On 16 November 1797 the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser printed the following squib: “His serene highness of Braintree made an anti-climax on his journey from his dukedom. Boston made the cap of the climax, Philadelphia its tail. On another occasion it would be safer and wiser to make no further attempts at forcing respect; for it sits aukwardly upon men, that from respect it degenerates into farce. In future, it would be better for him to travel to and from Braintree as he did before his exaltation, like Darby and Joan.” The latest in a series of Aurora articles lambasting John Adams for the public honors shown him during his travels between Philadelphia and Quincy, for which see Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, 15 November, and note 7, above, this article appears to have prompted a direct response from the Adamses.

An unsigned letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Gazette of the United States, John Fenno, was published in the newspaper on 18 November. Printed below, the article defends John Adams by providing examples of similar marks of respect shown him both during his tenure in the Continental Congress and at the start of his vice presidency. The level of detail included in the argument suggests the author was someone close to the president. But it is the curious document labeled “Communication” that further suggests the author was Abigail. Enclosed in a letter to Abigail’s sister Mary Smith Cranch, the document in Abigail’s hand is a near match to the printed article. Other than spelling and punctuation variations common to Abigail, there exist only two substantive differences, both of which were canceled by Abigail in favor of the word used in the printed version. Coupled with the fact that it seems unlikely Abigail would copy by hand the text of a newspaper article when she regularly enclosed printed extracts in her letters to Cranch, this leads the editors to believe that Abigail authored the piece.

The document fits within the broader spectrum of Abigail’s public letters. As the wife of the president, Abigail frequently used her networks of correspondence to influence public perceptions of the Adams administration, but it is in countering direct attacks by Democratic-Republicans that she moved beyond her established private networks to directly engage public figures. Here, it is John she champions, but she was no less attentive in her defense of John Quincy, which she demonstrated in letters to Benjamin Franklin Bache, 17 March [1798], and to Robert Goodloe Harper, [13 April 1798], both below.