Abigail Adams Expresses Her Support For the Blacks
(September 1774)

Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, was no typical woman of this era. She had a number of ideas that today are considered progressive. She was concerned about a number of issues associated with rights and freedom. This resource reflects her concerns about blacks. The text also reveals a number of Abigail Adams's other political ideas. Note that the use of the word Negro was common in her time.

There has been a conspiracy of the negroes. At present it is kept pretty private, and was discovered by one who endeavored to dissuade them from it. . . . They conducted [themselves] in this way . . . to draw up a petition to the [royal] Governor, telling him they would fight for him provided he would arm them, and engage to liberate them if he conquered [the rebels]. . . . I wish most sincerely [that] there was not a slave in the province; it always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.

• Abigail Adams in a letter to her husband, John Adams

Questions:

1. What actions by the blacks did Abigail Adams call a conspiracy?
2. What did the blacks ask the royal governor to do for them in exchange for fighting the rebels?
3. What did Abigail Adams wish did not exist in the colony?
4. What group of people did she say had as much right to freedom as she and others like her?
5. What did she say that she and others did every day to the blacks?
6. What was she asking her husband, John Adams, to help her do?
7. To what extent did Abigail Adams want to extend liberty and freedom to the blacks?
8. What reactions might most citizens of the colonies have had to Abigail Adams's attitudes towards blacks?