The most inadvertently prophetic words that Adams ever uttered were his last: Thomas Jefferson survives.
For it was the Jeffersonian image that broke free of the aggregated anonymity, the founders
or the fathers,
and eventually ascended into heaven with Washington. During the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Jeffersonian legacy became the most adaptable and all-purpose political touchstone in American political history.
James Peale (1749—1831)
Oil on canvas, figures probably painted by Charles Willson Peale. Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, MD.
Oil on canvas; 36 x 27 in. (91.4 x 68.6 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
Oil on canvas; 61.5 x 89.5 cm. (24 3/16 x 35 1/4 in.) Princeton University Museum of Art, Princeton, NJ.
Watercolor on ivory; 2 5/16 x 1 13/16 in. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.
Oil on canvas; 31 1/4 x 32 3/4 in (79.4 x 83.2 cm). Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.
Oil on canvas; 28 1/8 x 23 5/8 in (71.4 x 60.0 cm). Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA.
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams (1993)