In my last post, I talked about some of our forgotten Founding Fathers. Our founding mothers, of course, have fared even worse. Women had no votes in early America. Indeed, they had hardly any rights at all. But there were some women who nevertheless managed to make their voices heard on the great issues of the day.

Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814), to take one example, was considered one of the most literate American women of the 18th Century. A popular author with a sharp wit and pen to match, she wrote poems, plays and satires. She is also believed to have written contributions to newspapers under the pseudonym, “A Columbian Patriot.”

Mrs. Warren was famous in her day, but if we think of founding mothers at all in 21st Century America, we are most likely to think of Abigail Adams, wife of our second president, John Adams, and mother of our sixth president, John Quincy Adams.

John Adams’ obligations as a legislator and a diplomat kept him away from home for long periods, so the couple stayed in touch through a steady stream of correspondence. Their letters are a national treasure. They feature as a plot device in the musical, 1776, and were the basis of a successful stage play called John and Abigail by William Gibson.

Abigail may not have been as well educated as her friend Mercy Warren, but she more than held up her end of the correspondence with her famous husband. Consider the spirited letter she wrote to John in Philadelphia, a few months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

“I long to hear that you have declared an Independency,” she enthused. “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, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”

All American women secured the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920. After reading Abigail Adams’ letter, we can only wonder why it took that long.