Let me tell you a story about Abigail Adams. I want to tell you about how she died and I want to tell you about what happened afterward.

The love affair between John Adams, the president, founding father, the love affair between John and Abigail is one of the legendary romances of all time, of all history.

It's amazing that it really happened,

that it's not a kind of novel.

Their letters are incredibly moving.

I read one of her letters to their son John

Quincy on July 4th because I think she's still got motherly encouragement for all of

us that still rings true. And I also mentioned that Abigail's death, the story of Abigail's death

is one of the first things that brought me to tears in a book. It was in David McCullough's

biography of John Adams and near the end obviously as all historical figures do

Abigail dies and one should be emotionally prepared for that when you're reading a biography that takes place in the 18th and 19th centuries

you know that everybody in the book is dead and yet I was not prepared I wasn't I wasn't ready

and I just wanted to share this with you. What happened was Abigail fell ill with typhoid fever in October of 1818 and Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson he said the

dear partner of my life for 54 years as a wife and for many years more as a lover now lies in extremists,

forbidden to speak or be spoken to.

And at the end of October, when she finally died, McCullough writes, Adams insisted on walking in the procession to the meeting house.

And except for a momentary dizziness due to the unseasonable heat of the day, he went through all the rest, as Thomas wrote, with great composure and serenity.

Thomas, that's their son.

Their other son, John Quincy, is the boy that I mentioned in the July 4th episode who had to accompany his father to France

and wasn't happy about it and needed encouragement and strength from his mother.

Here's what John Quincy wrote in his diary. He wrote,

Gracious God, support my father in this deep and irreparable affliction. My mother was a

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