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Three Presidents Die on July 4th: Just a Coincidence?
It is a fact of American history that three of the five Founding Father Presidents died on Independence Day. But was it just a coincidence?
“It is a fact of American history that three of the five Founding Father Presidents died on the Independence Day anniversary. But was it just a coincidence?
It is a fact of American history that three Founding Father Presidents
John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe
died on July 4, the Independence Day anniversary. But was it just a coincidence?
On July 4, 1831, James Monroe, the fifth President, died at the age of 73 at his son-in-law
s home in New York City. Monroe had been ill for some time and newspapers had reported on Monroe
s illness before his passing.
Local and national newspapers were also quick to report after Monroe
s death that they thought his July 4 passing was a
remarkable
coincidence, at the least, since Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had both also died on July 4, 1826
the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
The oddness of the events wasn
t lost on the New York Evening Post in 1831, when the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton called it a
coincidence that has no parallel
:
Three of the four presidents who have left the scene of their usefulness and glory expired on the anniversary of the national birthday, a day which of all others, had it been permitted them to choose [they] would probably had selected for the termination of their careers,
the Post reported on July 5, 1831.”
2019-07-04T12:26:45Z