Remember the ladies

Braintree, 31 March 1776. Boston has been empty of the British for two weeks. She is thirty-one. The farm is hers to plant. He is in Philadelphia with the Congress. The last letter she has from him is dated 8 March. She opens this one by asking for a letter half as long as the ones she sends, and for news he may give: where the fleet has gone, what defence Virginia can make.

They had already been a marriage in the post for fourteen years. Courtship letters from 1762. The wedding in 1764. Four living children in the house this spring: Nabby, John Quincy, Charles, Thomas. She cannot go into Boston for fear of the smallpox. She sends Mr. Crane to look at their house there. A regimental doctor has been in it. It is very dirty. The few things left are gone. A month ago she could have seen it in flames. Now she wants the key, and the rooms shut.

She feels, she says, a gaieté de cœur to which she was a stranger. The sun looks brighter. They might sit under their own vine. Then the sheet waits five days for a carrier. 5 April. Neighbour Trot has lost two children in a week, George on Wednesday, Billy on Friday, the canker fever. Five grown people sick in this street. The mumps too. Isaac confined. Our own little flock are yet well. My Heart trembles with anxiety for them. God preserve them. She is making soap. She has not yet made saltpeter. She manufactures clothing or the family would be naked. The political sentence is in this same paper.

I long to hear that you have declared an independancy. And by the way, in the new Code of Laws, Remember the Ladies. Do not put unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. If perticuliar care is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion. Those who wish to be happy give up Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. She signs, as she often does, Your ever faithfull Friend.

He answered on 14 April from Philadelphia. He could not but laugh. Another Tribe more numerous and powerfull. He would not repeal the Masculine systems. Rather the Despotism of the Peticoat. The house will not pretend the tease was a victory, or that the request remade the code. She did not drop the point. They kept writing for the rest of the life. The ladies were not remembered in the law as she had asked. The sheet remains the place where the asking can still be read.