Healing

Cut from two different bolts of cloth, first laying eyes on each other sitting in the Continental Congress, they became friends.

Short, bald, plump cheeks, brilliant but irritating, John Adams dove head-on into fights. Tall, lean, copper-colored hair, charming but cautious, Thomas Jefferson avoided fights.

An heir of ‘The Enlightenment’ Jefferson put his faith in the power of reason. Adams thought reason had limits. Pursuing grand ideas to improve mankind Jefferson had little interest in individuals. Adams didn’t think mankind could be improved.

Writing his own version of the New Testament Jefferson took out the Resurrection, took out every miracle like Jesus healing the blind. Descended from Puritans, devout, Christian, Adams traveled a different road.

Jefferson married when he was 28 – his wife died 10 years later. Adams was married to one woman for 54 years.

Both lived in Paris as ambassadors. Worked together. Adams became Ambassador to London. Jefferson met Maria Cosway, blonde, winsome, half his age. He was smitten. Romance failed. That fall she returned to London with her husband.

When George Washington became president Adams and Jefferson worked side by side with him – but quarrels broke out. When Adams became President quarrels got worse. Next election Jefferson ran for president against Adams.

There was no internet in those days – newspapers ruled and like warring tribes chose sides. One tribe roared Adams, crippled by lust, sailed whores across the Atlantic from London for his pleasure, tarred him as ‘disgusting’… ‘toothless’… ‘obnoxious.’

Cutthroats in the other tribe called Jefferson an ‘atheist,’ an enemy of Christ, who ‘slept with his own slave women.’

It was brutal. When the election ended people had heard enough insults. Politics calmed down. Adams quietly handed Jefferson the reins of power, rode home to Massachusetts in a stagecoach.

The two men didn’t speak for a decade. Then sitting in his library, remembering, in an act of repentance Adams wrote Jefferson, wished him a Happy New Year. Healing started. Letters flowed back and forth for years.

On a summer afternoon when he was 83 years old Jefferson died at 1pm; five hours later, 500 miles away, 90 years old, Adams died. Both died on July 4th.

In a brutal election – in 1800 – America rolled downhill. But the ship righted itself. Wounds healed. But men are men, still villains. History repeats itself.

After he lost to Biden, angry, Trump shunned the peaceful transfer of power; now back in the White House, still seething, heaping scorn, calls his enemies ‘scum’ and ‘sleezebags.’ Insults roll on.

Can the ship right itself again? Is healing still possible? Only if people, once again,  tell politicians, Enough. No more. Only then will healing start.

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Telling stories, in his memoir Carter Wrenn follows The Trail of the Serpent twisting and turning through politics from Reagan to Trump. Order his book from Amazon.