Patriotism in the female sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence. . . . Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.

This remark comes from Abigail Adams’s wartime correspondence during the American Revolution, when she was managing household and family affairs in Massachusetts while her husband, John Adams, served in the Continental Congress and in diplomatic roles. Writing from a position formally excluded from voting, officeholding, and public honors, she reflects on how women nonetheless sustained the revolutionary cause through sacrifice, endurance, and moral commitment. The passage is part of her broader habit of pressing John Adams to recognize women’s political and civic stake in the new nation—an argument sharpened by the contrast between women’s lack of legal power and their demonstrated loyalty and service in moments of national crisis.

In this passage Adams argues that women’s patriotism is uniquely “disinterested” because, in her society, women are largely barred from the public rewards that often accompany civic devotion—office, honor, and political advancement. Precisely because women cannot easily convert loyalty into status or power, their sacrifices for country can be morally purer, motivated by principle, affection, and duty rather than ambition. By pointing to “all history and every age,” she also claims a long tradition of female civic virtue that conventional political narratives overlook. The closing comparison—women’s patriotism “equals the most heroic of yours”—challenges male monopolies on heroism and implicitly critiques the exclusion of women from public life.