Abigail Adams
Every other document in this library was written by someone with a seat: a pulpit, a bench, a convention, a command, a congress. Abigail Adams had none, and hers is the only document here written from a farm. She wrote it on 31 March 1776 while running that farm alone and nursing neighbours through a sickness that was killing them by the week, three months before the vote on independence. It is also the earliest of the four harvest documents, so the library's argument arrives at its conclusion first in a letter from someone who would not be permitted to vote on it. The Formation Library has nothing to send a reader to about her. Fifty four entries, none of them hers, and that absence is worth naming rather than filling.
What this library holds
March 31, 1776 | Abigail Adams
A letter from a farm outside Boston to a husband sitting in Congress, telling him what she expects of the laws he is about to help write.
Where this sits
Harvest, 1776 to 1781. The claim becomes a country. These are the documents everyone knows, and they read differently once you have read what came first.
- Before: Government Corrupted by Vice, and Recovered by Righteousness, Samuel Langdon.
- After: The Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason.
What to read about Abigail Adams
Nothing. The Formation Library carries fifty four entries and names Abigail Adams in none of them. That is recorded here rather than filled with the nearest section, which is not about Abigail Adams. The Formation Library is worth reading anyway.