
00:32:19.348 --> 00:32:22.810
So they got in a tiff and
00:32:23.451 --> 00:32:24.971
John went back and forth
00:32:25.031 --> 00:32:26.612
and there's excerpts in it in the book.
00:32:26.652 --> 00:32:27.732
But John says, okay,
00:32:27.792 --> 00:32:28.712
now let me do some
00:32:28.772 --> 00:32:29.854
complaining for a change.
00:32:30.374 --> 00:32:32.295
So that was the whole letter
00:32:32.335 --> 00:32:33.454
writing thing was come to an end.
00:32:33.474 --> 00:32:35.256
And that's one of the reasons she decided,
00:32:35.296 --> 00:32:35.496
you know,
00:32:35.516 --> 00:32:36.895
I'm going to have to cross the
00:32:36.935 --> 00:32:38.136
Atlantic and go see John.
00:32:39.368 --> 00:32:41.131
But yeah, for the most part,
00:32:42.412 --> 00:32:43.814
they lived in those letters,
00:32:44.013 --> 00:32:46.676
and it's a treasure for all
00:32:46.696 --> 00:32:47.458
of us left over.
00:32:47.798 --> 00:32:50.740
Although she hated, she told many people,
00:32:50.820 --> 00:32:52.383
destroy this letter, burn this letter,
00:32:52.824 --> 00:32:53.845
because if you were a
00:32:56.835 --> 00:32:59.395
fine-heeled colonial woman,
00:33:00.215 --> 00:33:01.477
the proper thing to do was
00:33:01.576 --> 00:33:03.137
write the first letter and
00:33:03.198 --> 00:33:04.998
then copy it over and then
00:33:05.159 --> 00:33:06.719
with errors and things
00:33:06.778 --> 00:33:07.839
corrected and then copy it
00:33:07.900 --> 00:33:08.779
over and then copy it over
00:33:08.839 --> 00:33:09.980
two or three times and send it.
00:33:10.441 --> 00:33:12.721
And she would always mention that and say,
00:33:12.741 --> 00:33:13.882
I don't have time for that stuff.
00:33:17.344 --> 00:33:17.523
Yes.
00:33:17.544 --> 00:33:19.104
So we've been talking with John Smith,
00:33:19.144 --> 00:33:19.884
the author of The
00:33:19.984 --> 00:33:21.464
Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:33:21.545 --> 00:33:23.105
A Woman Not Apt to be Intimidated.
00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:25.821
A book coming out end of April.
00:33:25.922 --> 00:33:26.982
Look forward to it.
00:33:27.403 --> 00:33:28.924
And you can also check out
00:33:29.005 --> 00:33:30.425
what you have written on
00:33:30.506 --> 00:33:32.027
the American Journal of the
00:33:32.067 --> 00:33:33.127
American Revolution.
00:33:35.049 --> 00:33:37.050
So congratulations on doing
00:33:37.071 --> 00:33:38.051
this and thank you for
00:33:38.512 --> 00:33:39.493
giving us this new
00:33:39.653 --> 00:33:41.075
perspective on Abigail Adams.
00:33:41.601 --> 00:33:42.721
Well, thank you.
00:33:42.740 --> 00:33:43.821
I appreciate it very much.
00:33:44.281 --> 00:33:45.742
There's a few books on Abigail,
00:33:45.782 --> 00:33:47.563
but they haven't been written.
00:33:47.583 --> 00:33:48.544
The latest one hasn't been
00:33:48.564 --> 00:33:49.983
written for about 11 or 12 years.
00:33:50.704 --> 00:33:54.306
And she was due this human
00:33:54.365 --> 00:33:58.208
look to expose some of the, not expose,
00:33:58.248 --> 00:33:59.567
but to tell people that
00:34:00.067 --> 00:34:01.128
some of the things she said
00:34:01.148 --> 00:34:03.450
and were doing was funny.
00:34:03.490 --> 00:34:04.289
And I never heard this.
00:34:04.369 --> 00:34:05.049
For instance,
00:34:05.931 --> 00:34:07.891
when John and Abigail first
00:34:07.931 --> 00:34:09.112
retired to Peacefield,
00:34:11.001 --> 00:34:12.800
like a retired couple,
00:34:13.322 --> 00:34:14.442
John got addicted to
00:34:14.501 --> 00:34:15.762
reading romance novels.
00:34:16.742 --> 00:34:19.625
And she writes that to one
00:34:19.644 --> 00:34:21.105
of her girlfriends.
00:34:21.164 --> 00:34:23.166
I can't get them off these romance novels.
00:34:24.027 --> 00:34:25.387
So that's a thing that you
00:34:25.427 --> 00:34:26.068
never hear in the
00:34:26.846 --> 00:34:27.226
in the book.
00:34:27.726 --> 00:34:28.887
And I'd like to go into the
00:34:28.927 --> 00:34:30.909
fact that Abigail was an
00:34:31.010 --> 00:34:32.391
animal lover and none of
00:34:32.451 --> 00:34:33.192
those were put in,
00:34:33.452 --> 00:34:35.373
very few of them put in the book,
00:34:35.434 --> 00:34:37.376
but she loved animals.
00:34:37.456 --> 00:34:39.998
And when John Quincy's wife
00:34:40.038 --> 00:34:41.298
would visit Peacefield,
00:34:41.378 --> 00:34:42.500
she called it Noah's Ark
00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:44.081
because there's so many
00:34:44.161 --> 00:34:45.001
animals running around.
00:34:45.722 --> 00:34:47.324
But the funniest part was
00:34:48.005 --> 00:34:50.407
she liked songbirds and dogs.
00:34:50.586 --> 00:34:51.969
Those are her two favorite things.
00:34:52.548 --> 00:34:55.170
But cats, she couldn't figure out cats.
00:34:55.210 --> 00:34:55.331
Now,
00:34:55.371 --> 00:34:57.893
they had cats on the farm getting mice
00:34:57.932 --> 00:34:58.313
and so on.
00:34:58.333 --> 00:34:59.434
But when she went to France
00:35:00.213 --> 00:35:01.255
and she couldn't speak the
00:35:01.315 --> 00:35:03.235
language and was trying for
00:35:03.295 --> 00:35:04.817
some angle to get in with
00:35:05.036 --> 00:35:05.557
other French people,
00:35:06.157 --> 00:35:07.858
she knows they all have these cats.
00:35:08.739 --> 00:35:12.121
And she used the term kind of like cats.
00:35:12.141 --> 00:35:16.105
And it's not in her letters if she
00:35:17.744 --> 00:35:18.045
you know,
00:35:18.706 --> 00:35:21.349
ended up getting a cat or if she didn't.
00:35:22.230 --> 00:35:24.172
But that annoyed her, the whole cat thing.
00:35:25.213 --> 00:35:25.932
Do you know what kind of a
00:35:25.972 --> 00:35:27.655
dog Satan was or any of the
00:35:27.695 --> 00:35:29.436
other dogs that she had?
00:35:29.456 --> 00:35:31.119
It was some type of large,
00:35:32.400 --> 00:35:35.643
something like a wolfhound
00:35:35.702 --> 00:35:36.443
or something like that.
00:35:36.483 --> 00:35:38.505
But if you look at his paws, she said,
00:35:38.947 --> 00:35:39.226
you know,
00:35:39.266 --> 00:35:40.809
this is going to turn into a big boy.
00:35:41.447 --> 00:35:41.708
Wow.
00:35:41.748 --> 00:35:42.447
So it was a puppy.
00:35:43.628 --> 00:35:44.688
He might have done that just
00:35:44.789 --> 00:35:46.869
because the dog would turn
00:35:46.909 --> 00:35:48.291
into this huge monster
00:35:48.690 --> 00:35:50.231
inside their house and rolling around.
00:35:50.271 --> 00:35:53.672
But Satan was a good dog.
00:35:54.393 --> 00:35:55.414
She had another one named
00:35:55.474 --> 00:35:57.855
Juno that she absolutely loved.
00:35:57.875 --> 00:36:01.056
Some of them were her
00:36:01.155 --> 00:36:02.577
favorite because if you think about it,
00:36:03.376 --> 00:36:06.277
Back in those days, there were no CDs,
00:36:06.338 --> 00:36:09.380
no record players, no radios or anything.
00:36:09.420 --> 00:36:11.061
Music was very hard to come
00:36:11.081 --> 00:36:11.862
by unless you're in a
00:36:11.902 --> 00:36:15.085
church or some type of special occasion.
00:36:15.445 --> 00:36:16.746
So she liked songbirds
00:36:16.806 --> 00:36:17.567
because they had a
00:36:17.606 --> 00:36:19.889
melodious sound going through the house.
00:36:19.929 --> 00:36:20.789
And sometimes she says
00:36:20.809 --> 00:36:21.871
they're so damn loud,
00:36:22.311 --> 00:36:23.552
they'd have to tell them to shut up.
00:36:26.293 --> 00:36:27.235
Well, that's great.
00:36:28.675 --> 00:36:30.677
Of course, she bought the house in Quincy,
00:36:30.797 --> 00:36:31.257
or Braintree,
00:36:31.277 --> 00:36:32.617
and then she had to redo it.
00:36:32.679 --> 00:36:34.840
So she oversaw the rebuilding of,
00:36:35.119 --> 00:36:36.581
or actually the extension of it,
00:36:36.740 --> 00:36:38.161
because it wasn't as big as
00:36:38.322 --> 00:36:39.762
they thought when they were... No,
00:36:39.983 --> 00:36:41.784
it was... She knew it came up,
00:36:42.224 --> 00:36:44.106
and she was a good investment person.
00:36:44.126 --> 00:36:45.728
She always looked at any
00:36:45.907 --> 00:36:46.708
investment with the
00:36:46.788 --> 00:36:48.510
exception of one that I'll go into.
00:36:49.070 --> 00:36:51.271
But she bought Peacefield
00:36:52.112 --> 00:36:52.972
when it was just up for
00:36:53.012 --> 00:36:55.454
sale and started remodeling and re...
00:36:57.396 --> 00:36:58.798
enlarging and doing a lot of
00:36:58.838 --> 00:37:00.561
the work that needed to be
00:37:00.621 --> 00:37:01.521
done because nobody had
00:37:01.561 --> 00:37:02.523
lived in it for a little while.
00:37:03.525 --> 00:37:05.947
And that was going to be
00:37:05.987 --> 00:37:07.510
their retirement place,
00:37:08.070 --> 00:37:09.172
the second retirement place.
00:37:09.231 --> 00:37:11.034
First, she was buying some Vermont land.
00:37:12.545 --> 00:37:16.829
And she pretty much was, that was a scam.
00:37:17.550 --> 00:37:19.472
And she bought four or five
00:37:20.291 --> 00:37:22.153
acres of parcels of Vermont
00:37:22.193 --> 00:37:23.695
land up on the Canadian border,
00:37:24.076 --> 00:37:25.277
four or five parcels,
00:37:25.356 --> 00:37:26.737
because she bought one for
00:37:26.797 --> 00:37:27.918
both of her four children
00:37:28.318 --> 00:37:29.300
and then one for John.
00:37:29.480 --> 00:37:31.842
Because of course, being a married woman,
00:37:31.882 --> 00:37:33.023
she had absolutely no
00:37:33.083 --> 00:37:35.105
rights to do anything.
00:37:35.625 --> 00:37:37.445
And so she bought those and John told her,
00:37:37.465 --> 00:37:39.628
don't ever do that again.
00:37:41.356 --> 00:37:42.478
Wow.
00:37:43.418 --> 00:37:45.280
So she didn't buy more land in Vermont,
00:37:45.340 --> 00:37:45.800
but she did.
00:37:45.902 --> 00:37:47.663
No, no, Vermont.
00:37:47.782 --> 00:37:49.664
The parcels went to the boys,
00:37:50.565 --> 00:37:51.947
and they even had a hard
00:37:52.007 --> 00:37:55.351
time in their will dumping those turkeys.
00:37:57.813 --> 00:37:58.153
Thank you.
00:37:58.393 --> 00:37:59.835
I know there's a lot more in the book.
00:37:59.916 --> 00:38:00.876
Anything else we should talk
00:38:00.936 --> 00:38:02.018
about before we let you go?
00:38:04.699 --> 00:38:06.541
Just the idea, well,
00:38:06.601 --> 00:38:07.942
we could talk about Hayden
00:38:08.121 --> 00:38:10.123
and the squatter situation,
00:38:10.202 --> 00:38:12.304
which is just like we do today,
00:38:12.465 --> 00:38:15.246
or slavery and the Adamses.
00:38:17.527 --> 00:38:20.268
Well, what about slavery and the Adamses?
00:38:20.329 --> 00:38:21.429
Or we can have you back to
00:38:21.469 --> 00:38:23.130
talk about when the book came out.
00:38:23.931 --> 00:38:26.072
Well, slavery, most people don't,
00:38:26.193 --> 00:38:27.833
another one of those unexpected,
00:38:28.474 --> 00:38:29.175
don't know that in the 1770s,
00:38:29.195 --> 00:38:29.474
all slavery,
00:38:31.985 --> 00:38:33.646
Slavery existed in all 13
00:38:33.646 --> 00:38:34.666
colonies or states.
00:38:35.706 --> 00:38:39.867
And believe it or not, Abigail's father,
00:38:39.907 --> 00:38:43.568
who was a congressionalist minister,
00:38:45.389 --> 00:38:47.148
Abigail grew up in a
00:38:47.188 --> 00:38:48.748
household with four or five slaves.
00:38:49.889 --> 00:38:52.369
And she was, starting with her adulthood,
00:38:52.429 --> 00:38:54.251
she was adamantly, John too,
00:38:55.030 --> 00:38:57.030
both adamantly against slavery.
00:38:58.110 --> 00:39:00.632
Privately, Abigail wondered if slavery
00:39:01.773 --> 00:39:05.753
slavery wasn't paid back for
00:39:05.813 --> 00:39:08.753
the sin to America of slavery.
00:39:09.333 --> 00:39:11.914
And then, and then in her other,
00:39:14.054 --> 00:39:16.315
in her other life,
00:39:17.516 --> 00:39:19.516
she probably got off track there.
00:39:22.717 --> 00:39:23.016
Okay.
00:39:23.036 --> 00:39:25.077
So she sees slavery as a sin
00:39:25.697 --> 00:39:27.677
and the revolution,
00:39:27.697 --> 00:39:29.177
we have all of these ways
00:39:29.257 --> 00:39:30.277
of paying for it.
00:39:30.297 --> 00:39:30.838
And then she,
00:39:31.615 --> 00:39:33.297
They don't own slaves, the Adamses.
00:39:34.157 --> 00:39:37.179
Publicly, she wondered if the hypocrisy,
00:39:37.239 --> 00:39:38.420
which everybody knew was
00:39:39.081 --> 00:39:40.201
there but didn't say anything,
00:39:40.280 --> 00:39:41.461
if the hypocrisy of
00:39:42.202 --> 00:39:43.202
Americans fighting for
00:39:43.222 --> 00:39:44.324
their freedom was
00:39:44.344 --> 00:39:48.065
hypocritical to preventing
00:39:48.186 --> 00:39:50.306
others from being free.
00:39:50.407 --> 00:39:52.208
So it was no easy thing.
00:39:52.268 --> 00:39:53.949
But she had one slave named Phoebe,
00:39:55.369 --> 00:39:56.851
and Phoebe became part of
00:39:56.891 --> 00:39:59.693
the family after Abigail's
00:40:00.413 --> 00:40:01.193
father passed on.
00:40:02.557 --> 00:40:03.338
And she,
00:40:03.858 --> 00:40:05.199
when they were in England and
00:40:05.260 --> 00:40:06.942
France for an extended period of time,
00:40:07.382 --> 00:40:08.682
Phoebe and her husband
00:40:08.722 --> 00:40:09.704
would stay inside their
00:40:09.724 --> 00:40:11.284
house and do things and
00:40:11.304 --> 00:40:13.067
keep it warm and things like that.
00:40:15.628 --> 00:40:17.869
But the squatter, the squatter story,
00:40:18.010 --> 00:40:19.070
and there's,
00:40:19.130 --> 00:40:21.873
it was in the news headlines
00:40:21.914 --> 00:40:23.675
yesterday about squatting.
00:40:23.875 --> 00:40:27.197
So it still goes on, but real quickly,
00:40:27.358 --> 00:40:28.679
she had hired this guy
00:40:28.719 --> 00:40:30.880
named Hayden in Braintree.
00:40:31.324 --> 00:40:32.545
And his two sons in history
00:40:32.565 --> 00:40:35.527
doesn't even know which Hayden it was.
00:40:35.586 --> 00:40:36.427
What's his name?
00:40:37.068 --> 00:40:37.628
But he hired,
00:40:37.807 --> 00:40:39.568
she hired Hayden and the two
00:40:39.608 --> 00:40:41.570
boys and almost immediately the boys,
00:40:42.329 --> 00:40:42.530
well,
00:40:42.751 --> 00:40:44.652
she hired him to do work in the
00:40:44.711 --> 00:40:47.833
fields and the two boys
00:40:47.893 --> 00:40:49.833
almost immediately enlisted
00:40:49.893 --> 00:40:51.054
in the army because the pay
00:40:51.094 --> 00:40:51.735
was much better.
00:40:51.755 --> 00:40:54.675
And so paraphrasing it,
00:40:54.755 --> 00:40:56.876
she went out to any Hayden
00:40:56.936 --> 00:40:57.898
was living in the,
00:40:58.501 --> 00:41:00.963
john adams birth house right
00:41:00.963 --> 00:41:03.365
75 feet from yeah yeah it
00:41:03.385 --> 00:41:05.547
was and she says well your
00:41:05.748 --> 00:41:06.768
boys are gone so I guess
00:41:06.789 --> 00:41:08.489
you have to go and this is
00:41:08.530 --> 00:41:09.650
another story about women's
00:41:09.690 --> 00:41:11.632
rights I guess you have to
00:41:11.672 --> 00:41:13.213
go and he goes no I don't
00:41:13.233 --> 00:41:14.153
think I'm going anywhere
00:41:15.215 --> 00:41:19.117
and he would not budge and
00:41:19.137 --> 00:41:22.541
then finally abigail wrote
00:41:22.581 --> 00:41:25.023
to john adams and said you
00:41:25.063 --> 00:41:26.384
have to get this guy out of
00:41:26.423 --> 00:41:27.125
here and don't
00:41:28.106 --> 00:41:29.887
Don't make me look bad on this.
00:41:30.007 --> 00:41:30.547
I'm serious.
00:41:30.688 --> 00:41:31.387
You need to get out.
00:41:32.068 --> 00:41:34.530
John, being the average lawyer, said,
00:41:34.550 --> 00:41:37.652
I'm going to give you a piece of paper,
00:41:38.273 --> 00:41:39.313
gets four or five of your
00:41:39.353 --> 00:41:41.155
friends to notarize it,
00:41:41.235 --> 00:41:42.076
that you're signing it,
00:41:42.376 --> 00:41:43.336
take it to the sheriff.
00:41:43.757 --> 00:41:44.737
I'll let them know that
00:41:44.898 --> 00:41:46.719
you're coming and the
00:41:46.759 --> 00:41:48.440
sheriff will evict Hayden.
00:41:49.260 --> 00:41:51.262
And then the communication
00:41:51.302 --> 00:41:52.884
goes dark and we don't know
00:41:52.923 --> 00:41:54.385
what happened if Hayden got out.
00:41:54.844 --> 00:41:55.824
Well, we know he got out,
00:41:55.945 --> 00:41:58.146
but two and a half years later, she,
00:41:58.367 --> 00:42:00.748
Abigail, paid for Hayden to leave.
00:42:01.088 --> 00:42:01.929
She hated doing that.
00:42:03.210 --> 00:42:04.431
She didn't even write to John.
00:42:04.471 --> 00:42:05.411
She was writing to a
00:42:06.132 --> 00:42:07.213
congressional aide or so.
00:42:07.733 --> 00:42:08.614
Wow.
00:42:09.896 --> 00:42:15.739
Well, problems in the Adams household.
00:42:16.059 --> 00:42:18.322
So we've been talking with John Smith,
00:42:18.681 --> 00:42:21.463
author of The Unexpected Abigail Adams,
00:42:21.523 --> 00:42:23.405
A Woman Not Apt to be Intimidated.
00:42:24.135 --> 00:42:25.237
I look forward to reading it.
00:42:25.297 --> 00:42:26.277
Thank you for this.
00:42:26.338 --> 00:42:27.260
And thank you for all of the
00:42:27.320 --> 00:42:28.621
other work you've done,
00:42:28.661 --> 00:42:30.202
really telling stories and
00:42:30.402 --> 00:42:33.025
about the things we didn't know.
00:42:33.045 --> 00:42:35.228
It's been great reading your
00:42:35.268 --> 00:42:36.009
work over the years.
00:42:36.088 --> 00:42:37.411
I might look forward to more of it.
00:42:38.030 --> 00:42:39.152
Well, thank you very much, Bob.
00:42:39.193 --> 00:42:39.492
Thank you.
00:42:41.304 --> 00:42:43.226
And so I want to thank Jonathan Lane,
00:42:43.266 --> 00:42:43.865
our producer,
00:42:43.905 --> 00:42:45.728
and then our listeners around the world.
00:42:46.188 --> 00:42:46.668
Every week,
00:42:46.789 --> 00:42:48.349
I thank people in particular
00:42:48.409 --> 00:42:49.811
places who are tuning in.
00:42:49.851 --> 00:42:51.373
And if you are in one of these places,
00:42:51.432 --> 00:42:53.434
send Jonathan Lane an email,
00:42:53.494 --> 00:42:55.876
jlane at revolution250.org,
00:42:55.936 --> 00:42:57.378
and they'll send you some
00:42:57.418 --> 00:42:58.818
of our Rev 250 stuff.
00:42:58.878 --> 00:42:59.980
We got a nice message the
00:43:00.019 --> 00:43:01.621
other day from someone in Long Beach,
00:43:01.661 --> 00:43:02.382
California.
00:43:03.282 --> 00:43:03.902
So this week,
00:43:03.943 --> 00:43:05.525
I want to thank our listeners
00:43:05.605 --> 00:43:07.106
in actually Quincy and
00:43:07.166 --> 00:43:08.606
Weymouth in Massachusetts.
00:43:08.646 --> 00:43:08.766
Yes.
00:43:09.588 --> 00:43:10.650
franklin tennessee
00:43:11.150 --> 00:43:13.273
steubenville ohio seneca
00:43:13.293 --> 00:43:15.416
falls new york henrietta
00:43:15.516 --> 00:43:18.018
oklahoma and tampa palm
00:43:18.059 --> 00:43:19.742
harbor and new smyrna beach
00:43:19.902 --> 00:43:20.623
in the great state of
00:43:20.643 --> 00:43:21.864
florida so thank you all
00:43:21.923 --> 00:43:23.586
and all places between and
00:43:23.606 --> 00:43:24.967
beyond and now we will be
00:43:25.027 --> 00:43:26.891
piped out on the road to boston