4/3/2023

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal starts with two pieces by Elliott Drago of the Jack Miller Center.

In the first, at the American Civics portal, he closes Women’s History Month by looking at a first lady ahead of her time: Abigail Adams. Adams, “the wife of one president and the mother to another,” was a staunch advocate “of women’s education” and was “a great inspiration for staying true to our founding principle of equality.” Growing up, Drago writes that she “read voraciously from her family’s library, mastering numerous subjects, including literature, philosophy, and history,” and her “love of learning and insatiable curiosity enabled her to speak knowledgeably on a variety of topics.” Drago calls Adams “a role model for Americans today who wish to educate the next generation in an honest and responsible manner.”

At JMC’s American Arc blog, Drago focuses on how women and black Americans fought for suffrage, with the latter group being accorded the right to vote with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. “The Fifteenth Amendment not only (initially) prevented states from dictating who voted, it also naturally fulfilled the Thirteenth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment,” which Drago notes banned slavery and granted citizenship to blacks respectively. He highlights how Thomas Mundy Peterson, the son of a freed woman who lived in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became “the first Black American to vote in a United States election under the protection of the federal government.”

At the New York Post, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott writes that Americans “are told day in and day out by leaders who can’t see beyond the past” of a story of suffering and victimhood. But hope for the revival of the American spirit “isn’t gone, it just needs to be nurtured and shared.” Scott writes that hardworking “Americans – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents – all agree that the American dream isn’t something to be seen through a political lens.” We must rise above our ideological struggles and understand the virtues and mores Americans need to pass on the blessing of liberty to future generations. Our country, he says, needs leaders who understand that “the future of our nation is rooted in two basic principles: Freedom and responsibility. When individuals take responsibility for their futures, We the People collectively are stronger.”

Original Posts

Abigail Adams Set the Stage for Equality in Women's Education

Elliott Drago, RealClearAmericanCivics

First Lady Abigail Adams was more than a wife to one president and mother to another. She is most known as the wife of John Adams and the mother of John Quincy Adams. At a time when ...