dimensions. this is in a book that says here is the single cause. there were a lot of causes and there have to be remedies. let me ask you before we end about the choice of the word panic, which is in your title. you call it the great to panic. i associate the word panic with the panic of 1907 or 1837. it's not a word we used recently. why did you take it? >> guest: i picked it for exactly that reason. this is more like the panic of 1907 before the fed was created when jpmorgan himself, the man, sort of served his function. it's more like that than what we have seen since. a panic is when there's a loss of confidence in the whole financial system and everybody starts to take their money in because they are afraid they can't trust anybody so that's basically my diagnosis of what it is and was a deliberate

harkening back to the earlier period of great instability and chaos that led congress to create the fed in 1913. the fed was created to do is hold up the are doing now. >> host: to do what they did even this panic. >> guest: exactly, even though we forgot because we thought all they did is move interest rates. >> host: right. and that's what they did for a long time. >> guest: you had the easy times, alice. >> host: absolutely. [laughter] so i think we are out of time. >> guest: thank you. it's been a pleasure. ..

not only for the amazing resources, that goes without saying that for the amazing people. as i said with my book this is a place the historical society, were uncommon generosity is a counter virtue and i am immensely grateful to the staff of the papers and the massachusetts historical society and in particular conrad wright, the research director and especially in particular maggie hogan to, without whom there was no way i could have possibly written a book. if you find in the mistakes in the book maggie will be available after the top.

[laughter] one of the fun question sets everybody writing a biography of abigail adams gets to and has to confront is how lucien how are other women affected by the american revolution? many of you know that john adams was gone for most of that decade that overlapped the american revolution from 1774 to 1784 and during that decade he put abigail in charge, not only of his farm down in later quincy massachusetts but in charge of the finances too. and i was happy to discover in this room five years ago while working on my previous book that abigail adams ran the addams family finances much better than her husband ever had. [laughter] she had a saying that we still have a version of today.

nothing ventured, nothing had, which kind of scared john because he was conservative not only politically but in his temperament and his finances too. and, she's scared him with some of what she did but in the process she made him a rich man. i am a good person to talk about this because i am from virginia and you know his successors as president, thomas jefferson, the sage of monticello and james madison of montpelier when they died they died so deep in debt that those two beautiful plantations had to be sold to pay their debts. not so with john adams and of course he had a lot to do with his legal career but that ended 50 years before his death. yeah he made some money as a public official, not as much as he could live with a lawyer but i think it's the adams financial records survived as well as the

adams correspondence that we would see pretty good evidence that abigail had it least as much to do with the family's wealth as he did. i had a pet theory early on in this project that may be her success as a financial manager woodley the invisible trace in a written record. i am like many of you interested in all the statements she made in favor of women's right. she made them not only to rosman john, you know the ladies record, you have an excerpt from that there but she but tranise is talking about education to lots of other men besides her husband, so that pet theory was maybe if we take this early statement in favor of women's rights, the ladies letter from 1776 and compared to what she rode at the end of the war we would see her more fired up, more confident in making stronger demands. so i want to tell you the fate

of that pet theory of mine but first let me tell you some of the details. how did she do so well financially? the first of the three-way she did so during the revolutionary war was this. anytime somebody is overseas whether he wore a mexican family and the husband or the wife is in the united states, it is traditional to send some of that money home. john when he was over in france as an american diplomat sent some of the money home. he wanted to do it by having abigail drought a builds exchange similar to a modern bank check and abigail said that would be okay. you are the husband, we will do that if you want but i have a better idea and that is there is a war bond. european goods are going at a very high prices here in massachusetts so instead of sending me to take that cash in use it to buy a chest of goods and ship it over to me. we have known about this for a

long time, but we haven't known the extent of it because john always refers to the shipments as good for family use, as a present that i thought i would send you. but if you go to the addams family correspondence there is an illustration of one of the inventories of goods being sent over, the shipping list and 87% by value of the goods being sent or not presence. aidid spoke items that are obviously intended for resale. now, that is one of the mysteries i have to admit i still haven't solved, why did he refer to these as for family use? was it not respectable for the wife of a diplomat to be in trade? there were lots of women in bausum for merchants and if we get time i will tell you about it women's marchant coffee writes that at the get reported on in 1777. maybe and this is the theory went within the buck when a ship was captured by the enemy it was

traditional to let the crew and the passengers keep their personal items. so maybe the reason john referred to these for family use was that maybe if they were captured they would not bcts. i am not sure but the reality is one of their early shipments that john sent abigail was captured and he wrote his wife saying, burn my fingers, don't want to madeleine this anymore but abigail roche john backs saying, look, it is true this is a dangerous business but the very process that makes it dangerous, britain yet did ruled the warships patrolling the atlantic but the few ships that can run the blocading get through to boston, the people with good on those ships can name their own price. to quote hershey said if one in three of arrives i should be a gainer, which i take its 18th-century version of you just don't get it, do you john?

[laughter] but eventually he did get it and he continued his shipments in the shipments have some fascinating influences on the relationship between this husband and his wife. they have been debating for some time and maybe there are couples in this room who have had this debate whether to buy a new vehicle. okay, some of you have. he wanted to wait as a good frugal lane lender. she said we have got to get a new one and of course the prices were up for these things even though they were made in massachusetts. do you know there is a war on? will he send reshipment and 17 of farce ilona hank chiefs. handkerchiefs were women's item then to where the hair, so they happen to hit right in the middle of a terrible shortage of that particular item when they were in high fashion. she sold them for enough money

and what did john say? he bought this with her own money. [laughter] in that same year 1780 john adams had an idea. still in paris, he says to abigail, maybe having had some of our shipments seized what i should do is instead of putting them in these big chess and shipping them across the atlantic i will disperse them and ask everybody who goes to massachusetts to take little thing. that way we are spreading their arrest and he first sent the shipmen present with the marquis the lafayette. you may know the great hero of the revolutionary war lafayette went home every winter. no reason to stick around here so he went home so when he came back in the spring of 1780 he brought some stuff for abigail to sell and once again abigail wrote her husband saying, your

willis lot to me. if that is the way you wanted to let that is what we will do but if you want to disperser shipments like that you are going to have to buy the items to send me retail and you have got to buy wholesale she said. [laughter] and she convinced him and the remaining shipments came wholesale and in fact pretty soon they got it rigged to where john was not involved in the process at all. she rode straight to amsterdam and paris then barcelona and they send the goods directly to her and she did quite well. another source of income of hers, and i hesitate to use that phrase because it was a long-term investment that didn't pay off during the war was vermont. by the time of the revolutionary war, the indians had been driven out of vermont but did not settled by europeans coming up from other colonies and so it was the wild frontier, a great place to speculate in land

because everybody knew it was eventually going to be settled but also a risky place to do that because new york claimed most of vermont is part of new york's territory and new hampshire claimed the rest, so people like ethan allen and his famed green mountain boys at the same time they were fighting the british were also fighting new york and new hampshire to claim that land and some of these vermont represented this came to abigail adams and said, wouldn't you like to buy in the early to some of this land in vermont on behalf of your husband, and she did. now, there was a limit to how many acres he could buy but she bought one of these acres, 530 acres i think it was, she bought one on behalf of her husband in each of her four children. the only person on whose behalf she did not buy one of these plots was herself, because she is a married women and married

women can't control properties. but even her little daughter would say, she was let's see, this is 78 so she has not yet reached a 20th birthday. she is living at home. she got one, as did her brothers. so, abigail was worried about what john was going to think of this idea and she wrote him saying i think you are what to think i am vermont matt. and he did actually. he wrote her saying, don't medal any more with vermont. and i thought initially that the story ended there, but it didn't, because although she didn't buy any more tracks, she did keep pushing john to try to buy some more land in vermont. i told you that a married woman can't control property. there is one thing she can do. sheahan heritage landin she can prevent her husband from selling

it. she is the the power on him selling her land and abigail had inherited a plot of land from her mom and said to john i no you don't want this because it was in wilkesboro. if you will buy more landin vermont i will let you sell this land in north breault. so it is an example of renegotiating constantly with him, not to unfamiliar to those of us who are married but not exactly what you would expect from a revolutionary family. the third way that that the deal made money for her husband was one that i stumbled across here while working at the massachusetts historical society, reading, of love to say it was a secure document. i was reading correspondence that maggie hogan is the editor of, and she kept talking, abigail did the pelt notes. i want to buy some more notes and i wasn't sure what she meant by notes but it eventually

became clear that what she was doing was speculating in government securities. i think the best thing to call her would be a junk bond dealer. but let me give you a little of the back story. you know everyone including the two we are involved in now that the country is involved then puts the country in debt and that was especially true of our first war. the continental army, george washington was not able to pay his men actual money. he basically paid them and promises. they got continental currency, so at the and the soldiers got something called final settlement certificates to settle up. these were often in pretty large denominations and the soldiers got these bonds while they were still in the army camp and they had to get it home. the army in those days didn't pay for your expenses to travel, so some of these guys had no money. you have got to buy food, said they would go out with these

bonds to get real money and nobody would give them face value for the bonds. in fact they got sometimes less than 10 cents on the dollar but i think a fair summary would be if you are selling one of these bonds to a speculator, you got 10% of its face value. there was one soldier, joseph martin, he had to go from near west point on the hudson river, to connecticut commandante it very far trip but he says in his memoirs that he took all of the bonds that he was paid as a fighting in that revolutionary war and he had been in the army for six years. he took all of his bonds and sold them and got not face value. he got just enough money to pay for a new set of clothes, something like myself when i arrived, in new set of clothing in his travel expenses home. that was his paid for his six years in the continental army. then when the soldiers get home and face incredibly high taxes,

one of the main provokes of shay's rebellion here in massachusetts because the state governments are levying taxes to redeem awards that. no longer in the hands of soldiers like daniels shays and joseph martin but in the hands of speculators, so from the soldier standpoint this is a real ripoff and that is why do you get rebellions like that in nearly every state. the most famous one was shay's rebellion but from the speculator standpoint this is a very profitable investment. one of the early securities that abigail plot, she bought it at $100 bond for $25, or $24 the interest is 6% a year but that 6% of 100. she is getting $6 a year and remember her initial investment was $24, so put that six on top of the 24. she is making a 25% annual

return on her investment. john didn't like the idea when she first reported it to him. he didn't like speculator is. they were a narrow, self interested group who had both the means and the motivation to manipulate the government in their favor, so he was very cool to speculator, and he also had an alternative way to invest money and that is land. you remember scarlett o'hara's father said something along the lines,-- we don't associate john adams what scarlett o'hara's father, but he really deserves to be in that category because land, that was the only safe investment. you can build the precht-- burr in the buildings on your farmer to can't burn the land. it is safer for the republic as

well as for the person. he could imagine himself as one of these roman senators was political independence was guaranteed by its economic independence because he always have the option of returning to his land, so that was part of his incorruptibility. abigail said that is all well and good. you make about 1% a year. you take the rant ended that the cause, you were making about 1% annual return on your investment with their land and i am making it 25%. eventually, he saw the wisdom of that and he allowed her to make, even as he was denouncing bonn speculations he allowed her to make them a large scale bonds peculator. she sailed over to join john after the war in the summer of 1784 and there is a wonderful letter that he wrote in april of 1785 after abigail had joined him to his new business agent,

with abigail in massachusetts and if you read the letter he has got to hundred pounds of sterling coming to them and there is a farm that he really wants. and on the front of the letter it says to cotton tufts, i want you to go ahead and buy this farm in draw 200 pounds sterling. that is what it says on the front. but, if you flip that same letter over to the back you will see where john adams writes, what i had written to madam, she has made me sick with the idea of purchasing this place. you will therefore take that to pound sterling and buy me some more bonds. she had convinced him in the middle of the letter, and i don't know what it was. there is plenty of evidence that i talk about in the book that she edited his letters and she apologized sometimes that things got out that she had thought edited-- edited. not all of this letters but they

talked about this process that he would show his letters to her so it's possible that was that although the image i want to more have his that he is dead is writing table. abigail is walking by and looking over your shoulder and saying comment you are not going to buy that place are you? in any of then she did convince them in the middle of the letter to not buy that farm but instead to buy war bonds. so you see she is doing these three things. she is in trade, she is buying vermont lyndon she is speculating in the preceding government securities and you can see my pet theory. my pet theory was, ashy achieve these successes that we get our confidence. she already had a lot but she had more after she had made all this money for her husband so what i wanted to see as i looked at these two figures was that the 1782 latter wedded sued more confidence in the 1776 letter,

by that time she has made a bunch of money for her husband. and, i have an exercise like to do. tate to things that superficially similar, compare them, find differences between them and explain the differences so i give this document to my students at the university of richmond and say the ec the much more confident she was in the second letter? they kind of go, no. and we had some wonderful debates. what do you think? has anybody had a chance to read it before we started in which you think is the more confident of the two letters? you say the second one. >> that was my pet theory but you can already tell i'm going to have some issues with that. why do you say that? >> i will take praise to myself. i do. >> yes,, fair enough.

that is a reasonable conjecture. who else though? who thinks one of the other of these two documents shows greater confidence than the other? at some .1 of my students had an idea which was comparative verb syndicate confidence. let's kill them. and has anybody here have the time to count the impaired verbs in these two documents? how about the first one? we are going to disagree and we won't do that all my. you have got four. [inaudible] [laughter] did anyone else give a count on the first one? you have seven. there is something called these subjunctive mandates. so, let's take it as a rain. i get five, you get for. how about in the second letter

she bowed at the end of the revolutionary war? raise your hand if he made it count. she is not only raising her hand, she is giving us the number. can you guys see it? the number is zero. you god see wrote too. remember my pet theory. has she made all this money and that all of the success she would be more confident and we would see that even in a women's rights writings that she is making more bold the mance and the reality was it was just the opposite. she is actually showing less confidence, at least on this issue then she had before. now, another student of mine pointed out later that the difference between confidence and hope and it may be that your personal confidence is as high as it was before or even higher but her hope is diminished, and that is why we are not seeing as many comparative fur of sandel that you have some theories about why her hope i have

diminished between 1776 and 1782. it is counterintuitive because that was the very period when the founding falters when the revolutionary war. but why put her hopefulness go down during that six year period? raise your hand so i can count. >> the voice in the legislation -- they didn't have the freedom-- >> of course they didn't have that freedom in 1776 either so what changed in 1782 to make her less hopeful? >> the revolution had ended. >> did everybody hear that? in march of 1776, independents is about to be declared but it hasn't been yet. anything is possible. she wrote, the boston people will appreciate this a couple

years after evacuation day, a holiday the rest of us don't understand but it is the day the british evacuated boston and in the same letter she talks about how the birds are chirping more swiftly than they ever have before. she is upbeat both about independence, she knows that is coming soon as you can see comerford resentence ganji is up in 1776 and i think you are right. i think she is down, as the two of you said in 1782 because the funding fathers have won the revolution a war but the founding fathers seven. by this time every state except new hampshire had revised or totally started anew in a written a new constitution and none of the state's it given women the right to vote. except new jersey which did it by accident, because the british were overrunning the jersey so they wrote the constitution really quiken forgot to leave women out. the fix that when they were able

to. [laughter] these the men had hardened by 1782 and the wall was there and so women have been left out. so this is actually a problem for an author because people don't want to hear sad stories but this is a sad story. she kept advocating women's rights but i think i am persuaded my pet theory was exactly the opposite, that she actually became lefts optimistic, but the story does not end there and i will ask you to flip over to the backside of that same sheet and have been look at abigail adams's will. when i was writing this book, i came to 1816, which was two years before her death, and ten years before her husband's death and came upon her will in the microfilm, and most of the biographers when they get to the

will, okay described the contents of the will and move on. i almost moved on too, but looking at that will come as something troubled me. you will greet her handwriting which was never good and was even worse in the 1860's, two years before her death. the very existence of the will, something is wrong here. and it reminded me of something, and exchange ahead with peter grummond who is the library-- librarian. abigail's will, her will, what is the main purpose of a will? to distribute property. she is distributing property in her well. what is wrong with that? people are saying it in different ways. i will summarize it. she is not supposed to have

property. she is a married woman. her husband john adams is very much alive and going to outlive her. she as a married woman is supposed to oh no personal property. certification-- i'm sorry, you could own a million dollars maam of stocks say. the secondee married this guide you own nothing and that million dollars is yours to dispose of as you please. so personal property as a married woman you have no right in those days to own any of. real-estate as i alluded to earlier a woman could inherit a real estate but she could not control it, she could not sell it without her husband's permission then he got all of the profits from the rent from the tenants for instance, so in essence you really didn't own the real estate either. married women-- widows and single women have the same property rights as men but married women could not own

property and yet here she was. she was doing it anyway. she left $5,000 worth of property and that may not sound like a lot, but it does sound like a lot to me. multiplying it by 20 to get what that would have been like in 18-- roughly $100,000 that she was distributing that the law said she did not own. once i figured out the significance of her will, it sent me back to an exchange i had had with peter on the last day of a trip to the amass historical society. i had seen that there might be received the john adams' business agent had signed excepting his federal bonds from the u.s. government because they were eventually redeem debt face value so the people who bought them ought to 10 cents on the dollar would pay bass-- payback

to 1 dollar on the dollar. i wanted to see them being redeemed, so i e-mailed peters saying i think if you look in the coburn papers you might find the documentation of john adams getting his bonds. and i got a wonderful e-mail back from peter saying i haven't found that reseed yet showing john adams got these bonds but i got one showing abigail god bonds. would that interest you? [laughter] and, it did. wade back in 1781, she had taken some of the money that she had made for her husband in trade. she had already made some interest on their bonds speculation but she took some of that money and that she put it in a letter to her husband in 1782, i will put it in the hands of a friend, a friend who she

conspicuously did not name, probably cotton tufts though. this little that grew and grew because she was a risk-taker and she made more and more money. most of the interest of he made on her bonds she reinvested and bought more bonds, but not all of that and once i started to see it, i could see here spending this money. she sent cords of firewood to wittes to help them get through the winter. she sent food to people, especially her sister's. one of her sisters, her younger sister elizabeth had married a preacher, which was another way of saying she was pour ander other sister mary a-- who was a philosopher. he tried various things come card making and watchmaking and it just hadn't really happened and i would have to say this is

another thank you to the mass historical society because there is a wonderful cd-rom where even though richard prince did not graduate from harvard he got an honorary degree from harvard so everybody who graduated from college during the colonial period any strat-- scrappage documentation is in this amazing collection. i could go to the historical-- and bright what a wonderful influence he had on abigail. but what a failure he was financially. abigail got a very uncomfortable letter from her sister in 1791 saying, hey your husband is vice president now. he is in a position to help his friends. of course my husband, richard france, is a wonderful guy. so, can you give him a job?

he will be great. can you give him a job with the federal government? what a tough position for abigail adams tbn, to know there was no position in the federal government that richard france would be credit to but how do you say no to your older sister who has meant so much to you and is really her closest friend? the way she said no was, marie quince oh the bunch of money to abigail abigail wrote her a letter saying i am going to forgive this debt. she said i feel entitled to do this because this is and i will quote ker, money which i call mine. uchitelle by that phrase, money which i call mine, that she knew that she was being subversive by laying claim to this money because some loss said it wasn't hers. but, i call that mind so she agreed to forget that. it was interesting the way she went about it.

she needed they received from marie because she one of the whole thing to be cleared. she dinges tell mary i need a receipt. she was in philadelphia by that time, and the reason that she didn't want marie to write her directly was that john had a bad habit of reading abigail's mellon she didn't want him to know about this. he knew about this money but she didn't want him overseeing how she spent it. john had made fun of richard and the 17 fifties. he was a terrible horse trader among other things and i think she thought john would see that is sending bad money. so how do you keep it secret? how do you you get a letter from your sister in massachusetts without your husband reading it? well, they are adults married daughter was living with them and john did not open her mail so what mary quince was supposed to do was put they receive in a

letter to mattie who would then hand it to abigail but if you write abigail adams smith, the vice president's daughter you cannot frank the mail. franking is, congress can still do this, they signed a letter and don't have to pay the postage. in those days the postage was paid by the person receiving this mail so it the letter was sent directly to mattie then she would have to pay postage and at the gil was way too frugal for that so merry kranz was to take this receipt put it in a letter to mattie smith then put that inside of that letter to john adams said john adams would receive a letter and open it into see it is actually daughter from my daughter and he would give it to my daughter who would see it is a receive intended for a mother and give it to abigail. [laughter]

as i said she kind of kept the use of this-of money secret from john butchey didn't totally keep it a secret from john and i want to read to you from a letter she wrote to john in december of 1783 and i going to receive-- refer to this same form. this is when the farm first came on the market and she knew john really wanted to buy that farm. and she saw an opportunity in his desire for that farm. now, all of abigail adams biographers quote this letter because as you will see when i read it she is offering to put john in debt to go borrow money for him to buy this farm because he doesn't have the cash to buy the farm so she says i know where i can borrow money for you to buy this farm and, all of us historians yahweh dominik, don't borrow money.

so it is a comet that part is surprising. but i am quoting it to you for a different purpose. he has been in france on the current trip for more than four years. if my dear friends you will promise to come home, take the farm into your own hands and improve it. let me turn a very woman and assist you in giving our living this way instead of running away to farm courts in leading the half my life to mourn in widowhood. if all that, then i will run you in debt for this farm. my question for the people here is, who was she going to borrow this money from to buy this far? do you know? herself. in the eyes of the law, abigail adams was offering to bribe her husband into coming home to bribe him with his own money.

he did not come home that winter, and she held on to the money. i want to say for more things about abigail's will end stop and hear your questions and comments. the first thing i want to say about the will was something i am only saying here in massachusetts but i can't resist saying it. when you write a book like this there is something called the uncorrected proves. that is what gets sent to rick hewers and so forth and india and corrected proofs i said something along the lines of at the head of this document that you have in your hands, the head of this document she did not refer to it as it will in the endorsement. she did not refer to it as a well. she referred to a does abigail adams disposition for property.

still not legal because it is not her property but it is interesting she avoided the word will and in my uncorrected i said all those who avoided the word will throughout the document right near the end of the document, right before the last paragraph , she wrote, my will. and i was actually going to use that as the title of my first chapter because it is sort of meacham, my will. and off went the uncorrected papers to the read yours and i came up to the massachusetts historical society for one last check up adams documents. this one that will i had only seen on microfilm, and maggie hogan and and her colleagues at the adams papers said you would like to look at the original will? i said yes, please so we got it out and we are looking at that and i said let me show you this. notice how she wrote, my will.

maggie nota she had written that over the name of louisa smith. i go, louisa smith, her brother's daughter. she said i think that actually says my niece, and she was right. so of course we went and corrected it just in time for the book to come out that they have to mention that the best way i can think of to say thank you to all of the people here at the massachusetts historical society. i'm not sure they caught every mistake in the book but i'm really grateful for them catching that one. a couple of things about the will. who did she leave all this money to? she had several grandson's who were in difficult economic circumstances and a couple of nephews for roque-- who were as well. she left them nothing. her two sons, got token gifts, but all really of for property

except those gifts went to granddaughters and nieces, her female servants enter daughters and law. it all went to women. and a question we can't answer but we can speculate his wife. i don't think it was an anti-meal thing. i think it was this. a lot of that property that she gave to women went to women who were married, and so technically in the eyes of the law those were not get to those women. those were gets to the women's husbands but she clearly intended that money to go to the women themselves and i think that was just the point. having spent the previous 30 years claiming to own property that the law said she did not own, she was trying as far as her power to give these other women the option of making the same claim. one of those women who inherited

$300 from abigail adams, for $150 but 3,000 in modern terms was her daughter-in-law, louisa katherine adams, the wife of the future president, john quincy adams, abigail's son and i think it's safe to say louisa and abigail had had issues as in los sometimes do. she was first of all guilty of having been born in britain although from a family in maryland and a family who was a wealthy when she was a kid and later lost all of their money. the father declared bankruptcy right after she married john quincy. all of it the gail's kids fail to marry just by her urging. and, the worst thing about louisa in abigail's eyes was that she was a weiner. she was not a cheerful and it is a reminder as the head of part-time and she was in so many

ways, abigail had traditional ideas about the role of women and particularly wives and one of those was to be cheerful and louisa was not cheerful. they had some positive moments. still abigail letter $150 guess what louisa did with half of that money? she passed through to her three sons, charles francis adams and his two brothers, gave it to the grandson's that abigail had disinherited. that is, that she left nothing to and i don't know what abigail would have thought about that. would she be mad that louisa catherine for defying her own wishes that the money should go to women? that is a possibility but it is also possible that, when louisa katherine, a married woman, took that money and gave it not to

husband, not to were husband to but two were three sons, and did so on her own authority, that what she was doing was affirming what abigail had always insisted on and what the law denied, and that was the money was hers. one last thing. the document you are holding if you are good at reading the handwriting you can see she says in the very first line she is distributing this property by and with the consent of for husband, john adams, but, his signature does not appear anywhere on the document. so it is not a legal document that any court is bound to respect. tense so, john adams would have been perfectly within his rights in taking that document and throwing it in the fire. and i am thrilled to be able to tell you that john adams carried that document out to the letter.

this is the most illustrious couple in the american revolutionary era. they are famous for a lot of wonderful collaborations in the final point i want to argue to you guys tonight is this collaboration which has never been reported before is the most extraordinary of them all. thanks. [applause] it is little intimidating facing the mass historical library staff and the adams papers editors with questions, so i will open the floor for questions and comments. yes, sir. >> do we know how abigail moved her inventory? who is she iwry taylor wish ga

wholesalers? >> that is a great question. >> how did she handle this stuff? >> she actually consigned some of these things that she was selling to a cousin, cotton tops jr. and she also sent stuff to mercy otis warren, her famous off again on again friend and plymouth, massachusetts. marci otis warren had won a first sons who was still just a teenager handled the actual business, and so it is very interesting that both of these women had men essentially as fronts and again it wasn't at all under respectable for a woman to be involved in trade at this time, but i think for a diplomat's wife and mercy otis warren, i can't think of the jabr husband had the time. he was a general and i think in the militia but they did feel in some way the need to insulate

themselves. wait for the microphone so they can hear you at home. >> what do you think john adams really personal feelings were about women's rights? >> i've found him very situational in his attitude towards women's rights. his response to the letter you are holding, a famous to the ladies letter was, i cannot but laugh, which of course didn't go over well with abigail who immediately wrote her friend saying, i was just testing mnd obviously failed the test and yet that same john adams at other times talk to abigail about how angry he was at the restriction that he wasn't supposed to talk politics with women. women at that time were believed to be less good at keeping secrets than men. my wife says i'm a much bigger gossip, but at the time women were supposed to be modeled on

the eve. you are not supposed to tell secrets to women and he rebelled against that. one of the most amazing things to me, abigail's mother had died in the previous fall to dysentery, and it is a really tragic story because she probably would not have died of she had stayed home but she came to abigail's house. john was often congress in the fall of 1775 and elizabeth clancy smith caymen helped abignale take care of their kids, who've had-- one of the servants died of the same epidemic and a couple of their own kids got it almost two. as a result of that dysentery, on october 1st of 1775, abigail's mother had died and abigail who did not talk heavily religious, she quoted the bible a lot, she quoted jobe up and down and express your terrible

distress. but john's response to his mother-in-law's that was to write abigail a beautiful letter saying, my great regret that your mother's passing is that she wasn't able to extend her influence beyond the borders. sheikha that had influence on the states, the colony in on the nation and is, in some ways i think a more feminine statement then you are holding in your hands. he said it to make his wife feel better, so i say and looking at some of the other adams experts, jim taylor the editor of the john adams papers and the whole papers projects may have a thought about this but i want to say one other thing myself first. jim am i going to be able to get u.n. on this? that was the best way to judge him as by his personal relationship. we know about congress and the new moral and then we find out about whatever.

judge him by his personal relationships. his first attitude towards nav the smith. abigail was called nappy when he first met her, he kind of ran home to ride in his diary about meeting deese two, abby and her sister polly and her sister mary and she said-- the-- which was a terrible insult for a woman and four young woman in particular to be with the. i feel pretty sure that they had said something witty about john adams. he said, she is not candid. this is one of the difficulties about writing in the antique-- e10 century. now it means i'm going to tell it like it is. candid in those days meant not judgmental, a nice person so jefferson goes let that be submitted to a world, listen up and give us a fair shake. john alsobrook in that same

letter, she is not candid meeting she judge me so his first impression of her was negative because she was so witty and smart but then he married her. why she married him is a tougher question. [laughter] but, i think the fact that having realized how would be and how tough she was in having to marry her any way is a pretty strong them in the statement. jim, did you want to get in on this? o the things that has always bothered me about our great praise of abigail and john is we have such a wonderful record and sometimes i think we think of them as such exceptional people they work because of the heights that john rose to and carried her long also but i wonder if there are other relationships like this and other women who did things like abigail that just because

we don't have their record, and i mean, i hate to save the people i spend my life working on weren't exceptional, but sometimes i think we might make them more exceptional then they really are. >> i think that is absolutely true and i don't think we need to go any further to prove your point then abigail's sisters, mary and elizabeth. because her sisters, many more of her letters survive then would have otherwise. sometimes they wrote her, lamenting the lack of education for young women f orthey wrote her on that topic s well. her sister-in-law, who married her ne'er-do-well brother william smith, and used in a letter to abigail before abigail herself use the phrase, lords of the creation. that was aware that women at the time used to mock men's petitions to be all-powerful.

the boards of creation say this and that in abigail didn't use it until having learned it. cheuse today couple times, one to john quincy and then to were sisters. she did not use it until after receiving it from her sister-in-law, who had really experience it with her nicolette fallen possibly abusive husband who is abigail's brother. and i have been amazed at how often i see that phrase, lords of the creation, in the clemons riding that there are a lot of women passing judgment in the same way. another thing to say about abigail's two sisters and i think it is extraordinary she made this statement by owning this property in writing the will, they are actually was one loophole that women could take to legally own personal property. it was extremely rare in new england. it is common enough in new

virginia and further south but extremely rare in new england because it violated puritan concept. both of abigail's sisters got prenups even though they were extremely rare. the first one to get it was her younger sister betsy. her first husband had died and before she remarried she insisted there be a prenup as a way of protecting this little bit of property of hers from her second husband creditors, which turned out to be a very wise move. then her second sister, i am not sure when she got hers. the documents have not told me that, but what we know by the time of her death she had some property in trust too, so i think it is bold and a different way from the way that abigail was bold and writing a wheel and all this but in that sense they were bolder than her because she never asked for a separate state. your point is well taken jim,

thank you. >> abigail had for a number of years a relationship with her sister elizabeth shah and get that resolved itself by the time abigail went to london because abigail center two sons to be prepared for harvard. how did that transition from this relationship occur? >> well, she will be mad at me for revealing her plans, but i know maggie hogan is thinking about writing a history of babbitt heels relationship with their sister and we will get a better answer than but i will give you a lesser answer no. abigail's big problem, dig cold period with her sister betsy was over her marriage, betsy's marriage to john shah and john shop's bikram was that he was a calvinists and it is interesting because what the puritans calvinist and was in sheep

puritan? she really of all the way from the calvinist notion that everybody is destined for hell and god will only select a few people from the predestined to not go to hell. she had a very optimistic way. she even believe somebody she knew that committed suicide was probably headed to heaven, which showed just how far she had default but then her sister hook up with this guy. the way they met was also bad because he had begun as a border at the smith family home, at abigail's parents home and by this time which is browned, during the revolution there were already all these novels about this traveling salesman and the farmer's daughter kind of stories. so you just don't talk to your father's border, certainly not alone in betts he insisted on doing that, and abigail said, i think you have got the hots for this guy and that's he denied it

but it was true. so, a the way she met the guy and b the fact that he was a calvinist, something i didn't talk about tonight but i was really interested in her religion and your move towards unitarianism and we can talk about her disagreements with john. they were fairly king grand but for instance she was for a much stronger connection between church and state then john was. he was a much bigger believer, leave church out of the public square. but, she was very into calvinists so that was an issue to her but it is to her credit that she reconciled herself to the marriage with john shop. a ticket long time. after the marriage abigail wrote betsy saying, don't have kids and even after the reconciliation that's he started having another crop of kids as

abigail polident cheat holder not to do that. part of that was she was a big sister. she was the middle sister but she was bigger than betsy and felt some entitlement to order betsy around so that he did not follow orders. as you say, by the time of their deaths they were great friends. yes. i see somebody behind you. >> about women's rights, as you mentioned earlier and she was famous for saying remember the ladies. i am curious about what your opinions on the women that served in the military. that sequelae served in the military. >> deborah sampson. i don't noaa forever referring to their breault or mary luther hayes to us molly pitcher.

i don't know of any references to that. she did have a wonderful admiring reference to a group of women led by deborah read in philadelphia who raised money to support the american soldiers, but i don't think she ever commented. does anyone want to correct me on that? i think she didn't, unfortunately. ..

is this right 19 years her senior, he was considerably older than abigail, and abigail really looked up to her as being older and already have and have a bunch of kids, as a woman who had published, all produced a publishing when navigare met her in 1773 she published a play based on the events of the boston massacre, so her initial attitude towards -- [inaudible]

i don't blame you for that but it's nothing fawning letcher. it in a just declined over a bunch of issues. mercy's kids, sons were almost all of them bad news and abigail sisters in charge of her kids while she was in europe kept her away from them and mercy figured that out. and then mercy became an opponent of the constitution. people like her said this constitution is a plot by bond speculators to get their money and abigail is one of the speculators. abigail was a supporter of the constitution. i don't think she supported it because it made her a pile of money. it did make her a pile of money but i don't think she supported it for that reason. that was a big issue. at one point she got into the orbit of john hancock, who was a great enemy of the adams -- it's amazing how many people adams

more enemies of. and this is my one grievance -- i love the hbo movie but the hbo movie often portrayed abigail as the port in the storm for john, and really she was the storm in many cases. [laughter] because everybody -- sexually mercy may be the one exception to this but everybody that he hated she hated more. she and franklin were enemies and she had worse things to say about franklin and when he and jefferson turned against each other she never really reconciled. they tried to one point after his daughter's death and it didn't take restive rescinded reconcile with the john adams and hancock. mercy's one exception because john never reconcile with her because mercy wrote a history of the american revolution that had bad things to say about john. when they attended a reconciliation and mercy asks john to send him all of these mean letters, his original

copies of these mean letters because she as a historian you if there's no documents there's no history and she wanted to destroy them and john wood in to that so they never catch up and abigail and mercy did. since we are talking about mercy i will tell you one other important thing about mercy. mercy was the occasion of the only town that i found that abigail deliberately appeared in print. there had been a guy named chesterfield who had written letters to his son, his bastard son on proper decorum and was a model supposedly of great writing, and also of a gentleman behavior mercy wrote this letter to her own son see how horrible lord chesterfield was, he said the bad things about women. one of the things he said was a woman never had a fault in her head for more than an hour, some sexist thing and mercy said if you were here now i would keep the same thought and my thought

is he is a jerk. [laughter] but after getting this lecture responding to the sexist statements by lord chesterfield, abigail send it to the boston newspaper with her own little introduction to the letter and that was published, not with -- i think neither one's name appeared but that's the only time i know of that abigail deliberately appeared in print, some other short little notes she rode were also published leader but that's the time that she -- that's the time that she put herself in a newspaper. yes, i see very. >> i was wondering if you had any notion of how abigail gained her financial acuity and because she didn't have a formal education was she died by somebody or have this sort of instinctual sense of how to invest and what was the best asset.

>> let me answer that in two different ways because you need both confidence to take these kind of risks and just the sophistication. on the sophistication i think she had an early adviser in her on call caught in talks. but it's interesting to see by the time john was vice president she had really surpassed coin toss. in 77 the price of bonds was really low. the was the year the constitution was written but it wasn't sure it was we to be ratified and he was worried and said we better get out of this market of bonds and she wrote a cotton tuffs saying when the price is low that is the wrong time to be getting out of the market. by me some more. by the time her husband was vice president a few years later he was riding her, cotton tuffs was riding abigail adams saying okay, should i use my bonds? adams and i could buy shares in the new national bank of the united states, shall i do that, he was actually asking her advice so she definitely had his

sophistication but then she surpassed him. the other question the relates to the finances and marvelous writings of hers in favor of women's rights is what made her so confident, and she had a rocky relationship with her mother. i told you how torn up she was about her mother's death and by that time they were great friends that she and her mother overly protective but i do think that she learned her benevolence from her mom and her dad get access to books and form of education. richard as i mentioned previously put a lot of books in her hands and i think the more she read not only did she become literate and she flaunted her literacy and i was on a radio show the other day and somebody called -- this was brought dustin denver at 4:00 in the morning, i should know better. the guy said what would she think of muslims? [laughter] and i was actually able to say she knows a lot more about islam

than i do because in one of her love letters to john she said i would like to fly u.s. swift as the mohammed. does anybody know -- there is the only people in this group that have. you know it? i had to look it up, it is the winged horse mohammed flies around on. she was actually quite sophisticated in her reading and like to show off her sophistication, so there is both a financial sophistication which i think cotton tuffs got her on any self-confidence which i came, which i think came from her reading. >> could be called patriotism and did she ever refer to it as such? >> she did not refer to it as patriotism. i don't think she was ashamed of it though and i try to present to you the case of the soldiers who had to dump the bonds at a fraction of the face value but there were people who did write defenses of speculators. she didn't.

she defended speculators in the sense of seeing we've got to pay the speculator is full value because that's how you establish your credit rating. but she never did in the first person singular we've got to pay me. [laughter] we've got to be the speculators. and it's interesting in february of 1790 james madison, who had actually supported speculators early on but turned against them and he put the bill in congress to make the speculators who bought the bonds split the money 50/50 with the soldiers who originally owned the bonds and other people issued these bonds and the congress was to vote on this date in february of maybe 1790, and that happened to be the device president's wife, who'd been in new york for almost a year chose to go watch the proceedings of congress for the first time ever, so she was in the gallery as congress voted 36 to 13 to go down madison's

proposal and make sure all of the money went to the speculator says. so, she did believe that -- i think she would have supported the speculator is almost as much if she hadn't been one of them because she did think it was a matter of establishing a credit rating, and even the guys that haunted the army camps bodying bonds the case you could make for them as if they hadn't been there the bonds would have been zero, so at least there was something because of speculators >> [inaudible] >> both. she started buying the bonds directly from the government the same way you would buy war bonds now and then you are supporting the war effort. >> [inaudible] >> that's right. she would have lost all of her bonds, or if the constitution haven't been adopted which gave the federal government the ability to levy taxes and the federal government assumed the responsibility for paying the state debt as well as its own. if the constitution hadn't been ratified its possible the states

in response to for instance massachusetts state of rebellion backing down & trying to cut deals like the speculator is only half of what they wanted, and so yes she could have easily lost, lost all is strong because for instance when you were getting 25% interest you need to check your investment in four years and then it's all gravy after that. but sure there was risk involved, there is no question. jim? >> she was pretty well connected wouldn't you think? couldn't she be guilty of insider trading? [laughter] >> i have to say in her defense that james polk, who most people defending abigail don't talk about james lowe fell because he is in the congressional delegation, who basically sexually harassed her by mail. he wrote her these amazingly cheeky letters. for instance he wrote at the

bottom of one letter i wish, her pen name was portia. i wish i could be in bed with portia but then when you flip it over it goes' good friend mrs. lovell, so it goes my best friend portia's. and he did, she had to keep corresponding because he was recondite once he was over in france as an american diplomat and she would put up with this and encourage some of his flirtation because every time he flirted with herd he also gave her some information. it was partly her job to make sure the congress paid on his salary which it wasn't very reliable about doing in his reimbursements and so he was helpful for that but in her defense to answer your question, at one point he told her now would be a really good time to

buy continental currency because we are about to refund and support so you should buy a bunch of continental currency and to her credit she didn't buy continental currency and i don't think it was an ethical decision. i think it was a financial decision and was a wise one because he was wrong price of the currency just went further and further down. so she had taken that insider tip she would have lost a lot of money on it. >> i think we have time for maybe one more question. >> no one wants to ask thatyoas. [applause] >> this event was hosted by the massachusetts historical society in boston. for more information, visit masshist.org.

dongping han argues china's cultural revolution from 1966 to 1976 had many successes and discusses the influence of the writings on those who participated. this event was part of a conference on the cultural at te university of california at berkeley hosted by revolution books. [applause] >> thank you, everybody. i had to get up early this morning to come here. i got up at 3:30 to catch a flight to come here. i'm very tired.

[laughter] and i'm not just here to talk about my book. i will tell you my life story. and when i'm teaching in the classroom, tell my students it is principal for people to work together, to solve their problems, to improve their lives together. most of my students say i don't believe you. i say you don't need to believe me, right? because -- most people believe human nature are selfish, right? people are born selfish, they only care about themselves. they would not work unless they were forced to work.

most americans believe this. so at the college we have a work day so every year on march 8 is a wednesday normally come everybody comes out to do some project on campus. the majority of people come out, the faculty, staff, students come now to work together. we do that every year. it is a big one on campus. and when i tell my students 17 people volunteer to work in the countryside with farmers. i do not believe that. [laughter] [inaudible] i said why in the china does it have to be [inaudible] here on the work day we all can all to work.

you don't have to have a gang because our nature, in our nature we want to work. we are what we are through working together. right? when i tell my students the welfare program in this country deprives these people's humanity they do not understand why. if a person can no longer work, do you think that he is still a human? there are many people who began to think they become trash, they become a burden on society. they lose their self-confidence, they lose their own dignity. work is very important. work is made what we are.

i have a colleague one time. he invited me to his classroom to talk about communism and when i came to class he said give me one minute. let me get my class to attend to you. and he forgot i was there. he began to talk about mao, stalin, the society. he said something sharp to me. he said mao and stalin were simply born into the streets, neighborhood and would randomly shooting people. this is how mao landstuhl will contribute to society [inaudible] i was shocked but no student in that classroom race to the question about that. this is how american students are taught about socialism and communism, right?

and i grew up in the countryside both in my appearance parent -- before i went to school most of my cousins and the children older than i was born of an school. during ekimov years the chinese government in power chinese farmers to set up their own schools. if the chinese today are telling the chinese people, telling the world the cultural revolution was natural disaster. at which time suffered tremendously. it was actually the cultural revolution educational reach to the countryside. and i did like research mostly in my own county.

before the cultural years there was only one high school in my county, there are 750,000 people in my county at the time. and the high school only have two classes each year. each class had 30 students so each year only 60 students from the county were able to go to high school. 17 years of the cultural revolution their high school only produced graduated 1500 high school students. 800 of them left the village, left the countryside to go to college and 700 others mostly go to work in urban areas.

so there were 1,015 villages in my county most having one high school student at the time. during the cultural years covering during that ten years, so-called natural disaster, mike county built 89 high schools. from one to 89 in ten years' time. before the cultural revolution we had a middle school in the county. by the end of 1976, we had 249 middle schools. every village had a primary school. everybody was able to go to school free of charge, without xm to. it has become an entitlement. everybody allowed to go to school free.

and, you know, in china there are many schools talking about schools should be run by teachers, all professional educators. but i think if you allow professor, teachers to manage education, education suffers. for very good reason. because teachers think first about their own self-interest. that's what happens. they tried to make education -- the make education so -- to become durham privilege. they don't want more people to receive education. look at it through chinese record. every time professional educators run, education severs.

the only time it suffered a string the cultural years. when the farmers, when the workers were in power to run their own school. school flourished and the poor people, the working class people have real access to education. and i'm telling my son i was so lucky i was growing up during the cultural years because the education model at the time was so different. it was not like today in china, students burdened with except everyday. every week, and there were no weekends for the chinese students. why? because the need to prepare themselves to pass the different exams, and the teachers -- the students are able to send to

college, not about how much activity. during the cultural years moly school is pending brightly but the format, the way is very much transformed. the students when i was in middle school was writing their own textbook. we go to the factories, we talk with the workers, which taught how to repair farm machines and how they were made, how they should be repaired if something is wrong. we talk with the farmers and about agriculture. i was taught when i was in

middle school and high school how to farm, how to grow things. every class in high school, in middle school has these fields and as part of the job every week to go to the garden to look after and learn how to grow and plant and take care of. it became a part of my nature. and now iger most of my own vegetables. over the years i grew about 40 kinds of vegetables and grain. i grow soybeans, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, everything. i do that -- how much you can do if you care about the environment. right? so, when i was growing up in the school system, there were no

exempt camano exemptions. we had one that was always open book, and students were allowed to talk to each other, to discuss, to copy from each other. [laughter] if you didn't know before, you copied for mothers and learn. [laughter] right? that is the most idf exam. before the cultural revolution many teachers use the great, use the market as an instrument to call to students in the classroom. during the cultural years. the students were in power to debate the teachers. i learned so much from that format of education. when i first came to the united

states, i was working for my masters of history. one of my professors had a class on cultural evolution, and in the class everybody said the cultural revolution was an educational disaster. i was so angered. [laughter] i said okay. i was a product of cultural revolution, right? anyone of you that want to come out, let's have a competition and see who knows more, right? none of them. they are to compete with me. none of them dared to. so that brought about disaster. and there are many challenges with young people grown-up with a perception. but the truth of the matter of the cultural revolution a

generation of people like myself, not only in power the books knowledge, but it was a lot of knowledge about society, about the real productive work. and i think china, the reason why china was able to develop so well in the first three years, and i think by comparison with china today even though i think they have a lot of problems still china did much better most other countries. many people in this country or in the world like to pick on china. but they don't know how weak of progress china made over the years. right? and there are a lot talking about china when they talk of the family, the 1960's. they didn't know the family was

a commonplace in china before the chinese revolution. there are families everywhere. they didn't know how because the chinese revolution, a family becomes very rare. it is because 100 years and the disaster. the worst drought and the worst flooding. and yes, we have shortages, but because the element took very good care of the chinese people we didn't have a widespread family during that three years. we had a lot ponder but most