An imagined gathering
1780 · Braintree, Massachusetts
Abigail Adams keeps a New England table while John, Jefferson, and Madison debate what the Revolution owes to women and to the states.
John has come home between diplomatic missions, and the house at Braintree is full of politics. Jefferson and Madison, in Massachusetts on public business, have been asked to dine, and Abigail presides over a table that is plainer than the talk.
The conversation ranges from the war to the new state constitutions, and Abigail does not let the men forget the argument she made four years earlier. She asks what the rights of women amount to if the laws still leave them dependent, and she presses Jefferson on the religious establishment he is trying to dismantle in Virginia. The men answer, mostly, that the times are unsettled; Abigail answers that they are exactly the times for the question. They eat clam chowder, codfish balls, and hasty pudding, with mince pie and raspberry shrub to finish.
Host: Abigail Adams
John Adams — Home between missions, and used to his wife's arguments.
Thomas Jefferson — At work on religious freedom and the reform of Virginia's laws.
James Madison — A young Virginia delegate with a taste for constitutional theory.
First course
a period dish
Main
a period dish
Side
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Abigail Adams
Abigail Adams's 1776 demand that the new code of laws not leave women at the mercy of their husbands.
Abigail Adams
The idea that women served the republic by raising virtuous citizens, a role that gave them influence and, later, a claim to education.
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson's draft, its argument from natural rights, and the compromises the Congress made in editing it.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.