Your turn: Galesburg can't move forward if people don't respect one another

They must have looked strange walking down the street. One was 6-foot-3, rail thin with red hair and a patrician air. The other was 5-foot-6, stocky, balding and feisty as a banty rooster. One was courtly and serene with impeccable manners while the other was irascible and splenetic.

What they had in common was a revolutionary spirit that sparked their friendship. Both had been delegates to the Continental Congress that declared the colonies free from King George. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were members of the committee that wrote The Declaration of Independence, but Adams insisted Jefferson do the original draft.

Adams explained why he wanted Jefferson to do it. "I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular." Plus, Jefferson "could write ten times better than I can." Abigail Adams said that Jefferson was, "the only person with whom my [husband had] perfect freedom and reserve."

Cracks began to emerge in their friendship while they served in George Washington's cabinet. Then came the election of 1796, which revealed a serious flaw in the brand-new Constitution. Jefferson and Adams ran against each other for president. Adams won and was sworn in as president. Jefferson came in second and was vice-president. (Imagine Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton serving together.) For all the genius in the Constitution, that was a really bad idea. Especially since the two men had started to develop very different political beliefs. Jefferson wanted a small government while Adams wanted to expand Federal power.

Their animosity towards each other grew so strong that they stopped speaking and when Jefferson was inaugurated president in 1801, Adams slipped out of the White House before dawn so he wouldn't have to go to the ceremony. They didn't speak for more than ten years.

The political issue that broke up their friendship has always been the primary source of friction between the political parties. It was one of the main topics debated by Lincoln and Douglas when they came to Galesburg. Liberal versus conservative; progressive versus traditionalist — call it what you want, it's the same thing we're still arguing about today.

And in case you think politics was more civil back then, a journalist hired by Jefferson printed that Adams was, "a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." Yikes. That has a strange familiarity in the 21^st century.

Adams said Jefferson was, "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." Sounds like somebody was playing the race card.

Honest Abe was a little more elegant but no less cutting when he accused Douglas of, "blowing out the moral lights around us."

Barbs and insults are part of our current political diatribe still today. Recent opinion pieces in this paper have accused opponents of being "fools," "hateful racists," "against anything that doesn't help them or the rich," "sewing fear and confusion" and "reentering the Dark Ages." At the same time the same writers are urging us to, “bring the city back together."

As the rift between Jefferson and Adams showed us, vitriol and mordancy will not bring us together but rather tear us further apart. How can either side be heard when their adversaries consider them evil and stupid?

If people really want the city or the nation to come back together, each side must respect the other. Instead of hurling epithets, it needs to be recognized that there are two legitimate but competing views of the way government should work. The discussion should be on substance-the merits of one’s positions- rather than why the other side is so irredeemably nasty and loathsome.

Jefferson and Adams did finally reconcile. After a dozen years of silence, Adams wrote Jefferson, "You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other." For the next fourteen years they exchanged ideas, not always agreeing but always respecting the other man's opinion. In an amazing coincidence, both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. Adams’ last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

Now if only we could discuss our differences without shouting at each other.

Harry Bulkeley is a retired Knox County judge and a local historian.

This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Your turn: Galesburg can't grow if people don't respect one another