Rackham’s ship was hunted by the British, and the final showdown took place in October 1720 off the coast of Jamaica. Bonny and Read put up a fight, but the rest of the crew was either too scared or too drunk to join the battle. Everyone was captured, thrown into prison, and sentenced to death. Bonny had no sympathy for her husband. “Had you fought like a man,” she told Rackham, “you need not have been hanged like a dog.”
Rackham and the other men in his crew were hanged. Mary Read died in prison. No one knows what happened to Anne Bonny.
Would Abigail Adams have known about Anne Bonny?
I like to think so, and it’s actually quite possible. A book called A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, published in England in 1724, helped make Bonny famous. Abigail Smith (as she was then called) was born twenty years later, in 1744, in Massachusetts. Abigail had no formal education, but she learned to read and write at home and loved to learn about history. Maybe she came across Bonny in her reading.
Abigail Smith married John Adams in 1764 (and from that point on, everyone called her Abigail Adams). They had five children together.
Like John, Abigail was a strong supporter of American independence from Britain—though she knew it would be a long, hard fight. On the night of June 17, 1775, she was awakened at three in the morning by the roar of British guns. Sleep was impossible. At dawn, she took her seven-year-old son, John Quincy, to the top of a hill near their Boston home. And from there, just two miles from the fighting, they watched the bloody Battle of Bunker Hill. The American Revolution would last seven more years.
John Quincy Adams, by the way, was the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. Aside from Abigail Adams, Barbara Bush is the only other person to have been both the wife and mother of American presidents.
On March 31, 1776, Abigail wrote her famous “Remember the Ladies” letter to John, who was serving in Congress in Philadelphia. And John really did treat it as a joke. “As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh,” he replied. He also threw in the line, “you are so saucy.”
Not cool, as Abby told him.
But if John didn’t get Abigail’s point, lots of other people have. Abigail’s letter became a big inspiration to generations of women who followed her.
The details of what a disaster the White House was in November 1800, when Abigail Adams moved in, are all true. “We have not the least fence, yard, or other convenience without,” she wrote to her daughter, “and the great unfinished audience room I made a drying room of, to hang up the clothes in.”
Another thing Abigail noticed was that much of the work on the building was being done by enslaved African-American men. Abigail spoke strongly against slavery. “It always appeared a most iniquitous [evil] scheme to me,” she wrote to John, “to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have.” Abigail and John agreed that the United States should have banned slavery from the very start. But that would not happen until 1865.
Abigail didn’t love being First Lady. She wasn’t into fancy parties, and she wasn’t one to stand around smiling politely while men discussed important issues. She was smart and funny and had ideas and opinions of her own. John knew this, of course, and relied on her wisdom and advice. Some people thought Abigail had too much influence over her husband. They called her “Mrs. President.” It was not meant as a compliment. But that didn’t stop Abigail Adams. She paved the way for future First Ladies (and, one day, First Gentlemen) to speak their minds and to work for causes they believe in.
I included the scene where Abigail wrote John a letter (Chapter Ten) because the letters they wrote to each other are so famous. John was away often, serving in Congress or on diplomatic missions in Europe, so the only way they could communicate was by mail. Today you can read more than one thousand of their letters—they’re truly a national treasure.
And yes, both Abigail and John began many of their letters to each other with the words, “My dearest friend.”
CREDITS
Steve Sheinkin, Author
Neil Swaab, Illustrator / Designer
Connie Hsu, Executive Editor
Simon Boughton, Publisher
Elizabeth Clark, Art Director
Tom Nau, Director of Production
Jill Freshney, Senior Executive Managing Editor
Megan Abbate, Editorial Assistant
Also by Steve Sheinkin
KING GEORGE: WHAT WAS HIS PROBLEM?
TWO MISERABLE PRESIDENTS
WHICH WAY TO THE WILD WEST?
THE NOTORIOUS BENEDICT ARNOLD: A TRUE STORY OF ADVENTURE, HEROISM & TREACHERY
BOMB: THE RACE TO BUILD—AND STEAL—THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS WEAPON
THE PORT CHICAGO 50: DISASTER, MUTINY, AND THE FIGHT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
MOST DANGEROUS: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR
UNDEFEATED: JIM THORPE AND THE CARLISLE INDIAN SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM
TIME TWISTERS: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRO WRESTLER
About the Author
Steve Sheinkin is the award-winning author of fast-paced, cinematic nonfiction histories for young readers. The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights, was a National Book Award finalist and received the 2014 Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Nonfiction. The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery, won both the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award and the YALSA award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Bomb: The Race to Build-and Steal-the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon was a Newbery Honor Book, a National Book Award Finalist, and winner of the Sibert Award and YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War was a National Book Award finalist, a YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award winner, and a Boston Globe/Horn Book Nonfiction Award winner. Sheinkin lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, with his wife and two children. You can sign up for author updates here.
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Table of Contents
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Un-Twisting History
Credits
Also by Steve Sheinkin
About the Author
Copyright
Text copyright © 2018 by Steve Sheinkin
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Neil Swaab
Published by Roaring Brook Press
Roaring Brook Press is a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
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All rights reserved
Library of Congress Control Number: 201744498
eISBN: 978-1-250-14894-0
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First
edition, 2018