And nearly seventy years later John Adams, in writing to Benjamin Rush, declares a similar confidence in his help-meet and expresses in his quiet way genuine pride in her willingness to meet all ordeals with him.  “May 1770.  When I went home to my family in May, 1770 from the Town Meeting in Boston ...  I said to my wife, ’I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children.  I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate.’  She burst into tears, but instantly cried in a transport of magnanimity, ’Well, I am willing in this cause to run all risks with you, and be ruined with you, if you are ruined.’  These were times, my friend, in Boston which tried women’s souls as well as men’s.”

Surely men were not unmindful in those stern days of the strength and devotion of those women who bore them valiant sons and daughters that were to set a nation free.  And, furthermore, from such tributes we may justly infer that women of the type of Jane Turell, Eliza Pinckney, Abigail Adams, Margaret Winthrop, and Martha Washington were wives and mothers who, above all else, possessed womanly dignity, loved their homes, yet sacrificed much of the happiness of this beloved home life for the welfare of the public, were “virtuous, pious, modest, and womanly,” built homes wherein were peace, gentleness, and love, havens indeed for their famous husbands, who in times of great national woes could cast aside the burdens of public life, and retire to the rest so well deserved.  As the author of Catherine Schuyler has so fittingly said of the home life of her and her daughter, the wife of Hamilton:  “Their homes were centers of peace; their material considerations guarded.  Whatever strength they had was for the fray.  No men were ever better entrenched for political conflict than Schuyler and Hamilton....  The affectionate intercourse between children, parents, and grand-parents reflected in all the correspondence accessible makes an effective contrast to the feverish state of public opinion and the controversies then raging.  Nowhere would one find a more ideal illustration of the place home and family ties should supply as an alleviation for the turmoils and disappointments of public life."[106]

There are scores of others—­Mercy Warren, Mrs. Knox, and women of their type—­whose benign influence in the colonial home could be cited.  One could scarcely overestimate the value of the loving care, forethought, and sympathy of those wives and mothers of long ago; for if all were known,—­and we should be happy that in those days some phases of home life were considered too sacred to be revealed—­perhaps we should conclude that the achievements of those famous founders of this nation were due as much to their wives as to their own native powers.  The charming mingling of simplicity and dignity is a trait of those women that has often been noted; they lived such heroic lives with such unconscious patience and valor.  For instance, hear the description of Mrs. Washington as given by one of the ladies at the camp of Morristown;—­with what simplicity of manner the first lady of the land aided in a time of distress: