Complex Appeals to Time in "Remember the Ladies"

Abigail Adam’s letter, “Remember the Ladies, is both an epideictic and forensic form of rhetoric because she is using it to try and sway her husband’s opinions on women’s rights and how they are represented in the new government. More specifically, she uses several of Killingsworth’s identified complex appeals to time to emphasize her points.
As Killingsworth says, “Authors may appeal to the past, present, or future, but the focus tends to fall on the need for change, the pursuit of something new, in the present” (Killingsworth 39). So, when Adams asks her husband to “remember the ladies” while he is helping to build the new government, she is appealing to the present (Adams 318). She emphasizes the importance and far-reaching effects of the task at hand. She wants him to make the right decision.
In the same letter, Adams also uses an appeal to the past. She says, “be more generous and favorable to [the ladies] than your ancestors” (Adams 318). This is important because the writers of the constitution were fighting against their ancestors in a way. They were asserting their right to revolution of a King that didn’t serve them. So, by tying the rights of women to this cause that they were already committed to, Adams uses her appeal to the ways of the past to sway her husband.
Finally, Adams uses an appeal to the future. She threatens rebellion of the wives. She says, “If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion” (Adams 318). This was an appeal to her husbands own security. So, Adams made the decision very personal to her husband in an attempt to gain his attention.
Adams’ complex appeals to time attempt to make her concerns central to her husband’s and the writers of the constitution’s minds.