By Louise Mathews
On July 4, 2026, we celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States of America. That date is also the 200th anniversary of the deaths of two founding fathers: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson died earlier on that day. John Adams, not knowing this fact in those pre-telegraph and all subsequent electronic communication days, said as his final words, “Jefferson still lives.”
This story and many more are found in the 2024 book “Confronting the Presidents” by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. As part of my personal 250th celebration, I am reading this history that contains vignettes illuminating presidential actions and character.
I am midway through the 19th century, and I am reminded of a French phrase, translated as, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Democracy is messy. It may have been even messier in the early days of the Republic than it is now as everyone was making it up as they went along. The bedrock was there: the Declaration of Independence that enumerated rights and the Constitution that defined how the people would determine their governance were in place. Everything else was new and uncharted.
How should a new government pay an enormous war debt? What decisions belonged to the states and which to the government of “these United States?” What should the president do about Muslim North African pirates that snatched Americans and Europeans off ships and sold them into slavery? Should the courts have authority over the president and Congress in constitutional interpretations?
From the very beginning, finding answers to issues that arose daily was muddled. Freedom of expression meant that there always were and always would be multiple opinions on any possible solution. Reaching a simple majority was often difficult. Presidents made decisions that the Congress and the courts sometimes fought and occasionally overruled.
From 1829 until 1837, Americans referred to the president as “King Andrew” because of the way Jackson governed. Probably no one actually held a “No Kings” rally then as Andrew Jackson had shot a man dead in a duel and had hung belligerents he had captured in war.
I found the relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson particularly poignant and fitting to the current times. Although Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams chaired the drafting committee and served as an editor. Both signed the document, Adams as a representative from Massachusetts and Jefferson as a delegate from Virginia.
Both served their new nation as diplomats, Adams primarily in the Netherlands and Great Britain and Jefferson in France. Neither participated in the Constitutional Convention, because they were at their diplomatic posts.
During the first presidential administration, Thomas Jefferson served as Secretary of State. John Adams was President Washington’s vice president. Washington, Adams, and Alexander Hamilton headed up the Federalist party, which supported a stronger national government, while Jefferson was a chief Democratic-Republican, which favored stronger state governments.
From the very beginning, the press criticized the president, even the almost sacred hero, George Washington. Once John Adams became president, attacks by the press — and there were multiple newspapers in every major city and town – became vicious. Some of these assaults were planted by Thomas Jefferson. This reached a head when the relationship with France soured to the point of hostility, and enormous pressure was put on Adams to declare war. He refused to do so because he believed the country was not strong enough to fight a major power.
To counter his bad reviews, Adams engineered the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 that limited the freedom of the press, making “false, scandalous, and malicious writing about the president illegal.” Indeed, editor James Callender, who had been paid by Thomas Jefferson to smear Adams, was sent to prison under the Acts.
In the election of 1800, the vote was “marred by rumor and mudslinging. Newspapers said Adams demanded to be called “His Highness.” Others wrote that Thomas Jefferson was an enemy of the Constitution.” Of the four candidates, the sitting president, John Adams, finished third. Thomas Jefferson tied with Aaron Burr in the Electoral College. In the House of Representatives tiebreaker, Thomas Jefferson was elected president on the 35th vote. Apparently, legislative gridlock is nothing new.
John Adams did not attend Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration, which was the first time power transferred from one political party to the other. Jefferson had not invited Adams to the event. The Alien and Sedition Acts expired on that day, March 4, 1801.
It would seem these former friends might be forever enemies, but on January 1, 1812, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson in the hopes of renewing their relationship. Between that date and April 1826, they wrote each other hundreds of letters, proving that, as one later president stated, the “better angels of their natures” could overcome political and even personal animosity. These giants of the founding generation worked together, drank together during Continental Congress happy hours, risked “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” together, then fought bitterly through the press, sometimes with lies and innuendos. In the end, despite their differences in opinion, they were united in their principles and love for this great country.
In this era of bad feelings and division, we should emulate their example.
Happy birthday, America!
Louise Mathews retired from a career in community colleges and before that, theater. A 13-year come-here in Beaufort, she has been a dingbatter in North Carolina and an upstater from New York.