A Tree of Reconciliation

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

In this age of rancor, there is one political reconciliation that defies the national mood and grows stronger and deeper each year. A direct descendant of the elm tree that John Quincy Adams planted on the White House grounds in 1826 is now three years old and 14 ft. high, growing in the soil Thomas Jefferson had graded into a small hill back in 1807 to increase the beauty and privacy of the President's residence.

Jefferson and John Adams, John Quincy Adams' father, were fast friends when they helped found the Republic. Politics subsequently divided and embittered them, and only in their last decade did the two men engineer a reconciliation. Now there is a living symbol.

The other day White House Gardener Irvin Williams looked proudly at the youngster. "It grew 4 ft. this year," he said, scanning the supple trunk that is planted about 12 ft. from the original Adams elm, which is weak and declining. The old tree was the tallest and grandest on the White House grounds until it was hit by lightning in 1965 and lost one of its huge limbs. Another storm in 1976 battered the tree even more, and now decay has begun to eat at the 4 1/2-ft. trunk. Its leaves, once deep green and dense, are thinning. They have fallen for the winter, and the likelihood is that next spring they will not regain even this year's reduced vigor. But the family will go on.

This new little elm is not the first progeny of the Adams elm. Some seedlings have been shipped back to the Adams family in Quincy, Mass., and a few to Lady Bird Johnson in Texas. Four more have been planted in other parts of the White House grounds. Since the old tree has resisted aphids, locusts, Washington's air pollution and even Dutch elm disease, there is great hope that the new trees will inherit its special immunity. One by one the other elms around the White House have succumbed. Eight have died since 1965, and only 31 oldtimers still stand.

Williams will continue to expand the Adams tree family. Each spring he will take a few seeds from the old tree and start them out on a Maryland farm. After three years of growth, they will be transplanted to their permanent homes. None of the cousins will be so special as the one planted in March on the Jefferson mound. It has the classic vase shape of Ulmus americana. Its trunk is already 4-in. in diameter, and its upper branches in a couple of years will brush the lower limbs of the patriarch. It will be ready to stand vigil for another 150 years in the name of the Adams family on the ground that Jefferson ordered reshaped.

Williams believes the old Adams elm has only a few years left, although trees, like humans, fight hard to live on. "We can never be sure," says Williams. "Elms don't like to lose Limbs. They do not heal well." And the giant has now lost half a dozen of its big branches.

Adams and Jefferson first met in 1775 at the Continental Congress that later proclaimed independence. Jefferson Biographer Dumas Malone wrote that "the young Virginian soon seized upon his [Adams'] heart." Their friendship deepened when they were both envoys to Paris after the revolution. But back home and in politics, the two approached governing from different perspectives. Adams did not share Jefferson's faith in the common man. They fought for the presidency and became critics of each other's leadership. But near the end of their lives, Philadelphian Dr. Benjamin Rush successfully urged them to heal the old wounds through letters. This they did, enriching the history and literature of those days with their exchanges. Both men died July 4, 1826, Jefferson at a few minutes after the start of the new day, and John Adams shortly before sunset.

That same year, President John Quincy Adams planted his memorial tree on the South Lawn just at the edge of "the small rising knoll" created by Thomas Jefferson. It is one of the enduring virtues of this free society, which Adams and Jefferson did so much to create, that political animosity does not often last.

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