Posted on 07/04/2026 5:47:58 AM PDT by one guy in new jersey
Too good to be true? On July 4, 1826, the very day on which America celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Independence, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died. While this fact - dramatic enough - is beyond dispute, the ninety-year-old Adams's last words as they have come down to us,"Jefferson survives," seem a bit too perfectly constructed. Yet no historian ever questioned them.
...
Further investigation turned up the one and only person known to have been present when Adams last spoke: Louisa Smith, the never-married, fifty-three-year-old niece and adopted daughter of Abigail Adams. Smith at some point told the wife of Boston's mayor"that the last words he distinctly spoke was the name 'Thomas Jefferson.' The rest of the sentence he uttered was so inarticulate, that she could not catch the meaning. This occurred at one o'clock - a few moments after Mr. Jefferson had died." This quotation is drawn from a footnote in the unheralded 1861 memoir of Eliza Quincy, the mayor's wife. And that, apparently, is all there is.
(Excerpt) Read more at historynewsnetwork.org ...
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It happened exactly 200 years ago today, on July 4th, 1826.
I recall while reading “The Vineyard of Liberty” many years ago first learning of the near simultaneous deaths of Jefferson and Adams on the day of our nations Jubilee, which at that moment sent chills down my spine. For it seemed such an improbability, not just mere coincidence, that it must have been the hand of God at work.
When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Adams was confounded by Jefferson’s renown. How it seemed to come to him naturally, almost easily. Whereas if you were to ask Adams, he, Adams, deserved at least as much renown, or greater. But always had that nagging feeling that however much he worked hard to achieve it, and, objectively speaking, basically deserved it, he wasn’t getting it, and might never get it.
So, as the kids say these days, this, the reported utterance by Adams on his deathbed, “tracks”!
But Adams also knew that Jefferson had a charisma that he himself lacked.
Both were pretty awesome Americans though.
Each in his own right.
.
Very true. Our Founding Fathers were amazing men.
God is good.
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