As the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic into a New World, they brought with them conventions about family life that endured long after their migration. Their children then inherited these beliefs and continued to practice in what they believed to be the appropriate role of each family member. In 1776, in what was considered to be the family of the New World, these roles and expectations of what a father, a mother, a husband, a wife, and children should be and do were much like those of their ancestors. Within these conventions, women had only one role in society, which was to be a constant caretaker. Many women, although agreeing their most important role was to be a wife and mother, sought the right to exemplify what it meant to be an independent American woman.

Although not anticipated to be more than an exclusive observer and devotee of her husband's public career, Abigail Adams was one of the first women to seek glorification of the revolutionary era of women. At that time the only political existence wives and daughters experienced was through their relations with men. Abigail sought to break the barrier of women simply standing outside of the political process.

considered women to be intellectual equals of men and suggested women gain similar rights to those of men. Abigail was not suggesting that women wanted to gain complete control and have a reversal of hierarchy. Rather, she was simply questioning the Code of Laws in which women were expected to follow without having a say in them. She was hopeful for a legal system in which women were able to attain contentment in their attributed positions as wives and mothers, as domestic beings respectful to fathers and husbands. Abigail's message to her husband was clear; she was a woman who refined and respected customary female virtues, but also faithfully held valuable her ideals of independence for women.

Through her intelligence and power, Abigail spoke for the women who were unable to express their own feelings due to lack of supremacy.

She made her most famous request to her husband, John Adams, in creating the new government. She pleaded to him, "Do not place such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands" (pg. 10). Abigail believed that not a single individual could be trusted to exercise unlimited power over another, not even a husband over a wife. She

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Approximate Word count = 987
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)