On July 4th, 1826 — fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted — two of the men who wrote it, signed it, and spent their lives arguing about what it meant died on the same day. Within five hours of each other. John Adams in Quincy, Massachusetts. Thomas Jefferson at Monticello in Virginia.

Adams' last words, spoken in the failing light of that afternoon, were these: Thomas Jefferson still survives. He was wrong. Jefferson had died five hours earlier.

Host Shawn Spainhour takes you into the full story: the friendship between Adams and Jefferson, the bitter political falling out that silenced them for years, the remarkable fifteen-year correspondence that brought them back together, and the two old men, separated by five hundred miles, writing to each other about death as it slowly approached. This is not a ...