"Persons of Consequence": The Women of Boston and the Making of the American Revolution, 1765-1776

On March 31, 1776, three months before the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, Abigail Adams, writing from the family farm she was managing in Braintree, Massachusetts, to her husband, John, a delegate to the Congress in Philadelphia, closed her long report on local affairs with a comment that has won a deserved notoriety as the opening manifesto of American feminism. "I long to hear that you have declared an independency – and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies...” What made Abigail Adams make this request in the spring of 1776? What activities had women engaged in during the momentous decade since the Stamp Act protests of 1765? What roles had they played? What was the relative importance of these activities? This book chapter in the monograph Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution explores these questions.