Mother’s Day is this Sunday, made a holiday in 1914. On this holiday, we give thanks for those women who bore us and raised us. And we remember those who have passed and celebrate those who are with us.

Mother’s Day, then, is a family holiday. But America can also give thanks for the country's political mothers. We often speak of the men who achieved independence and wrote the Constitution as “Founding Fathers.” So, too, we must not neglect those women, those “Founding Mothers,” who made significant contributions to establishing the principles and practices of our polity. We could recount many examples, including Martha Washington, Mercy Otis Warren, and Dolly Madison.

Perhaps preeminent among these great women, though, is Abigail Adams. She was the wife of John Adams, himself among the most consequential founders. She proved a loyal and wise adviser throughout his career. That wisdom shined in her letters, which sparkle with wit, learning, and deep political insight.

An excellent example of her mind and heart comes out in a famous letter she sent to John Adams in the spring of 1776. At that time, he toiled away as part of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. There, John Adams and others fought for America to separate from Britain and become its own country. Abigail declared herself a fervent patriot on this matter, writing that “I long to hear that you have declared an independency.”

She also spoke to the qualities and conditions she knew necessary to make that independence worthwhile. It would be worthwhile, she argued, if independence properly and fully protected human liberty. On this score, she spoke to two issues that continue to dominate our own discussions of America: race and sex.

First, Abigail Adams made a critique of the race-based slavery that continued to exist, though it had been increasingly relegated to the South. This critique included a moral one grounded in the biblical mandate of the Golden Rule. “Of this I am certain,” she wrote of human bondage, “that it is not founded upon that generous and Christian principal of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us.” In short, slavery’s continuance was troubling for the moral claims of the American republic, she said.

But she also saw political problems brewing in the future for a political community that included slavery. She declared that she questioned whether “the passion for liberty cannot be equally strong in the breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow creatures of theirs.” Slavery not only betrayed a certain hypocrisy regarding those fighting for universal principles of human freedom, but it also exposed those men and women to the disease of tyranny and even made them spreaders of it. One’s immune system to such despotism, grounded in a love for liberty, only could take so much exposure before itself being compromised.

Second, and most famously, Abigail Adams also spoke to the role of women in the coming American nation. She urged her husband to “remember the ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.” This point, too, sought to counter tyranny and found the new country in an expanded liberty. As the men in Philadelphia sought to establish limited government, Abigail reminded John not to make the same mistake regarding men’s power over women. “Remember all men would be tyrants if they could,” she chided. Moreover, as these men continued in revolting against other men acting the tyrant, so the women were “determined to foment a rebellion” to vindicate their rights.

In particular, Abigail Adams was attuned to the claim that human equality demanded consent of the governed and equality under the law. She wrote that, if mistreated, women “will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.” In so saying, she echoed the words that Congress would publish in July as our famous Declaration of Independence.

America’s founding did not perfectly realize these principles. But partly through Abigail Adams's and other women's influence, America began with a commitment to equality and liberty by which we have judged and reformed ourselves ever since. Slavery was ended. Women were given the right to vote.

Thus, this Sunday, let us “remember the ladies” such as Abigail Adams — our “Founding Mothers.”

Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.