“You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. ‘And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people, give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and to come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this, thy so great a people?’ were the words of a royal sovereign, and not less applicable to him who is invested with the chief magistracy of a nation, though he wear not a crown nor the robes of royalty. My thoughts and meditations are with you, though personally absent; and my petitions to heaven are, that the things which make for your peace may not be hidden from your eyes. My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation upon the occasion. They are solemnized by a sense of the obligations, the important trusts, and numerous duties connected with it. That you may be enabled to discharge them with honor to yourself, with justice and impartiality to your country, and with satisfaction to this great people, shall be the daily prayer of yours—”
In such exaltation of spirit, and with such grandeur of speech, did the wife of the second President receive the fact of her husband’s elevation. As devout as Deborah, her utterance is equally marked by its comprehensiveness of view, its devotion and self-forgetfulness. No visions of personal finery, of fashionable entertainments and show, gleam through the grand utterances of this majestic woman. And yet no pictures of the White House, no sketches of the social life of her time begin to be as graphic, frequent and “telling,” as those of Abigail Adams. Nothing has been more quoted than her sketch of the White House as she found it.
“The house is upon a grand and superb scale, requiring about thirty servants to attend and keep the apartments in proper order, and perform the ordinary business of the house and stables—an establishment very well proportioned to the President’s salary. The lighting the apartments from the kitchen to parlors and chambers, is a tax indeed, and the fires we are obliged to keep to secure us from daily agues is another very cheering comfort. To assist us in this castle, and render less attendance necessary, bells are wholly wanting, not one single one being hung through the whole house, and promises are all you can obtain. This is so great an inconvenience that I know not what to do or how to do. The ladies from Georgetown and in the city have many of them visited me. Yesterday I returned fifteen visits. But such a place as Georgetown appears! Why, our Milton is beautiful. But no comparisons; if they put me up bells, and let me have wood enough to keep fires, I design to be pleased. But surrounded with forests, can you believe that wood is not to be had, because people cannot be found to cut and cart it.... We have indeed come into a new country.
“The house is made habitable, but there is not a single apartment finished, and all within side, except the plastering, has been done since B. came.... If the twelve years in which this place has been considered as the future seat of government, had been improved as they would have been in New England, very many of the present inconveniences would have been removed. It is a beautiful spot, capable of any improvement, and the more I view it the more I am delighted with it.
“The ladies are impatient for a drawing-room: I have no looking-glasses but dwarfs, for this house; and a twentieth part lamps enough to light it. My tea-china is more than half missing.... You can scarcely believe that here in this wilderness city I should find my time so occupied as it is. My visitors, some of them, came three or four miles. The return of one of them is the work of one day.... We have not the least fence, yard, or other conveniences without, and the great unfinished audience-room—(the East room) I make a drying-room of to hang my clothes in. Six chambers are made comfortable; two lower rooms, one for a common parlor and one for a ball-room.”
Abigail Adams is an illustrious example of the grandeur of human character. She proved in herself how potent an individual may be, and that individual a woman, in spite of caste, of sex, or the restrictions of human law or condition. She never went to school in her life, yet her thoughtful utterances will live where the labored utterances of her scholarly husband are forgotten. She was less than a year the mistress of the President’s house, yet she has lived ever since in memory a grand model to all who succeed her. The daughter of a country clergyman, the wife of a patriotic and ambitious man, whether she gathered her children about her or sent them forth across stormy seas, while she left herself desolate; whether she stood the wife of the Republican Minister before the haughty Charlotte in the stateliest and proudest court of Europe; whether she presided in the President’s house in the new Capital or in the wilderness, or wrote to statesmen and grandchildren in her own lowly house in Quincy, in prosperity or sorrow, in youth and in age, in life and in death, always she was the regnant woman, devout, wise, patriotic, proud, humble and loving.
Her pictures of the social life of her time are among the most acute, lively and graphic on record. While in her letters to her son, to her husband, to Jefferson and other statesmen, we find some of the grandest utterances of the Revolutionary period. Cut off by her sex from active participation in the struggles and triumphs of the men of her time, not one of them would have died more gladly or grandly than she, for liberty; denied the power of manhood, she made the most of the privileges of womanhood. She instilled into the souls of her children great ideas; she inspired her husband by the hourly sight of a grand example; she gave, through them, her life-long service to the State, and she gave to her country and to posterity her spotless and heroic memory. Tardy Massachusetts! You build monuments to your sons, and ignore the fame of your illustrious daughters. When in the Pantheon of the States you shall place the sculptured forms of two of your patriots, honor your ancient fame by giving to posterity the majestic lineaments of the great woman of the Revolution—Abigail Adams.
In her portrait, Stuart gives us Minerva in a lace cap. Dainty and delicate, it softens without veiling her august features. The exquisite lace ruff about the throat, the lace shawl upon the shoulders, all indicate the finest of feminine tastes, while the broad brow, wide eyes, keenly cut nose, firm chin and slightly imperious mouth, proclaim the proud and powerful intellect, and the high head the commanding moral nature of the woman.