Abigail Smith Adams: “Remember the Ladies”

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
First Lady of the world

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (National Archives at College Park, Maryland)
(Born: October 11, 1884; Died: November 7, 1962)
Born to a rich and influential family in New York City, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt transformed the role of first lady during her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency of the United States (1932-1945). She became an inspiration to millions around the world by giving a voice to the powerless: minorities, women, the poor, and the disadvantaged. She was a controversial figure to others because of her dedication to human rights, civil rights, and women's rights.
Orphaned at the age of 10, Eleanor Roosevelt grew up shy and insecure. She followed her family's tradition of community service, teaching in a settlement house before marrying her outgoing cousin Franklin in 1905. They had six children, one of whom died as an infant. Her husband's election to the New York State Senate in 1910 launched her career as political helpmate.
Several of her biographers see her traumatic discovery in 1918 of her husband's affair with her social secretary as the spur behind Eleanor's expanded social activism, but others point to her education and expanding network of friends as her inspiration. When Franklin Roosevelt was stricken with poliomyelitis in 1921, she turned increasingly to politics, to further his career and her ideals of social justice.
Eleanor Roosevelt regarded her work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as her greatest legacy. (United Nations)
Once Roosevelt was elected president, Eleanor toured a country devastated by the Great Depression. She reported back to him on conditions and tirelessly promoted equal rights for women and minorities, child welfare, and housing reform. She became the first president's wife to hold regular press conferences, to write a syndicated column ("My Day") and do radio commentary, to go on the lecture circuit, and to address a political convention. She used symbolism to great effect: In1939, when the Daughters of the American Revolution banned African-American singer Marian Anderson from performing in their auditorium because of her race, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization. She suggested that Anderson sing at the Lincoln Memorial instead, in a concert attended by 75,000 people.
After Franklin's death, President Harry Truman appointed her a delegate to the United Nations. She served as chairman of the U.N.'s Commission on Human Rights and played a leading role in the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy made her the chair of the President's Commission on the Status of Women, work she continued until her death in 1962.
President Truman admiringly called Mrs. Roosevelt "First Lady of the World." She was, typically, more unassuming in describing her achievements: "I just did what I had to do as things came along."
For additional information, see:
Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1992.
Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor. My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001
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Abigail Smith Adams: “Remember the Ladies”
(Born: November 11, 1744; Died: October 28, 1818)

Portrait of Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blythe, 1766.
Engraved portrait of First Lady and author Abigail Adams. (Stock Montage/Getty Images)
Wife of the second president of the United States and mother of the sixth, Abigail Adams's multiple claims to fame also rest on her championing of women's rights, including the right to an education. Her voluminous correspondence is full of wit and vivid insights into the early years of her beloved nation. She shared and helped shape her husband's political thought and career, and excelled in the management of their farm and finances.
Born at Weymouth, Massachusetts, Abigail Adams lacked a formal education, as did most women of that time. She was, nevertheless, an ardent reader from an early age. She married John Adams in 1764. Their 54-year union – as reflected in their letters to each other – was warm, loving, and intellectually lively. Her husband's frequent travels meant long separations, so she raised their four surviving children and managed their home affairs on her own, all the while acting as her husband's chief political confidant. In 1776, she made her strongest appeal for women's rights in a letter to Adams, then a member of the Continental Congress that declared independence from Britain. "In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies," she wrote, "and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors." Her plea was the first call for the equality that American women would gradually achieve. When George Washington's army was facing seeming destruction later that year, she boldly wrote that the British forces instead would be opposed by "a race of Amazons in America."
Abigail Adams joined her husband in Paris and London when he served as diplomatic representative of the new nation. She dutifully acted as his hostess when he became the country's first vice president, in 1789, and president, in 1797. Defeated by Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 election, Adams retired to their home in Massachusetts, where he and Abigail enjoyed their remaining years until her death in 1818. On that sad occasion, her son John Quincy Adams, a future president, paid her this tender tribute in his journal, "There is not a virtue that can abide in the female heart but it was the ornament of hers."
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