Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

Abigail Adams wrote this sentiment during the American Revolution while her husband, John Adams, was away serving in the Continental Congress. In March 1776, as revolutionary leaders debated the principles of a new political order, she urged him to consider women’s legal and social subordination under English common law, especially within marriage. Her warning about “unlimited power” reflects the doctrine of coverture, which largely subsumed a married woman’s legal identity under her husband’s. The remark appears in her famous “Remember the Ladies” correspondence, pressing that a new republic should not replicate old forms of domestic tyranny.

The quote argues that unchecked authority—here, the legal and customary dominance of husbands—invites abuse. Adams frames tyranny not as an exceptional vice but as a predictable outcome when power lacks accountability: if men can rule without restraint, many will. By linking household governance to political governance, she implies that liberty must be consistent across public and private life; a republic that rejects monarchy while tolerating absolute power in marriage is morally incoherent. The line is an early, pointed articulation of feminist political critique: rights and limits on power should apply within the family as well as in the state.