America's First Power Couple
· 03.01.2024 · 17:00:01 ··· ··· Wednesday ·· 3 (3)
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History often remembers the great men of each era, their very public accomplishments, and the trials and tribulations they may or may not have gone through to get there, sometimes to the extreme. What’s often forgotten in many cases is the men generally didn’t do any of it alone. For most, there was their partner in life beside them supporting them through it all. Beyond such aphorisms as “Behind every great man, you’ll find a great woman”, as Ben Franklin noted in his June 25, 1745 “Old Mistresses Apologue”, “It is the Man and Woman united that make the complete human Being. Separate, she wants his Force of Body and Strength of Reason; he, her Softness, Sensibility and acute Discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the World. A single Man has not nearly the Value he would have in that State of Union. He is an incomplete Animal. He resembles the odd Half of a Pair of Scissors. If you get a prudent healthy Wife, your Industry in your Profession, with her good Economy, will be a Fortune sufficient.”
Nowhere is this perhaps better illustrated than in the United States’ first power couple, John and Abigail Adams. Breaking many customs of their era, Abigail was subservient to no one, an equal partner in their combined journey to help create and shape the United States, with arguably only a handful of others having more influence on the United States today because of their work in its foundation than these two. While Thomas Jefferson would once state of John Adams during Adams’ Presidency, Adams “takes no counsel from anyone”, he was incorrect. His closest confidant and whom he thoroughly relied for her equally keen intellect next to her certifiably genius husband, was his wife, Abigail. As historian and author of Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage Edith Gelles, notes, "Abigail was his best ally, and because she was intelligent, well-informed and totally sympathetic with him, she was devoted to his politics. She probably was the best-informed and most reliable advisor to a president until Eleanor Roosevelt in the 20th century."
On top of this, while her husband was off gallivanting across the nation and the world, leaving them parted for about half of the first two decades of their marriage, she also managed all the family’s affairs from approximately middle class to start, to later great prosperity in some rather ingenious ways that actually occasionally went against her husband’s wishes, as we’ll get into, but in the end doing it anyway and making John Adams one of the few early presidents who not only didn’t see near financial ruin because of the nature of the position at the time, but one who died relatively wealthy. This was in stark contrast to the likes of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who started off incredibly wealthy and ended life deeply in debt- in Adams’ case, all achieved through Abigail’s keen mind for investments, allowing her husband to do his thing without concern for his financial base and homefront.
Going back to her counsel, it is thus no coincidence that when John Adams finally ascended to the role of President, he desperately wrote to his then sick wife four hundred miles away in Quincy, “I never wanted your Advice and assistance more in my life…” And, “I can do nothing without you… Public affairs are so critical and dangerous that all our Thoughts must be taken up with them. I must intreat you, to loose not a moments time in preparing to come… assist me with your Councils…”
The first woman to be both wife and later mother to a U.S. President, and generally ranked as one of the best female intellect’s of her era in the United States, so much so that she was given the nickname “Mrs. President” for her influence on affairs of state during her husband’s Presidency, Abigail Adams is the oft’ forgotten half of the power couple pair, and considered by many to be greatest among the little talked about “Founding Mothers”, and a woman future President Harry Truman would remark, “would have been a better President than her husband.”
So let’s dive into it shall we?
Author: Daven Hiskey
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
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