As the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this week, it is worth remembering what happened on the 50th — a coincidence so remarkable that Americans at the time saw the hand of Providence in it.
On July 4, 1826, exactly half a century after the Declaration was adopted in Philadelphia, the two men most responsible for it died within hours of each other, more than 500 miles apart.
Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration’s principal author, was 83 and failing at Monticello, his mountaintop home in Virginia. In his final days, he drifted in and out of consciousness, and those at his bedside recorded that he repeatedly asked some version of the same question: “Is it the Fourth?” He held on through the night of July 3 and died shortly after noon on Independence Day.
That same afternoon, in Quincy, Massachusetts, 90-year-old John Adams — Jefferson’s fellow revolutionary, bitter political rival and, in old age, devoted friend — lay dying in his own home. According to those present, among his last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives.” He was wrong. Jefferson had died hours earlier, but the news could not have reached Massachusetts. Adams died that evening.
The friendship between the two men was itself one of the great American stories. Allies in the Continental Congress, they served together on the committee that drafted the Declaration, with Adams pushing the writing assignment onto the young Virginian. Later, politics tore them apart. Adams, a Federalist, and Jefferson, a Republican, fought two of the nastiest presidential campaigns in the nation’s history in 1796 and 1800, and after losing the second, Adams left Washington without attending his rival’s inauguration.
They did not speak for more than a decade. Then, in 1812, prodded by a mutual friend, Adams sent a short letter to Monticello. Jefferson answered warmly, and for the next 14 years the two old revolutionaries carried on one of the most celebrated correspondences in American letters — more than 150 letters ranging over politics, philosophy, religion, grief and the meaning of the revolution they had made together.
When word of the double deaths spread that July, the nation was stunned. President John Quincy Adams — John Adams’ son — wrote that the timing was a “visible and palpable” mark of divine favor on the country.
Remarkably, it happened again. Five years later, on July 4, 1831, James Monroe — the fifth president and the last of the founding generation to hold the office — also died, making three of the first five presidents who died on Independence Day.
And for those keeping score on the other side of the ledger: only one president was born on the Fourth of July. Calvin Coolidge arrived on July 4, 1872 — a fact the famously quiet New Englander was said to take quiet pride in.
