Her letters provide a window on eighteenth-century life, private and public. They reveal Abigail’s roles as wife, parent, and friend; her domestic and social activities; her opinions and observations. They also convey her zeal for politics, her intense interest in national affairs, and her avid patriotism. “Our country is as it were a Secondary God, and the first and greatest parent,” she wrote to Mercy Warren in 1776. “It is to be perferred [sic] to parents, to wives, children, Friends and all things the Gods only excepted.” Her wartime correspondence with John Adams combined personal messages, local news, and political commentary. In March 1776, she vented a complaint about the legal subjection of married women. “I desire you would Remember the ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors,” she wrote in a jesting tone. “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.”