how when happened to write this book and we have to go back into history three years when if you recall, three years ago, it seemed certain that a woman was going to be the democratic candidate for president of the united states and win the election. things changed a lot and very quickly but three years ago there was no competition on the horizon. as i thought about this woman who was about to become our first woman president of united states, i realized she had been a first lady and i had worked on a first lady 30 years of my career and i had worked on the political relationship of a very famous first family, the adams and it

seemed appropriate to write a book about them. there had been no prior double biography of abigail and john wonderful biographies of john adams and some nice ones of abigail but none of the marriage so i decided to write about the two of them in tandem. my interest in abigail goes back 30 years to the beginning of the women's movement. i am trade is a colonial history and i did period since the entire 17th and 18th century. then the women's movement came along and i was teaching in southern california and i did not know how to do women's history. there were very few bucks if you went to a bookstore 30 years ago and looked on a shelf of woman's books there

were very few. the only way i can think to do women's history was to write a biography of able men. i looked through who were the possible well-known women in that era? and bradstreet, but she was a poet and i don't do poetry. there was mercy warren who wrote the first history of the american revolution, but she left very few papers as well. and and hutchison of course, but no paper, no archives left in your own words everything we know about her has been written by men but then there was abigail adams and she laughed letters price as they started reading her letters, it was love at first letter and realized i could work on abigail adams.

and there were very few biographies of her at the time that had been sit-in at in recent times there were some around world war ii but no contemporary biographies. i started out writing a biography of abigail adams this was 30 years ago. i finished it and it was a chronological history of her life from birth through death. just about the time i was ready to publish it a couple of biographies came out about her and i realize my not was not different than the others that came out about her. and the salient thing about all of them was that all of her biographies had as its protagonists, the main character, a hero, john adams. the reason was he was involved of all of the great historical

events of the period so when you start writing a chronological biography you keep landing and it that congress or the first continental congress or the peace treaty or one or another of the very famous in which john was involved and so the consequence he was the hero of her biographies so i started to think about how i could write to our hurt and keep the focus of the book on her? it occurred to me if i wrote about topix in her life in a woman's life that i could keep the focus on her and that is why i have written so extensively about abigail adams i have written two books because each one of them is written not chronologically but on topics in a woman's life, about being a wife, a

mother, a mother-in-law, issues that were important in women's lives in the 18th century as well as today. i wrote a chapter on the correspondence between abigail adams and thomas jefferson that focused on the way women and men at use language differently. eroded topic of the conversation of abigail and james lovell who was a member of the first continental congress and that chapter focused on gossip because win talk a lot. what this chapter did was rescue that topic of gossip to say it is important and that is how we form communities and no ourselves to be part of a community. i have written 30 years about abigail adams and along came

the clinton candidacy and i thought now is the time i should start writing about the marriage and focus on the marriage of "abigail & john" which i did do. of course, history changed in three years and hillary instead became secretary of state. but that was my starting point* for this book. nevertheless when i started i was left with the same challenge that i had faced when i wrote chronologically about abigail, that is how to write a double biography and keep the focus on abigail and not let it move over onto john? the way i did that and decided to do that was moved john adams out of the political or the diplomatic sphere and moved him into the domestic sphere, the family's fear, so

mostly, this book is about the marriage and john and family man although it has to do too be accurate history within the context that the marriage took place, it has to tell the history of the period as well and it does tell about john's diplomatic and historical participation in the revolution, but the focus is always on that the family, my help. another problem i had in writing a double biography how do write a double biography? how do write about two people and manage handily and two people and give them equitable time? at first i thought maybe i will do "war and peace" '01 chapter on "war and peace" one chapter and abigail then one chapter on john that i decided my material did not take me that way and it would not be very interesting so i thought

maybe i will start one chapter focusing on abigail then focus on john and that did not work out either because as i was reading the material did not take me there. so then i decided i would go where the material took me. i kept the focus on the marriage, showing john when there was more material on john o.r. abigail:abigail. 54 year marriage which is an incredible and than as now because people died a lot. but what was most amazing about their marriage is in their 54 years of marriage, for about 25 years, they've lived apart a good deal of the time because john was away from home.

running the revolution, being a diplomat in europe, being vice president and then president of the united states. that is why we have all of these letters between them because they did correspond so it is a really remarkable marriage. for 80 years they did not see each other when john went to europe in 1779 through 1784. they corresponded sometimes during that period but letters were lost at sea and john did not write of the time and not very many ships going back and forth during war so not a lot of correspondence. when abigail finally did go to europe and the marriage resumed and it is amazing that this resumed with all of the passion and interest that they

originally had in their early married years. remarkable. of course, there was the exit clause from the marriage they could not have gotten a divorce. there were grounds for divorce but not any grounds that abigail and john met. so we're remains remarkable they did resume their marriage and i thought about all lot why this was and of the reasons why this marriage worked so well. the first is they loved each other. from the early meeting between the two of them, there was and immense attraction. but love is a word is a cliche. i don't mean in love, i don't

mean love in a poetics sense of all of the beautiful words you find in poetry, i mean law of and what i think was in the 18th century sense, they had the capacity to be generous with each other come each one of them was able to give endlessly to the other without expecting in return there would be reciprocity. that certainly was the case on abigail sparc. the facts that they could sacrifice their own daily personal monthly or yearly happiness for the well-being of these other persons, that is the way i came to believe about 18th century love. they were also very compatible. there was parity. jon treated abigail with

respect and admiration which she deserved but 18th century was a period of time when women were subordinate to men and there is a great deal of deference that women expected to give a and men accepted from women. that was not the case. it was a kind of mutual understanding that the other person had great talents and there was an equality to this mary's that was unusual in the 18th century. another very important factor in the 18th century was the compatibility of religion and abigail and john were both religious people so there was no attention around their religious belief. revision in the late 18th century to both of them, i said it is like and the air people brief recovery bid gen

was something that just was. it was not something that people chose or did not choose. it was built into people's feelings and believe system so both abigail and john were believers and both believed in. >> i do believe they were more religious or conservative and john but both were religious people. and respectful of that. out of that came a value system that was unique to their generation, a value system that really confirmed four people the difference between right and wrong and what was good and what was bad. out of that came the belief that people had to give of

themselves. they had to serve their families, they had to serve their community and serve the nation. both of them believe that the idea of service i call it by the 18th century the term, i do the. they had a sense of duty and it was that sense of duty that made john and serve the nation and that sense of duty that they both had. it was like a calling, a kind of providence and religious terms that say people existed for the purpose of doing service to the community and that was very clearly made a part of their patriotism, a major part. the impulse of their patriotism. both of them also were tolerant of each other and they gave each other space to

grow. in the entire arc of the 54 years, each of them had incredible experiencexperienc e is that change their lives and each of them tolerated that difference that developed in the other and appreciated it. fact allowed both of them to change and develop over a period of time. one of the challenges in writing a book, a biography at any time, but particularly a double biography is to follow the arc of a life, follow the ark of two lives in this case and see the changes that people made in their lives and how they grew or developed and in this case to see and observe the tolerance each tab for each other. finally the last component of their wonderful marriage that i was approached about and i

would take into account is there playfulness. they tease each other from the time they first met and during their courtship until both passed away. more than 50 years later. and teasing and playfulness is an important way to develop harmony in a relationship. they could talk about sensitive issues about potentially antagonistic issues and a play it as a joke as 80's that it was not really important and because the issues came through at such a level that was later rather than confrontational, and the playful this existed all of the time throughout their

marriage, i believe this was an enhancement in their relationship and it made it possible for them to live with each other for 54 years of change and development without having a huge antagonist. and at time there was a conflict but most of the time it was a very generous and tolerant an equal relationship per. i also want to talk about how i feel about abigail and john separately and individually and why can i work on abigail adams 30 years? it is unusual for a scholar to write about 1% for this long,

-- wrote about henry james, i think eight volumes other biographers do but it is unusual. after i finished the first biography i had withdrawal from abigail. it pained me i was not writing about her anymore and along came a book publisher who asked me to write a second for a series and that is our wrote the sec and then again i was bereft and i love reading her letters cover her letters are just a delights and there are endless numbers of letters, you could be reading for the rest of my life and i very well maybe doing this the rest of my life because she was just an interesting woman. i loved the fact that abigail adams was proud to be a woman. that was not something that

was a major factor in women's lives in the 18th century tied at being a woman, it was a differential century, when women thought men were better than women and men thought men were better than women and abigail was proud to be a woman and she spoke up for women all of the time and expressed her pride and satisfaction in her life and demanded that from other people. i love the fact that she was self educated, a person in her early life was educated as women were educated, that is learning to read and write and a of the 12 bit of french and arithmetic. women were taught to read but not necessarily to write so they could read the bible and

a little arithmetic to keep accounts abigail use this time when john was a way to read and she educated herself and she became an amazingly carrier negative eight will been. she read largely in history and literature but also medical and scientific books as well and philosophy and political science and she could converse with any human being as in a call i love the fact that this woman who experienced huge diversity of her life and i have often thought about whether i would change places with her after all she is famous in the history books, i would not because it was not a pleasant

life. it was a hard life for all of her adult years. she did not see it that way. the idea of happiness was not something people expected to come from life. she lived through a revolution, post revolutionary period there were very few periods of her life where she was not faced with a crisis of some sort. the deaths of two children, three if you count a child who died in infancy but the death of two adult children, so she was a survivor, faced adversity and survived a but she grew every time. people can confront adversity and shrivel but add abigail faced it and all the times through expanded and it made

her wiser and more engaged and compassionate for other people. i loved the fact that she was authentic. she was herself always. when she became first lady she wrote a letter to her sister that said if you see me putting on airs ever come a please tell me about it and call me back and remind me of my roots of who i am. she was pleased to be of her social class, iraq, gender, an authentic person. she was also consistent the people who were her friends and her youth remained a friend for a lifetime. she did not by people because per position was elevated she was consistent in her ideas

and did not change her opinion in order to be a popular person. and that has made are not just a very enjoyable figure to write about but as a model and a model for winded in my time you were looking for feminist models in the past. she was always political, she was what i call april feminist, that is a don't think she was a feminist she did not ask for political rights or the vote but she did beef women should be treated respectfully before the law with equal justice before the law and she was also anti-slavery. i will get to that. she was a wonderful model both in her time and hours.

have also come to love john adams over the years and one of the reasons he is such a great hero to be a is in his transparency. john adams is someone we can get to know as a human being. john adams what his feelings show. john adams wrote about his feelings then did not throw out either his letters or his diary. he rode a dire bree from a very young age from the time he was in college until the end of his life and he wrote autobiography is also then it just hundreds of letters and all of the time he would and his writing and take his temperature and say am i too ambitious? am i two nds? and the consequence of him exploring his own feelings is that historians had all of this in addition to say he was

too ambitious or envious. and no other founding father has left the kind of records that john adams did. they burned their letters to their wives. washington's letters to martha was burned so there is no correspondence between either of them. in fact, martha only leaves us three letters in her lifetime. thomas jefferson burned his correspondence with his wife so we don't even know anything about his wife, traces of these women have been lost. but not only do they e raise their wives from history but also their own emotions and a wage john adams did not. he left these documents for historians to work with and it makes it wonderful because he is a person who becomes very human and all of his own right things about himself. he was brilliant comment

amazingly creative and it is fun to be around creative people so it is fun to read the ideas that he had. and john adams, he never used to adjectives when he could use 12 and he did use 12. he just had an amazing capacity to invent and play out ideas and just wonderful prose so that reading him is reading a very fine person. he was a courageous and $0.02. he was courageous in eight intellectual sense that he defended the unpopular members of the british soldiers that participated in the boston

massacre when many others that time would not defend it because it was an unpopular stance to take he did it because nobody should want a lawyer in court for everybody should have a whole lawyer to go into court. he was also physically courageous and that he went to cross the ocean this several times. and winter when traveling in winter in one of those little boats, there were 125 feet long is not something anyone chose to do. people traveled in this summer but that is when he was needed. he was physically courageous and that he handled a gun when it necessary and physically courageous to do that because of captured he would have then eight considered a traitor by the british.

he was quite remarkable and has aa person with courage and he was a wit and a very funny which makes a pleasure to read with a person of great passion. he lived well and he loved well and that makes john a very fascinating and inspiring person to deal with. that's a pretty much explains why i have so enjoyed working on the atoms in the course of writing this book but in the entire 30 long years i have worked on them. if you will indulge me i will read it to you a bit as my portrait of "abigail & john" from my book and i will read a portion first about john and then a portion of about

abigail. the portion of john comes from the period 1775 when the revolutionary war had just begun and he is writing in his diary and this is particularly a letter to abigail. >> i was a soldier john wrote to abigail from philadelphia where the continental congress had convened in the spring of 1775. i am reading military books everybody must and will and shall be a soldier. jon was zealous however since he had no prior military experience and could not expect a rank higher than a lieutenant he concluded he would be more effective in the halls of congress. by 1775 john was widely acknowledged in those