On the Fourth of July, 1826, America
celebrated its Jubilee the Fiftieth Anniversary
of Independence. John Adams, second
President of the United States, died that day,
aged ninety, while from Maine to Georgia bells
rang and cannon boomed. And on that sameday,
Thomas Jefferson died before sunset inVirginia.
In their dying, in that swift, so aptly
celebrated double departure, is something
which shakes an American to the heart. It
was not their great fame, their long lives or
even the record of their work that made
these two seem indestructible. It was their
faith, their bounding, unquenchable faith in
the future, their sure, immortal belief that
mankind, if it so desired, could be free. |
