To this letter Dr. Rush replied as follows:
From Benjamin Rush.—[Extract.]
Philadelphia, Dec. 17th, 1811.
My dear old Friend—Yours of December 5th came to hand yesterday. I was charmed with the subject of it. In order to hasten the object you have suggested, I sat down last evening and selected such passages from your letter as contained the kindest expressions of regard for Mr. Adams, and transmitted them to him. My letter which contained them was concluded, as nearly as I can recollect, for I kept no copy of it, with the following words: "Fellow-laborers, in erecting the fabric of American liberty and independence! fellow-sufferers in the calumnies and falsehoods of party rage! fellow-heirs of the gratitude and affection of posterity! and fellow-passengers in the same stage which must soon convey you both into the presence of a Judge with whom forgiveness and love of enemies is the only condition of your acceptance, embrace—embrace each other—bedew your letter of reconciliation with tears of affection and joy. Let there be no retrospect of your past differences. Explanations may be proper between contending lovers, but they are never so between divided friends. Were I near you, I would put a pen in your hand, and guide it while it wrote the following note to Mr. Jefferson: 'My dear old friend and fellow-laborer in the cause of the liberties and independence of our common country, I salute you with the most cordial good wishes for your health and happiness.
John Adams."
Jefferson's hopes were realized by receiving early in the year 1812 a letter from Mr. Adams. It is pleasing to see with what eagerness he meets this advance from his old friend. In his reply he says:
To John Adams.
A letter from you calls up recollections very dear to my mind. It carries me back to the times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow-laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self-government. Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us, and yet passing harmless under our bark, we knew not how, we rode through the storm with heart and hand, and made a happy port.... But whither is senile garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final leave. I think little of them, and say less. I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and I find myself much the happier. Sometimes, indeed, I look back to former occurrences, in remembrance of our old friends and fellow-laborers who have fallen before us. Of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, I see now living not more than half a dozen on your side of the Potomac, and, on this side, myself alone.
You and I have been wonderfully spared, and myself with remarkable health, and a considerable activity of body and mind. I am on horseback three or four hours of every day; visit three or four times a year a possession I have ninety miles distant, performing the winter journey on horseback. I walk little, however, a single mile being too much for me; and I live in the midst of my grandchildren, one of whom has lately promoted me to be a great-grandfather. I have heard with pleasure that you also retain good health, and a greater power of exercise in walking than I do. But I would rather have heard this from yourself, and that, writing a letter like mine, full of egotisms, and of details of your health, your habits, occupations, and enjoyments, I should have the pleasure of knowing that in the race of life you do not keep, in its physical decline, the same distance ahead of me which you have done in political honors and achievements. No circumstances have lessened the interest I feel in these particulars respecting yourself; none have suspended for one moment my sincere esteem for you, and I now salute you with unchanged affection and respect.
Mr. Adams having had some affliction in his household, Mr. Jefferson, at the close of a letter written to him in October, 1813, says:
To John Adams.
On the subject of the postscript of yours of August the 16th, and of Mrs. Adams's letter, I am silent. I know the depth of the affliction it has caused, and can sympathize with it the more sensibly, inasmuch as there is no degree of affliction, produced by the loss of those dear to us, which experience has not taught me to estimate. I have ever found time and silence the only medicine, and these but assuage, they never can suppress, the deep-drawn sigh which recollection forever brings up, until recollection and life are extinguished together.