Soon after Thomas Jefferson declared in his 4 March 1801 inaugural address that “We are all republicans: we are all federalists,” Abigail Adams wrote an essay charging the president’s party with hypocrisy and calling on Federalists to treat Jefferson as Democratic-Republican critics had treated George Washington and John Adams during their administrations. Abigail quoted Jefferson’s request that critics give him the benefit of the doubt before censuring his policies. No such quarter was given to his predecessors, Abigail argued, and so he had no right to ask for it himself. The essay is composed of two parts, an expository preface that flows seamlessly into extracts from a letter John Quincy Adams wrote to his father on 25 November 1800 discussing the merits of his administration and characterizing him as an impartial and dedicated public servant (vol. 14:445–454). The Washington Federalist, 12 March 1801, printed an extract of the letter, attributing it to an “American gentleman in Europe,” though Abigail quoted more fully from the original that her husband had carried with him on his final return from Washington, D.C., to Quincy. John Quincy’s vindication of his father’s presidency clearly moved Abigail, who in a 22 March letter to Thomas Boylston Adams, below, called it “a Jewel of a Letter” and marveled at “how accurately, yet how candidly has he judged of Men and measures.” Abigail’s preface offers scathing condemnation of the partisanship directed at John during his presidency and lambastes a 4 March letter from Matthew Lyon attacking the former president. Underlying her comments was an acknowledgment of a shift from the ostensibly disinterested public leadership of the founding era to the openly partisan politics of a new century. Beyond the preface, her choices in selecting, paring, and adding to John Quincy’s words provide insight into her thinking. Abigail signed her work “a Lover of Justice,” a biblical phrase she also used in a 6 July 1802 letter to Thomas Boylston printed below. Although the essay does not appear to have been published, the manuscript is in Abigail’s hand and reflects her views in general, leading the editors to believe that the piece is a rare example of a political treatise by Abigail Adams.

Abigail was no stranger to writing political commentary and to repurposing her sons’ letters as a means to influence public opinion. She had long filled letters to family and friends with robust criticism of her husband’s treatment by the press. Offering selected extracts from her sons’ letters to newspapers, both directly and through intermediaries, was her regular practice during her husband’s administration. She also, at times, directly addressed herself to printers. A letter of hers defending John was printed by 9 John Fenno in the Gazette of the United States in 1797, and in the following year she wrote to Benjamin Franklin Bache to criticize him for his treatment of John Quincy in the Aurora General Advertiser (vols. 12:xxv–xxvi, 140, 290–291, 295–297, 451–452; 13:xxiv–xxv, 90, 297–298; 14:47, 520, 521).

Abigail also went beyond the political commentary of her letters in another recent composition, a transcription of a “curious conversation” she had with Jefferson shortly before leaving Washington, D.C., which she enclosed in a 25 January 1801 letter to Thomas Boylston (vol. 14:539–543). The transcribed exchange was both serious and spirited, displaying political disagreements but also hinting at a longstanding mutual affection. Although this essay provides no evidence of that affection, it emerged again in the extraordinary exchange of seven letters between Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson that took place between May and October 1804, all of which are printed in this volume. In those letters, Abigail opened with condolences to Jefferson on the loss of his daughter Mary before responding to a critical comment about her husband’s presidency. She defended John’s administration and expanded on some of the criticisms formulated in this essay. The essay thus constituted Abigail’s contribution to political commentary being written in the Adams family during the first years of the new century and served as a prelude to a direct dialogue with Thomas Jefferson yet to come.