Ed Simon at the Hedgehog Review:
Thomas Jefferson died a few minutes after noon on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of his Declaration of Independence. Attended by a University of Virginia medical professor, along with a grandson and a grandson-in-law, the third president reportedly asked whether it was the Fourth of July, before answering himself, “It soon will be,” and then quite promptly dying. Six hours after Jefferson’s death, John Adams—the man whom Jefferson beat in the 1800 presidential election—suffered a heart attack at Peacefield, his “Old House” in Quincy, Massachusetts. As is well known, Adams’s last words were the erroneous “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” (Whether this was grudging or reassuring is uncertain.)
That these two architects of the Republic, the last and most significant pair of the revolutionary generation, died on the half-centennial appeared providential. The then-occupant of the White House, John Quincy Adams (son of the second president), saw the coincidental deaths as “visible and palpable remarks of Divine Favor.”
more here.
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