let's not forget john and abigail adams were also a time and oppose slavery. abigail perhaps even more ardently than her husband, at one point she says i wonder if all the travails and suffering we are going through our god's punishment for the sin of slavery. this san andreas fault of slavery, begins well before the revolution just as the revolution is too many seem not to understand began well before the declaration of independence. the declaration of independence as john dickinson who opposed the signing of the declaration of independence, launching into a storm in a skiff made of paper. what made it more than just a piece of paper, the fact that we succeeded in the revolution, in the war, fought for and succeeded in gaining independence. john adams would not have said free and independent, he would have said independent and free. you need to have independence and then comes the freedom. new englanders by nature, bicultural tradition were fiercely independent people, independence was a way of life, so was religion. the most important in understanding that t

the communication across the ocean and the adams abigail and john were separated and cumulatively 10 years and that separation was created by the atlantic ocean and communicated across the atlantic ocean upwards of three to six months. and what did that mean? it meant both in personal life and in diplomatic or official life that one had to be more responsible than we understand today that one's own decisions. abigail adams at home running the family and running the farm trying to keep people, good people working to meet the farm work to get that was their only means of subsistence and trying to educate the children making decisions about whether to give smallpox shots for example. she had to make those decisions herself rage she wouldn't pick up the phone and ask her husband what should i do? that was a part of life. assumption of responsibility to one's self. when adams was serving in france and in the netherlands and in england as a diplomat again and again he had to make homages decisions on his own, decisions that would affect the course of events at the time and the fortune of u

neither john or abigail adams was capable of writing a sentence or a short letter. and they wrote between the two of them over 1000 letters to each other. that has survived, they doubtless wrote many more than that but over 1000 have survived all in the massachusetts historical society and all on rag paper and as a consequence those letters are as good as the day they were written and you can hold it in your own hand and you're holding that letter about the same distance from your eyes as they did with two hands as they did and believe me, something tactile, something very important, visceral happens when you're working the real thing area it isn't the same as seeing it on microfilm orreproduced in a book . by humanity, the mortality , the vulnerability of those people comes through and the bravery. think of that woman alone in her 11:00 at night having been up since five in the morning doing all she did, sitting down and writing those letters and nearly always inserting into them into her letters some wonderful quote from one of her favorite poets or from shakespea

jefferson and cetera but we don't have the kind of treasure trove of exchanges that we have between abigail adams and john adams that range from the political to the personal and she was i think if she were alive today she would be running for office herself and pretty darn successful at it then i can't wait to read this book thank you so much for being with us larry always great to see you and great to be with you the new book is john adams under fire the founding fathers fight for justice in the boston massacre murder trial it's out now and available everywhere including to download and thank you for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me against things don't forget to use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking. the world is driven by a dream shaped by one person or those. who dares thinks. we dare to ask. thousands of american men and women choose to serve in the country's military and the decision lotos sheltered lives every song came to a complete. the day that i was raped be instructed

john adams is extremely unfettered in his commentary to benjamin rush. and because abigail is with him, i am missing some of that confidant flavor, so i turned to the rush letters for that, probably more than anything else. but they are remarkable as a pair, because when john adams just to bookend your story a little bit when john adams has returned to the united states, he had kind of an uneasy reintegration. rush is there for him as a friend. and they have these wonderful letters that are very much gentleman scholar exchanges. where they are not just thinking about the federal government, they are thinking about -- this kind of goes full-circle to our opening conversation -- what america should look like. what is american identity to us and the world? what kind of education do need you need to be a senator? what qualifies you to be in the house of representatives? serving the people? and what exactly should we do with the difference between executive authority, executive titles, and executive powers under the constitution? that all plays out in a lot of the adams-rush cor

thomas jefferson etc but we don't have the kind of treasure trove of exchanges that we have between abigail adams and john adams that ranged from the political to the personal and she was i think if she were alive today she would be running for office herself and pretty darn successful at it dan i can't wait to read this book thank you so much for being with us. larry always great to see you and great to be with you the new book is john adams under fire the founding fathers fight for justice in the boston massacre murder trial it's out now and available everywhere including to download and thank you for joining me on this edition of politicking remember you can join the conversation on my facebook page or tweet me at kings things don't forget to use the politicking hash tag and that's all for this edition of politicking. is you'll be via reflection of reality. in a world transformed. what will make you feel safe from. the isolation full community. are you going the right way or are you being led so. direct. what is true what is faith. in the world corrupted you need to descend. to join us in the

the suffering in the tragedy and the grief and the sorrow cannot be measured with any statistics abigail adams said future generations who will reap the blessings well had little idea can little imagine what we have suffered on their behalf and she was right. the war was the longest in our history except for the vietnam war. eight and half years. it was also very bluntly proportionate to the population. 25,000 americans were killed. to us who have lived. with the 20th and 21st centuries. and suffering worldwide. 25,000 does not sound like a great deal for 25,000 was 1% of the population of 2,500,000 and if we were to fight a revolutionary war revolutionary war today with our population that would mean that over 3 million would be killed. so in their time it was a horrible war and it is extremely costly to the people who stayed home and had to make do without their husbands to work the farm. or to be the bread winner. i would like to just read you a little bit of some of these deserter notices they are very colorful. very picturesque. in a way that we are not used to. very much like the charact

adams met mom -- john abigail when he was already a successful lawyer. it was not right to propose to a woman that you could not successfully support. it is probable that his father told his mother to tell him this. those passages, which are quite , very painful.y he describes, a little later ,han that, in a very opaque way trying to pick up prostitutes in boston. like, "camething home, successful, by which he means he did not do anything wrong. then, later on, when he is with his wife, he was not a good husband, not a good father. he was just too unhappy in himself. -- undergoeses terrible nancy. he won't ever use the word pregnancy. that was considered inappropriate. and yet he is talking about how she suffers, now he suffers. later, their son commits suicide and the agony for both of them is unbearable. person who wears a cast-iron face in public. , he is aivate brilliant man, a has an astonishing mind, but he suffers. brian: we need to take some questions from the audience. if anyone has a question, put your hand up now. butll ask another question, g

abigail adams was horrified by the fact, not only slavery existed, which she wrote to john about in theamerican revolution, but she understood that the slave masters take took advantage of slave women. and that is something that also she passed on to john quincy adams. >> thank you. >> is the cult of personality as important as you say, and how were they elected [inaudible] 1776 john quincy adams because the house of representatives, do things change in the four years he was president? did adams suddenly become something different? >> if i agree with you the personality is so important, i'm having trouble deciding. >> first the popular vote didn't matter, so we cannot make the direct correlation between that and now. john adams lost narrowly to thomas jefferson and beat jefferson in 1796 i 1796 and tht contested election narrowly also. this is largely a factor of what is later described as a sectional divide. adams was contentious but he wasn't as contentious as alexander hamilton. adams had attained his reputation through his service in europe as a diplomat for many years. and so >> ca

i would go from abigail adams to clara barton to dolley madison and essentially was all first ladies and nurses, and that was great. i like reading about them. helen keller was one exception,, but now there are children's biographies of everyone you can imagine, from artists to entrepreneurs, to writers, to politicians, the public service people who have excelled in public service, just sports heroes really across the spectrum. they are highly illustrated and beautifully produced and they run from really very, quite young, lots of board books. you might've seen these hero books for very young children, going up through picture books for all the kids come for kids are more visual readers who appreciate same rich photography. the photography that is produced in these books again because of the lower printing costs and production in asia, it's gotten much better so book of photographs they used to be not affordable for most kids in the '70s and '80s, now your place like national geographic in washington producing incredible photography books for kids. there are lots of books in terms of

abigail spanberger on the steps she takes to work in congress. watch the communicators monday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two. the conference moved online because of coronavirus outbreak. on session features adamtic unrest in the u.s. during and after world war i including anti-german sentiment, race riots, and arrests of suspected communists.