Jefferson was invited to attend a celebration of the nation’s 50th birthday, but he was not well enough to travel. He responded to the invitation as follows:
“Let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of the rights of man, and an undiminished devotion to them.”
In an amazing coincidence, John Adams and Jefferson, co-signers of the Declaration of Independence, rivals, second and third presidents of the nation, died on the same day – and that day happened to be the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence! Their deaths, 196 years ago today, left Charles Carroll as the last living co-signer of the Declaration. (He would live six more years, to age 95.)
Have a good 4th!
Another remarkable coincidence is that while the deaths of Adams and Jefferson on July 4th 1826 symbolised the passing of a generation and the end of an era, on that same day, far West across the Alleghenies, the birth in Pittsburgh of Stephen Foster, the father of American music, brings on to the stage an icon and cultural symbol of the next epoch in our history: antebellum and Civil War America.