As the two venerable titans of our nation’s Heroic Age—the season of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the framing of the Constitution—neared the end of their long lives, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson yearned to see on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of our country’s birth. Whether providential or not, their dreams were fulfilled when their last wishes were confirmed by family and friends gathered at bedside that, indeed, they were awake on July 4th. They died mere hours later. Adams’s last words, “Jefferson survives,” uttered just after 6 p.m., were not literally correct, for Jefferson had passed away at 1 p.m., five hours earlier. But some have understood Adams’ s last words as metaphorical truth, an expression that in Jefferson, the apostle of freedom, the Spirit of ‘76 lived on.

Adams and Jefferson had struggled in the last weeks of their lives, each frail and consigned to bed, Adams at his homestead in Quincy, Massachusetts, and Jefferson at his estate in Monticello, near Charlottesville, Virginia. They were separated by 600 miles, but their thoughts were filled with memories of one another, and they had nothing but praise for their respective roles in securing Independence and founding our nation. Their closing arguments about the American Revolution were drawn out by the numerous invitations from officials in cities up and down the Eastern seaboard, those who hoped that the pillars of the Declaration of Independence could participate in the jubilee that spread across the land, with words to commemorate the events that changed history. The remarkable coincidence of the passing of these two giants on the same day could be explained, it was maintained, as providential, a sign that the revolutionary period had been ended.

Neither Adams, nor Jefferson, could accept the invitations, but they shared in letters final words about the revolution and the Declaration, how they hoped the epochal achievements would be remembered by posterity, and the light that they might provide for generations to come. On June 7, Adams wrote an old friend and called the American Revolution “a memorable epoch in the annals of the human race,” and said it was destined to form “the brightest or the blackest page” in history, depending on the use or abuse of the legacy by posterity. Jefferson, in a letter dated June 24, summoned his eloquent powers to write his last testament to the American people, for a celebration in Washington. “All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man,” Jefferson wrote. “The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor the favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”
Americans’ jubilee celebration of the genius of Adams and Jefferson, led early on to discussion of how they would be remembered. Jefferson has lived on in the poetry of our nation’s history, while Adams’ influence has survived as governing prose. The Declaration of Independence, largely the work of Jefferson, has assured his place in the minds of the citizenry as a symbol of liberty. A great monument, the Jefferson Memorial, honors his contributions to humanity.
Adams, on the other hand, has not enjoyed similar tributes, but he always knew that he would not enjoy comparable honors. “Mausoleums, statues, monuments will never be erected to me,” he wrote, “nor flattering orations spoken to transmit me to posterity in brilliant colors.”

Jefferson has been invoked by Democratic and Republic presidents, from Lincoln and FDR to Reagan and Obama. In 1874, the biographer James Parton, wrote, “If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. America is right, Jefferson was right.” Adams’s influence is reflected in his seminal works inscribed in our institutions. America is less inclined to honor Adams for his seminal contributions to our constitutional doctrines, which he championed in the 1760s—separation of powers, checks and balances and the rule of law, but the work of both is critical to American success. Whether the final legacy of the Revolution will constitute “the brightest or darkest page” in history, depends entirely on whether Americans now, and in the future, honor or dishonor it. Will we, indeed, inspire the hopes and dreams of mankind?