By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza
In the first days of July 1826, Thomas Jefferson “gathered his will for one last mission: he wanted to survive until the Fourth of July.” So writes Jon Meacham in his splendid biography Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power.
Jefferson succeeded, repeatedly asking in his final agony during the afternoon hours of July 3: “Is this the Fourth?” At last he heard the twelve strokes of midnight on the clock in his room; he remained alive, losing consciousness, yet knowing it was the Fourth. He died at ten minutes before one in the afternoon that day.
Five hours after the third president died at Monticello, the second president, John Adams, passed away in Quincy, Massachusetts. His famous last words were mistaken: “Thomas Jefferson survives.”
Both died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, two hundred years ago. (The fifth president, James Monroe, would die on a Fourth of July in 1831.) It is the great coincidence of anniversaries among the Founding Fathers. The reaction to the twin presidential deaths on the fiftieth anniversary of the first Fourth of July was that Providence was at work, not unlike the way Catholics regard miracles in the causes of saints.
John Quincy Adams, president at the time of his father’s death, described the coincident deaths as “visible and palpable marks of Divine Favor, for which I humble myself in grateful and silent adoration before the Ruler of the Universe.”
The younger President Adams issued an executive order in memory of the elder Adams and of Jefferson:
A coincidence of circumstances so wonderful infuses confidence in the belief that the patriotic efforts of these illustrious men were directed by Heaven, and furnishes a new seal to the hope that the prosperity of these States is under the special protection of a kind Providence.
In early August 1826, with President Adams present, Daniel Webster was more effusive at Faneuil Hall in Boston:
Adams and Jefferson are no more. On our fiftieth anniversary, the great day of national jubilee, in the very hour of public rejoicing, in the midst of echoing and re-echoing voices of thanksgiving, while their own names were on all tongues, they took their flight together to the world of spirits.
Webster continued:
If we might, we could not wish to reverse this dispensation of Divine Providence… [that] the heavens should open to receive them both at once. As their lives themselves were the gift of Providence, who would not acknowledge in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are the objects of His care?
The Declaration of Independence, signed fifty years before Adams and Jefferson died, professed a “firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence.” Now, it seemed to their contemporaries that Providence had granted a final protection, calling Jefferson and Adams to their home on the anniversary of their great work.
Meacham wrote that Webster “painted an indelible portrait of the ascent of Jefferson and Adams to the American pantheon.”
Catholics do not have a pantheon, but we do have saints. The Catholic process of making saints—or, strictly speaking, of recognizing saints—consists of two great parts. First comes the human judgment, after careful examination, that the candidate lived a holy life, culminating in a declaration of “heroic virtue.” The second is heavenly confirmation, the requirement of a miracle, understood as divine evidence, so to speak, that the candidate is in heaven, interceding before God.
The Fourth of July 1826 was something like a miracle for the secular canonization of the nation. What the founding generation of Americans knew by experience—and aspiration—had apparently been confirmed by Providence. They knew the heroic virtue of the young republic; now a divine blessing had been granted.
The organizers of the golden jubilee of the Declaration had fervently hoped to have Jefferson present in Washington, but he was too ill to travel. He wrote a letter for the occasion, noting the timeliness of celebrating the anniversary.
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them.
In every culture, anniversaries—“the annual return of this day”—are markers of memory and occasions of gratitude and renewal of commitments. Anniversaries bring to mind great moments of the past, most often beginnings, birthdays, weddings, and ordinations, but also endings, including retirements and graduations (though the latter are sometimes called commencement exercises).
The biblical imagination goes further with regard to the anniversary, commanding that it be kept as a festive memorial through the generations (cf. Exodus 12:14). The Jewish intuition was that the memorial of the anniversary made the original moment present once again. Those who had not been present at the original covenant could, in this way, join themselves to it.
For its fiftieth anniversary in 1826, the Fourth of July had already become an occasion for gratitude, celebration, and renewal of commitment to the original ideals. If, somehow, Jefferson and Adams had managed to reach Washington or Philadelphia for the jubilee celebrations, their presence would have enhanced the occasion. Yet in death they sealed the Fourth of July as something sacred, watered not by the blood of fallen soldiers, but by an outpouring of grace, since only God fixes the day and the hour.
Anniversaries of death are usually observed with greater reserve, except in the case of the saints, for whom they are literally feast days. This year’s Fourth of July will be the first feast day for St. Pier Giorgio Frassati, a man full of life. The traditional term is dies natalis: death is birth into eternal life.
There are secular feast days—the Presidents’ Day, Columbus Day—and every country has its national holiday. But the Fourth of July, because of its fiftieth anniversary, combines something of both, the secular and the sacred, enduring another two centuries until the semicentennial.
Fr. Raymond J. de Souza is a Canadian priest, Catholic commentator, and senior fellow of Cardus.