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By Root 836 0

come as no surprise that the same nineteenth century that reveled in gloom took a morbid interest in last words. Everyone recalls John Adams’ poignantly inaccurate declaration of July 4, 1826, “Thomas Jefferson still survives.” Less well known is Jefferson’s political testament to his countrymen, contained in a letter published that very day in Washington’s National Intelligencer. Gracefully declining an invitation by citizens of the capital to attend ceremonies commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson reiterated his lifelong faith in the rights of man, and an optimism vouchsafed by “the light of science.” To the end, he believed it a self-evident truth “that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

Professing indifference over his ancestry, Jefferson took a much different view of posterity. The inscription he composed for his own granite obelisk listed authorship of the Declaration of Independence and Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom, and his founding of the University of Virginia, to the exclusion of his service as the nation’s third president. Andrew Jackson used characteristically blunter language to propel his parting shot. Asked if he had any regrets, the fiery Jackson replied, “Yes. I didn’t shoot Henry Clay, and I didn’t hang John C. Calhoun.” More tenderly, Jackson admonished his family and servants, black and white, to keep the Sabbath faithfully. His last recorded words: “We will all meet in Heaven” (where, presumably, he didn’t expect to encounter either Clay or Calhoun).

Jackson’s great political rival, John Quincy Adams, lingered two days after a stroke felled him on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on February 21, 1848. Adams did meet Clay, his onetime secretary of state, with whom he enjoyed a brief, emotional reunion. “This is the end of the earth, but I am content,” he is supposed to have remarked as breath ran out. It is a claim disputed by recent biographer, Paul Nagel, who points out, truthfully enough, that John Quincy Adams was never content. William McKinley, whose initial thought on being shot was for his assailant (“don’t let them hurt him”), expired early in the morning of September 14, 1901, after calling for prayer and murmuring, “Goodbye, goodbye all. It is God’s way. His will, not ours, be done.” The earnest Grover Cleveland did not depart this life before reassuring history, “I have tried so hard to do right.” At the last, a sightless Woodrow Wilson, the very picture of Scottish chill and Presbyterian rectitude, gasped a single word—“Edith!”—the name of his wife and White House protector.

It is no small irony that nineteenth-century presidents, for whom the Constitution existed as a limiting, not an enabling, charter, should have their graves marked by great piles of marble and stained glass, while their allegedly imperial counterparts of the modern era are entombed more modestly. Such is the contrast between Victorians who loved nothing better than a good prolonged cry, and the prosaic emotions of our ironic, if not cynical, age. A century ago, presidents were more remote but also more revered. To be sure, millions of Americans retain indelible memories of the untimely passings of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, but that was before twenty-four-hour-a-day exposure magnified the imperfections of our leaders.

Ever since George Washington was laid to rest “with the greatest good order and regularity” in December 1799, Americans have honored their deceased presidents with varying degrees of pomp and ceremony. As the first incumbent to die in office, William Henry Harrison was accorded a period of mourning scarcely shorter than his month-long tenure. By contrast, John Tyler’s death in 1862 prompted a single paragraph notice, several days after the event, in Washington’s newspapers. Such neglect may have been occasioned by Tyler’s decision to throw in his lot with the Confederacy, in whose Congress he was