Week 7: Abigale Adams and the American Revolution

The Revolutionary War provided a prime opportunity for disenfranchised individuals to address their own social standings and freedoms because it gave the people the courage to stand up for their own rights and independence. "At a time when many Americans-slaves, servants, women, Indians, apprentices, property less men-were denied full freedom, the struggle against Britain inspired challenges to all sorts of inequalities" (Freedom 111). People now realized that their voice had some meaning, they no longer feared the consequences of not agreeing with what was being done.

Abigail Adam's main argument and point in her letters to her husband was that, "she urged Congress, when it drew up a new "code of Laws," to "remember the ladies." All men, she warned, "would be tyrants if they could" (Liberty 111). She wanted women to have equal rights as men had. she knew that if she didn't speak about it, no one would and that men would continue to view women as not being equal to them. She states that if women do not become equal to men, then the women would rebel against them making her argument have more meaning by having that threat behind it. She just wanted women to be treated fairly, and have the same rights as men had. She sees that it be imperative that women are considered in the making of the new constitution because it will no longer be tolerated that women be treated any less then men.

According to John Adams, the struggle for independence "loosen the bands of government everywhere" because "that children and apprentices were disobedient, that schools and colleges were grown turbulent, that Indians slighted their guardians and Negros grew insolent to their masters" (Freedom 113). He's saying that because of this "looseness" people are becoming evermore defiant to the laws that have been made, making it look as though women are using this as a way to gain more freedoms for themselves. and that the oppressed saw it easier to gain freedoms then that they once thought.