“Wherever I go I am Scarcly welcome without I bring my pocket full of Letters,” Mary Smith Cranch wrote to her younger sister Abigail Adams, hinting at the value of Adams’s letters back home in New England. Her dispatches from Philadelphia illustrate her unparalleled access to political news and her skill in shaping public opinion—Philadelphia was, at that time, the home of the US president, Abigail’s husband, John. Cranch’s letter offers a snapshot of the headlines that captivated Americans in 1798. She shares word of popular support for the Adams administration in the wake of the XYZ Affair with France and comments on local news and politics in Quincy, Mass.