Abigail Adams wrote the 1776 letter urging John Adams to “remember the ladies.”
She wrote to her husband, John Adams, on March 31, 1776, while he was serving in the Continental Congress. Abigail asked lawmakers to make new legal arrangements more favorable to women and warned against placing unlimited power in the hands of husbands.
The letter is often remembered as an early American statement about women’s legal and political rights. Abigail argued that women should not be bound by laws in which they had no voice or representation. Her words appeared during the revolutionary debate over liberty, government, and the rights of colonists.
John Adams acknowledged the request but responded humorously and did not support a major change in women’s legal status. The phrase is also sometimes incorrectly attributed to Martha Washington or Betsy Ross. Abigail Adams was not a delegate to the Continental Congress, but her correspondence with John Adams provides an important perspective from outside the official political assembly.