my dearest friend letters of abigail and john adams

Since John retired to the family farm in Braintree (renamed Quincy) and was with Abigail when she died, I took Abigail’s last words to John to open the piece “do not grieve my friend, my dearest friend, I am ready to go, and John it will not be long.” In response to this, I chose to use an earlier letter from John to Abigail (May 1776) as the final song in this cycle to express his feelings over Abigail’s passing. Despite John’s 27 years of public service, including many years away from his wife and children in Braintree, time and distance could not break the extraordinary bond of love between this husband and wife.Īs I poured over their letters in my research, I wanted to design a song cycle that encompassed the span of John and Abigail’s entire relationship from early courtship and married life in the 1760s, to their active roles in major political events, and ultimately to Abigail’s death in 1818. A progressive thinker in her own right, Abigail was John’s greatest supporter and adviser from the time John left his family in Boston for the First Continental Congress through the completion of his term as the second President of the United States. Their personal accounts of America’s political tensions with Great Britain and their unyielding determination to design a new independent nation are beautifully nuanced with descriptions of domestic life in Boston, and underscored with Abigail’s tremendous personal sacrifices to support her husband’s political career. America’s first “power couple,” John and Abigail Adams shared a correspondence of over 1,100 letters from 1762-1801 that detailed some of the most significant events in American history.

My dearest friend letters of abigail and john adams