DETROIT – It is certainly the best and perhaps most famous Fourth of July story in American history.
But even if you know it, it’s worth hearing again. John Adams, our nation’s second president, and Thomas Jefferson, the third, once friends and fellow revolutionaries, later became bitter enemies.
They each became leaders of America’s first two political parties, the Federalists and Republicans. When George Washington retired, Adams and Jefferson ran against each other, and Adams narrowly won. Four years later, Jefferson beat Adams.
John Adams was so bitter he packed up his belongings and left the new White House for his native Massachusetts before Jefferson’s inauguration – the only departing president ever to do so. Thomas Jefferson served two terms, and then retired to Virginia forever.
The two old foes ignored each other. But as time went by, feelings and memories mellowed. Something else happened too: The other founding fathers they had made a revolution with began to die.
Washington was gone; so was Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine and most of the rest. One day in 1812, out of the blue, Adams wrote Jefferson a letter wishing him a happy new year. Jefferson answered back.
They began corresponding. “You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other,” Adams told Jefferson.
For the next 14 years, the men corresponded, writing about everything from farming to religion. Adams wrote more and was more comfortable expressing his emotions.
Adams at first wanted to argue politics, but Jefferson refused, saying “nothing new can be added by you or me to what has been said.” They mostly avoided the subject after that, though it is likely that both felt they could have run things better than the generation of young whippersnappers who had come up after them.
Instead, they wrote about philosophy and books and their families. They never visited each other, or even seemed to have thought about doing so. In that era of wooden-wheeled carts and dirt roads, when even railroads were still in the future, Massachusetts and Virginia were in some ways further apart, especially for old men in declining health, than Washington and Tasmania are today.
Eventually, they began failing. John Adams was 90 in 1826, more than seven years older than Jefferson. He wanted to live till July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The doctors didn’t think he could do it. He fell into a coma, only to awaken on that glorious day and ask, “Is it the Fourth?”
Told that it was, he brightened. He died late that afternoon, saying something like, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
But in perhaps American history’s most amazing coincidence, Jefferson had died around five hours earlier.
Days later, when the news arrived, the nation was stunned. Many regarded this as a sign of approval for the United States of America from God himself. The not-yet-badly cracked Liberty Bell was rung to commemorate their memories.
Neither Jefferson nor Adams was by any means perfect. Adams could be irrationally emotional and as president approved the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, a dangerous attack on free speech.
Thomas Jefferson, we now know thanks to DNA, took Sally Hemings, his teenage slave girl as his mistress and fathered numerous children with her, but never granted her freedom.
They had other faults too, and were about as different politically as two loyal Americans of their day could be.
Adams wanted a strong federal government; Jefferson, a weaker one, with strong state governments. Adams was completely opposed to slavery; Jefferson owned slaves.
Each had once beaten the other in presidential elections every bit as nasty and bitter as any contest today.
Yet in the end, they reconciled. They appeared to forgive each other, became friends again, and they both were loyal to the nation they had created. They died exactly half a century after the Declaration of Independence, a document Adams told Jefferson he should draft because he felt the Virginian was a better writer.
Nearly two centuries after they died on the same day, this nation still exists, and once again is deeply divided.
Somehow I cannot imagine Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, or even Barack Obama becoming friends after their political careers are finally over.
But I would feel better about our nation if I could.
