What phrase did Abigail Adams use in her famous March 1776 letter to John Adams?

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Abigail Adams used the phrase “Remember the Ladies” in her famous March 1776 letter to John Adams.

John Adams was attending the Continental Congress in Philadelphia when Abigail wrote to him on March 31, 1776. She urged him and other lawmakers to consider women when creating the new nation’s laws.

Her letter warned that women would not feel bound by laws in which they had no voice or representation. The passage became one of the best-known statements associated with women’s political concerns during the American Revolution.

The phrase did not immediately produce legal equality or voting rights. Women remained excluded from formal political participation in the new United States, and Abigail Adams did not lay out a modern constitutional program. Still, the letter provides a vivid example of how the Revolution’s language of liberty prompted questions about who would benefit from the new political order.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Oct. 2026

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