Fourth of July

"The Second Day of July 1776," John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail, "will be the most memorable Epocha [fixed moment] in the History of America… it will be celebrated… as the great anniversary Festival." Perhaps only John Adams realized that delegates to the Continental Congress had given birth to the modern national holiday, which came to be celebrated on the fourth, when the Declaration of Independence was approved. The day, he told Abigail, "ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance… It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade."

The Fourth of July provided a rallying point for revolutionary fervor throughout the war. The Continental Army celebrated by firing salutes, distributing extra rum, and pardoning prisoners. Holiday rituals included bell ringing, thirteen-gun salutes, fireworks, military parades, oratory, sermons, dinners, and toasting. A consensus emerged on these rituals and the national symbols of the Declaration of Independence, George Washington, and the flag. Despite this symbolic consensus, conflicts marked celebrations of the Fourth from the start. During the war revolutionary leaders downplayed the fact that a significant number of Americans were Loyalists, while rank-and-file patriots marked and publicly punished Loyalists by breaking their windows on the Fourth.

Conflicts over the meaning of the Fourth and the nation continued after the war. Federalists and anti-Federalists used the Fourth to legitimize their causes during the contest over ratification of the Constitution. Federalists suggested that the Constitution was the fulfillment of the Revolution by holding ratification processions on July 4, 1788. Anti-Federalists countered with

rituals and oratory opposing ratification, going so far as to burn a copy of the Constitution in Albany, New York.

By the late eighteenth century, Fourth of July celebrations contained four standard features: (1) the oration and the reading of the Declaration of Independence; (2) a military parade and drill; (3) dinners and toasting; and (4) fireworks and illuminations. The oration was the centerpiece of the celebration and taught the lessons of the Revolution. Speakers proclaimed that Americans were by nature a liberty-loving people, which was why they had risen up against England's tyranny. Because power resided with the people, orators continued, Americans must be both virtuous and vigilant to preserve their liberties. Finally, they asserted that unity was essential to the nation's continued independence and lauded the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as symbols and guarantors of that union.

Despite calls for unity, underlying divisions over the nature of the republic continued to flare up on Independence Day. By the mid-1790s Federalists and Republicans were holding separate celebrations in Boston, New York, and other cities, with each party proclaiming itself the true heir of the Revolution. Republicans rallied for the French Revolution, comparing it to America's own, whereas Federalists condemned its anarchy. Both parties lauded the Constitution as the guarantor of independence, but Republicans read the Declaration of Independence at their exercises, whereas Federalists preferred to keep it and its potentially radical implications well in the past. Each party annually berated the other as an illegitimate faction seeking to undermine the republic. Although both paid tribute to George Washington, Republicans in the 1790s attacked his and Adams's administrations; once the Republicans took over the presidency in 1801, Federalists used the Fourth to assail Thomas Jefferson's administration.

Rather than leading to renewed unity, the War of 1812 intensified these partisan divisions. Republicans used the Fourth to rally support for the war, proclaiming that its causes were the same as those of the Revolution, whereas Federalists condemned the war and James Madison's administration. After the War of 1812, partisan ferocity declined along with the Federalist party, but politically divisive Fourths reemerged in the antebellum era with rising tensions over slavery.

African Americans faced harassment from whites on the Fourth. Some refused to observe the day in protest of its hypocrisy, while others organized separate exercises to agitate for emancipation and point out the incongruity of slavery in the land of liberty. Abolitionists turned the Fourth into a pointed attack on America's fall from the promise of 1776. In an 1852 address, the abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass denounced the holiday as a cruel joke to African Americans and asserted that they could not celebrate it until they were free. On another Fourth, the more radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the Constitution to protest its acceptance of slavery.

Although abolitionists attacked the Constitution on the Fourth, white Southerners embraced its protection of slavery. During the Civil War, however, Southerners returned to the Declaration of Independence to support secession, which they heralded as the completion of the Revolution. Northerners, in contrast, used wartime Fourth of July celebrations to proclaim unity and loyalty to the republic and its Constitution. During Reconstruction white Southerners refused to commemorate the Fourth, whereas African Americans celebrated it and their newly won independence vigorously.

Since the Civil War, the Fourth of July has continued to serve as a periodic rallying cry for Americans at war. During the war against Filipino insurgents at the turn of the century, pro- and anti-imperialists promoted their respective causes in holiday oratory. In 1915 more than a hundred towns celebrated the Fourth as National Americanization Day. In response to pressure to demonstrate their patriotism during World War I, immigrant leaders worked with the Committee on Public Information to make the 1918 Fourth of July a showcase of loyalty. In World War II as well, the Fourth was an occasion to demonstrate patriotism. Congress even created a new citizenship holiday, dubbed "I Am an American Day." During the Cold War (1946–1991), Fourth of July orators often propounded on American freedom and denounced communism. During the Vietnam War (1965–1973), pro- and antiwar forces agitated.

Today naturalization ceremonies remain a feature of the Fourth, with the most symbolic at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Fourth again became a rallying point, this time for the war on terrorism. Although picnics, family reunions, fireworks displays, and sporting events are popular ways to celebrate the contemporary Fourth, the holiday clearly retains the potential to revive revolutionary passions and renew patriotic values.

Bunker Hill Monument; Lafayette's Tour; Valley Forge.

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O'Leary, Cecilia Elizabeth. To Die For: The Paradox of American Patriotism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Sweet, Leonard I. "The Fourth of July and Black Americans in the Nineteenth Century: Northern Leadership Opinion within the Context of Black Experience." Journal of Negro History 61 (July 1976): 256–275.

Travers, Len. Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.

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