ABIGAIL ON THE FARM
—from Abigail Adams, 1797, by Gilbert Stuart
How many snowbanks separate us, John?
For twenty-five years, she shovels, scrubs, nurses, gardens,
loads the gun, a boisterous cold ocean away from her husband [2. —from Letters, Abigail Adams, First Lady to husband John, second President of The United States of America.]
serving in France, England, Boston, and Philadelphia for the colonies,
and the Americans. She writes farm life accounts, manages the tenants,
the money, house repairs, hires farm labor, orders herbal medicines
from the islands, food, shoes and clothing for five children. She walks
months of morning snow banks to uncover the well, pulls milk teats,
plants and picks vegetables, sidesteps chicken scree on the way to chop
and pluck another meal, stirs stews over walk-in fireplaces.
She shoulders the rifle to ward off the marauders. Homeschools
cranky children, cares for her old parents, always the child, adult, or self
bedded down, moaning, coughing, dysentery, colds, fevers, distemper,
jaundice, rheumatism, dropsies, pukes, and smallpox. The doctor scrapes
the pus from the corpses ‘open wounds and smears it into the fresh cuts
he makes on the children’s arms, then pulls the bodies away on his cart.
She sanitizes every floorboard with lye on her knees,
hot water scuffs every blanket and sheet on the washboard.
BETTER TO BUILD HER A STATUE
—from Abigail Adams, 1797, by Gilbert Stuart
Abigail nurses her mother, drains pus-filled sores
until the smallpox takes her under the shovel.
In New York, she visits her alcoholic son, dying
in a charity bed. She adopts his young daughter
and schools her at home as she was taught.
Her wagons, staff and nine horses get lost in the woods
on their way to Washington and the new White House.
She lands in trenched mud, a large, damp, unfinished
collection of hollow halls with twenty-eight fireplaces,
pillared forests and no one to lift an axe.
She homeschools her own children and takes on many others,
raises them and teaches them the basics. The free black youth
knocks on the door, ask to learn to write. She brings him
into the schoolroom parlor with everyone, hands him a pencil
and a book. Neighbor’s object, she puts him in an evening school.
.
Her husband and the framers of the Constitution gather
at the First Continental Congress,[1. Abigail Adams is wife and the First Second Lady to John Adams, first Vice President to George Washington, first President of the United States of America] she writes to, “remember the ladies,”
to be more generous than their ancestors. She corresponds with four
presidents,[2. She wrote regularly to her husband John Adams, second President of the United States, to John’s very good friend and later President, Thomas Jefferson, and to the First President, General George Washington as well. She also wrote to her son John Quincy Adams, another US President.] speaks of women’s property rights, education, representation.[3. She is an early voice, an antecedent to 19th-century suffrage. Some consider her a founder of the United States.]
Abigail should have her own statue on the stony top of Bunker Hill,[4. She was an observer of the very important Battle of Bunker Hill with her nine-year-old son John Quincy Adams who became the Sixth President of the United States.]
a dozen children at her feet, a few founders, a few presidents,
a rifle at her side, and books stacked waist high.
Behind her a woman wearing a banner for The Vote,
a black man signing his name in the front of his Bible.
REPORT FROM BUNKER HILL
—from Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill by John Trumbull
—from Letters, Abigail Adams, Sunday, June 18, 1775
At the crown of Penn’s Hill, Abigail and son John Quincy Adams[1. Abigail Adams, mother to son John Quincy, sixth President of The United States of America.]
balance on rough stones, cover the heads of ragged Revolutionaries
with prayer. Red-coat lines snake toward Breed’s Hill. Smoke,
orange flames, hilltop Charlestown, a holocaust to stop snipers.
Wind snaps their clothing, they shudder, she wraps her fingers
around his eight-year-old arms, a visible vein pulses in his tender temple.
Twenty-four-hours of cannon roar, windows rattle. Sunny day in June,
eyes squint over the fallen bodies, twisted legs, shocked faces drop,
cries for help, blood soaks uniforms and the grass. Outnumbered,
rifles empty, the exhausted young army retreats over Bunker Hill.[2. The pyrrhic English victory, twice the number of men, ninety-four officers die.]
Too many good souls fly by. Abigail watches General Warren’s children.
At the front, he raises his rifle, shouts to his men …Fight for your brethren,
your sons, your daughters, your wives, your houses! …Towards the end,
a bullet pierces his cheek, he dies. Heart bursting, lips purposed, Abigail blinks
back tears, inhales a healing, lavender-scented paper, squares her Yankee chin,
Charlestown smolders, long-absent husband John congresses in distant
Philadelphia, under candlelight, she vents at her pen…The race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong…The God of Israel gives strength and power
to his people…the loss of Charlestown…no more than a Drop in the Bucket.