Posted on 07/02/2006 11:07:53 AM PDT by wagglebee
On the morning of July 4, 1826, the leading residents of Quincy, Mass., and Charlottesville, Va., began their last celebration of the nation’s birth – and their last day on Earth. They faced eternity as friends.
High on his small mountain in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, the master of Monticello lay asleep. Throughout the spring, Thomas Jefferson had become increasingly feeble. By mid-June, the daily horseback rides were over.
In Quincy, John Adams’ health had also declined during the late winter and spring. On sunny days, he was able to take short carriage rides, but even they had to stop by June.
Jefferson and Adams could look back on lifetimes of accomplishment on behalf of young America. By 1826, the United States was enjoying an exuberant adolescence. Its borders stretched ever westward. Its goods were finding worldwide markets. Its ambitions were ravenous. Its future appeared seamless – without limit to prosperity and peace.
Even the dark clouds of disunity, of state sovereignty, of slavery – those elements of national business left unsettled by the Founders – seemed in repose on that bright dawn.
And in Quincy, Adams’ anger at being denied a second term in the bitter election of 1800 had largely dissipated.
John Adams had laid claim to the presidency in 1796. In revolutionary credentials and early driving support for independence, only George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson equaled this lawyer and farmer from Baintree, Mass.
He beat Jefferson by three electoral votes and for four years continued the rule of the Federalists, that loose network of merchants, bankers, aristocrats and politicians.
The problem for Adams was that many of the Federalists, particularly those closely allied with Alexander Hamilton, believed the president was unenthusiastic for their party principles, and they were right.
Adams, following Washington, despised political parties, believing them hostile to the common good of the republic. He generally accepted a moderate version of the Federalist program, but he lacked Hamilton’s brilliance and Jefferson’s ability to connect with popular sentiment. And, for a major politician, he was unusually tone-deaf to matters the public considered important.
When he stood for re-election in 1800, the unpopular Adams was consumed by a political tsunami that, probably to the end of his life, he never understood.
The 1800 election left Jefferson and Aaron Burr each with 73 electoral votes and Adams with 65.
After weeks of negotiation and dispute, the House of Representatives finally elected Jefferson over Burr, who became vice president. Disillusioned and brokenhearted, Adams did not even attend the inauguration.
Yet, the two old patriots could not long remain hostile. In the years after Jefferson’s second term, they resumed a respectful and increasingly affectionate correspondence, largely through the intercessions of Abigail Adams.
Sometime during the day of July 2, Jefferson stirred up to inquire, “Is this the Fourth?” Hearing a yes, he lay back. This gentle and yet false reply surely brought him some measure of comfort. Occasionally, his hand could be seen moving, as if he were writing.
In Massachusetts, on the morning of the Fourth, Adams’ attendant asked him, “Do you know, sir, what day it is?” His reply. “Oh yes. It is the glorious Fourth of July. God bless it. God bless you all.”
Sometime that afternoon he roused again, and someone heard the second president say his last intelligible words: “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
By sunset the two men, so honored by their fellow citizens, so important in the birth of freedom and, in the end, so close as friends, were dead – 50 years to the day since together they had signed the Declaration of Independence.
RESOURCES
Adams, John. The Adams Papers, Series I: Diary and Autobiography. Edited by L.H. Butterfield. Cambridge, Mass ., 1961. Allison, John M. Adams and Jefferson: The Story of a Friendship. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966. Brodie, Fawn M. Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. , 1974. Jefferson, Thomas. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Edited by Julian P. Boyd. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950.
I believe that God ordained the birth of the United States of America and with it the birth of true freedom. The presence of the great minds and leadership in our Founding Fathers is truly Providential.
Adams/Jefferson Ping.
Jefferson had been invited to attend a celebration in Washington, DC, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That inspired the last letter he ever wrote, on June 24, 1826, in which he expresses his belief "that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God."
Their deaths is of history's great ironies.
"On the morning of July 4, 1826, the leading residents of Quincy, Mass., and
Charlottesville, Va., began their last celebration of the nation’s birth –
and their last day on Earth."
This history (and other Providential events in America) are recounted
masterfully by Michael Medved in this recording:
"God's Hand on America"
https://www.treefarmtapes.com/catalog/product.asp?productid=11872
The first time I ever heard of the 50th Anniversary story of Jefferson and Adams
was on this recording.
Funny the things they just don't (or won't...or can't) tell you at school.
History bump
I whole heartedly concur.
Until I read McCollough's "John Adams" I never knew that he and Jefferson had reconciled. I always heard about the feud and had assumed it lasted the rest of their lives.
A goodly portion of the letters that Jefferson wrote, and which remain to posterity, were to Adams.
Their presense, together, as America's Founding Fathers was truly a miracle. Public education of our school children today does not teach this miracle of America and in the end may destroy America.
The left detests everything about the Founding Fathers.
Jefferson was a very prolific letter-writer (and even invented a device to produce duplicates of the outgoing letters for his own files), so the letters he sent to Adams are probably a pretty small fraction of the total, but they do include some of his most interesting letters. He made one or two efforts to restore communication with Adams before Adams was ready to respond.
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