July 2021 – Page 2 – Historical Easter Eggs

July 8, 2002 Rocky

Rocky planned to become a Priest of the Roman Catholic faith, and return to the country to help the orphaned children of Vietnam. His was a bright and shining future. One never meant to be.

Humbert Roque Versace was born in Honolulu on July 2, 1937, the oldest of five sons born to Colonel Humbert Joseph Versace. Writer Marie Teresa “Tere” Rios was his mother, author of the Fifteenth Pelican. If you don’t recall the book, perhaps you remember the 1960s TV series, based on the story. It was called The Flying Nun.

Like his father before him, Humbert, (“Rocky” to his friends), joined the armed services out of high school, graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, in 1959.

Rocky earned his Ranger tab and parachutist badge the same year, later serving as tank commander with the 1st Cavalry in South Korea, then with the 3rd US Infantry – the “Old Guard”.

Rocky attended the Military Assistance Institute, the Intelligence course at Fort Holabird Maryland, and the USACS Vietnamese language Course at the Presidio of Monterey, beginning his first tour of duty in Vietnam on May 12, 1962.

He did his tour, and voluntarily signed up for another six months. By the end of October 1963, Rocky had fewer than two weeks to the end of his service. He had served a year and one-half in the Republic of Vietnam. Now he planned to go to seminary school. He had already received his acceptance letter, from the Maryknoll order.

Rocky planned to become a Priest of the Roman Catholic faith, and return to the country to help the orphaned children of Vietnam.

His was a bright and shining future. One never meant to be.

Rocky was assisting a Civilian Irregular Defense (CIDG) force of South Vietnamese troops remove a Viet Cong (VC) command post in the Mekong Delta. It was unusual that anyone would volunteer for such a mission, particularly one with his “short-timer’s stick”. This was a daring mission in a very dangerous place.

Screen-Shot-2016-09-28-at-7.20.27-PM-466x315 — In happier times, Colonel Humbert Joseph Versace pins insignia on the uniform of his son, Captain Humbert Roque “Rocky” Versace

On October 29, an overwhelming force of Viet Cong ambushed and overran Rocky’s unit. Under siege and suffering multiple bullet and shrapnel wounds, Versace put down suppressing fire, permitting his unit to withdraw from the kill zone.

Another force of some 200 South Vietnamese arrived, too late to alter the outcome. Communist radio frequency jamming had knocked out both main and backup radio channels.

Their position overrun, Captain Versace, Lieutenant Nick Rowe and Sergeant Dan Pitzer were captured and taken to a North Vietnamese prison, deep in the jungle.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 7d4cb22a67972aeb9cbbc48b25414a38.jpg

For most of the following two years, a 2’x3’x6’ bamboo cage would be their home. On nights when their netting was taken away, the mosquitoes were so thick on their shackled feet, it looked like they were wearing socks.

Years later, President George W. Bush would tell a story, about how Steve Versace described his brother. “If he thought he was right”, Steve said to audience laughter, “he was a pain in the neck. If he knew he was right, he was absolutely atrocious.”

In 1964, Vietnamese interrogators were learning what Steve Versace could have told them, if only they’d asked. His brother could not be broken. Rocky attempted to escape four times, despite leg wounds which left him no option but to crawl on his belly. Each such attempt earned him savage beatings, but that only made him try harder.

Fluent in French, Vietnamese and English, Rocky could quote chapter and verse from the Geneva Conventions and never quit doing so. He would insult and ridicule his captors in three languages, even as they beat him to within an inch of his life.

Incessant torture and repeated isolation in solitary confinement did nothing to shut him up. Communist indoctrination sessions had to be brought to a halt in French and Vietnamese, because none of his interrogators could effectively argue with this guy. They certainly didn’t want villagers to hear him blow up their Communist propaganda in their own language.

For five months in 1964, reports came back through intelligence circles, of one particular prisoner. Paraded in chains before local villagers, with hair turned snow white and face swollen and yellowed with jaundice. With hands tied behind his back and a rope around his neck, even then this man still spoke in three languages, of God, and Freedom, and American democracy.

The affect was unacceptable to his Communist tormentors. To the people of these villages, this man made sense.

In the end, Versace was isolated from the rest of the prison population, as a dangerous influence. He responded by singing at the top of his lungs, the lyrics of popular songs of the day replaced by messages of inspiration to his fellow POWs. Rocky was last heard belting out “God Bless America”, at the top of his lungs.

Humbert Roque Versace was murdered by his North Vietnamese captors, his “execution” announced on North Vietnamese “Liberation Radio” on September 26, 1965. He was twenty-eight years old.

Rocky’s remains were never recovered. The headstone bearing his name in the Memorial section MG-108 at Arlington National Cemetery, stands over an empty grave. The memory of his name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing in the Honolulu Memorial at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, and on Panel 1E, line 33, of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

This American hero of Italian and Puerto Rican heritage was nominated for the medal of honor in 1969, an effort culminating in a posthumous Silver Star. In 2002, the Defense Authorization Act approved by the United States Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, awarded Versace the Medal of Honor.

In a July 8, 2002 ceremony in the East Room of the White House, the President of the United States awarded the Medal of Honor to United States Army Captain Humbert Roque “Rocky” Versace. Dr. Stephen Versace stood in to receive the award, on behalf of his brother. Never before had the nation’s highest honor for military valor been bestowed on a POW, for courage in the face of captivity.

Rockys Statue_Plaza1 — This statue of Medal of Honor recipient and Ranger Hall of Fame inductee Captain “Rocky” Versace stands in a plaza bearing his name in Alexandria, Virginia. With him are the likenesses of two Vietnamese children, along with sixty-seven gold stars, each representing one of the 67 soldiers, sailors and airmen from Alexandria who were KIA or MIA, in the war in Vietnam.

July 7, 1944 Banzai

Crowded into the north end of the island, lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito assembled everything he had, over 4,000 hardened troops, into the largest banzai charge of World War 2.

The largest amphibious assault in history began on June 6, 1944, on the northern coast of France. By end of day, some 156,000 Allied troops had successfully stormed the beaches of Normandy. Within a week that number had risen to a third of a million troops, over 50,000 vehicles and more than 100,000 tons of equipment.

Half a world away the “D-Day of the Pacific” launched the day before and landed nearly two weeks later, to take the first of three islands in the Mariana group. Saipan.

The “leapfrog” strategy bringing US Marines onto the beaches of Saipan were nothing new. The earlier campaigns to recapture New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, clearing the way for the “island hopping” tactics of admiral Chester Nimitz, to move on the Japanese archipelago.

The Solomon Islands of Tulagi, and Guadalcanal. The heavily fortified atolls of Tarawa and Makin, in the Gilbert islands. The Marshall islands group: Majuro, Kwajalein and Eniwetok. These and more were pried from the grasp of the Japanese occupier, retaken only by an effusion of blood and treasure unheard of, in previous conflicts.

Saipan was different. Captured in 1914, the League of Nations awarded Saipan to the Empire of Japan five years later, part of the South Seas Mandate of 1919. Saipan was Japanese territory, the first not retaken since the Japanese offensives of 1941 -’42. Not only that. Allied control of Saipan put the Japanese archipelago well within range of B29 long range bombers. Control of the Marianas and Saipan in particular spelled the beginning of the end of the war in the Pacific, and both sides knew it.

Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō publicly swore the place would never be taken. This was to be the most pivotal battle, of the war in the Pacific.

We’ve all seen that hideous footage from the closing days. The cataracts of human beings hurling themselves from the cliffs of Saipan to certain and violent death, on the rocks below. Destroying themselves to avoid who-knows-what kind of atrocities the propaganda ministers of their own government, had taught them to expect at the hands of the Americans.

And those were the civilians. The ferocity of Japanese military resistance can scarcely be imagined, by the modern mind. US Marines took 2,000 casualties on the first day alone, June 16, on the beaches of Saipan.

US Army joined in the following day and, for almost four weeks, battled dug-in and fanatical Japanese soldiers for control of Saipan. Fighting was especially intense around Mount Tapotchau, the highest peak on Saipan. Names such as “Death Valley” and “Purple Heart Ridge” etched themselves in blood, onto the histories of the 2nd and 4th divisions of the United States Marine Corps and the US Army’s 27th Infantry Division.

By July 6 what remained of the defenders had their backs to the sea. Crowded into the north end of the island, lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito assembled everything he had, over 4,000 hardened troops, into the largest banzai charge of World War 2.

Banzai as the allies called it after the battle cry “Tennōheika Banzai” (“Long live His Majesty the Emperor”) was a massed assault, one method of gyokusei (shattered jewel) whose purpose is honorable suicide, not unlike the hideous ritual of self-disembowelment known as seppuku.

Imagine if you will, an irresistible tide of shrieking warriors, thousands of them pouring down on you bent on destroying you and everyone around you, each seeking that honorable suicide only to be had, from death in battle.

The evening of July 6 was spent immersed in beer and sake At 4:45am local time July 7, the largest banzai charge of World War 2 came screaming out of the dawn to envelop US forces. First came the officers, some 200 of them, waving their swords and screaming, at the top of their lungs. Then came the soldiers. Thousands of them, howling in the morning’s first light. Major Edward McCarthy said it was like stampeding cattle, only these, kept coming.

The tide was irresistible at first, sweeping all before it. The American perimeter was shattered leaving nothing but isolated pockets, fighting for their lives. Fighting was savage and hand to hand with everything from point-blank howitzers and anti-tank weapons to rifle butts, fists, and rocks.

The human tide advanced some 1,000 yards into the American interior before it was slowed, and then stopped. By six that evening, American armed forces had regained original positions in what was now a charnel house, of gore.

406 Americans were killed that July 7 and an another 512, maimed. 4,311 Japanese troops, lay dead. Three stories come down to us, from that day. Three stories among thousands who have earned the right, to be remembered.

Lt. Col. William O’Brien fired two pistols into the faces of his attackers until he was out, of bullets. Receiving a severe shoulder wound in the process O’Brien leaped onto a jeep and blazed away with its .50 caliber mounted machine gun, all while shouting encouragement to his retreating comrades.

At last even that was out of ammunition. Lt. Col O’Brien was overwhelmed by his attackers his body riddled with bullets, and bayonet wounds. On retaking the position that evening American observers credited 30 dead Japanese, to O’Brien’s .50-cal.

Private Tom Baker exhausted his rifle’s ammunition before turning it, as a club. His rifle butt shattered Baker began to pull back, before he was hit. A fellow soldier began to carry him when he himself, was shot down. Baker refused further aid asking instead to be propped up against a tree facing the enemy with a cigarette, and a pistol.

He was found that afternoon, dead, the eight bullets from that pistol, spent. He was still sitting up against that tree. At his feet, were eight dead Japanese.

Captain Benjamin Salomon was a rear-echelon guy, a dentist assigned to a medical unit. Captain Salomon was treating the wounded in an aid station, when the first attacker, crawled under the tent wall. Salomon hit the man with a medical tray before killing him with a wounded soldier’s carbine.

Ordering the aid station to be evacuated of all wounded, Dr. Salomon covered their retreat with a .30-caliber water-cooled machine gun. He too was found later his body riddled with bullets, and bayonet wounds.

Seven men were awarded Medals of Honor for their actions on Saipan, all of them, posthumous. Among those were Lieutenant Colonel O’Brien, and Private Baker. Dr. Salomon did not receive the medal of honor as his final actions, involved a machine gun. The Geneva Conventions prevent medical personnel from defending themselves with anything more, than a pistol.

July 6, 1916 Jersey Shore

Today, some sharks are known to be capable of living for a time, in fresh water. Bull sharks have been known to travel as much as sixty miles up the Mississippi River. Researchers report that the Neuse River in North Carolina has been home to bull sharks, possibly arrived in pursuit of young dolphins. That information was unavailable in 1916.

As Spring gives way to Summer, kids of all ages exchange school bags for beach bags. Sports practices and homework are over, for now. We grown-ups can enjoy the last hours of the weekday, under the warmth of the sun.

Gone are the days when the warmth of summer brought with it, the horrors of polio. We have no idea how fortunate we are.

In pre-1955 America and around much of the world, Summer was a time of dread. TIME Magazine offered what solace it could, in 1946: “for many a parent who had lived through the nightmare fear of polio, there was some statistical encouragement: in 1916, 25% of polio’s victims died. This year, thanks to early recognition of the disease and improved treatment (iron lungs, physical therapy, etc.) the death rate is down to 5%.”

Polio is as old as antiquity but major outbreaks are all but unknown, until the 20th century. The 1916 outbreak was particularly severe. Nationally, some 6,000 died of the disease that summer. New York City alone suffered 9,000 cases of polio, forcing a city-wide quarantine.

“Polio was a plague. One day you had a headache and an hour later you were paralyzed. How far the virus crept up your spine determined whether you could walk afterward or even breathe. Parents waited fearfully every summer to see if it would strike. One case turned up and then another. The count began to climb. The city closed the swimming pools and we all stayed home, cooped indoors, shunning other children. Summer seemed like winter then.”
Richard Rhodes, A Hole in the World

To make matters worse, the epidemic took place during one of the hottest Summers in memory, the twin threats of heat and disease driving millions to seek relief at nearby lakes, streams and beaches.

On July 1, 1916, twenty-five-year-old Charles Epting Vansant of Philadelphia was vacationing with family, at the Engleside Hotel on the Jersey shore. Just before dinner, Vansant took a swim with a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, who was playing on the beach. Vansant began to shout and bathers thought he was calling to the dog, but shouts soon turned to screams. As lifeguard Alexander Ott and bystander Sheridan Taylor pulled the man to shore, they could see the shark, following.

Charles Vansant’s left thigh was stripped to the bone. He was brought to the Engleside hotel where he bled to death on the front desk.

Despite the incident, beaches remained open all along the Jersey Shore. Sea captains entering the ports of Newark and New York reported numbers of large sharks swarming off the Jersey shore but such reports received little attention.

The next major shark attack occurred five days later, on July 6. Forty-five miles north of Engleside, Essex & Sussex Hotel bell captain Charles Bruder was swimming near the resort town of Spring Lake. Hearing screams, one woman notified lifeguards that a red canoe had capsized, and lay just below the surface. Lifeguards Chris Anderson and George White rowed out to the spot to discover Bruder, legless, with a shark bite to his abdomen. The twenty-seven year old Swiss army veteran bled to death before ever regaining the shore.

Authorities and the press downplayed the first incident. The New York Times reported that Vansant “was badly bitten in the surf … by a fish, presumably a shark.” Pennsylvania State Fish Commissioner and former director of the Philadelphia Aquarium James M. Meehan opined that “Vansant was in the surf playing with a dog and it may be that a small shark had drifted in at high water, and was marooned by the tide. Being unable to move quickly and without food, he had come in to bite the dog and snapped at the man in passing“.

Response to the second incident was altogether different. Newspapers from the Boston Herald to the San Francisco Chronicle ran the story front page, above the fold. The New York Times went all-in: “Shark Kills Bather Off Jersey Beach“.

A trio of scientists from the American Museum of Natural History held a press conference on July 8, declaring a third such incident unlikely. Be that as it may, John Treadwell Nichols, the only ichthyologist among the three, warned swimmers to stay close to shore, and take advantage of netted bathing areas.

Rumors went into high gear, as an armed motorboat claimed to have chased a shark off Spring Creek Beach. Asbury Park Beach was closed after lifeguard Benjamin Everingham claimed to have beaten a 12-footer back, with an oar.

New Jersey resort owners suffered a blizzard of cancellations and a loss of revenue estimated at $5.6 million in 2017 dollars. In some areas, bathing declined by as much as 75%.

Scores of people died in the oppressive heat. Newspapers reported twenty-six fatalities, in Chicago alone. Air conditioning, invented in 1902, would not be widely available until the 1920s. Rural areas had yet to be electrified.

That information wasn’t available in 1916.

As the heat wave dragged on, lakes and rivers crowded with bathers from Gary, Indiana to Manchester, New Hampshire. In New Jersey, ocean beaches remained closed with the exception of the 4th Ave. Beach at Asbury Park, enclosed with a steel-wire-mesh fence and patrolled by armed motorboats.

Eleven miles from the ocean, Matawan New Jersey had little to fear, from sharks. Locals sought relief from the heat in Matawan Creek, a brackish water estuary in the Marlboro Township of Monmouth County. With fresh waters flowing from Baker’s Brook down the salinity gradient to the full-salt waters of Keyport Harbor, Matawan Creek seemed more at risk for snapping turtles and snakes, than sharks.

Matawan_Creek_mouth — “Photo showing the Matawan Creek near its mouth in Keyport and Aberdeen Township, New Jersey. Photo taken from the Front Street / Amoby Road (County Route 6) bridge looking north”. H/T Wikipedia

On July 12, several boys including eleven-year-old epileptic Lester Stilwell were swimming near Wykoff Dock when the boys spotted an “old black weather-beaten board or a weathered log.” The boys scattered when that old log turned out to have a dorsal fin, but Lester Stilwell wasn’t fast enough.

Many dismissed the rantings of five naked, hysterical boys, believing that no shark could be this far inland. Twenty-four year old tailor Stanley Fisher came running, knowing that the boy suffered from epilepsy. Arthur Smith and George Burlew joined in the effort, by now clearly a recovery and no longer a rescue. The trio got in a boat and probed with an oar and some poles, but…nothing. They were about to give up the search when Fisher dove in the water. He actually found the boy’s body, and began to swim to shore.

Townspeople lining the creek looked on in horror, as Fisher now came under attack.

Stanley Fisher made it to shore though his right thigh was severely injured, an eighteen-inch chunk of his thigh gone, and an artery severed. The man would bleed to death at Monmouth Hospital, before the day was over.

The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 claimed a fifth and final victim thirty minutes later, when 12-year old Joseph Dunn of New York city was bitten a half-mile from the Stilwell and Fisher attacks. A savage tug-of war ensued between Dunn’s brother Michael and sixteen-year-old Jeremiah Hourihan, with local attorney Jacob Lefferts jumping into the water, to help. The boy survived but the damage to his left leg, was severe. He wouldn’t be discharged from the hospital, until September 15.

Based on the style of the attacks and glimpses of the shark(s) themselves, the attacks may have been those of Bull sharks, or juvenile Great Whites. Massive shark hunts were carried out all over the east coast, resulting in the death of hundreds of animals. Whether all five attacks were carried out by a single animal or many, remains unclear.

At the time, the story resulted in international hysteria. Now, the tale is all but unknown, but for the people of Matawan. Stanley’s grave sits on a promontory at the Rose Hill Cemetery, overlooking Lester’s grave, below. People still stop from time to time, leaving flowers, toys and other objects. Perhaps they’re paying tribute. A small token of respect. Homage to the courage of those who would jump into the water, in the face of our most primordial fear.

July 5, 1915 A Man of Science

Fancy the irony that, today as I write this, a 7-foot “non-scalable fence” surrounds the Capitol building, in Washington DC. In those days, you were apparently free to stroll about, with a bomb in your hands. At least while Congress was in recess.

The train left Boston station in April 1906, headed for Chicago. On board were the infant, the toddler, the nanny and the children’s father, Professor Erich Muenter, a German language instructor from Harvard University. The two little girls’ mother was onboard as well. Leone (Krembs) Muenter was in her casket taking a one-way trip to her own funeral, and burial in her home town. She had passed from some sort of stomach ailment, ten days after giving birth.

The story may have ended there, but for Dr. Herbert McIntyre. The circumstances of Leone’s death didn’t add up. Dr. McIntyre ordered an autopsy. On April 27, Cambridge police issued a warrant for the arrest of Professor Erich Muenter for the murder of his wife, by arsenic poisoning.

Apparently, this “man of science” wanted to test his theory that you could literally see the soul passing, at the moment of death. Now, Erich Muenter vanished.

Eight years later, the European continent exploded in the ‘War to End Wars’.

US policy at this time allowed arms sales to any and all belligerents in the European war. With British dominance of North Atlantic shipping routes, for all intents and purposes this meant France and Great Britain.

German language professor Frank Holt was teaching at Cornell University in 1915. A naturalized citizen and committed German nationalist, Holt had ties with the secret German spy intelligence unit Abteilung IIIb, which was conducting a campaign of sabotage against US ships carrying munitions ‘over there’.

Frank Holt might have described himself as a ‘peace activist’, obsessed with the idea that arms themselves were extending the war. If arms exports were brought to a halt he believed, the war would come to an end.

Holt gave up arguing the point on July 2 and took a train to Washington DC. In his hands he carried a bomb, three sticks of dynamite attached to a timing mechanism, ingeniously designed to go off when the acid ate through the cork stopper.

Finding the Senate chamber locked, Holt placed his package under a telephone switchboard in the Senate reception room, with the timer set to go off around midnight.

The explosion when it came, was enormous. The room was torn to pieces while, across the building, a night watchman was blown out of his chair. Writing to the Washington Star newspaper under the pseudonym R. Pearce, Holt explained his intentions to “make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for war. This explosion is an exclamation point in my appeal for peace.”

Senate_Bombing_July_2,_1915 — Aftermath of the Senate bombing, July 2, 1915

The following day, a tiny little box on the front page of the New York Times attributed the explosion to ‘gasses’. The paper was hitting news stands as Frank Holt headed for Long Island, to the Glen Cove estate of “the Great Pierpont”, J. P. Morgan. Armed with two revolvers, a suitcase full of dynamite and a few anti-war newspaper clippings, Holt bulled his way through the butler who opened the door, and into the Morgan residence.

Pandemonium broke out in the home, as Holt turned his weapons on the four Morgan children. Mrs. Morgan tried to block the path to her husband but the millionaire financier lunged, tackling the much smaller man to the ground. Holt fired twice into Morgan’s thigh and groin, as the pair went down together. Pierpont twisted the gun from his grasp as Mrs. Morgan and a gaggle of household servants struggled for the other. All the while, the butler pounded the would-be assassin’s head with a lump of coal as Holt shouted “Kill me! Kill me now! I don’t want to live any more. I have been in a perfect hell for the last six months on account of the European war!”

A copy of the R. Pearce letter quickly tied Holt to the Capitol bombing, as former colleagues identified the long-since vanished, alleged killer of Leone Muenter. Frank Holt and Erich Muenter were the same man.

A colleague once described Muenter as “a brilliant man, a tireless worker, and a profound student. Night after night he would sit reading, studying and writing while his wife lay asleep in a room nearby.” The Harvard Crimson newspaper described him as “harmless on the surface…affect[ing] a scholarly stoop and a Van Dyke, and wore dingy, patched suits”. Fluent in seven languages he was the pale, bearded model of the junior faculty intellectual, complete with elbow patches.

For all his vaunted brilliance, Erich Muenter was nuttier than a squirrel turd. His intention as explained to police, was to take Morgan’s wife and children hostage, until the financier cut off loans to Europe. He told police of his intention to assassinate J.P. Morgan, as well. How the two objectives squared with one another, remains to be explained.

That Sunday morning, July 4, the J.P. Morgan shooting seems to have been front page on every newspaper in the world. On July 5, Erich Muenter took the brass ferrule from a pencil eraser, and slit his wrist. That suicide attempt was unsuccessful. The following day he scaled the bars of his prison cell and jumped, leaving his brains on the concrete floor, twenty feet below.

The day after his death, Police tracked down a trunk Muenter left in a New York city storage facility. In it were 134 sticks of dynamite, blasting caps, fuse coils, batteries, nitric acid, windproof matches, mercury fulminate and smokeless explosive powder. Three tin can bombs had been recently completed, and were ready to go. Inspector of Combustibles Owen Egan declared the find to be “the greatest equipment for bomb making ever brought to New York”.

That same day, the 2nd Mrs. Muenter received a letter from her dead husband. It said that an arms shipment headed for England would go to the bottom, that very day. Warned by wireless, the crew of SS Minnehaha frantically searched for the bomb, without success. Muenter’s bomb went off and touched off a fire, but it was far away from Minnehaha’s cargo of high explosives, and did little damage to the ship itself.

The vessel sustained little damage at the time but, in the end, the ghost of Erich Muenter had his way. The Harland & Wolff liner SS Minnehaha was torpedoed and sunk off the Irish coast with the loss of 43, on September 7, 1917. There was one survivor.

July 4, 1826 Friendship Restored

For two years Dr. Benjamin Rush labored to restore the broken friendship, of two founding fathers. In 1811, he succeeded.

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee delivered the all-important resolution of the founding era, before the assembled delegates of the 2nd Continental Congress: “Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States...”

Congress appointed three overlapping committees to draft a formal declaration of independence, a model treaty for the conduct of international relations and a document by which this confederation of states, was to be governed. Already appointed to the Committee of Confederation, Lee was urged to join the Declaration committee, as well. Believing that two such committees were too much and burdened with the care of a critically ill wife, he demurred.

So it is a committee of five was appointed to write the Declaration of Independence, including Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York, Massachusetts attorney John Adams and a young Virginia delegate named Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson had no interest in writing the Declaration of Independence and suggested Adams pen the first draft. Adams declined, and described the following conversation, in a letter to Massachusetts politician Timothy Pickering:

“Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft. I said, ‘I will not,’ ‘You should do it.’ ‘Oh! no.’ ‘Why will you not? You ought to do it.’ ‘I will not.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Reasons enough.’ ‘What can be your reasons?’ ‘Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.’ ‘Well,’ said Jefferson, ‘if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.’ ‘Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting.”

Fellow committee members agreed. Thomas Jefferson spent the following seventeen days, writing the first draft. He and Adams had only just met during the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The two would develop a close personal friendship which would last for the rest of their lives.

To be more precise, the friendship between the two men would last, for much of their lives. That came to an ugly end during the Presidential election of 1800, in which mudslinging and personal attacks from both sides rose to levels never before witnessed in a national election.

Jefferson defeated one-term incumbent Adams and went on to serve two terms as President of the United States. Upon Jefferson’s retirement in 1809, Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the Declaration’s signers, took it upon himself to patch up the broken friendship between the two founding fathers.

For two years Dr. Rush worked on this personal diplomatic mission. In 1811, he succeeded.

There followed a series of letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, which together constitute one of the most comprehensive historical and philosophical assessments ever written about the American founding.

The correspondence between the pair touched on a variety of topics, from the birth of a self-governing Constitutional Republic, to then-current political issues to matters of philosophy and religion and personal issues related to the advancement, of years.

Both men understood. They were writing not only to one another, but to generations yet unborn. Each went to great lengths to explain the philosophical underpinnings of his views. Adams the firm believer in strong, centralized government, Jefferson advocating a small federal government, deferential to the states.

By 1826, Jefferson and Adams were among the last survivors among the founding generation. Only a handful yet remained.

No fiction author, no Hollywood screenwriter would dare put to paper an ending so unlikely, so unbelievable, as that which then took place. These two men, central among the hundreds who gave us this self governing Republic, died on the same day. July 4, 1826. Fifty years to the day from the birth of the Republic, they had helped to create.

Adams was 90 as he lay on his deathbed, suffering from congestive heart failure. His last words were “Thomas Jefferson still survives”. He had no way to know. The author of the Declaration of Independence had died that morning, at his Monticello home. Jefferson was 82.

John Adams’ son John Quincy was himself President at the time of the two men’s passing, and remarked that the coincidence was among the “visible and palpable remarks of Divine Favor”.

A month after the two men passed, Daniel Webster spoke of these two men at Faneuil Hall, in Boston.

“No two men now live, (or) any two men have ever lived, in one age, who (have) given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. No age will come, in which the American Revolution will appear less than it is, one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come, in which it will cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July 1776″.

A Blessed Independence Day, to you and yours. – Rick Long, the “ Cape Cod Curmudgeon”

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