However, despite their closeness, Jefferson and Adams fought often over their political views. Jefferson and Adams were the last surviving members of the original American revolutionaries who had stood up to the British empire and forged a new political system in the former colonies.As a Democratic / Republican, Jefferson advocated for the rights of states, while Adams, a Federalist, supported a strong national government. Both friends ran for president in the 1796 election, and Adams beat Jefferson by just 3 electoral votes. Still, the two remained friends. And after receiving the second highest number of votes, Jefferson served as vice-president to Adams for the next four years.
It was during this time that their ideas about policy-making became as distinct as their personalities. The irascible and hot-tempered Adams was a firm believer in a strong centralized government, while the erudite and genteel Jefferson believed federal government should take a more hands-off approach and defer to individual states’ rights. As Adams’ vice president, Jefferson was so horrified by what he considered to be Adams’ abuse of the presidency–particularly his passage of the restrictive Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798–that he abandoned Adams and Washington for his estate at Monticello. There, he plotted how to bring his Republican faction back into power in the presidential election of 1800. After an exceptionally bitter campaign, in which both parties engaged in slanderous attacks on each other in print, Jefferson emerged victorious. It appeared the former friends would be eternal enemies. And they were enemies for the next ten years.
A Founding Father, eager to reunite the two statesmen, hatched a plan to bring them back together. Benjamin Rush, a civic leader and fellow Declaration signer, wrote to both men, saying the other wanted to rekindle their friendship. (And thus a timeless comedy trope was born).
Rush sealed the deal by telling them he had a dream in which they revitalized their friendship through letter-writing before they later “sunk into the grave nearly at the same time, full of years and rich in the gratitude and praises of their country.”
He kind of nailed it.
In 1812, the two started writing again and eventually mailed more than 185 letters to each other. But their friendship was still tense at times and their political divisions remained ripe. A year after their communication was reopened, Adams wrote, “You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.”
Over the next few years, a tenderness crept back into the founders’ relationship. As he grew older, Jefferson even wrote, “Crippled wrists and fingers make writing slow and laborious. But while writing to you, I lose the sense of these things, in the recollection of ancient times, when youth and health made happiness out of everything.”
We’ll never know exactly where they stood in the end or what Adams was thinking on that fateful Fourth of July 192 years ago. But we know that Jefferson was on his mind until his last moments. Then, on July 4, 1826, on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the two died within five hours of each other. Unaware that Jefferson had just died, Adams’ last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
A month later, wordsmith Daniel Webster was called to deliver a joint eulogy. In commemoration of July Fourth and the life of the two politicians, he said:
“Adams and Jefferson are no more. On our 50th anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.”
Happy 4th of July America!
