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Happy Independence Day! Happy America 250th!
Today, we remember the Declaration of Independence that planted the seeds of liberty. As we look back on 250 years, we honor the harvest, the fruit of those planted seeds.
I am excited to share with you this video of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams reflecting on each other’s roles in drafting and fighting for the Declaration of Independence.
As I wrote in my new book, A Great and Grateful Nation, the two men started out as colleagues in the Continental Congress. Both served on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. Both thought the other should write the Declaration, but Adams believed that Jefferson wrote ten times better than he did. Jefferson used his “happy talent for composition” to draft the greatest document of freedom the world has ever seen.
Though their friendship started strong in 1776, they became rivals in the 1790s and some would say—enemies—during their bitter, bickering presidential years. In their senior, post-presidential years, however, their mutual friend Benjamin Rush encouraged them to set aside their differences. In 1809, Rush had a prophetic dream of both of them dying on the same day. “These gentlemen sunk into the grave nearly at the same time, full of years and rich in the gratitude and praises of their country,” Rush wrote to Adams on October 17, 1809. “For they outlived the heterogeneous parties that were opposed to them and to their numerous merits and honors posterity has added, they they were rival friends.”
This led to an exchange of dozens of letters between the two. They praised each other’s role in adopting the Declaration of Independence and buried the hatchet over their differences.
In April 1826, they wrote their last letters to each other as their health mutually declined. Both held out to make it to the nation’s 50th birthday on July 4, 1826. Jefferson passed away at noontime while Adams died in the early evening. Not knowing his friend had already passed, Adams’s last words were “Jefferson still survives.”
Americans throughout the nation responded to the news by hosting vigils and memorials for both men at churches. Many believed that the timing of their deaths on America’s 50th birthday was an act of Providence. This moment is captured in the opening sequence of the movie, The American Miracle, which is now streaming on Amazon.
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