History or His Story?

History or His Story?

My brother Joseph and I are very close in age. We have many fond memories of our shared childhood. The funny thing is that these memories don’t always match. We were in the same place at the same time but often remember things completely differently. 

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shared many of our nation’s founding moments. They served together in the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia; collaborated on the writing of the Declaration of Independence (John thought he should be congratulated for choosing Tom to write it. Adams fine-tuned a bit); worked together in France; and traveled together in England. Both served under George Washington and took consecutive terms as president. They had “been there” but could never agree about what “there” had been. 

John Adams believed that history was messy. During the Revolution, nothing was “clear, inevitable, or even comprehensible” to either those serving in the Continental Congress or on the field of battle. As Adams remembered it, “all the critical questions about men and measures from 1774 to 1778” were part of a “patched and piebald policy” which was improvised, turbulent, confused and riddled with failures. The major players were making it up as they went along and constantly skating on the edge of catastrophe. 

Out of this chaos, Jefferson rose as a literary phoenix. His masterful expression of the inalienable rights of men, as detailed in the Declaration, and his vast correspondence on philosophical issues of the day suggest that America was predestined to win the war against England, establish a republican government, and take its place as a beacon of democracy for the world. Jefferson’s “felicitous abilities” with a pen made his version of history rise out of the ashes which was the reality of the times. 

This drove Adams mad. He struggled for decades to write his history of the Revolution and the forming of America. Unfortunately, his writing style, which Joseph Ellis called “enlightened perversity” in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers, got in the way of his story. His writings are punctuated with circular arguments and angry interruptions. Worst of all, Adams feared that his own contributions to the American nation would be forgotten in favor of Jefferson’s more fluid version of their shared history. 

Adams realized that there is a difference between “history as experienced and history as remembered.” Transforming the events of the Revolutionary period into history would involve fitting events into a “dramatic formula” which could be understood by posterity. Adams lacked this capacity.  In the words of Ellis, “Jefferson seemed predestined to tell the people what they wanted to hear. Adams… to tell them what they needed to know.” 

Joseph Ellis called Adams and Jefferson the “words and music” of the Revolution. The music of Jefferson’s prose outshines the rhetoric of Adams’ arguments. The melodies of his history are easier to recall than Adams’ lyrics. Adams feared that Jefferson’s version would prevail.

Many peoples have made up the history of the United States. How do the Native Americans write the story? How would the Africans brought here in chains write it? Would each immigrant group (“your tired, your poor, yearning to breathe free” as welcomed by the Statue of Liberty) write a different story? What do we know about their “American histories”?  Which stories prevail?

Whose history will prevail after we are gone? Adams warned that the future of America would be written “on the brightest or blackest page according to the use or abuse of its political institutions.” His future is our present. Our present is our children’s future. Which page will they see and remember?

After arguing with Jefferson for decades over the correct version of history, John Adams got the final word. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, both Adams and Jefferson died on the same day – July 4, 1826 --fifty years to the day after the date on the Declaration. Communication was slow in those days, so Adams didn’t know that Jefferson had passed earlier in the day when he spoke his final words, “Jefferson still lives.” The history of that time is largely remembered as the one Jefferson favored. 

Whose history will be remembered in our future? Let’s take great care as we write it today. 

(All quotations from Joseph Ellis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Founding Brothers.)