Gave As Good As She Got
Illustration
Stories
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” (v. 27)
As it turned out, the founding generation of leaders in the American colonies found it far easier to be united against a common enemy, Great Britain, than to be civil, much less friendly, when it came to forming a new nation. Though it was the intent of some of the founders to create a country without parties and partisanship, their widely divergent views on government and politics broke down and eventually destroyed any semblance of unity among them.
One set of staunch allies, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), John Adams (1735-1826), and Abigail Adams (1744-1818), had been fast friends while in Great Britain, but later became the bitterest of enemies during the early years of the republic. Jefferson believed in an agrarian society — with the always unspoken assumption that all the hard labor on the farm would be performed by African slaves. He preached personal thrift. Never mind that Jefferson died deeply in debt because he insisted on importing luxuries from overseas.
Meanwhile both John and Abigail Adams were actually farmers who worked with their own hands. Their modest wealth was due to their hard labor in the soil as well as to John’s law practice and Abigail’s thrift-conscious management of their properties.
Well before the presidential campaign of 1800, Jefferson and Adams had become bitter opponents who threw accusations in the other’s direction, often through proxies. Their cordial relationships had broken down long before. The highly contentious election cemented a silence in which there was no direct communication through Jefferson’s first term in office.
Then, in 1804, towards the end of Jefferson’s first term, Abigail heard about the death of Jefferson’s daughter Polly, who she had cared for personally during her years in London when her husband was ambassador to England. She wrote a compassionate letter of sympathy, but she did not gloss over the break in their relationship, signing her letter as somebody “who once took pleasure in subscribing herself as your friend.”
Jefferson wrote back, stating he could never repay her for her kindnesses to him, insisted that any differences between him and her husband came from “honest conviction,” and that their apparent rivalry, whatever the public might think, had not placed a barrier between them. Then he added a dig in his final remark, suggesting that he himself did have one minor grievance with her husband — that one of his final acts as president had been to make certain political appointments that he might have left to Jefferson.
Abigail might have considered their correspondence complete had he not made that remark. Instead, she wrote back with a sharp retort that her husband was within his constitutional rights to make the appointments, and that at the time it was unclear if Jefferson or Aaron Burr would become president, since a tie in electors had thrown the election to the House of Representatives to decide.
She then named names and took no prisoners, citing in detail a scandalous action with regards to a scoundrel who had published material very damaging to her husband, and though Jefferson had feigned ignorance at the time, she knew very well that Jefferson was the one behind the hatchet job.
Abigail, however, stuck to political matters in her letter, and drew the line at personal accusations. She did not mention, for instance, his long sexual relationship with the slave Sally Hemmings, with whom he had fathered several children who were now slaves in the Jefferson household, even though she and her husband had discussed the matter in their own personal correspondence.
Their correspondence continued for seven more letters, at one point she quoted from Proverbs 27:6 — “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” words that suggested Jefferson ought to think deeply about the words she had written because they might lead him to truth and repentance. In her last letter she wrote, “Affection still lingers in the bosom, even after esteem has taken flight.”
It would be another eight years before her husband, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson would finally resume their correspondence, and at least something resembling a long-distance friendship that lasted until they both, each unbeknownst to the other, died within hours of each other on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826.
Although in her era women were considered inferior to men, supposedly unable to think upon the same high plane as men, Abigail gave as good as she got, and even better. She, and many other women of the age, proved men were wrong about their false and self-serving assumptions.
This calls to mind another woman who gave as good as she got, and certainly put certain men to shame when it came to engaging Jesus in dialogue. In the Gospel of John, Jesus challenges Nicodemus, Andrew, Nathaniel, the people who received the benefit of the feeding of the multitudes, the religious leaders at the time he healed a man blind from birth, and others to look beyond the surface and really come to understand the Great I Am standing before them. Some did not do as well in the exchange, failing to look beyond the surface, trying to figure out how one could be born from their mother’s womb again, for instance, or insisting on more bread instead of reaching for the Bread of Life.
But the Samaritan woman, despite the history of bad blood between Judeans and Samaritans, not only listened to Jesus when he spoke about the living water, but went beyond the desire for a never empty jar of water and saw in Jesus the one who could be challenged as well with regards to who owned Father Jacob, Jacob’s Well, and which mountain was the most proper to worship God at.
(Want to know more? David McCullough’s biography, “John Adams,” Simon and Schuster, 2001, provides plenty of information about the extraordinary Abigail Adams, her correspondence with Thomas Jefferson [pages 581-585] and of course the second president of the United States, John Adams. All quotations from the correspondence are taken from this book.)
As it turned out, the founding generation of leaders in the American colonies found it far easier to be united against a common enemy, Great Britain, than to be civil, much less friendly, when it came to forming a new nation. Though it was the intent of some of the founders to create a country without parties and partisanship, their widely divergent views on government and politics broke down and eventually destroyed any semblance of unity among them.
One set of staunch allies, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), John Adams (1735-1826), and Abigail Adams (1744-1818), had been fast friends while in Great Britain, but later became the bitterest of enemies during the early years of the republic. Jefferson believed in an agrarian society — with the always unspoken assumption that all the hard labor on the farm would be performed by African slaves. He preached personal thrift. Never mind that Jefferson died deeply in debt because he insisted on importing luxuries from overseas.
Meanwhile both John and Abigail Adams were actually farmers who worked with their own hands. Their modest wealth was due to their hard labor in the soil as well as to John’s law practice and Abigail’s thrift-conscious management of their properties.
Well before the presidential campaign of 1800, Jefferson and Adams had become bitter opponents who threw accusations in the other’s direction, often through proxies. Their cordial relationships had broken down long before. The highly contentious election cemented a silence in which there was no direct communication through Jefferson’s first term in office.
Then, in 1804, towards the end of Jefferson’s first term, Abigail heard about the death of Jefferson’s daughter Polly, who she had cared for personally during her years in London when her husband was ambassador to England. She wrote a compassionate letter of sympathy, but she did not gloss over the break in their relationship, signing her letter as somebody “who once took pleasure in subscribing herself as your friend.”
Jefferson wrote back, stating he could never repay her for her kindnesses to him, insisted that any differences between him and her husband came from “honest conviction,” and that their apparent rivalry, whatever the public might think, had not placed a barrier between them. Then he added a dig in his final remark, suggesting that he himself did have one minor grievance with her husband — that one of his final acts as president had been to make certain political appointments that he might have left to Jefferson.
Abigail might have considered their correspondence complete had he not made that remark. Instead, she wrote back with a sharp retort that her husband was within his constitutional rights to make the appointments, and that at the time it was unclear if Jefferson or Aaron Burr would become president, since a tie in electors had thrown the election to the House of Representatives to decide.
She then named names and took no prisoners, citing in detail a scandalous action with regards to a scoundrel who had published material very damaging to her husband, and though Jefferson had feigned ignorance at the time, she knew very well that Jefferson was the one behind the hatchet job.
Abigail, however, stuck to political matters in her letter, and drew the line at personal accusations. She did not mention, for instance, his long sexual relationship with the slave Sally Hemmings, with whom he had fathered several children who were now slaves in the Jefferson household, even though she and her husband had discussed the matter in their own personal correspondence.
Their correspondence continued for seven more letters, at one point she quoted from Proverbs 27:6 — “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” words that suggested Jefferson ought to think deeply about the words she had written because they might lead him to truth and repentance. In her last letter she wrote, “Affection still lingers in the bosom, even after esteem has taken flight.”
It would be another eight years before her husband, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson would finally resume their correspondence, and at least something resembling a long-distance friendship that lasted until they both, each unbeknownst to the other, died within hours of each other on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1826.
Although in her era women were considered inferior to men, supposedly unable to think upon the same high plane as men, Abigail gave as good as she got, and even better. She, and many other women of the age, proved men were wrong about their false and self-serving assumptions.
This calls to mind another woman who gave as good as she got, and certainly put certain men to shame when it came to engaging Jesus in dialogue. In the Gospel of John, Jesus challenges Nicodemus, Andrew, Nathaniel, the people who received the benefit of the feeding of the multitudes, the religious leaders at the time he healed a man blind from birth, and others to look beyond the surface and really come to understand the Great I Am standing before them. Some did not do as well in the exchange, failing to look beyond the surface, trying to figure out how one could be born from their mother’s womb again, for instance, or insisting on more bread instead of reaching for the Bread of Life.
But the Samaritan woman, despite the history of bad blood between Judeans and Samaritans, not only listened to Jesus when he spoke about the living water, but went beyond the desire for a never empty jar of water and saw in Jesus the one who could be challenged as well with regards to who owned Father Jacob, Jacob’s Well, and which mountain was the most proper to worship God at.
(Want to know more? David McCullough’s biography, “John Adams,” Simon and Schuster, 2001, provides plenty of information about the extraordinary Abigail Adams, her correspondence with Thomas Jefferson [pages 581-585] and of course the second president of the United States, John Adams. All quotations from the correspondence are taken from this book.)
