Remember the ladies!

Any year now, we will listen to Abigail Adams

Blessings to those who can read this cursive.

In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John Adams, “remember the ladies!” as he went to form a new government. I don’t know about you, but I always pictured her waving a lace hanky shouting after him “remember the ladies!” as he rode off on horseback. I didn’t realize she sat down and wrote a letter in ink, admonishing him and promising consequences if he didn’t remember the ladies. 

She wrote: 

Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable 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.

Who among us has not written to our husbands promising rebellion? She continues: 

That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.

The founding fathers did not remember the ladies. And so the ladies had to foment a rebellion. 

Which they would do. It was a 72 year slow burn revolution to get women’s right to vote and to have a voice in the laws by which we are all bound. It took longer—until the Civil Rights Act of 1965—to ensure that the constitutional right of women to vote was honored for women of color. And one hundred years after an Equal Rights Amendment was proposed in 1923, and now four years after it’s full ratification in 2020, we are still waiting for the archivist to publish it and make it an official part of the US Constitution. 

Lawmakers will forget the ladies if they can. We can’t let them.