and she followed henry through the army camps in the revolution. and ten of her children died. but she reminded henry several times that he was not a commander in his own home. and she was quite firm about that. and all of her children went to fine schools. so i don't have real statements about the importance of education for women, but clearly she would have believed in that. peggy, her counterpart in philadelphia, who married benedict arnold, lucy becomes a patriot and peggy becomes a spy, and the question is why. she became a co-conspirator with benedict much later. when they married, he was a military hero. they were both educated. peggy came, again, from an affluent, educated family. we know he educated her beyond the french cipher and reading, because she was a teacher. she was a student of politics and finance twice. so we know that education -- and again, as a mother, and i can only speak to that, because you have to understand her parents burned all her accordance when she w -- correspondence when she was being accused of being a spy, so they burned everything until 1773 when they were in england. but she made sure all of her five children went to fine schools. so we can only say education was obviously very important for her. and just to deviate, her brother was trained to go to harvard but didn't. she would tutor with her brother and train others to go to college here in england. and she also actually did some education for people like abigail and john's daughter abby and even some for john quincy. and she did write a little about women and education, and i think this is where she crosses a little bit with sergeant murray, who she finally met later briefly. but she believed women should be more educated, that they should have the same opportunity as men. she did not believe that -- she couldn't imagine that they would go on and have what we have today, anything like jobs and professions. so education for all these women was very important, and we have to remember these were all women from, you know, the upper classes of colonial and revolutionary america. and most women, if they were lucky, could barely read enough to read the bible and just cipher enough to keep household accounts. judith? >> well, education was -- for girls and women was her huge passion. and there had been a family story passed on for generations that she was also tutored, along with her brother, who then went to harvard. but i know from reading her books that this was absolutely not the case. she had wonderfully supportive parents but she received only very rudimentary reading and writing teaching from a woman she called her ill-taught. at a very early age, she was keenly aware of the education her brother got and the education that she got and then did not have because it ended pretty quickly. and she was really trained to run an upper-class household and get married and have children. but she had, in her family home, a family library, and she was allowed to use it. so she became a self-educated, really, throughout her life, a self-educated woman and then also a writer. and her first writing was poetry, which, again, another family story which i choose to believe that her father was very proud of her writing and would show it to family. so she received a lot of encouragement from her parents to let her use the family library and then start to write. she is credited with opening up a lot of opportunities for quality education for women. i mentioned earlier that she helped start a female academy in dorchester. and the other thing to remember is that these were the days, the 18th century, this is before women could speak in public. so if you wanted a public voice, writing was the only way that you could do that. and she did that in spades because she was from a very politically active family, militarily in the patriotic cause, and she was not content to sit on the sidelines. so her writing was her way to have a public voice. and she wrote essays, magazine and newspaper columns. her book "the gleaner," which i mentioned, poetry and three plays, one of which has not been found, and of course these 20 volumes of letter books which were just an incredible find. so education for girls and women is something she wrote about a lot, cared passionately about it, but she wanted to go one step further, which was to open up employment opportunities for women across the board and allow women to earn and manage their own money, manage and keep their own money, which was not happening at the time. so she was way ahead there. >> i think abigail, i think one of the most characteristic things about her writing, during the tumultuous years of the revolution, she wrote at one point, my bursting heart must find vent in my pen. and i think that's really what writing is for abigail, is kind of this outlet. and unlike mercy and judith, abigail didn't speak this public role, but her writing serves to get out her thoughts and her views and to educate herself, and it's not just maintaining ties with friends and family. and one of the topics that she was passionate and adamant about was education for women. and, i mean, both john and abigail believed in public education and believed that it was the bedrock of an engaged and stable citizenry. i mean, these are the republican values that abigail further believed as women had a role, and forgive me, she says females who have a burst to act on the great theater should have education, and she means that because they're responsible for molding the young minds of their children and for creating the heroes and statesmen of their if i lo-- if -- philosephers, they learn it. she speaks about the value of education. and i think one of the kind of most poignant moments, but also one of the strongest statements she made is while she's in london, she is -- she attends a series of lectures, which is something she has not been able to do in the united states. and she writes to her niece, no less, and she is talking about this inequality in education. but she says that by attending these lectures and taking part in this intellectual dialogue, that this big beautiful world was open to her, and if only it was also available at home. >> i've listened to the comments of both sara and bonnie. mercy warren is the oldest of these women. she's 45 when she meets abigail, who is 29 at that time. and i don't remember the dates of judith, sergeant murray, but i know she's quite a bit older. she was not supposed to speak about politics, but she could write about them but nobody could know it was a woman. and so she wrote a series of very influential pamphlets that were published in t"the patriot and "the spy" and they were copied. she then wrote a series of incendiary plays, one that was published. plays weren't performed in boston, they were read in newspapers. and the last play she wrote "the group" really lit a spark right before, really, lexington was conquered. and she was terrified. she kept saying to john adams, well, i can't do this, i can't do this, and he kept encouraging her to. so they were anonymous. it wasn't until much later that john kept pesterring her to please write a history of the revolution, and it took her nearly 30 years. and then, actually, by 1792, we already have judith sergeant murray's publications, and by that point mercy, in her 60s, publishes her poems and some of them were political. it takes her more than another 10 years to have the courage to public her history of the rise and termination of the american revolution. when you look at it in a time frame, there is a gradual opening up, at least for women to be published and to begin to speak, partially from the -- i was thinking about this when you were talking about abigail -- partly from the loose talkings of elizabeth montague. in london is became permissible for women to write. also, abigail -- just to respond, abigail and mercy used to compare treatises that they would read in books. when they first knew each other, julianna seymour's on the management and education of children, and they discussed this and batted it back and forth as to whether this was valid or not. then, of course, there were many others, including the outrageous lord chesterfield letters that they were quite upset about. >> that's a really good point. because i mentioned that women were not speaking in public at this point. it was also inappropriate for women to use their real names. and judith wrote under pen names until she revealed her identity in "the gleaner" which was also a very gutsy thing to do. the first pen name she used was constantia. and at some point, around 1792, her first essay as constantia appeared in 1790. it was on inequality of the sexes, the first claim of feal equalii -- female equality in public. people then knew who constantia was, so she decide to do write as a man. she called herself mr. gleaner, and she didn't even tell her husband that she was mr. gleaner. and everybody kept trying to figure out who it was. eventually she published an essay that had enough clues or she wrote about something that only he would know about, so he figured out that's who she was. but by the time 1798 came around and she collected those glean heiress isglean gleaner essays and began putting them together. they own a copy of the gleaner, all three volumes, and it's her name abigail that's on the book. so we like that. >> if you could kind of address the interesting relationship that mercy and abigail had, and then also if you want to talk about the relationship between judith and abigail, and sara, if you'd like to respond after that. >> well, abigail and mercy met in 1773. john had known mercy otis warren and her husband james warren before. and as i say, when they first met, they first talked about child rearing and the revolution among themselves. i think that was the ghost of mercy otis warren. a powerful personality. but -- and then from there they went on. well, that book originally, i was going to call it "dare i say more." mercy very strong-minded but afraid what people would think of her. she writes, and abigail encourages her -- she's already written two plays anonymously, but abigail encouraged her, as john did, to write sort of a spoof on the boston tea party. and she does that, and she has the squabble of the senims. but mercy gives it up and she thinks john should do it. abigail is definitely advocating for that. abigail is a lot younger than mercy. she was 29 when mercy was 45 and mercy's children are almost all grown. she has five sons. and abigail looks at her with wonder and talks about her, quote, well-ordered household. but once john leaves for the continental congress and mercy encourages her to -- but you have to understand, mercy did not want her own husband, general james warren, to go south of new york. she didn't let him go out of the state of massachusetts. although abigail add meyers hmi you begin to get -- and abigail admires her education -- almost formally educated -- she becomes a little resentful when -- they do wonderful things, they trade children a lot of times, and they kind of boost each other when they're worried about the soldiers occupying quincy and braintree and coming towards plymouth where mercy lives. and they worry about this back and forth. they trade notes on it. they do many other things. when mercy went to watertown right after lexington and concord to help her husband james, who is the president of the presidential congress and consequence nej-- continental a, she writes to john. every time she rides back to plymouth, she stays with abigail. as i say, this becomes a very close relationship. when john is finally sent to europe, abigail doesn't want him to go, and she moans and is upset about it to mercy. mercy lectures her like mercy had a pen chant for doing. great advantages, quote, are often attended with great inconveniences. if your friend did not have the ability to render such important service to this country, he would not be called. so abigail was to be congratulat congratulated, mercy is telling her, to be merely connected with a gentleman who is learning patriotism and prudence that qualify him to negotiate over courts. you cannot anticipate the advantages that will probably rebound from the security to yourself and your country, end quote. and yes, john keeps asking mercy's husband to become part of congress, become a justice in the supreme court, mercy won't let him go. they do go into business when john is overseas because he does send back things like handkerchieves and fabrics and tea, and mercy acts as abigail's agent for the sale of these kind of black market goods, if you will. they weren't british, but it was okay. and then, of course, they twiddle over these snarky series of letters called lord chesterfield's letters. sort of a cynical view of life. mercy dashes off a letter about it, and abigail immediately has it published. the relationship becomes more complicated after abigail goes to great britain. there are strains in the relationship beyond the little ones i've described because mercy and her husband are these hard rock, old time patriots. they don't believe in any embellishment of any kind, and hearing about the lavish courts and the wonderful lives they're leading there in france, mercy writes a few letters that are probably, well, rather provoking. and both john and abigail respond, this is not fun. we have to get dressed up in these things. we can't afford to keep up this pomp. we have to -- i think abigail says and i'm not quoting directly -- that she would rather be at home in her garden than talking to people in these courts. then when they come back, when the adams return, the constitution has already been ratified. and there's already, as you must know, a great deal of animosity between the federalists and the non-federalists. so the adams and the warrens take up their old friendship together, but the strain of difference in political views pull them apart, and they're some very nasty breakfast scenes between them. meanwhile, mercy is still trying to write this history, and she's kind of given up. adams goes on to become vice president and president. this distance between them grows even more and more acrimonious. but abigail and mercy keep exchanging letters and all of that. but when mercy finally publishes her history of the rise and termination of the american revolution, three volumes in 1805, and she's now in her 70s and gets help from her secretary. john doesn't reply or respond. she sends him a copy. nor does abigail for two years. abigail writes chatty letters to her. and then john writes to her and says, in the spirit of friendship, i have a few corrections to make in your history. and those corrections go on for 16 letters, 20 pages each. there is a terrible break between them, and poor abigail and mercy really can't connect too much. it's superficial the few times they do. finally, when abby comes back, and she's already ill, their daughter, with cancer, there is a visit with mercy, and abigail gives her a lock of hair. and then -- let me say this. mercy gives her a lock of hair. they become friends, they start to exchange what you did in those days. you had a ring set with pearls with interlocking hair between them. eventually about four months later -- this is now -- now abby dies and this reckonciliation happens with john and abigail, and she has continued to be very close. in fact, mercy brings abby's children to stay with her after the funeral so they can have a little kind of normal time. so desperately, you know, mercy and abigail try to maintain a friendship through all of these difficult strains and political threads that have separated them one way or the other. >> interesting. well, i have a very different story. first of all, judith was seven years younger than abigail. and she first met her in 1788 after judith and john murray were finally able to be married, and their honeymoon trip took them through braintree on the way to rhode island and they stayed with the adamses. john had sailed from england with the adamses earlier that year. i get this question all the time, john and abigail, were they friends or whatever. i have yet to find a letter she wrote to abigail, but she wrote a couple of letters about abigail, and i have some really brief excerpts i want to read to you because they're really fun. i really think geographic distance was great. we're talking, you know, horseback riding back and forth. it took me two hours to get to drive from salem to waymouth today during rush hour. so it would have taken a lot longer using a horse and buggy or whatever. but i like to think they would have been friends because they were both married to men who were public figures who traveled a lot. i think both of them were lonely, and both of their husbands were named john, and i think they would have been friends. but i will say, you know, abigail was a force of nature. i mean, judith, very courageous in her own way, doing her thing. but abigail is running a farm and probably plowing the back 40 herself. she's a real force of nature. i think judith would have found her a tad intimidating. anyway, let me just read you these letters since they're really fun. this one was written after she had met abigail for the first time about the relationship she had with john adams, and she writes, she is not only his bosom friend but his aide and counselor in every emergency. and such are the energies of her mind as to place her title in the unbounded accomplice of her alleged husband beyond controversy. several gentlemen in boston whose character and influence are high in the political world declare it was the president called out of time, they should rather see mrs. adams in the presidential chair than any other character now existing in america. i love thinking about abigail adams as president. so she then -- when they reencountered each other in new york when she and john went to philadelphia and the american government, as you know, first started meeting in new york. and she wrote, the vice president still continues a man of sense and patriots, that he is still good and deniably affable, that his lady is not spoiled by the surrounding flatterers. in one word, mr. and mrs. adams are the same kind and hospitable individuals received the most affectionate and applicable condescension. that's all i know except abigail's signature is in "the gleaner." you can see it at the hp park service site. but as i say, i'm still reading the letters, so there might be something i don't know about. and i'll let all of you know. >> and i hope you find something in those letter books. those are wonderful characterizations. >> i went through today and looked at our on-line catalog again, okay, what's in there? i only came up with the letters between john and judith. which in themselves are very interesting, but -- and i think in terms -- i think you ably summarized the relationship between mercy, but i think just a couple, you know, reading the correspondence, kind of the full compass of the correspondence, certainly their early letters when abigail is so young and she is definitely impressed and influenced by mercy's candor and these first letters that abigail writes are very timid and the work you were talking about on child rearing, that, you know, abigail is very praising of this work and mercy is very dismi dismissive of it in reply. i think that probably intimidated abigail to an extent, but it also in some ways acted as a role model in terms of abigail finding her voice. and i think that's certainly one of the benefits of the age disparity and the early correspondence. you can certainly see abigail trying to aid the writing of mercy, which is a much more formal style than abigail has. it's almost disconcerting as somebody who works with abigail's writings all the time to see these letters and see this much more formal -- it almost comes off as disingenuous a little bit, but it's very early on, and abigail uses that in her wonderfully candid way to the point of sarcastic or intimidation at times. but i think, you know, abigail was certainly that glue that managed to keep the relationship together, and i think at the end it really did kind of come back, certainly, and she and mercy resumed their correspondence before her death. the last letter abigail writes to mercy shortly before mercy's death and after the death of mercy's brother is just a wonderfully -- you know, it is the letter of a friend at a point in time in life where half differences, while not forgotten, have been forgiven, and it's a wonderful letter. >> i think that abigail, you know, had a lot of pluck to start with. my sense is that abigail's writing is so refreshing compared to mrs. warren, who had quite a reputation and quite a stern conscience of the american revolution. so i don't think she's disingenuous -- >> i don't think she's disingenuous, but when you read abigail's letters and you read her letters to mercy, there is a different tone in them many times. it's just initially maybe she's trying to impress her, but it's just -- they're just a little bit different than the normal kind of stream of conscience abigail letters that you get when she's kind of writing to her husband. >> i just have to say that abigail's comments about lucy knox are pretty funny, because lucy got to be an obsessive card player even when she was entertaining other dignitaries, the wives of other dignitaries and abigail find this quite a musing. of course, lucy becomes very obese, and the daughter has visited them and knox has been very hospitable to abby and so on, but abby writes to her mother, you would not recognize lucy, mrs. knox anymore, because she thinks her waist is about three times the size of abigail's. there is a different kind of a relationship with lucy knox. >> funny. >> so mercy, judith and abigail all had very supportive husbands. if you want to just briefly touch upon that, how the relationship that each of these women had with her husband, how that enabled her to pursue what she wanted to pursue in life. >> well, briefly, mercy's husband probably met her through her brother james otis, the famous patriot who was assaulted by the british at harvard. and he loved books. mercy didn't marry until she was 26, which was quite late for a colonial era women. there are a lot of theories as to why. she was too erudite, one theory. james warren, who became the high sheriff of plymouth which is what his father's position was, loved her for that and always encouraged her. finally when she first -- he was the one that kept showing her work to john adams. when she finally did publish, and even when she wrote that famous play "the group," he immediately rushed that off to john adams in philadelphia. but when she finally dared to publish her own poetry in her own name in the 1790s and she had to spend time in boston, it was james who encouraged her. he was always very proud of her. and, of course, it was he and his son when she began to lose her eyesight that they helped her to the very end. the final copy was written by her son, but they were all very supportive. she couldn't have done it otherwise. she had five sons. she had quite a bit to do. >> yeah, john murray was in judith's corner at all times, and there is a running joke that when he was roaming around the countryside preaching, he was selling salvation and subscriptions to her book at the same time. i choose to believe that's true. one of the reasons i put together that book "mingling souls upon paper," that was the quote she said to him. when they first met, she was married to her husband john stevens. john murray was ten years older, but clearly they just fell in love with each other, because there was no other woman in john murray's life by the time he came to america and arrived in gloucester and decided to stay in gloucester. they were friends for 14 years before they could be married. husband number one conveniently died. they were pastor and convent before they could be married, and the letters between judith and john are striking in that they are filled with philosophical investigation, and it's clear to me that she was starved intellectually to have these conversations with somebody, and here is the head guy of her chosen faith, universalism. the letters are kind of hard to read, because they really get into a lot of detail about theological investigation, as i said. but if you look at her writing career, her very first essay appeared in 1784 when she was still married to john stevens, her first husband. he fled gloucester because he was fact debtor's prison. he died in 1786, she found out, in 1787, and she was very poor and had to put her writing on hold during all that time because they were barricaded in their home in gloucester so the sheriff couldn't come get him. it was very dramatic with all of this. by 1788, john murray was told to leave gloucester for his safety because his minister was being threatened and he was being threatened physically. so he went back to england, and it was when he came back to america when he knew it was safe, it was that ship he sailed on with john and abigail. but when judith and john got married later that year, her writing career came screaming back and that's when she really kicked everything into high gear. she wouldn't be able to do any of that without his deep love and support. i will also say, one of the talks i love to give about the two of them is about their love story. in 1809 he suffered a stroke after all of the traveling he had been doing. i mean, he worked himself to a point of exhaustion. he would travel, travel, come home and crash, be terribly ill, get up and do it all again. 1809 he has a stroke, and a couple years later -- he's partially paralyzed but he can speak and he can think. a couple years later, judith made her annual summer trek to gloucester to visit her family. by now they're living in boston. and he has apparently written to her telling her how sorry he is that he's made her life so difficult. and she writes back -- i'm going to choke up right now. she writes back one of the most beautiful love letters i've ever read about how much he means to her, how much he's done for her spiritually as her husband, as the father of their child. it's beautiful. i've given this talk many, many times. i choke up every single time i read that letter, so i won't read it to you. you can see that on c-span. but it's a beautiful love story. they were equal partners. this is something she believed in tremendously, that marriage must be based on an equal partnership, and theirs was in spades. it's a beautiful 18th century relationship or for today, as i conclude my talk. >> i think equal partners is a perfect way to encapsulate it and partners in a way we would understand that are different in many 18th century partnerships, right? but they fed off each other, so abigail is this very intelligent woman that doesn't necessarily have a full outlet for that, and john respects that and fosters that, and so she's his sounding board, and through that and through his encouragement and correspondence not just with him but with women and other -- her other social cohort, she really is able to work through these ideas and develop this very strong intellect and political ideas. and she does not seek this public role. she writes, actually, at the very beginning of 1796 when the possibility of somebody other than washington begins to circulate, and john starts to put these ideas down on paper and tries to work out his thoughts of the potential of him becoming president to abigail, abigail writes back, my ambition leads me not to be the first in rome. she would have been happy to retire to quincy. and yet because of who she is and the values she believes and who her husband is that she recognizes that there is a duty beyond her own desires, and her responsibility is to fulfill that duty, whatever that is. so i think that very well encapsulates the relationship. she didn't seek this public role, but once she is in it, because she has had this wonderful relationship that has allowed her to become this independent woman, right, she is managing the farm, he's gone for a decade, and it starts out as his farm and then it's our farm and then it's my farm. you know, but by this time, it's not necessarily the public role she sought, but she certainly believed in her own capabilities to help massage the situation to her husband's advantage. and so you see her, you know, using her correspondence to shift opinions in the newspapers, to correct and challenge kind of republican ideas and kind of assert the federalist mentality that was the adamses'. and all of that is possible because she has this partnership with john that allowed what was already this amazingly capable woman with this deep intellect to kind of flower and grow. >> i have a quick response to that because there is a wonderful letter that judith wrote to her parents in salem in 1788 when she and john were fanlfan finally able to get married. she tells her parents, essentially, that she feels such a sense of peace knowing she and john are pursuing their path of duty. duty was to god, number one, but to country, number two. and so it's interesting she had a tremendous sense of her duty and her life's purpose, and she did it. >> ready for some questions from the audience? actually, i'm sorry, could you please step to the microphone? thank you. >> first of all, my thanks to you mirks she wi you, michelle, for this wonderful program. i enjoyed it very much. through your research, to what extent did you uncover a support system among women for women? my sense is these three women were so farah he ahead of their that they would be encouraging other women, helping them up. i wasn't sure to what extent you found that in your research. >> yes, i did find it in both mercy and abigail's work with women. there is a lot of concern at the battle of bunker hill of women who were in situations who were now in straits or their husbands had died. i'm certainliy thinking of sam adams' wife. the professor of natural science was a good friend of theirs, and a lot of concern when he became ill and when hannah was left a widow. also just -- for instance, they pooled their wool so it could be used for women who perhaps didn't have livestock to have enough wool to be able to sew sweaters and garments for their family. just moving on to lucy in the army camp, it was many officers' wives who were there, but lucy stays all the time, even more than martha washington. and there is a comparison all the time with other officers' wives who maybe got to camp more than lucy did in the beginning, because she was angry about that. or people like katie green flirted with all these young officers. there is a sisterhood or a support system. it isn't anything like what we have today, at least what was preserved. we have to understand these are handwritten letters, often in candlelight and under duress, so we probably don't have it all. you hear about the war widows. many of them weren't widows. their husbands were simply gone. and there was a lot of concern and care and attention in kind of keeping track of these people and trying to help each other out. >> most of judith's attention to other women was focused on the next generation. she loved young people. she had one daughter of her own. the son she gave birth to died in birth. and she always had neeieces and nephews and children of family friends staying with them once they moved to boston, and so she was very, very dedicated to the next generation. hence her interest in female education, but also in taking them to cultural activities or whatever. so she was very interested in m empowering and encouraging the next generation. in fact, one of those young cousins who would stay with her in boston, he game part of the william lloyd garrison group of abolitionists in boston, and i have a friend who is writing a book that looks at that relationship. so that's just one example of how judith really empowered the next generation of young women. she also empowered the next generation as american writers. this is at a time when american writing was looked down on. if it wasn't european, if it wasn't ancient, it wasn't good. so as an american writer, she was given a lot of credit by the next generation of writers, and especially women writers. sally wood from maine, maine's first woman novelist among them credited her with opening the door for people like her, to be able to write and use their name. and so that's where she had a lot of influence on other women and provided -- she was the support system for a lot of these people. in terms of her close, personal friends, the women she wrote to, and she had a number of close -- she had two very close female friends. the letters are all about family. it's the men who were her close friends, like her cousin in new hampshire who she talked business with or politics with. so it's very interesting for me to look at those differences. >> i think with abigail, that female network began at home. she was one of three daughters. and so she and her sisters carried on this rich correspondence when marriage with abigail if quincy, they didn't need to write, but this is the first time in quite a while we've had the two writings, and they're wonderful letters. but certainly their early letters, their reading, and they're talking about books and what they're reading for ways of bettering themselves, and that's the earliest, that threefold relationship. but abigail is definitely someone that is looking out for the women in her community. we have, again, in the volume we're working on now, abigail is in philadelphia and she's writing to her sister, mary, who is in quincy, and she's saying, you know, she's sending little bits of money. oh, and i forgot to do for widow whomever. o so mary writes back and says, i'm happy to be your almonder and running around the community. this certainly gives you insight that abigail is, you know, a leading woman in her community. take away the public role because of her affluence is a leading woman in her community, and back to that christian duty, part of it is to take care of her duty. she's writing letters to her nieces and other young women and, again, fostering, teaching them to write, imploring them to write. her daughter-in-law, who famously early on did not like to write. she's writing to louisa katherine saying, if you practice more, you'll learn to enjoy it, and perhaps you should also keep a diary. >> great question. thank you. any other questions? >> this question is for nancy. lucy knox. i didn't get her middle name. >> flucker. >> is that the one and same henry who brought the cannons? >> yes, it is. and lucy wasn't too happy because he told her -- her parents never talked to her again after she married henry. he told her he was going on a short journey for three weeks. and she threw quite a tantrum, so the poor guy, here he is going to new york and he's writing to her, it's okay, i'll be back soon. 58 days later -- >> he was instrumental in bringing that american revolution. that was huge. >> thank you. >> hi. my question is this. most of what we know about these women and their husbands are from the paper records they left behind. and most people say, male and female, unfortunately, myself included, aren't really leaving paper records behind for their descendants to follow. what does this mean about the recording of history for the future, going from the 21st century and beyond? >> i'll begin, for years with voluntary groups i belong to, everything is e-mail and where are we going to get our history? some people today are doing videos. family reminiscence, family memoirs. maybe that's an option. i tend to keep paper copies of most things, but i think most people don't, and it's really frightening. >> i don't have much to add except i agree with that. that. it's disturbing because -- and i mean, we're all addicted to e-mail, but as you say, occasionally print out some of those things. i mean, we know that letter burning went on in the past, and sofia hawthorne bushed letters, and john murray asked judith to burn all his letters before they were married, one wonders, but we can't find them, so she probably did. it's distressing, and i think people need to think about what people like us 50 years, a hundred years from now will want to read and save some stuff. get a blank volume, create a letter book, write a journal. you know, it's not too late to start and write some of the stories that you remember from your -- from earlier years in your life now while you still can. yeah, oral histories are done, families are videotaping and audio taping and doing those kinds of things, but it's not the same. it's not the same. >> yeah, not day by day. >> i think the adams would fully approve of whatever you write, preserve mentality, and, i mean, i think there's something to that, but at the same time, it's, you know, what we need as an archivist right now, and these are questions going on for more than a decade, and there are ways of capturing, but just as other methods of recording history have changed in the last 300 -- well, more, but for our purposes, 300 years, it, you know, it's historians are creative about how they capture those stories, and history is kind of stories made out of the stories you find, and, certainly, the only reason we're able to tell these three women's stories are because they left a record. there are countless other women of the same period whose stories we certainly can't tell through writing whether they didn't leave them or they couldn't, but there are a number of other ways to access those stories through material culture, landscape, and so it's -- it's thinking more broadly about how to recapture those stories and how to turn that research question into one of access and accessibility. certainly, it's easier when you keep a letter book. >> we didn't know we had them until the 1980s so -- >> yeah. which reminds me of the story of when harry truman was about to leave the white house. his wife was standing there by the fireplace throwing letters in, his letters to her, her letters to him. he said, beth, what are you doing, think about history. she said, i am. >> that's great. >> any other questions? >> hi, elsa, i'd like to thank the three wonderful panelists and michelle for a great program. i have a specific question. did these women have any comments or feelings about the french revolution? i know that's going on in the 1790s, and it dealt a little bit with women's, you know, rights and women's history. i didn't if you had comments about that? >> i'm not sure there's enough comments. well, initially, mercy otis warren and james warren were fascinating by it hoping it would become a less federalist nation when the french revolution was over, they thought it was great. they loved jefferson, and, as you know, jefferson was embracing the idea of equality for all men, but as it went on, and when things started getting gruesome, then there was a feeling that unless you had -- and, of course, that actually bolstered the whole federalist impulse later in the 1790s, that you needed to have a regulated government so that you didn't have chaos and greed and vengefulness and all beheadings and whatnot taking place in france, and so, eventually, the french revolution, you know, is looked upon with horror. it's democracy gone amuck. >> same here. i mean, judith wrote a wonderful essay that appearing in her book, "the gleaner," denouncing the revolution. she was antiviolence of any kind. she didn't believe in corporal punishment for children, which was common at the time. she did not believe in dualing. she believed in a vegetarian diet because she didn't believe we had the right to kill animals, which is interesting. she was against -- i love the fact -- she's against killing fish. so she was horrified. that was the word. she was horrified by the french revolution when it turned and started getting bloodier and bloodier, ands i said, she wrote a wonderful essay about it in her book, "the gleaner," and i have a copy of it, and it's been reissued. it's been put in the library, so you don't have the find the original edition from 1878. >> when the revolution breaks out, the adams's are cautiously optimistic because it's the idea of democracy spreading, but quickly, that turn is made, and abigail deplores the violence and the murder of the king and queen and it's -- it's in and of itself, they deplore what's going on in france, but then as it feeds back into american politics in terms of becoming so devicive between what is perceived as probritish federalists and profrench republicans, it is, you know, it becomes this critically important event to american politics, and it's hugely devicive to the nation, and i think that's more so than what's actually going on in france is what is important to the adams is not kind of in their everyday live, and certainly, i mean, from the 1796 election on and certainly the 1800 election, it's just bitterly acrimonious because of these divisive factions. >> and the aliens seditious act under adams is because there's fear that the french are going to corrupt the americans and create similar chaos here. >> maybe one more question. >> this is just for bonny, but could you speak more about when the letter books were found? here you are a scholar of judith, came to a dead end, and then this wonderful discovery. wondering if you could speak about that. >> yeah, thanks. the daughter married a harvard student who was from mississippi, so after john murray eventually died in 1815, adam louis who returned to natches sent for his wife, for julia maria, who by then, had a baby, and even though judithmented to die in the same bed her husband died in and be buried with him, she went to natches with her daughter and granddaughter and took the letter books with her, all 20 volumes, and there they sat. she died in 1820, and her daughter died soon after. the granddaughter had already died, and they just sat in this mansion owned by the bingeman family until a minister, reverend gordon gibson was receivering a parrish, read american history, told about the family bible, oh, did to the house, there's copy books. he found them. he took them a couple years to persuade the ordinary person to give them up, and she finally did, and they are now at the mississippi department of archives and history. they had them preserved and published on microfilm, and it was while i was president of the sergeant house that gordon gibson contacted us saying, i think you might be interested in this. as i still refer to him as her knight in shining armor because, you know, it's like what would i do with my life if he had not found these things, really, so i just became completely entranced and started promoting her, them because as we have been talking about, so many women did not -- were not able to or did not leave behind a personal record. we thought that even though she had, it had been destroyed. it was not destroyed. i just went out of my mind when i learned about this and eventually left the museum, got my own copy of the microfilm, seven rolls, my own microfilm reader and plunged in. it's years of doing this, and that's fine because i never know what i'm going to read. no one has read them in their entirety. that's how they were found. in fact, i contactsed gordon, out in the middle part of the country now, i contacted him before the talk to let him know i was doing it. any advice? he said, oh, for god's sake, you don't need advice from me. what's also neat about them is the early ones are soft brown let ergs and if you go on my website, i have pictures of the covers, jsmsociety.com, but the early ones are light brown leather, and the later ones are covered with wallpaper, which is neat because a frugal new englander, she would have used scraps of her own wallpaper to cover the books so i know, oh, is that the bed chamber wall paper? i don't know. they are absolutely fascinating, and, of course, every letter i've transcribed, written to -- as i said before, i have yet to run into a letter written to ab gail, but all the letters written to john sor about john i sent to ad 78s historical national park and david mccallaugh, when he was working on his biography. i wrote to him. i love this story. i wrote to him, i have unpublished primary source material about john adams, are you interested? these were the days when we still had answering machines with a tape. he was still doing "american experience," and i was out when he called, so i came back, hit the button. hello, bonny, this is david mccalllaugh. i was, like, oh, my god. we got together, sent him everything i had. judith loved john adams. she dedicate the "the gleaner" to him. he was then president. i sent everything i had. his description of adams the man, when she met him and wrote home to the parents, is in the john adams's boig. which i assume you own. go home and look in the index, and her letter is in there. >> well, wonderful questions. the authors will be signing books outside, and they'll be available to chat with you if you'd like, and thank you so much to our wonderful panelists. it was a wonderful conversation. thank you. you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter @cspan history to keep up with the latest history news. so i told this story about how i, whose every aspect of whose identity is in one way or another a threat to israel. i am -- my gender is male. my religion is muslim. my citizenship is american, but my nationality is iran you. my ethnicity is persian. my culture is middle eastern. everything about me sends off all warning signals for israel. the experience of an iranian american single man trying to get through the airport in, you know, in the 21st century is a reminder to everyone despite how globalization brought us closer, diminished the boundaries that separate us as nations, as ethnicitie ethnicities, as people, as cultures. despite all of that, all you have to do is spend a few minutes trying to get through the airport to remember that those divisions, things that separate us are still very much alive. best selling author and professor will reza asian will take your questions on the war on terror and current instability in the middle east live sunday for three hours at noon eastern. booktv, book television for serious readers. next on american history tv, hear how forward-thinking founding fathers like franklin, madison, and jefferson coped with disease, promoted public health, and experimented with new medical treatments. author jean abrams traces medical theories and therapies available to the founders focusing on the smallpox inoculation. this event is a little less than an hour. tonight, we are so happy to have willijean with us, she's t author of dr. charles david -- "a jewish immigrant and the american tuberculosis movement" as well as articles and jewish and medical history appearing in scholarly articles and medical magazines. i welcome you here tonight. >> thank you. good evening, thank you.

Related Keywords

New York , United States , New Hampshire , Watertown , Massachusetts , Constantia , Iran , Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , Rhode Island , Boston , Washington , District Of Columbia , Mississippi , London , City Of , United Kingdom , Braintree , Maine , Rome , Lazio , Italy , Israel , France , Britain , Americans , America , French , British , American , John Murray , Lucy Knox , Abigail , Europe Abigail , John Stevens , Adam Louis , Jean Abrams , Otis Warren , Julia Maria , Louisa Katherine , John Quincy , James Warren , Gordon Gibson , Harry Truman , Charles David , Julianna Seymour , Benedict Arnold Lucy , Asam Adam , James Otis , Franklin Madison , John Adams , William Lloyd , Elizabeth Montague ,