On March 30, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, who was a delegate to the Continental Congress then drafting the Declaration of Independence. She asked him, as the founding fathers considered what sort of document they would write, "Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. . . . Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation." Despite this early concern by a prominent American woman, who would be the wife of the second president of the United States and the mother of the sixth president, no such rebellion took place. In fact, for the first one hundred years of the United States...