When many of us were last in this place, fellow-citizens, it was on the day of that anniversary.  We were met to enjoy the festivities belonging to the occasion, and to manifest our grateful homage to our political fathers.  We did not, we could not here, forget our venerable neighbor of Quincy.  We knew that we were standing, at a time of high and palmy prosperity, where he had stood in the hour of utmost peril; that we saw nothing but liberty and security, where he had met the frown of power; that we were enjoying every thing, where he had hazarded every thing; and just and sincere plaudits rose to his name, from the crowds which filled this area, and hung over these galleries.  He whose grateful duty it was to speak to us,[1] on that day, of the virtues of our fathers, had, indeed, admonished us that time and years were about to level his venerable frame with the dust.  But he bade us hope that “the sound of a nation’s joy, rushing from our cities, ringing from our valleys, echoing from our hills, might yet break the silence of his aged ear; that the rising blessings of grateful millions might yet visit with glad light his decaying vision.”  Alas! that vision was then closing for ever.  Alas! the silence which was then settling on that aged ear was an everlasting silence!  For, lo! in the very moment of our festivities, his freed spirit ascended to God who gave it!  Human aid and human solace terminate at the grave; or we would gladly have borne him upward, on a nation’s outspread hands; we would have accompanied him, and with the blessings of millions and the prayers of millions, commended him to the Divine favor.

While still indulging our thoughts, on the coincidence of the death of this venerable man with the anniversary of Independence, we learn that Jefferson, too, has fallen; and that these aged patriots, these illustrious fellow-laborers, have left our world together.  May not such events raise the suggestion that they are not undesigned, and that Heaven does so order things, as sometimes to attract strongly the attention and excite the thoughts of men?  The occurrence has added new interest to our anniversary, and will be remembered in all time to come.

The occasion, fellow-citizens, requires some account of the lives and services of JOHN ADAMS and THOMAS JEFFERSON.  This duty must necessarily be performed with great brevity, and in the discharge of it I shall be obliged to confine myself, principally, to those parts of their history and character which belonged to them as public men.

JOHN ADAMS was born at Quincy, then part of the ancient town of Braintree, on the 19th day of October (old style), 1735.  He was a descendant of the Puritans, his ancestors having early emigrated from England, and settled in Massachusetts.  Discovering in childhood a strong love of reading and of knowledge, together with marks of great strength and activity of mind, proper care was taken by his worthy father to provide