Their final Fourth of July

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

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.