July 4th: Echoes of Independence—Presidents, Battles, and Uncanny Coincidences

Three of the first five U.S. Presidents died on the Fourth of July. That’s a fact that feels like it should be a riddle. Just last episode, for our one hundredth show, we were talking about July third and the end of the Battle of Gettysburg with Pickett's Charge. And it’s a reminder of how these dates aren't just single points in time… they're connected, one bleeding into the next, full of echoes and strange symmetries. The end of a bloody battle on one day, and a national day of origin on the next… a day that also became, for some of its most important authors, a day of ending.

Looking back now, we can see the patterns. But at the time, it was just… life. And death. On July fourth, 1826, the country was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The Jubilee of Freedom. And in Massachusetts, John Adams, the second president, was on his deathbed. He was ninety years old. His health had been failing for a long time. Across the country, in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, the third president, was also dying. The two had been rivals, then friends, then bitter political enemies, and then, in their old age, friends again, writing some of the most profound letters in American history back and forth.

And on that day, the fiftieth anniversary, they both slipped away. Adams’s last words, famously, were "Thomas Jefferson survives." He was wrong. Jefferson had died five hours earlier at Monticello. The news just hadn’t traveled fast enough. Two of the core architects of the nation, the primary author of the Declaration and its most powerful advocate, gone on the exact same day, exactly fifty years after the moment that defined their lives. At the time, it was seen as nothing less than divine providence. A sign from God, sealing the legitimacy of the American experiment. Daniel Webster, in his eulogy, called it an "event which will not happen again." And then, five years later, on July fourth, 1831, James Monroe, the fifth president, also died.

The last of the so-called "Virginia Dynasty" of presidents. At that point, the coincidence became so profound it felt… almost scripted. Like a story being written in real time. From our vantage point, we see it differently. We don't necessarily see it as a divine sign. We see it as the moment a national mythology became scripture. The story was just too good, too powerful, too… perfect, not to become a foundational truth about the country. It was a coincidence that we, as a people, decided would have meaning. And that act of deciding what has meaning… that’s really the story of July fourth itself.

We think of the big John Trumbull painting in the Capitol Rotunda. Dozens of men, all gathered in a room, stepping forward to sign the great document. It’s a powerful image. It’s also not what happened. The real story is a little messier, and frankly, a little more human. The Continental Congress actually voted for independence on July second, 1776. That was the day the legal separation from Great Britain was made. John Adams was so sure that this would be the day for the ages. He wrote to his wife Abigail that July second would be "celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival… with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other." He got the celebration right, he just got the date wrong.

So what happened on the fourth? On July fourth, the Congress approved the final wording of the document we know as the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s masterpiece of rhetoric and reason. They finished the edits, and they ordered it to be printed and sent out to the colonies and to the army. The only people who likely signed a copy that day were John Hancock, the president of the Congress, and his secretary, Charles Thomson. The famous, beautifully handwritten version on parchment… that wasn’t signed by most of the delegates until August second. Some signed even later. So why the fourth?

Because that’s the date printed at the top of the document. It’s the day the idea was broadcast. And looking back, that choice tells us everything. We didn't choose to celebrate the day of the vote, the legalistic moment of separation. We chose to celebrate the day of the text, the day the words were sent out into the world. We built our national holiday around a piece of writing. Around an argument. And that feels… right. The power wasn't just in the act, but in the declaration of the principles behind the act. The date itself seems to have this strange gravitational pull, attracting not just endings, but beginnings.

The only U.S. President to be born on the fourth of July was Calvin Coolidge, in 1872. "Silent Cal." A man who could not have been more different from the eloquent, philosophical founders. He was famously a man of few words. There’s that story of a woman at a dinner party who told him, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a bet that I can get more than two words out of you." He replied, "You lose." But his beginning as president is a story that feels like it’s straight out of another century. He was Vice President when Warren G. Harding died in 1923. Coolidge was on vacation, visiting his family home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont.

A house with no electricity, no telephone. The news of Harding’s death arrived by messenger in the middle of the night. So, at 2:47 in the morning, by the light of a single kerosene lamp, Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the thirtieth President of the United States by his own father, who happened to be a notary public. It’s an unbelievable scene. A transfer of power so quiet, so humble. In hindsight, after the noise and scandals of the Harding administration, this quiet man, born on the fourth of July and sworn in by lamplight, was exactly what the country felt it needed. And then there are the artists born on this day, who created a different kind of independence.

Stephen Foster, born in 1826, the very day Adams and Jefferson died. He's called the father of American music. He wrote "Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," "Beautiful Dreamer." His songs became part of the American subconscious. Here’s the turn, though. Foster wrote the definitive soundtrack for the American South of that era—"My Old Kentucky Home," "Old Folks at Home," with its famous line about the "Swanee River." But he was from Pennsylvania. And the best evidence we have suggests he only visited the Deep South once, for a very short steamboat trip. He wrote the songs that defined a region he barely knew.

He was creating a myth, a romanticized version of a place, that was then absorbed by the entire country as truth. It’s another layer of the story we tell ourselves. And then… there’s Satchmo. Louis Armstrong. For his entire life, he told everyone he was born on the fourth of July, 1900. And why not? It was perfect. A Black man from the poorest neighborhood of New Orleans, who, through sheer genius and force of will, reinvented American music and became a global ambassador for American culture. Who better to be born on Independence Day? He was the embodiment of the promise. A self-made icon.

But decades after he died, in the 1980s, a music historian was digging through old church records in New Orleans. And he found it. A baptismal record for one Louis Armstrong. His actual date of birth wasn't July fourth, 1900. It was August fourth, 1901. We don’t know if Armstrong himself knew and changed it, or if he genuinely believed he was a fourth of July baby. But I like to think he chose it. Just like the country chose to celebrate the fourth instead of the second. He understood that you have to claim your own story. He picked a birthday that matched the scale of his spirit. He looked at the calendar and said, "Yes.

That one. That will be my origin story." So when we look back at July fourth, what is it we’re actually seeing? We see a day that wasn’t the real day of the vote. We see a signing that didn’t happen the way we picture it. We see a president who wasn’t really born on that day. We see a songwriter who wrote about a South he never really saw. It’s a holiday built on revisions and convenient coincidences and… stories. And that’s not a criticism. It’s the point. The astonishing deaths of Adams and Jefferson gave the day a sense of divine weight. Coolidge’s quiet birth gave it a sense of humble, democratic virtue.

Armstrong’s chosen birthday gave it the rhythm of reinvention. Even the Liberty Bell, the ultimate symbol of the day… the story of it ringing out to announce independence on July fourth, 1776? That’s a myth, too. It comes from a short story written in 1847. We needed a sound to go with the image, so we wrote one into the script. History isn't just what happened on a certain day. It's the story we decide to tell about it, year after year. And on July fourth, we are all co-authors.