You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast.

Ben Franklin's world is a production of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios.

Because she wrote so many letters to her husband John who was away from home.

If John and Abigail had lived together during the American Revolution,

Abigail Adams would probably be a historical nobody

because we wouldn't have the letters. Hello and welcome to episode 380 of Ben Franklin's world.

The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and offense of our

early American past have shaped the present

day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.

The American Revolution was the central event that led to the United States' emergence as an independent nation.

But the revolution wasn't just one event or one idea.

The American Revolution was a movement comprising many events that divided British

Americans.

Americans do not universally agree on the revolution's ideas about governance and independence,

and the movement's war for independence was a bloody civil war that not only pitted brother against brother and fathers against sons,

it also pitted wives against husbands.

Cynthia A. Kerner is a professor of history at George Mason University.

She's also the author of the book, The Tori's Wife,

a woman in her family and revolutionary America.

Cindy joins us to lead us through the story of Jane and William Spurgeon, an everyday couple who

lived and raised their family in the North Carolina backcountry during the American

...