2026 First-Class Forever Stamps,Figures of the American Revolution: Abigail Adams

US 6068a
2026 Abigail Adams

• One of 25 people commemorated for helping America become independent
• Part of 250th anniversary celebrations

Stamp Category: Commemorative
Set: Figures of the American Revolution
Value: 78¢, First Class Mail Rate
First Day of Issue: April 10, 2026
First Day City: Washington, DC
Quantity Issued: 18,125,000 stamps (725,000 panes)
Printed by: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Offset, Flexographic
Format: Pane of 25

Why the stamp was issued: This stamp is part of a pane of 25 stamps issued to commemorate early Americans who helped in the country’s fight for independence.

About the stamp design: USPS art director, Ethel Kessler, designed the pane using original artwork by 13 artists.

First Day City: The dedication ceremony took place at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington.
An additional dedication took place on May 29 during the Boston 2026 stamp show.

About the Figures of the American Revolution set: Revolutions are not made by one kind of person. They are made by anyone willing to act — the general and the spy, the writer and the diplomat, the minister and the war chief, the woman at her writing desk and the enslaved man behind enemy lines. When the American Revolution demanded courage, it found it in unexpected places and in people history did not always remember.
Consider who is here: A Seneca war chief who made an impossible choice to protect his people. An enslaved man who infiltrated the British camp and helped win the war at Yorktown. A woman who heard the words “all men are created equal” and walked into a courtroom to demand they apply to her. A Caribbean orphan who rose from nothing to become indispensable. A Spanish governor who never lost a battle. A Polish military engineer who crossed an ocean to fight for a country that wasn’t his own. A Quaker who set aside his faith’s most sacred principle and picked up a musket. Together these 25 figures tell a fuller, truer story of what the Revolution actually was.
As the nation marked its 250th anniversary, this pane asked us to look beyond the famous moments and the celebrated names. Independence was not secured by one kind of courage or one kind of sacrifice. It was built by soldiers and statesmen, yes — but also by people who had every reason to doubt that the promise of freedom applied to them, and who fought for it anyway. That is the America these 25 figures helped forge.

History the stamp represents: The year was 1776, and a new nation was taking shape. While her husband John Adams helped draft its founding laws, Abigail picked up her pen and issued a challenge. “Remember the ladies,” she wrote, demanding that the founders include women in the freedoms they were building. It was a bold act and a revealing one. Here was a woman with no seat at any table, quietly shaping the thinking of the men who sat at all of them.
Abigail Adams was more than a president’s wife. She was his most trusted advisor, his sharpest critic, and in many ways, his political conscience. Through hundreds of letters written during years of wartime separation, she reported on public sentiment and analyzed British movements. She argued her positions with a clarity that matched any statesman of her era. Written by candlelight, her letters carried news, strategy, and a voice that helped guide a revolution.
She held no office, cast no vote, and signed no document that history would frame and hang. In the world she helped build, women simply did not hold such power. Yet her influence threaded through the founding of the republic as surely as any signature on the Declaration. For collectors, this stamp honors a remarkable paradox: a woman who wielded enormous power from just outside the room.