A Letter to Samuel Whittemore Jr. (February 27, 1694 – February 2, 1793)
Dear Sam,
In 1776, living to old age was considered less an expectation and more a small miracle wandering around stubbornly refusing to die.
Which made you something of a legend already.
By the time of the Revolution, you were in your eighties, an age so uncommon in colonial America that younger men probably looked at you the way modern people look at giant tortoises or suspiciously ancient trees.
Respectfully.
And with mild disbelief.
The average life expectancy in Revolutionary America hovered somewhere around thirty-five to thirty-eight years old. At first glance, that sounds horrifyingly short to modern ears, conjuring images of entire populations collapsing dramatically before middle age.
But averages lie beautifully sometimes.
The real story was childhood.
Infant mortality rates were brutal. Between 10% and 30% of children died within their first year. Many more never reached adulthood. Disease, infection, malnutrition, accidents, childbirth complications, and poor sanitation devoured young lives relentlessly.
Human existence began precariously.
Yet if a person survived childhood, avoided catastrophic illness, and reached adulthood, especially among wealthier populations, they often lived into their fifties, sixties, or beyond. Benjamin Franklin was already seventy in 1776. George Washington lived to sixty-seven. Thomas Jefferson reached eighty-three.
The founders aged surprisingly well for men spending enormous amounts of time arguing about liberty while consuming questionable medical treatments.
Still, death remained intimate in ways modern Americans rarely experience.
Families lost children routinely. Women risked death through childbirth repeatedly. Smallpox outbreaks swept communities with terrifying speed. Dysentery, tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever, influenza, and infected wounds all killed efficiently in a world lacking antibiotics, vaccines, anesthesia, or reliable germ theory.
A minor cut could become fatal.
A cough could become permanent.
And yet, despite primitive medicine, many colonial Americans were relatively tall and physically robust compared to Europeans of the era, likely because land abundance and agricultural productivity provided reasonably strong nutrition for many free colonists.
Good food and terrible medicine.
An oddly effective historical pairing.
Then came the 19th century, and longevity improved frustratingly slowly.
Despite industrialization transforming economies and cities, life expectancy remained stubbornly low, hovering around forty years for much of the century. Again, childhood mortality heavily distorted averages. Roughly one-third of children still died before age five in many regions.
Cities made things worse.
Industrial urbanization packed humans tightly together beside contaminated water, sewage, livestock waste, smoke, and overcrowded housing. Cholera, tuberculosis, typhoid, influenza, and other infectious diseases spread eagerly through tenements and growing industrial centers.
Urban life often shortened lives dramatically.
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston became engines of opportunity wrapped in invisible microbial warfare.
And then came the Civil War.
The war itself slaughtered over 600,000 Americans while disease killed even more soldiers than combat. Camps became breeding grounds for dysentery, pneumonia, typhoid, and infection. Surgeons amputated limbs quickly because speed mattered more than delicacy when anesthesia remained limited and infection lurked everywhere.
Medicine in the 1860s often resembled organized desperation.
Still, something revolutionary began emerging late in the century:
Sanitation.
The “sanitary revolution” quietly changed human history more profoundly than many wars. Sewer systems expanded.
Clean water infrastructure improved.
Waste disposal modernized.
Germ theory gained scientific acceptance.
Cities slowly learned not to dump sewage directly beside drinking supplies with reckless confidence.
An important civic breakthrough, honestly.
And suddenly, children stopped dying quite so often.
That changed everything.
By 1900, American life expectancy had climbed to roughly forty-seven years. Still low by modern standards, yes, but the curve had finally bent upward meaningfully for the first time.
Then the 20th century arrived and detonated the greatest longevity revolution humanity had ever experienced.
Life expectancy nearly doubled.
Think about that.
In just one century, humans added roughly thirty extra years to average life.
That is not incremental improvement.
That is civilization performing medical sorcery.
The transformation came from multiple directions simultaneously.
Clean water systems expanded nationally.
Sewage infrastructure improved.
Vaccines crushed diseases that once haunted childhood relentlessly.
Antibiotics turned infections from death sentences into inconveniences.
Refrigeration improved food safety.
Public health campaigns reduced mortality dramatically.
The average child born in 1900 entered one world.
The average child born in 2000 entered another entirely.
Of course, the century still delivered terrifying setbacks. The 1918 influenza pandemic crashed life expectancy temporarily from over fifty years down near thirty-nine because the virus killed millions globally with horrifying speed.
Then came smoking-related illnesses, heart disease, cancer, industrial pollution, and automobile fatalities, all products of modernity itself.
Progress giveth.
Progress occasionally poisons the river and invents cigarettes.
Still, the overall trajectory remained astonishing. By 1950, life expectancy reached roughly sixty-eight years. By 2000, it climbed near seventy-seven to seventy-eight years nationwide.
And perhaps most importantly:
Far more children survived.
That single fact reshaped emotional life itself.
Parents no longer expected routinely to bury sons and daughters.
Entire generations grew up with grandparents.
Family structures changed.
Retirement became possible because large populations actually lived long enough to need it.
Old age transformed from rare privilege into common life stage.
But not equally.
Race, class, gender, and geography shaped longevity constantly.
Black Americans faced dramatically lower life expectancy throughout much of American history due to unequal healthcare, poverty, segregation, violence, environmental injustice, and systemic inequality.
Women generally lived longer than men.
Wealthier Americans consistently survived longer than poorer citizens.
Longevity became political whether societies admitted it or not.
Now we arrive in 2026, Sam, where Americans live longer than almost any humans before them…
…and yet often feel deeply anxious about aging anyway.
Current U.S. life expectancy rebounded recently to around seventy-nine years after devastating declines during the COVID-19 pandemic and opioid overdose crisis dropped averages sharply in the early 2020s.
For a brief moment, Americans experienced something psychologically shocking:
Life expectancy moved backward.
Modern civilization suddenly remembered progress is not guaranteed.
COVID exposed vulnerability brutally.
Hundreds of thousands died.
Hospitals overflowed.
Older adults became isolated.
Mental health crises intensified.
Addiction surged.
The illusion that modern medicine had fully conquered mortality cracked visibly.
And beneath the pandemic lay another uncomfortable reality:
America, despite enormous wealth and advanced medicine, still lags behind many peer nations in life expectancy.
The nation spends staggering amounts on healthcare while suffering high rates of obesity, chronic disease, gun violence, addiction, maternal mortality, stress, and inequality. Rich Americans often live dramatically longer than poor Americans depending on ZIP code alone.
Some neighborhoods contain decade-long lifespan differences separated by only a few miles.
A civilization reveals itself through who gets to grow old comfortably.
At the same time, modern humans now pursue longevity with near-religious intensity. Fitness tracking, supplements, anti-aging medicine, personalized nutrition, genetic testing, biohacking, and longevity startups all promise extended vitality. Silicon Valley billionaires inject themselves with experimental treatments hoping to outrun biology itself through money and optimization.
Humanity remains deeply uncomfortable with expiration dates.
And perhaps that is understandable.
Because modern life extended years while also creating new emotional dilemmas previous generations rarely faced.
People now worry about retirement savings lasting decades.
Dementia rises as populations age.
Loneliness among older adults grows severe.
Medical systems can prolong life far beyond what earlier centuries imagined, sometimes raising painful questions about quality versus quantity of years.
Living longer is not the same thing as living well.
Still, there is undeniable wonder here too.
A child born today will likely witness technologies, discoveries, and cultural transformations unimaginable even now.
Millions may live into their nineties. Some expect to reach one hundred routinely.
Entire generations may spend thirty years or more in retirement, something almost inconceivable in 1776.
Time itself expanded.
Sam, if you could witness America in 2026, you would probably stand speechless at modern medicine alone.
Vaccines.
Organ transplants.
MRI scanners.
Antibiotics.
Artificial joints.
Intensive care units.
Heart surgery.
Anesthesia.
Civilization learned astonishing tricks for keeping death waiting politely outside the room.
Yet We suspect you would also recognize something deeply familiar beneath all the technology.
Humans still fear losing one another.
Still grieve.
Still cling desperately to more time.
Still search for meaning inside fragile bodies moving steadily toward the same horizon.
With admiration, gratitude, and one aggressively scheduled annual physical,
—The Radical Left 🪼🖤
And dear reader, perhaps this is the deeper question longevity asks us after 250 years: what should humans do with these extra decades civilization fought so hard to create?
Is the goal merely longer life, or fuller life?
As medicine increasingly extends lifespan, how do societies ensure dignity, purpose, connection, and care across aging populations?
And what happens psychologically when humans begin expecting not merely survival, but longevity itself?
Because from candlelit colonial sickbeds to AI-assisted modern hospitals, humanity has spent centuries pursuing the same impossible dream:
More time.