“Tell Me More” is an occasional series from the Newsroom where St. Thomas faculty experts tackle topical questions in their area of study in two minutes or less. The answers may be presented in written, audio or video form, but they will all have one thing in common: You’ll click away smarter than you were 120 seconds ago.
In this edition of Tell Me More, history assistant professor Michael Blaakman answers, “How did early Americans celebrate July 4?” Blaakman specializes in the history of early North America, including the Unites States’ growth after the Revolutionary War.
My favorite source on what July 4 was and should be in the early republic is John Adams, probably the nerdiest of the Founding Fathers. It took him a couple years to get Independence Day right and figure out how Americans were going to celebrate. Looking at his letters, right from the beginning, Americans were thinking about it in similar ways to what we do now.
In July 1776, Adams wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, that “independence day will be celebrated for the rest of time, there will be shows, games, pomp and parades, sports, fireworks, bonfires, from one end of this continent to the other, from this day forward, forevermore. The second day of July will be the most memorable in the history of America.” Congress decided to become independent on July 2; July 4 was when they adopted the document that explained the reasons for that decision. So, the first go-around Adams was wrong about the date but right about everything else.
No one thought about planning anything until July 2, 1777, so July 3 rolled around and they’re like, “We have to figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow.” So, they just kind of threw together the first Independence Day anniversary. They took the boats in the river – the patriots’ sad excuse for a navy – turned them into a boat parade, and had them shoot their cannons off 13 at a time. Any troops in the city of Philadelphia marched around in a parade. Bells rang all day. Bonfires were lit in the streets. Congress adjourned and had a party at a tavern. They made a band of Hessians that had been captured at the Battle of Trenton play for Congress. It was celebratory, exciting and would be familiar to us now.
In the next couple of decades, the Fourth of July became an occasion for Americans to debate what they thought America should be and articulate their ideas about how to improve it. This was often more divisive than unifying. “Are your toasts going to celebrate Washington and the Federalists, or critique the government?” It became a political battleground in a lot of ways.
By the early 1800s, the Jeffersonians had made the Fourth of July their own, and it became such a partisan holiday that a lot of Federalists refused to participate. They started boycotting the Fourth of July because if they showed up they would hear toasts mocking the Federalists and articulating a staunchly Jeffersonian vision for what the United States should be. Federalists made their party on Washington’s birthday. There was one particularly intense Jeffersonian party on July 4 in Virginia where the people assembled decided to toast President Washington. He was the president and he had won the Revolutionary War, but the toast was, “To President Washington, hoping he will remember that he is but a man, a servant of the people and not their master.” Couldn’t resist that dig.