Learning from History - Part V

"No war. No politics. What shall I say?" 

Abigail Adams, 1816

Oh, that we had this dilemma when writing letters to our family and friends today! But Abigail had just come through decades of turmoil, vision, and sacrifice that deeply affected her family as well as her nation.

Public Domain photo of 1766
portrait by Benjamin Blyth

Are you ready to be challenged and inspired?! Reading personal letters and journals are one of the best ways I know to learn from history. 

"Abigail Adams: Letters"

Edited by Edith Gelles

Overview by publisher - Library of America:

"Abigail Adams was an unusually accomplished letter writer. Spirited and insightful, her correspondence offers a unique vantage on historical events in which her family played so prominent a role, while bringing vividly to life the everyday experience of American women in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Here are 430 letters—more than a hundred published for the first time—to John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Mercy Otis Warren, James and Dolley Madison, and Martha Washington, among many others. Including her famous call to “Remember the Ladies,” letters from the 1760s and 1770s offer an unrivalled portrait of the American Revolution on the home front. Travel to Europe in the 1780s opens a grand new field for her talents as social commentator and political advisor while her roles as vice presidential and presidential wife place her at the very heart of the nation’s founding."

Public Domain photo of
portrait by Gilbert Stuart

If you are ready to better appreciate the Independence Day we in The United States of America celebrate tomorrow, try this first-hand, inside view of life at that pivotal time.