200 years, 763 hours ago · Today in history
Dramatized
This morning the papers bring word that Thomas Jefferson has died—ten hours before John Adams, they say, on the very anniversary of that Declaration they both signed. Two old men, enemies who became friends through correspondence, choosing the same hour to quit the earth. I think of my own father, Godwin, still living, still arguing; of how the generation that dreamed of perfectibility now lies in the soil it surveyed. I am twenty-nine. The world I was born into is vanishing faster than I can record it.
Explain more
Jefferson and Adams, the second and third Presidents of the United States, both died on July 4, 1826—precisely fifty years after the Declaration of Independence. Their near-simultaneous deaths were seen as almost supernatural confirmation of America's founding myth.
Why it matters
For Shelley, this marked the end of the revolutionary generation her parents had worshipped. Her mother Mary Wollstonecraft had known Paine, had argued with Godwin; now that intellectual world was literally dying.
Try today
Write a letter to someone you have quarreled with. Time is not so generous as we pretend.
What is true / dramatized: Dramatized. Educational entertainment — not a primary historical source.
Deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, July 4, 1826; reported in European papers by late July.
Difficulty: medium · ~3 min
Related
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