Brookfield Basics

I am behind on a few issues but can’t let Independence Day pass without a brief comment.

During the age of the internet, when we have unparalleled tools of learning and all of history’s recorded events at the command of our keyboards, we often think of our Country’s Founders as being perhaps hearty and brave, but considerably less educated than we are. But the group of men and women who founded our Republic and fashioned its political institutions were the most learned and educated in our nation’s history. Their knowledge of history, philosophy, literature, politics, government, natural law and theology was profound. To read their letters and dissertations today is to view prose of such beauty and analysis of such depth and insight, that they stand unmatched for over two centuries.

This morning I think of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Never have two men been so linked in the history of their respective country, and rarely have two personalities and temperaments engaged in the same cause been more dissimilar. Adams was the short, paunchy, but hearty New England farmer and barrister. He had little in terms of worldly means, but all that he had was self-made. Jefferson was the southern aristocrat planter, the very embodiment of nobility in a country that claimed to have none. Tall, lean, and graceful, he invented and built many devices such as a therapeutic chair for his bad back and a dumb-waiter for serving the wines he so loved. His home at Monticello is not only a thing of architectural beauty; it is a small museum of artifacts and inventions. Adams rarely drank anything stronger than apple cider, and pruned his own trees in the orchards he and his wife Abigail so loved.

Jefferson penned and both would sign the Declaration, risking all they had by doing so. Both would serve their fledgling country with long stints abroad as Ambassadors, spending years away from the their beloved homes. Both would serve their new country as President, struggling to serve in the mighty shadow of Washington.

Then, as the new Country established its political identity, the two inseparable partners became bitter political enemies, their disputes rising out of differing views of the role of the new Federal Government and the Office of the Presidency.

But after each retired to private life, they mended their relational fences and engaged in a long-running correspondence, which left us with a priceless legacy of thoughts, reflections, and wisdom.

And finally, in what can only be described as an almost surreal twist of history, both died on the same day.

That day was, incredibly, July 4th, 1826 – the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration to which they had pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor”.