What of a society as “sexless as the bees”?

Posted at The Reformed Mind:

From Dr. Susan Hanssen

Alexis de Tocqueville called “the strength of American women” the great secret of the strength of the American republic. Likewise, strong women were the backbone of the Adams family and its contribution to the political integrity of the American republic.

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The letters of John and Abigail Adams were first published by their grandson, Charles Francis Adams (President Abraham Lincoln’s ambassador to Britain). The diaries and letters of John Quincy Adams’s wife, Louisa, have just been published this year, a project explored by their grandson, Henry Adams. Henry Adams—who called Tocqueville’s Democracy in America the “bible of my own private religion”—worried that American men and women were losing their appreciation for the complementary strengths and gifts of men and women. He thought the best remedy was to hold up for Americans the image of his grandmother.

Part of the charm of John and Abigail Adams’s letters (which are frequently addressed with terms such as “Dear Miss Adorable” and “My Dearest Friend”) is the way that the two weave a life-long conversation about universal human virtue into their ongoing inquiry into their complementary contributions to mothering and fathering their “little flock” of children. Louisa Adams had a hard act to follow in such a renowned mother-in-law, but her journals reveal a woman of profound reflection—on the meaning of piety (filial, patriotic, and religious) and her role as daughter, wife, and mother.

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