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David McCullough’s 2001 biography on John Adams was a hefty 600-plus pages. I wish it went on for another 600 pages. I didn’t want to put the book down when I finished reading it in May.
If Adams were alive today, he would love Twitter and Facebook. He wrote daily journals about everyday life, family, politics and his vision for the country he loved and played a huge role in founding.
McCullough wove Adams’ journal entries, letters to and from his brilliant wife Abigail and his friend Thomas Jefferson and numerous other correspondences into one of the finest biographies buy an essay online I’ve ever read.
While Jefferson was the author of the the Declaration of Independence, Adams was its voice.
As a member of the Continental Congress, his speeches stirred strong support for cutting the cord with the British.
Adams and Jefferson, however, differed politically in the early years of the United States of America. During Adams’ one-term presidency, from March 1797 to March 1801, Jefferson served as vice president, and the two didn’t talk to each other. Jefferson defeated Adams for president in the 1800 election and served for two terms.
In 1812, after they had long retired from politics — Adams to his farm in Quincy, Mass., and Jefferson to his Monticello estate in Virginia — the two reconciled and resumed their friendship with a marvelous exchange of letters that continued the rest of their lives.
Both men were highly sought after for events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. In that year, 1826, Adams and Jefferson were too ill to leave their respective homes. Somehow, they found the will to live until Independence Day.
“It is a great day. It is a good day.” Adams said from his bed on July 4, 1826. The last three words he was reported to have uttered before he died that day at age 90 were “Thomas Jefferson survives.” Jefferson, 83, had died a few hours earlier.
Less than a month before his death, Adams made the following statement about his country as its 50th anniversary approached:
“My best wishes, in the joys, and festivities, and the solemn services of that day on which will be completed the fiftieth year from its birth, of the independence of the United States: a memorable epoch in the annals of the human race, destined in future history to form the brightest or the blackest page, according to the use or the abuse of those political institutions by which they shall, in time to come, be shaped by the human mind.”
On this Fourth of July, I tip my hat to one of the greatest patriots this country has ever known, John Adams.
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