Divine Friendship
Adams and Jefferson were colleagues, rivals, presidents, and friends.

By Jack Walsh
June 30- July 1, 2001

n July 4, 1826, as America celebrated the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, respectively, died. From the very first the careers and fortunes of Adams and Jefferson were intertwined.

Adams, attending the Continental Congress in Philadelphia as a delegate from Massachusetts, was one of the most outspoken leaders of the independence movement. Indeed it was John Adams alone whom British soldiers during the war had orders to hang if caught. In the summer of 1776, Adams was assigned to the committee that would write the formal document explaining to Britain and the world the reasons for America's drive for independence. The head of the committee, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, was the primary author of this "Declaration of Independence".

Jefferson was a southerner and eight years Adams's junior, but this did not stop him and the more famous northerner from forging a friendship in Philadelphia. It would be a friendship strained many times in the years to come.

After the successful revolution, Adams and Jefferson traveled together to England to negotiate a U.S.-British trade treaty. Upon returning home, Adams was elected vice president under President George Washington and Jefferson was appointed Secretary of State. However it was during their time in the Washington administration that a rift developed between the two men. Put simply, Adams, a Federalist, supported a strong federal government. Jefferson believed in the concept of greater states' rights. This fundamental difference in what direction the new republic should take led Jefferson to run against Adams in the presidential election of 1796. Adams won, but as the runner-up Jefferson became his vice president. Four years later, Jefferson would finally defeat Adams and relegate his old friend to a one-term presidency.

While in office Adams and Jefferson attacked each other's positions and policies unmercifully. But when both had retired from public life, Adams to Quincy and Jefferson to Monticello, their friendship was renewed. The 14 years of letters they wrote to each other, covering the far-ranging challenges facing the young country, are today considered the masterworks of the American Enlightenment.

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 1826, President John Quincy Adams listened to patriotic speeches in Washington unaware that in Quincy, Mass., his father lay dying.

John Adams, 91 years old, knew it was the Fourth: "It is a great day," he said to the family members gathered around him. Later that evening he slipped quietly into death. His last words were spoken around one o'clock, "Jefferson still survives."

Adams was wrong. An hour earlier and hundreds of miles to the south, Thomas Jefferson, age 86, went fitfully to his maker. He had slipped into a coma the night before, but awoke briefly that morning, asking his physician: "Is it the Fourth?" His last sounds were semiconscious rambling. He was back in the 1770s giving orders about the Committees of Safety and the need to stand firm against British tyranny.

The deaths of Adams and Jefferson, who had been colleagues in Philadelphia, then rivals, presidents, and in the end, friends once again, seemed to the nation beyond mere coincidence. President John Quincy Adams, upon learning of both deaths wrote, "The time, the manner, the coincidence…are visible and palpable marks of Divine favor."