 Had a Declaration of Independence even made seven months ago, it would have been attended with many great and glorious effects. We might before this hour have formed alliances with foreign states, but on the other hand, the delay of this declaration to this time has many great advantages attending it. Time has been given for the whole people, maturely to consider the great question of independence, and to ripen their judgments, dissipate their fears, and allure their hopes by discussing it in newspapers and pamphlets, by debating it in assemblies, conventions, committees of safety and inspection, in town and county meetings as well as private conversations, so that the whole people in every colony of the 13 have now adopted it as their own act. This will cement the union and void those heats and perhaps convulsions which might have occasioned by such a declaration six months ago. But the day has passed. The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epic in the history of America. My husband's letters never failed to give me pleasure, but this one was greatly heightened by the prospect of the future happiness and glory of our country. Nor am I not a little gratified when I reflect that a person so nearly connected with me has had the honor of being a principal actor in laying the foundation for its future greatness. I am Abigail Smith Adams. I first met the man who would become my husband, John Adams, when I was but a teenage girl growing up in my father's parsonage in Weymouth, Massachusetts. John was this earnest young lawyer from nearby Braintree who would attend for visits in our family parlor. I had so many questions about public goings on, and he never failed to give me the respect to do my inquiries and answer as honestly and as thoroughly as he could. His respect for me was what drew me to him, not his appearance or fortune, both of which were modest. Our country, but then Great Britain, was engaged in a war that would become known as the French and Indian War. French and Indian as they were our primary adversaries on these shores. King George II died in the middle of it, and his son, George III, ascended to the throne of England. Along with the new king came an apparent tightening of trade restrictions on Americans. Rits of assistance were granted to agents of the Crown, and there were basically blank search warrants for goods that could be considered smuggled outside of British duty. John went to the Boston State House to hear a famous lawyer, James Otis, speak out in opposition to these new rits. James Otis said, a man's house is his castle, and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege. Custom house officers may enter our houses when they please. We are commanded to permit their entry. Their menial servants may enter, may break locks, bars, and everything in their way, and whether they break through malice or revenge, no man, no court can inquire. John reported back that every man of an immense, crowded audience appeared to go away as he did, ready to take up arms against rits of assistance. He later said that the child independence was then and there born. The flame of his patriotic fervor was kindled, as we kindled our flames of courtship. John and I married in 1764, and our parent country sought measures to pay for the seven years long war recently ended. The stamp-act of 1765 drew the most ire from the people, as it was a direct tax on domestic activity. Every bit of paper that would be used for colonial business now had to have a tax paid. News pamphlets, deeds of sale, licenses, books, even playing cards. And the money raised would not necessarily be used for local improvement. The crown determined what would be done with this revenue. That same year I gave birth to our first child, a girl, Abigail, or Naby as we call her. John was busy placing his understanding of our colonial relationship with our government on paper. By the time he had completed a dissertation on canon and feudal law, he had laid the case that England had broken her compacts with her daughter colonies, and as such Massachusetts, indeed all the American colonies, had an inherent right to seek self-determination. There seems to be a direct and formal design on foot to enslave all America. The prospect now before us in America ought in the same manner to engage the attention of every man of learning to matters of power and of right, that we may be neither lead nor driven blindfolded to irretrievable destruction. No one of any feeling born and educated in this once happy country can consider the numerous distresses, the gross indignities, the barbarous ignorance, the hot years of patience that we have reason to fear are mediating for ourselves, our children, our neighbors, in short for all our countrymen and all their posterity without the utmost agonies of heart and many tears. For those who had not the time, patience, or a skilled enough vocabulary to read John's dissertation, he also published in a more plain voice the sentiments of a fictional New Englander, Humphrey Plough Jogger. I do say I won't buy one shilling worth of anything that comes from the old England, till the stamp act is appealed, nor I won't let any of my sons and daughters. I'd rather the Spitalfield weavers should pull down all the houses in old England and knock the brains out of all the wicked great men there, than this country should lose their liberty. Our forefathers came over here for liberty of conscience, and we've been nothing better than servants to them all along this hundred years, and got just enough to keep soul and body together. The words of Humphrey Plough Jogger. Two years later in 1767 I would bring our first son, John Quincy Adams, into the world. That same year our parent nation sought to raise further revenue from the American colonies through a series of taxes on imported goods. The towns and acts. Our response would be an active boycott of the materials of our oppression, and the Crown's response was to send troops to enforce the tax collection and protect the interests of importers. A nation cannot have a standing army living among the civilian population and not expect some trouble to come of it. Boston, a city of sixteen thousand people eventually had reportedly as many as four thousand soldiers stationed there. No wonder it all came to a head on March 5th, 1770, when an altercation of protest ended with five dead Americans. Americans allegedly murdered at the hands of eight British redcoats and their captain. English soldiers who were here allegedly to keep the peace. This event would become known as the Bloody Massacre, or the Boston Massacre, and our friend Paul Revere, a Boston silversmith, engraved a rather sensational visual depiction of what would appear in newspapers and pamphlets, far and wide. I was to deliver our second boy in two months' time, so I was already in a delicate state when I could hear the commotion occurring just a few blocks to the north of our home. My husband believed in his patriotic duty to defend the soldiers. He called it one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country. It was his intention to prove to the world that Bostonians could, indeed, uphold the principles of justice and the right to a fair trial regardless of any predilection. Even lobsters could get a fair trial in Boston. I was thrown into a fear that all of the anger directed at those soldiers would also be thrown upon the man defending them and his young family. John prevailed in his defense because, as he argued, facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. He also made it known that if someone should be blamed, guilt lay with the government that sent this standing army into our midst. The acquittal of these soldiers, though, did little to alleviate our colonial burden. We would continue to live as a people occupied and vilified by the crown that was supposed to protect us. Great Britain, England, was growing to be an ever-distant government, increasingly acting like an enemy nation. By the close of 1775, this could no longer be denied. Not only did the king and parliament declare the American colonies an open rebellion and outside of their protection, they began to seize American merchant vessels at sea with no cause other than they were operating in trade. What the crown called the Prohibitory Act was a direct affront to laws and compacts as old as Magna Carta. In Clause 41 of that noble document, our compact with the British king stated, all merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear, and may stay or travel within it by land or water for purposes of trade, free from all illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient and lawful customs. This however does not apply in time of war to merchants from a country that is at war with us. Any such merchants found in our country at the outbreak of war shall be detained without injury to their persons or property, until we or our chief justice have discovered how our own merchants are being treated in the country at war with us. If our own merchants are safe, they shall be safe too. The Prohibitory Act denied American merchants the right to operate in international trade alongside other English free men and treated us as if we were a nation at war with England. That act did more to solidify the colonies against the king than all the skirmishes and taxes thus far. John wrote to me of the Prohibitory Act. It throws 13 colonies out of the royal protection, levels all distinctions, and makes us independent in spite of our supplications and entreaties. It may be fortunate that the act of independency should come from the British Parliament rather than the American Congress. By March of 1776 I became acquainted and charmed with the sentiments of Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense. I wondered how an honest heart, one who wishes the welfare of their country and the happiness of posterity, can hesitate one moment at adopting them. After reading Common Sense I wrote to my husband. He was serving in Philadelphia in the Continental Congress, and I knew from our correspondence that independence was among the topics about which they were debating. I longed to hear that they had declared an independency and wrote my husband of this wish. John's response to my plea was clearly an attempt to prove his metal as a diplomat. As two declarations of independency be patient, read our privateering laws and our commercial laws. What signifies a word? Well, mine was the response of a voice from our community, and one who had read Common Sense. A government of more stability is much wanted in this colony, and they are ready to receive it from the hands of Congress. And since I have begun with maxims of state, I will add another piece. That a people may let a king fall, yet still remain a people. But if a king let his people slip from him, he is no longer a king. And as this is most certainly our case, why not proclaim to the world in decisive terms your own importance? Shall we not be despised by foreign powers for hesitating so long at word? There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea we are now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures. Those are not my words, but Shakespeare's. As far as I was concerned, the tide was now. Finally, the events of late June and early July would bring Congress to a vote on independence on July 2, and a proclamation to the world on July 4. As to my husband's prediction about the most memorable epic? With the date July 4 boldly emblazoned on the declaration, July 4 quickly surpassed July 2 and became the celebrated day of American independence. On Thursday, July 18, after hearing a very good sermon, I went with the multitude into King Street to hear the proclamation for independence read and proclaimed. Some field pieces with the train were brought there. The troops appeared under arms, and all the inhabitants assembled there. When Colonel Crafts read from the balcony of the state house the proclamation, great attention was given to every word. As soon as he ended, the cry from the balcony was, God save our American states, and then three cheers which rendered the air. The bells rang, the privateers fired, the forts and batteries, the cannon were discharged, the platoons followed, and every face appeared joyful. Mr. Bowden then gave a sentiment, stability and perpetuity to American independence. After dinner the King's arms were taken down from the state house and every vestige of him from every place in which it appeared, and burnt in King Street. Thus ended royal authority in this state, and all the people shall say amen. I am told that like-minded patriots in other cities such as New York and Philadelphia did the same, and used the melted metal to cast musket and cannonballs. As I think of our call to independence, I have a wish for this nation. May the foundation of our new constitution be justice, truth, and righteousness. Like the wise man's house, may it be founded upon those rocks, and then neither storms nor tempests will overthrow it. I have now been posed some questions. The first comes from a Mr. Cotton penny farthing. He writes, when you heard the declaration read for the first time, were there things that you would have liked to have seen as part of it, things which you perhaps believe were omitted? Thank you for asking my opinion on this matter, Mr. Penny Farthing. Nothing pleases a lady more than knowing that her good understanding is sought. I cannot but feel sorry that some of the most manly sentiments in the declaration were expunged from the printed copy. Perhaps wise reasons induced it. It was my hope that the document would call out the crown for their continued participation in the slave trade, and thus move the American mind to abolition of this practice. Nothing was sureer in my mind than slavery was a sin. I wish most sincerely there was not a slave in the province. It always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight for ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have. I believe that the Declaration of Independence was the time to begin the foundations for a new state. Foundations for a new code of laws, which I supposed it would be necessary to make, laws which would bear out the promise of Mr. Jefferson's statement that all men are created equal. I had also hoped that the document would call upon the framers of those same laws to remember the ladies and be more generous to them than our ancestors have been by not putting unlimited power into the hands of husbands. I had hoped that they would pen a grievance about English common law and how it gives complete control to husbands over their wives and their wives' property. I believe all men would be tyrants if they could. Sadly, my husband had already disabused me of any hopes for the fruition of such a publicly stated grievance. He said the men in Congress knew better than to repeal their masculine systems, lest they should find themselves completely subject to the despotism of the petticoat. He and I will continue to argue about this. The next question comes from Constance Smith. Oh, I wonder if she's a relative. My maiden name is Smith. But then again, that may be one of the most ubiquitous surnames in Massachusetts. She writes, as wives, we have neither suffrage nor the right to property. Our husbands have sovereign authority over these two perquisites of citizenship. What can we as wives do to support and defend these states? Dear Mrs. Smith, patriotism in the female sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the state or government. Even in the freest countries, our property is subject to the control and disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given sovereign authority. Deprived of a voice and legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are opposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to public welfare? Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex. We ladies hold the power of the domestic purse. We have already proven our fortitude in boycotts, eschewing tea and refined sugar, making homespun milling flour. The more self-sufficient we in our domestic capacity may render ourselves and our families the less dependent our nation will be upon outside resources. And thus, the more likely and strong we will be as a whole. As wives, it is true we do not have a vote. To our husbands go their toner, one family, one vote. Even though we do not hold the reins of government, I do not see why we should not be critical of how those reins are conducted. As wives and hopefully mothers, we are heralded as the keepers of family virtue. Our husbands return from their days in the public sphere to the comfort and solace of our domestic one. It is our duty to remind them of what is right and virtuous in the world, as this is what is most needed by the community. And to encourage them by all means necessary to cast votes and produce legislation that will be in the best interest of our families and our nation's future. For those of us blessed with children, they are our legacy and the future of our nation. Yet for all the control men take over wives, for the most part, they have left the care of our greatest resource, our children, largely in the care of the mothers and nurses for the most formative years. I have always believed that the first principles instilled are those which take the deepest root. I hope that our nation will have at its foundation virtue and knowledge. Therefore, the more we ladies can educate ourselves, the better we will be able to impart knowledge to our children. The better prepared we are to remind our families of that which is good and virtuous, then the better the nation will ultimately benefit by the heroes, statesmen and philosophers that once we nurtured. I thank you for your kind attention, and I remain my husband's dearest friend, Abigail Adams.