John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, July
4, 1826, exactly fifty years from the date the
Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence
From Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon
S. Wood
“As Lincoln grasped better than anyone, Jefferson offered Americans
a set of beliefs that through the generations have supplied a bond that holds
together the most diverse nation that history has ever known. Since now the
whole world is in the United States, nothing but Jefferson’s ideals can turn
such an assortment of different individuals into the “one people” that the
Declaration says we are. To be an American is not to be someone, but to believe
in something. And that something is what Jefferson declared.
That’s why we honor Jefferson and not Adams.”
Apparently, we honor
neither any more.