Free From This Day Forward by Cokie Roberts

Providence has preserved to me a life that is dearer to me than all other blessings in this world.” Still, even in his relief that Abigail had made it through, he grieved for the baby daughter he would never know: “Is it not unaccountable that one should feel so strong an affection for an infant that one has never seen, nor shall see? Yet I must confess to you, the loss of this sweet little girl has most tenderly and sensibly affected me.”
    Soon Abigail was her old self, trying to manage with few farmhands as more men were called to fight, leaving her with little help. “We can scarcely get a day’s work done for money and if money is paid ’tis at such a rate that ’tis almost impossible to live. I live as I never did before, but I am not going to complain. Heaven has blessed us with fine crops.” She goes on to tell him about everything she’s done on the farm, including paying off debts and setting up a cider press: “I should do exceeding well if we could but keep the money good, but at the rate we go on I know not what will become of us.” Or what would become of John, who, with the other instigators of independence, was a marked man. British troops moved on Philadelphia, the members of Congress scattered, eventually reconvening in York, Pennsylvania. Abigail kepthim apprised of the situation at home. The women of Boston suspected certain merchants of hoarding sugar and coffee to jack up the price. One wealthy-bachelor coffee supplier was particularly suspect. “A number of females, some say a hundred, some say more, assembled with a cart and trucks, marched down to the warehouse and demanded the keys, which he refused to deliver, upon which one of them seized him by his neck and tossed him into the cart. Upon his finding no quarter he delivered the keys, when they tipped up the cart and discharged him, then opened the warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put it into the trucks and drove off.” Score one for the ladies! And for the American troops, who were defeating the British in battle after battle. On their thirteenth wedding anniversary, October 25, 1777, Abigail was convinced it was the last they would spend apart, that the British would soon lose the war and John would be back in his law practice. She couldn’t have been more wrong.
    Adams did return home that fall, but only a month after he went back on the court circuit, a letter arrived from James Lovell, a fellow Massachusetts delegate to Congress. It was to inform John Adams of his election as a commissioner to France, where he would join Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee. It was important to keep France on the side of the United States during the Revolutionary War, and to make sure key diplomats were there negotiating all eventualities. With her husband off arguing a court case, Abigail received the letter and took it upon herself to fire off an answer. “O Sir, you who are possessed of sensibility, and a tender heart, how could you contrive to rob me of all my happiness?” she challenged Lovell. “My life will be one continued scene of anxiety and apprehension, and must I cheerfully comply with the demand of my country?” Try to imagine a political wife writing a letter like that today! It must have been infinitely more shocking then. If John was to go, Abigail wanted to take the children and go with him. She was soon persuaded that thiswould be a hazardous course, with the British gunning for her husband, and she relented. In February 1778, judging that a stay in Europe would provide an invaluable education for their son, John took the ten-year-old John Quincy and sailed to Paris for what was to be the most trying period of his and Abigail’s marriage.
    Adams was quite taken with the French, “stern and haughty Republican as I am,” and he made the mistake of writing his long-suffering wife: “To tell you the truth, I admire the ladies here. Don’t be