by ©2025 Sarah Becker
In 1821 Mexico declared its independence from Spain and the American Colonization Society established the West African republic of Liberia. General Andrew Jackson was appointed governor of the Florida territory; New York’s Emma Willard started the first female collegiate-level school, and Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy published The Genius of Universal Emancipation. President James Monroe (VA-DR) was again inaugurated President and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams (MA-IR)—retired President John and wife Abigail Adam’s son—delivered America’s Fourth of July address.
On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to draft a declaration of independence. The war-related Declaration was accepted on July 4th and copies were sent to the thirteen colonies for review. The parchment original was signed—in Philadelphia on August 2, 1776.
The Declaration of Independence “was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government,” Secretary of State John Quincy Adams said. “It was the cornerstone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest…From the day of this declaration the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master in another hemisphere…They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintaining by war, its own existence.”
The United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, in Paris, on September 3, 1783—thus ending the Revolutionary War.
“Fifty-six men came forward to sign the Declaration of Independence,” President Ronald Reagan explained in his July 4, 1986, New York Harbor address. “It was noted at the time that they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors. And that was more than rhetoric; each of those men knew the penalty for high treason to the Crown. ‘We must all hang together,’ Benjamin Franklin said, ‘or, assuredly, we will all hang separately.’”
“Two of our greatest Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, learned this lesson late in life,” Reagan continued. “They’d worked so closely together in Philadelphia. Their courage created a nation built on a universal claim to human dignity…But once that was gained and a government was formed, something called partisan politics began to get in their way.”
“[W]e were fellow laborers in the same cause,” Jefferson wrote,” struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government.”
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were both dedicated to country. Each participated in the American Revolution. Each signed the Declaration of Independence. Each served as a U.S. Minister overseas. But they clashed politically: philosophically in 1796 and almost irreconcilably in the election of 1800.
George Washington’s Vice President John Adams; Alexander Hamilton his Secretary of the Treasury were Federalists [F]. Washington’s Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson was Democratic-Republican [DR]. Adams defeated Jefferson in the presidential election of 1796 and the rules, as then written, gave the Vice Presidency to Jefferson.
After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for the Presidency in 1800. The night before Jefferson’s inauguration Adams—disappointed, brokenhearted, and bitter— snuck away to Boston. Their estrangement lasted for years.
When both had retired, Jefferson at age 68 to Monticello and Adams at age 76 to Quincy, they began to again communicate. Through letters that discussed almost every conceivable subject: gardening, horseback riding, even sneezing as a cure for hiccups; but other subjects as well: the loss of loved ones, the mystery of grief and sorrow, the importance of religion, and of course their last thoughts, the final hopes of two old men, two great patriarchs, for the country that they had helped to found and loved so deeply.
“They were an incongruous pair,” Joseph J. Ellis wrote. “Adams, the short, stout, candid-to-a-fault New Englander; Jefferson, the tall, slender, elegantly elusive Virginian; Adams the highly combustible, ever combative, mile-a-minute talker, whose favorite form of conversation was an argument; Jefferson, the always cool and self-contained enigma, who regarded debate and argument as violations of the natural harmonies he heard inside his own head…Choosing between them seemed like choosing between the head and the heart of the American Revolution.”
“The [presidential] campaign of 1800 was a collision of three republican ideas: the oligarchic republic of Alexander Hamilton and the High Federalists, the balanced republic of John Adams (a balance between the few and the many), and the representative republic of Jefferson and Madison (in our terms a democratic republic),” editors Fischer and McPherson noted. “Ironically, the tribunes of the democratic republic in 1800 were rich and well-born men of greater wealth than Adams and Hamilton.”
“The fuel was the seemingly implacable opposition of Federalists and Republicans, largely a battle between northerners and southerners,” Joanne B. Freeman penned. Scandalous charges were hurled.
“Most vicious were the charges that Adams was insane,” David McCullough said. “If Jefferson was a [French] Jacobin, a shameless southern libertine, and a ‘howling’ atheist; Adams was a [British] Tory, a vain Yankee scold, and, if the truth be known, ‘quite mad.’”
“Federalists additionally whispered the story that Jefferson cohabited with one of his female slaves at Monticello,” John Ferling wrote.
In the winter of 1800 Vice President Thomas Jefferson defeated incumbent President John Adams; tied Democratic-Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Aaron Burr and then with Federalist Alexander Hamilton’s help —a revenge play—won the Presidency in a run-off election in the House of Representatives on the 36th ballot. Jefferson’s inauguration started a democratic trend that lasted 25 years, including the elections of Presidents James Madison and James Monroe.
“All through our history our Presidents and leaders have spoken of national unity and warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the boundaries of freedom—the only permanent danger to the hope that is America comes from within,” Reagan said. “It’s worth remembering that all the celebration of July 4th is rooted in history.”
John Adams carried Alexandria in two presidential elections, 1796 and 1800. Alexandria was then a thriving seaport town—the country’s 10th largest city in 1790 and 1810. Adams’ Attorney General, Federalist Charles Lee lived in Alexandria.
Alexandria and the Federalist Party eventually became one. In 1800 Adams carried Alexandria; Jefferson the remainder of plantation Virginia by 10,000 votes. Simply stated, the city was out of sync with the Commonwealth.
“My fellow Americans, it falls to us to keep faith with…all the great Americans of our past.” Reagan believed. “[I]f there’s one impression I carry with me after the privilege of holding for 5 1/2 years the office held by Adams and Jefferson and Lincoln, it is this: that the things that unite us—America’s past of which we’re so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much-loved country—these things far outweigh what little divides us. And so tonight we reaffirm that Jew and gentile, we are one nation under God; that black and white, we are one nation indivisible; that Republican and Democrat, we are all Americans. [W]ith heart and hand, through whatever trial and travail, we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom, the cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.”
Sarah Becker started writing for The Economist while a graduate student in England. Similar publications followed. She joined the Crier in 1996 while serving on the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association Board. Her interest in antiquities began as a World Bank hire, with Indonesia’s need to generate hard currency. Balinese history, i.e. tourism provided the means. The New York Times describes Becker’s book, Off Your Duffs & Up the Assets, as “a blueprint for thousands of nonprofit managers.” A former museum director, SLAM’s saving grace Sarah received Alexandria’s Salute to Women Award in 2007. Email: abitofhistory53@gmail.com